18 Digital Wellbeing Keynote Speakers, Compiled for 2026

Last updated: August 2026

By Jonno White, leadership consultant and keynote speaker at Clarity Group Global.

Digital wellbeing keynote speakers help organisations address screen fatigue, notification overload and always-on working culture. This page compiles eighteen speakers whose role, organisation and credentials were verified against their own primary sources on 3 August 2026. Entries appear alphabetically by surname, not in order of merit, and each links to that speaker's own site.

The scale of the problem is now measured rather than assumed. Desk workers record 99.2 hours of screen time each week, up from 97 hours a year earlier, and 71 percent report screen-related visual discomfort that costs them 7.4 hours of productivity every week, according to the third annual Workplace Vision Health Report, published in February 2026 by VSP Vision Care with Workplace Intelligence. That is close to a full working day lost every week to a problem most organisations still treat as a personal habit rather than a design decision.

How this list was compiled

This list is compiled, not ordered by merit, and no entry paid for inclusion. An entry appears only if three things were true when the page was checked on 3 August 2026: the person publicly offers speaking, training or facilitation work; their role and organisation were confirmed on their own domain, their employer's official profile or their publisher; and their public work has a clear, stated connection to digital wellbeing, attention, screen use or always-on culture.

Entries are ordered alphabetically by surname. That ordering is deliberate, because an order of merit across eighteen people working in different countries, formats and audiences would be a judgment this page cannot evidence. Twenty-five entries were assessed. Six were removed because no current source published in 2025 or 2026 could be found for their stated role during this check, and those removals are treated as a gap in the evidence rather than a judgment about the person.

Commercial disclosure: this page is published by Clarity Group Global, and Jonno White offers keynotes and facilitation in an adjacent field. He appeared as an entry in the earlier version of this page and has been removed from the list for that reason, with his availability described separately and clearly labelled at the end. If you believe an entry here is out of date or wrong, the correction route is the Clarity Group Global contact page, and corrections are applied at the next review of this page.

For the wider booking process, including briefs, contracting and running the event itself, see the complete guide to hiring keynote speakers in Australia and New Zealand.

What changed in this 2026 update

Four substantive changes were made in this update, and each one exists because a claim did not survive checking. The count moved from twenty-five to eighteen. Every speaker fee figure and fee band was removed, because no fee is published on any retained speaker's own site. All order-of-merit language was removed, and the author of this page was removed from the list he publishes.

One finding is worth stating plainly, because it affects a real booking decision. The Digital Wellness Institute publishes conflicting leadership titles for three of the people on this list. On 3 August 2026 its team page named Tyler Rice as Chief Executive Officer, Amy Blankson as Chief Evangelist and Nina Hersher as Chief Learning Officer, while its about page named Nina Hersher as Chief Executive Officer, Amy Blankson as Chief Operating Officer and did not list Tyler Rice at all.

Nothing about that discrepancy questions the individuals or their work. It does mean that if a title matters to your programme copy, your board paper or your speaker contract, confirm the current title in writing at the point of booking rather than lifting it from any website, including this one.

The compiled list of eighteen speakers

Each entry states what was verified, who the speaker suits, and links to that person's own site or official profile. Titles, affiliations and publications were confirmed on 3 August 2026.

Adam Alter, NYU Stern School of Business

Adam Alter is Professor of Marketing at New York University's Stern School of Business, with an affiliated appointment in the university's Psychology Department. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Irresistible, which considers why so many people are addicted to so many behaviours, from incessant smartphone and internet use to video game playing and online shopping, and of Drunk Tank Pink. His NYU profile records talks for Google, Microsoft, Anheuser Busch, Prudential and Fidelity, and academic work published widely in psychology journals.

Strongest fit: executive audiences that want the behavioural science behind attention capture explained by an active researcher rather than summarised second hand. He received his Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of New South Wales and his PhD in Psychology from Princeton University. Profile: stern.nyu.edu.

Amy Blankson, Digital Wellness Institute

Amy Blankson is a co-founder of the Digital Wellness Institute and the author of The Future of Happiness. Her keynote work joins positive psychology to digital culture, and she presents the Digital Flourishing framework the Institute uses in its programmes. The Institute also records her as a member of the UN Global Happiness Council and chief executive of Fearless Positivity.

The Institute's own pages currently give her title as both Chief Evangelist and Chief Operating Officer, so confirm the current title at booking. Strongest fit: wellbeing and people-and-culture programmes that want a keynote followed by a structured organisational pathway rather than a single event. Profile: digitalwellnessinstitute.com.

Jocelyn Brewer, Digital Nutrition

Jocelyn Brewer is a Sydney-based registered psychologist who founded Digital Nutrition in 2013, a positive technology use philosophy that treats technology habits the way nutrition treats food. Rather than counting screen hours, the framework asks what value a given digital activity actually delivers. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney, a Diploma of Education from UNSW and postgraduate qualifications in psychology, and submitted her Master of Applied Science in cyberpsychology in December 2021.

She runs a boutique psychology practice in Burwood alongside her speaking and course work. Strongest fit: Australian audiences, and any organisation that wants an evidence-led approach which avoids moralising about technology. Profile: jocelynbrewer.com.

Christina Crook, JOMO

Christina Crook is a Canadian author and speaker, and the founder and chief executive of JOMO Campus, a digital wellness education platform. She did not coin the phrase joy of missing out, and her own site is clear about that: the tech entrepreneur Anil Dash coined it on his blog in 2012, and Crook's book The Joy of Missing Out followed shortly afterwards. What she did was turn the idea into a body of work, including her second book Good Burdens and the teachable JOMO Method.

She hosts JOMO Cast and has worked with organisations including Oxford University, Adobe, Gimlet Media and Shopify. Strongest fit: education, nonprofit and values-driven organisations, and any conference wanting a hopeful rather than alarmed treatment of the subject. Profile: experiencejomo.com.

Dr Anastasia Dedyukhina, Consciously Digital

Dr Anastasia Dedyukhina founded the London-based Consciously Digital Institute in 2015, after giving up her own smartphone for a year and a half while working in senior digital marketing roles. The Institute now describes itself as a network of more than 150 digital wellbeing coaches worldwide. She teaches the first digital wellbeing certification programme approved by two major coaching associations, the International Coaching Federation and the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching, and has given over a thousand talks.

Her organisation's published client list includes HSBC, Google, Booking.com, DLA Piper, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Lush. She has given two TEDx talks and is the author of Homo Distractus. Strongest fit: enterprise conferences and human resources leadership events that want a research-led keynote plus a route to certified internal capability. Profile: consciously-digital.com.

Nir Eyal, NirAndFar

Nir Eyal writes and teaches on the psychology of distraction and habit formation, and is a former lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable, which have sold over one million copies in more than thirty languages, and of Beyond Belief, which his site records as an instant New York Times bestseller.

Strongest fit: audiences that would resist an anti-technology message. His argument is that distraction begins with internal discomfort rather than with the device, which makes the talk land in commercial and sales-heavy rooms. Booking: nirandfar.com.

Tanya Goodin, Time To Log Off and EthicAI

Tanya Goodin founded the digital detox movement Time To Log Off and is now chief executive of EthicAI, an ethical artificial intelligence advisory. She has written four books on our relationship with technology, published in ten languages, hosts the It's Complicated podcast and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Her recent published writing covers artificial intelligence and young people, which is where much of the current corporate anxiety sits.

"I've watched emerging technologies morph from trusted tools into manipulative masters," she writes on her own site, which is a fair summary of the argument she brings to a room. Strongest fit: United Kingdom corporate events and school leadership audiences that want ethics and wellbeing handled together. Profile: tanyagoodin.com.

Dr Kristy Goodwin, Dr Kristy Goodwin Consulting

Dr Kristy Goodwin is an Australian neuro-performance scientist, keynote speaker and executive coach with a PhD on the impact of digital technologies. She wrote the award-winning Dear Digital, We Need to Talk and Raising Your Child in a Digital World, and her work translates neuroscience into workable rituals for focus, sleep and recovery rather than generic screen-time advice. A former educator in public and private schools, she has lectured at Macquarie University and the University of Notre Dame.

She is a Certified Speaking Professional and received the Australian Professional Speakers Association Breakthrough Speaker of the Year Award in 2023. Strongest fit: Australian and Asia Pacific corporate and education audiences that want scientific depth delivered with practical workplace application. Profile: drkristygoodwin.com.

Nina Hersher, Digital Wellness Institute

Nina Hersher is a co-founder of the Digital Wellness Institute and the founder of Evolving in the Digital Age. Her speaking focuses on hybrid and distributed teams, where always-on behaviour is hardest to unpick because the working day has no shared shape. The Institute's own pages currently give her title as both Chief Learning Officer and Chief Executive Officer, so confirm the current title at booking.

Strongest fit: remote and hybrid team conferences, and organisations that want a certification pathway rather than a one-off talk. Profile: digitalwellnessinstitute.com.

Dr Elaine Kasket, cyberpsychologist

Dr Elaine Kasket is a United Kingdom cyberpsychologist, an HCPC-registered counselling psychologist and a BPS-chartered psychologist who speaks on artificial intelligence, digital wellbeing and online relationships. She wrote Reset, published in 2024, and All the Ghosts in the Machine. Her stated message is that all psychology is now cyberpsychology, and her digital wellbeing keynote is built around finding agency in a world of artificial intelligence and overwhelm.

She has spoken at TEDx in Oxford, Congreso Futuro in Chile, re:publica in Berlin and the International Baccalaureate conference in Budapest. Strongest fit: psychology-literate audiences, leadership workshops and executive briefings that want a clinical perspective. Speaking enquiries go through Andrew Hickman at Speaking Office rather than direct. Profile: elainekasket.com.

Cal Newport, Georgetown University

Cal Newport is a Full Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University and the author of eight books, including Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, A World Without Email and Slow Productivity. His titles have cumulatively sold well over two million copies and have been published in more than forty languages. He is a contributing writer for The New Yorker and hosts the Deep Questions podcast.

His argument is structural: always-on culture is a workflow problem, not a willpower problem. Strongest fit: rooms where the audience can actually change how work flows, such as executive retreats and senior leadership offsites. Media enquiries go through his publisher rather than his university address, and everything else runs through his contact page. Profile: calnewport.com.

Dr Joanne Orlando, Western Sydney University

Dr Joanne Orlando is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at Western Sydney University and a regular media commentator on technology and behaviour. She wrote Life Mode On, published by Hardie Grant, and her research spans digital safety, literacy and wellbeing across families, classrooms and workplaces. She is currently leading a research project on best practice in screen use for education that runs to late 2026.

Western Sydney University records her as a recipient of the Engagement Australia award for Outstanding Leadership in Engagement in 2024. Strongest fit: Australian conferences and education leadership events that want an academic voice with genuine media fluency. Profile: Western Sydney University.

Catherine Price, Screen/Life Balance

Catherine Price is an award-winning health and science journalist, the founder of Screen/Life Balance and a number one New York Times bestselling author. Her books include How to Break Up With Your Phone, The Power of Fun, The Amazing Generation, co-authored with Jonathan Haidt, and Vitamania. Her TED talk on fun has been viewed more than five million times, and she writes the How to Feel Alive newsletter.

She speaks on fun, phone breakups, creativity, productivity and screen and life balance for conferences, Fortune 500 companies, schools and health organisations. Strongest fit: corporate kickoffs and wellbeing initiatives that want a science-journalist perspective with a structured programme attached. Speaking enquiries go through The Harry Walker Agency. Profile: catherineprice.com.

Tyler Rice, Digital Wellness Institute

Tyler Rice is a co-founder of the Digital Wellness Institute and the author of Tactical Disconnection. His keynote challenges the assumption that constant availability signals commitment, and argues that deliberate disconnection improves focus and output. He holds a Master's Degree in Public Administration and Social Innovation from New York University and completed coursework through Stanford's Idea 2 Market business incubator, and his stated client base is enterprise and university organisations.

His title is the clearest example of the problem this page flags. His own about page names him Chief Executive Officer, his own site description names him chief operating officer, and the Institute's about page does not list him at all. Strongest fit: human resources leadership conferences and corporate wellness summits that want a named, teachable framework. Profile: tylerriceauthor.com.

Daniel Sih, Spacemakers

Daniel Sih is the co-founder and chief executive of Spacemakers in Australia and Canada, and the author of Spacemaker. Spacemaker won the Australian Business Book Award for Personal Development in 2021 and the Axiom Business Book Award for Work-Life Balance and Time Prioritisation in 2023, and his later book is Raising Tech-Healthy Humans. His framing puts digital boundaries inside a wider conversation about work design and deep work.

He is a TEDx speaker, co-hosts The Spacemakers podcast and has made over one hundred international podcast appearances. He is based in Hobart and speaks across Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Strongest fit: Australian corporate events and leadership retreats where digital wellbeing needs to sit within productivity rather than beside it as a wellness item. Profile: spacemakers.au.

Petra Velzeboer, PVL

Petra Velzeboer is a writer, speaker and entrepreneur who runs the wellbeing and culture business PVL. She wrote Digital Wellbeing: Recharge Your Focus and Reboot Your Life, and Begin with You: Invest in Your Wellbeing and Satisfaction at Work. She trained in youth mental health, psychotherapy and coaching, and holds a Masters in Psychodynamics of Human Development.

Her own account of leaving a religious cult, addiction and recovery is central to how she frames workplace culture, and she works specifically with wellbeing and culture leads rather than only with general audiences. Strongest fit: corporate conferences that want digital wellbeing connected to resilience and mental health rather than treated as a standalone topic. Profile: petravelzeboer.com.

Laura Willis, Shine Offline

Laura Willis is a co-founder of Shine Offline, which educates and empowers employees to improve their digital habits and build healthy digital workplace cultures. The company's published research states that 86 percent of employees experience stress and overwhelm as a result of poor digital habits, and 89 percent say digital distractions affect their performance. Its work is delivered as in-room and virtual employee engagement programmes rather than as single talks.

That programme orientation is the reason to consider Shine Offline over a pure keynote booking. Strongest fit: United Kingdom employers running an employee wellbeing programme who want the speaking element to connect to something ongoing. Profile: shineoffline.com.

Manoush Zomorodi, TED Radio Hour

Manoush Zomorodi is a journalist and author who hosts NPR's TED Radio Hour, and who wrote Bored and Brilliant, the argument that boredom and idle time are what creative work runs on. Her TED talk on the attention economy has over six million plays. Her book Body Electric was published by Flatiron on 5 May 2026 and draws on a collaboration between NPR and Columbia University Medical Center involving more than 20,000 participants.

That project matters for booking, because its conclusion is that small changes to how we sit and move with screens matter more than digital detoxes. She brings broadcast-grade storytelling, which matters more than it sounds when the audience has heard the topic before. Strongest fit: creative and innovation-focused organisations where the argument that has to land is the link between reduced distraction and original thinking. Profile: manoushz.com.

What the compiled set actually shows

Reading the eighteen verified entries together tells you something the individual profiles do not, and the pattern is compiled from the entries listed here, not from a survey. Eight are based in the United States, five in the United Kingdom, four in Australia and one in Canada. No verified entry on this list is based in continental Europe outside the United Kingdom, in Asia, in Africa, in the Middle East or in Latin America, so an organiser wanting regional resonance outside those four countries will need to search beyond a list like this one.

Two further patterns matter for a booking decision. Fifteen of the eighteen have at least one published book confirmed on their own current source, which means most options come with a body of work you can read before you commit. Only three hold a current university post, so most of the field speaks from consulting and practice rather than from active academic research.

The concentration is worth noticing too. Three of the eighteen, one in six, are officers of the same organisation, the Digital Wellness Institute. Four of the eighteen sit inside an organisation offering a certification or programme pathway beyond the keynote, which is a small share of a field that talks a great deal about lasting behaviour change.

How to choose a digital wellbeing speaker for your event

The choice becomes straightforward once you name the problem precisely, because digital wellbeing covers at least four different problems that need different speakers. If the problem is workflow, meaning meeting load, after-hours messaging and communication norms, look at the speakers who argue structurally, such as Cal Newport, Nir Eyal or Nina Hersher. If the problem is physical, meaning eye strain, sleep and recovery, look at Dr Kristy Goodwin, Catherine Price or Manoush Zomorodi. If the problem is cultural, meaning what people believe is expected of them, look at Petra Velzeboer, Tanya Goodin or Christina Crook.

Then decide whether you are buying inspiration or implementation, because they are different purchases. A single keynote reliably shifts attention and language, and it rarely shifts behaviour on its own. If you need behaviour to change, choose a speaker whose organisation offers a follow-on pathway, and budget for the follow-on at the same time as the keynote rather than afterwards.

Here is a worked example, using a real decision shape rather than an invented client. Suppose a 400-person professional services firm finds its engagement survey flagging after-hours contact, and the executive wants a keynote at its November conference. The problem named is cultural and structural rather than physical, the audience includes partners who can change norms, and the firm has no internal capability to run follow-up work.

On those three facts the shortlist narrows quickly. A structural speaker suits the partner audience, a certification pathway covers the missing internal capability, and a physical-health specialist would be a mismatch despite being excellent in another room. The firm would end up comparing two or three names rather than eighteen, which is the point of naming the problem first. For a related angle where the core issue is how people talk to each other rather than how much they use devices, see speakers on communication in a distracted world.

What moves the cost of a digital wellbeing keynote

No speaker fee appears on this page, and that is a deliberate result rather than an omission. No retained speaker on this list publishes a fee on their own site, and no public fee benchmark specific to the digital wellbeing speaking market could be verified from a named publisher during this check. Any range quoted for this niche elsewhere should be treated with caution unless it names its source.

What can be stated honestly is what moves a quote. Travel and time zone are usually the largest single variable, followed by format, because a virtual keynote, an in-person keynote and a keynote plus workshop are three different pieces of work. Beyond that, the length of the engagement, the size and seniority of the audience, exclusivity within your sector and any licensing of assessments or certification all move the number.

Several speakers here are booked through named intermediaries rather than direct, including The Harry Walker Agency for Catherine Price and Speaking Office for Dr Elaine Kasket. That matters for your timeline more than most organisers expect. The practical approach is to send the same brief to two or three speakers from your shortlist and ask each for a quote covering the keynote, one follow-on session and travel.

Digital detox and digital wellbeing are not the same booking

A digital detox talk and a digital wellbeing programme solve different problems, and confusing them is the most common booking error in this category. A detox is time-bound abstinence, such as a device-free retreat or a weekend without screens, and it works as an experience rather than as a system. Digital wellbeing is the ongoing design of how a team communicates, when it expects replies and how recovery is protected.

Most speakers on this list now work in the second mode, even when their public reputation was built in the first. Manoush Zomorodi's own framing for Body Electric is the sharpest version of the distinction, because her stated conclusion is that small sustained changes matter more than digital detoxes. If your goal is a memorable conference hour, either will do.

If your goal is a measurable change in after-hours messaging six months later, only the second will, and you should say so in the brief. For adjacent voices on the broader wellbeing conversation, see thought leaders on mental health and wellbeing at work in Australia and New Zealand.

The compliance angle Australian organisers should know

In Australia, digital wellbeing now has a legal edge as well as a cultural one. The right to disconnect began in August 2024 for employers with 15 or more employees and extended to small business employees on 26 August 2025, according to the Fair Work Ombudsman. Employees may refuse to monitor, read or respond to work contact outside their working hours unless that refusal is unreasonable.

The Ombudsman also lists the factors that decide whether a refusal is unreasonable, including the reason for the contact, the nature of the employee's role, their personal circumstances, how disruptive the contact is and any extra compensation for being available. This changes what a good keynote should do for an Australian audience. A talk that lands entirely on individual habits leaves the employer's own contact practices untouched, which is now the part with legal weight.

Ask a shortlisted speaker directly how they handle employer obligations, and treat a vague answer as a signal. For the wider cultural version of the same argument, see speakers on rejecting hustle culture.

How to tell whether the booking worked

Behaviour change is measurable if you choose the measure before the event rather than after it. The most useful measures are ones your organisation already collects: the volume of messages sent outside working hours, the number of meetings scheduled after 6 pm, meeting hours per person per week, and the wellbeing or workload items in your existing engagement survey. Take a reading in the month before the keynote and again three months after.

Two figures give useful context for whatever you find. Microsoft's June 2025 Work Trend Index special report, Breaking down the infinite workday, found that employees using Microsoft 365 are interrupted every two minutes during core hours, 275 times a day, and that meetings starting after 8 pm rose 16 percent year over year. The same report found that 48 percent of employees and 52 percent of leaders say their work feels chaotic and fragmented, which is the baseline most organisations are actually starting from.

"Managing digital eye strain is a shared responsibility," says Dan Schawbel, Managing Partner at Workplace Intelligence, in the research behind the 2026 screen-time figures. His colleague on that report, Dr Valerie Sheety-Pilon, Senior Vice President of Clinical and Medical Affairs at VSP Vision Care, puts the practical consequence simply: "When screen time reaches this level, regular eye care becomes essential". The same report found that 87 percent of human resources leaders say their company should be doing more.

Limitations and when this list will not help

This list has real limits and it is better to state them than to let you discover them. It covers eighteen people verified against public sources on one date, so it is a snapshot rather than a census, and roles change. Six speakers who appeared in the previous version were removed only because a current public source could not be confirmed during this check, which is a limitation of the method and not a verdict on them.

The list will not help you in three situations. If you need a speaker based in continental Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East or Latin America, none of the verified entries is based there. If your real problem is workload rather than technology, a digital wellbeing keynote will be treated by your audience as an insult, and you should fix the workload first.

If your leaders send messages at midnight and have no intention of stopping, no speaker on this list will change the culture, because the modelling problem sits above the keynote. There is also a case for booking nobody. If your organisation has already run a wellbeing keynote in the past twelve months without changing a single policy, a second one will lower trust rather than raise it. A related failure mode, where connection rather than attention is the underlying issue, is covered in speakers on the loneliness crisis at work.

Key takeaways

Name the problem before you name a speaker, because workflow, physical health and cultural expectation are three different bookings. Confirm any title you intend to print, since three people on this list have conflicting titles published by their own organisation on the same day. Decide whether you are buying inspiration or implementation, and budget for the follow-on at the same time as the keynote if you need behaviour to change.

Choose your measure before the event, using data your organisation already collects. And if you are booking in Australia, ask how the speaker handles the employer side of the right to disconnect, because that is now the part with legal weight.

Your next step

Before you contact anyone, write three sentences: what the problem actually is, who in the room can change it, and what you would need to see six months later to call the booking worthwhile. Send those three sentences to two or three speakers from the list above and ask what they would do with them. The quality of the replies will sort your shortlist faster than any comparison page can.

In full transparency, I work in an adjacent field and offer keynotes and facilitation on leadership, team culture and the conditions that create always-on behaviour, which is why I have kept my own work separate from the list above rather than placing myself among the options.

If your real problem is that your leadership team sets the always-on norm and no one will name it, that is exactly the kind of room I work in. You can reach me at jonno@consultclarity.org for a written proposal.

About the author

I'm Jonno White, a Brisbane-based leadership consultant, keynote speaker and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, certified through The Table Group, and the author of Step Up or Step Out, which has sold more than 10,000 copies. I host The Leadership Conversations with Jonno White Podcast and work with schools, corporates, boards and executive teams around the world. More on my background is on the Clarity Group Global about page.

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