Author • Speaker • Executive Advisor.
Keynotes for rooms ready to ask better questions about the future.
Ken Alston is an established keynote speaker to business leaders, conferences, schools, colleges, universities, boards, and professional communities exploring sustainability, circularity, artificial intelligence, and long-term stewardship.
For nearly five decades, Ken has worked at the intersection of business, product innovation, sustainability, circular economy, and executive decision-making.
His keynotes do not begin with easy answers.
They begin with the assumptions shaping the answers.
Why Ken?
There are moments when an audience does not need another trend forecast.
It needs a better question.
Ken Alston has spent 48 years asking why intelligent organizations can do so much work in sustainability, circularity, innovation, and transformation yet still produce outcomes no one intended.
That question has taken him through corporate product development, global sustainability leadership, circular-economy consulting, international advisory work, authorship, and keynote stages worldwide.
Today, his speaking helps audiences see the operating beliefs behind the decisions they are already making.
Watch Ken Open The Room
In under three minutes, you should be able to feel whether Ken is right for your audience.
Speaking Topics
Speaking Topics
Every presentation is tailored to the audience, event theme, and moment in front of the room.
### Why Sustainability Reached Its Ceiling
Why decades of sustainability work have improved performance while leaving the deeper trajectory largely unchanged.
### Perfectly Wrong: AI, Sustainability, And Business Risk
How AI can turn inherited sustainability blind spots into faster, more confident business risk.
### Design Like Nature
What living systems teach leaders about resilience, renewal, value creation, and the limits of linear business design.
### Business Stewardship And Future Capacity
What it means to lead a business in a way that protects the conditions its own future depends upon.
### Sustainable Circularity
Why circularity without sustainability is not enough.
### The Tactical Tetrahedron
A practical framework for seeing creation, use, maturity, decline, and renewal across products, organizations, and living systems.
### AI, Judgment, And The Responsibility Of Thinking
Why the future of AI is not only a technology question. It is a judgment question.
Ways To Bring Ken Into The Room
### Keynote
A tailored keynote for conferences, leadership meetings, universities, schools, associations, and executive forums.
Best when the event needs a strong opening, closing, or mid-program reframe.
### Keynote Plus Workshop
The keynote opens the shared question.
The workshop helps the audience apply it to their own decisions, risks, assumptions, and next moves.
Best for leadership teams, professional associations, business schools, university programs, and conferences that want the idea to move into practice.
### Keynote, Workshop, And Evening Event
A deeper engagement for retreats, summits, universities, and hosted communities.
The day can include a keynote, facilitated workshop, and an evening fireside conversation, salon, dinner dialogue, book discussion, or VIP session.
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## For Audiences Thinking Seriously About What Comes Next
Ken speaks for rooms where the question matters.
– Business leaders
– Boards and executive teams
– Trade associations
– Industry conferences
– Sustainability and circularity professionals
– Innovation and strategy teams
– Schools
– Colleges and universities
– Business schools and executive education programs
– Government and institutional audiences
– Podcast, media, and interview platforms
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## The Books Behind The Current Speaking Work
Ken’s current speaking draws from two books now available on Amazon.
*Our Common Future-Now* asks why sustainability reached a ceiling and what business leaders must reconsider before strategy begins.
*Perfectly Wrong* examines how AI can turn inherited sustainability blind spots into business risk.
Implementation note: link each book title directly to its Amazon page and, where useful, to the matching book page on `thekenalston.com`.
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## Selected Speaking And Advisory Contexts
Ken has spoken for or been associated with events and organizations including Circular Economy Forum of the Americas, University of Virginia, U.S. Department of State, Sustainable Cosmetics Summit, Adhesive & Sealant Association, Americana Conference in Quebec, Cumipaz Conference in Cali, and Universidad El Bosque in Bogota.
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## About Ken Alston
Ken Alston is an author, international speaker, and executive advisor working at the intersection of business, sustainability, circularity, artificial intelligence, and long-term stewardship.
His career includes more than two decades at SC Johnson, seventeen years working alongside William McDonough and Dr. Michael Braungart, and independent advisory work with companies, governments, institutions, and leadership teams across North America, Europe, South America, and the Caribbean.
He is the founder of Circularity Edge and the author of *Our Common Future-Now* and *Perfectly Wrong*.
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## Bring Ken To Your Audience
If your event needs more than another presentation, start with a conversation.
Tell Ken about the room, the audience, the timing, and the question you want people to carry after the event ends.
Invite Ken To Speak
For keynotes, workshops, evening events, school and university programs, executive sessions, interviews, and conference conversations.
(C) Ken Alston 2026. All Rights Reserved.