Happiness@Work Live!

Line-up for 2024:

Garry Ridge

Garry Ridge is the former Chairman and CEO of WD-40, a global company he led for more than 25 years. During his tenure, he transformed the company's culture into one of the most engaging and high-performing in the world, with an employee engagement rate of 93%. Under his leadership, the company's market capitalization quadrupled (to $2.5 billion) and profits grew significantly.

Ridge is known for his innovative approach to leadership, emphasizing continuous learning, servant leadership and employee empowerment. He is also a professor at the University of San Diego, where he teaches corporate culture principles and practices.

The co-author of several books, including "Helping People Win at Work" with Ken Blanchard, Garry Ridge has been recognized in rankings of the world's best CEOs by publications such as Inc. Magazine.
 

Sonja Lyubomirsky

Sonja Lyubomirsky (AB Harvard, summa cum laude; PhD Stanford) is a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside and the author of the bestselling books "The How of Happiness" and "The Myths of Happiness" (published in 39 countries).

Her research focuses on the potential for sustained increases in happiness through interventions in gratitude, kindness, and connectedness, and has received numerous grants and awards, including Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an honorary doctorate from the University of Basel, the Diener Award for Outstanding Midcareer Contributions in Personality Psychology, the Christopher Peterson Gold Medal, the Positive Psychology Prize, and two Faculty of the Year Awards.

She lives in Santa Monica, California with his family.

Jurgen Appelo

Jurgen Appelo is an author, speaker and entrepreneur who helps innovative organizations survive and thrive in the 21st century. He shares stories, games, tools and practices so you can create networked organizations yourself. Most importantly, he offers the unFIX model for organization design, continuous innovation, and a better "human experience."

Jurgen describes himself as a creative networker. But sometimes he is also a writer, speaker, coach, entrepreneur, designer, manager, blogger, reader, dreamer, runner, freelancer or... Dutch. Inc.com ranked him among the Top 50 leadership experts and Top 100 speakers on leadership.

Since 2008, he has written a popular blog on NOOP.NL with thoughts on agile management and organizational change. He is the author of the bestselling "Management 3.0," which describes the role of the manager in agile organizations; "How to Change the World," which presents a supermodel for change management; "Managing for Happiness," which offers practical ideas for engaging employees, improving work, and delighting clients; and "Startup, Scaleup, Screwup," which addresses the major issues that entrepreneurs and business leaders encounter throughout the company lifecycle. The fifth book he is working on will be "Glitches of Gods," a science fiction novel.

Jurgen is CEO of The unFIX Company and co-founder of the Agile Lean Europe network.

Josef Dvořáček

Josef Dvořáček is the co-owner and director of SONNENTOR, which today is a major processor of herbs, teas and spices from organic farming. He and his team have been pioneering healthy organic food for over 30 years, developing local cooperation with local organic farmers and have managed to build one of the most sustainable companies in the Czech Republic.

If you visit their SONNENTOR Herb Paradise visitor centre in Čejkovice in South Moravia, you will be a huge inspiration in organic business and you will definitely be impressed by their original company culture.

Eliška Remešová

Psychologist and psychotherapist. Everything she does is aimed at improving mental and social health in the Czech Republic. She founded the Mezilidmi Institute, a psychotherapeutic and educational centre. In private practice she works with both individuals and couples. In companies she helps to strengthen psychological safety, workplace relationships, emotional resilience and personal wellbeing.

She has been a trainer for over fourteen years in a number of companies that are leaders in their fields. Key Note Speaker at professional, public and corporate conferences. Co-author of the therapeutic journal for women "Soul in Place", promoter and popularizer of respectful education in the author's podcast miniseries "Are We There Yet?" with 200,000+ listens. Online creator with a focus on mental health and author of the content series "Love is a Skill" on Forendors.

Michal Meško

Michal Meško (1984) studied management and marketing at the Faculty of Management of Comenius University in Bratislava. He also completed a PLD programme at Harvard Business School in the USA and a six-month study programme with a focus on consumer behaviour and internet commerce at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands.

In 2000, he co-founded Referaty.sk, the largest portal for students, which was acquired by Atlas.sk in 2004. He was also behind the creation of the online bookstore Martinus in 2000, of which he is now co-owner and CEO.

He is the recipient of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2020 and TREND TOP Manager of the Year 2018 awards, and has been included in the Forbes 30 under 30 list and among the New Europe 100 innovators compiled by the Financial Times and Google.

In his free time, he enjoys cycling, running and, of course, reading.

Alexander Kjerulf

Alexander is the founder and Chief Happiness Officer of Woohoo Inc. and one of the world’s leading experts on happiness at work. He is an author and speaker, presenting and conducting workshops on happiness at work at businesses and conferences in over 50 countries. His clients include companies like Hilton, Microsoft, IKEA, Shell, HP, and IBM.

Alex is the author of 5 books, including the international bestseller Happy Hour is 9 to 5: How to Love Your Job, Love Your Life, and Kick Butt at Work. The book has been extremely well received all over the world and is available in 11 languages, including English, Spanish, Dutch, Czech and Chinese. His latest book is Leading With Happiness: How the Best Leaders Put Happiness First to Create Phenomenal Business Results and a Better World.

His work has been featured in CNN, New York Times, Times of India, The Times, BBC, Financial Times, and many others.

And in case you were wondering, his last name (Kjerulf) is pronounced a little like care-oolf :)

Josef Holý

A technologist with a passion for all things human and an equally deep distrust of techno-utopianism. He has worked at Sun Microsystems, MSD, Avast and Semantic Visions.

For the past 4 years he has been co-creating the podcast "Canaries in the Net", lecturing on "Hacking the Mind" at FIT CTU and teaching people to swim with AI in swimin.ai.

Alexandra Hubáčková

Alexandra Hubáčková is a lecturer, consultant, author of the podcast Lead Simply. She believes that we are on the threshold of an inevitable change in the way people are led and how companies operate. Practices proven in the past are no longer valid and are holding companies back in their development.

The first part of her professional career was academic and sports. She taught at universities in the Czech Republic and the USA, skiing in the Rocky Mountains and yoga. She studied Navajo Indian culture directly on reservations. She has translated several books. She brought Native American artists to the Czech Republic as part of the "On Wings of Words" program she founded.

For the last 15 years, she has been working in companies that want real change, that believe that it is not only the skills that are important, but the mindset of the people. She conducts workshops, long-term programs and individual or team coaching in companies of various industries in the Czech Republic and internationally.

Roman Bittner

Roman Bittner works in the foundry. He has worked his way up from a basic grinding position to shift supervisor. He has been with the company for 26 years.

In that time, he has experienced several ways of managing people. One of them, which the company director started to promote in 2013, attracted him because people were drawn directly into the production process and became actively involved. They felt better about being part of the company because their opinions and problems were listened to and someone was willing to address them. This resulted in a better company culture, people were happy to come to work and happy to leave work. 
He is interested in history, is a volunteer firefighter and enjoys being involved in organising cultural and sporting events.

Lenka Žlebková

She has been working in the field of congress tourism since 2008, when she was elected a member of the Board of Directors and later appointed Director of the Prague Convention Bureau. In this position, she helped Prague to a leading position in the ranking of world congress destinations.

Since 2020, she has been the first woman to head the Prague Convention Centre in its more than 40-year history. She began managing the building in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. For two years, the business centre became a vaccination centre and, after the start of the Russian aggression in Ukraine, a refugee centre.

She's a dancing lover and mother of three sons, and has been working out for several years. 

Luboš Malý

Luboš Malý has worked in a variety of professional roles, from manufacturing operations at P&G, through management positions and leading transformation projects, to managing technology innovation on a global level at The LEGO Group. Throughout his career, he has focused on setting change in motion, whether it be improvements impacting small teams or strategic initiatives that fundamentally impact the way companies operate. He has led the Red Button EDU since 2021. One of his key roles is as a 'transformation architect', where he works with clients to develop an approach and detailed steps to kick-start larger changes in line with strategy. This process is a combination of proven methodologies, diplomacy and working with leadership and people at all levels to make transformations as smooth and effortless as possible.

Lubos recognises how his industry is evolving - changes are faster and people are more demanding. He specializes in projects in the areas of sustainability, innovation, digitalization, corporate culture and corporate learning concepts. He has successfully delivered dozens of change projects, hundreds of facilitated workshops and thousands of trained people. He regularly speaks at conferences, on podcasts and is a member of boards of directors.

Michal Šrajer

Fifteen years ago, Michal and his two friends founded the Inmite studio, which has become a leader in smartphone app development in the Czech Republic. There he became the first Czech "Chief Happiness Officer" and set himself the task of finding ways to make people's work fulfilling.

Eight years ago, Inmite became part of global Avast through an acquisition. However, the role and mission to find happiness at work remained with Michal. After a year-long family trip around the world, during which he also visited a number of "people companies," he returned to the country with a vision to help create successful organizations where people feel great.

That's why he co-founded Happiness@Work - an international conference and consulting firm. He co-created Workshop Box, is a partner of the Red Button network and co-founder of several technology startups. Recently, he has also been building a CEO Community where he creates an environment for value leaders to meet and support each other.