Former opera singer and CEO helping leaders master performance, coaching, and AI-driven leadership.
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Top rated!Bernhard Kerres has spent his career performing at the highest level — first as an opera singer alongside José Carreras, later as CEO of the Wiener Konzerthaus, and today as a leadership practitioner and founder of RolePlays.ai. His keynote speeches combine leadership, coaching, AI, and high-performance teamwork in a way few speakers can. Drawing from experience across the arts, business, and technology, he delivers practical frameworks and fresh perspectives that audiences remember long after the event.
Bernhard Kerres has built a career across worlds that rarely meet — international opera stages, executive leadership, consulting, and AI innovation. This unique background gives him a fresh perspective on leadership, performance, and human potential.
As a former opera singer, he performed with internationally renowned artists including José Carreras before moving into strategy consulting at Booz Allen Hamilton and executive roles in listed technology companies. He later became Artistic Director and CEO of the Wiener Konzerthaus, one of the world’s most respected concert venues.
Today, Bernhard works as a leadership practitioner, executive coach, keynote speaker, and founder of RolePlays.ai — an AI platform helping leaders rehearse difficult conversations before they happen in real life. His work focuses on one key question: how can leaders improve human performance in a world increasingly shaped by AI?
Bernhard Kerres combines real leadership experience with practical tools audiences can apply immediately.
His keynote speeches are grounded in lived experience rather than abstract models. He understands the realities of leading organisations, managing teams under pressure, and communicating through uncertainty. At the same time, he brings the mindset of a coach — helping leaders reflect, adapt, and improve continuously.
He challenges audiences to rethink leadership as a skill that requires practice, not just knowledge. Through his work with coaching and AI, he explores how leadership development can finally become scalable and truly effective.
Audiences leave with frameworks they can use immediately — whether they lead teams, organisations, or transformation initiatives.
One of Bernhard Kerres’ most distinctive keynote themes is the connection between classical music and business performance.
Orchestras and ensembles operate under conditions that closely resemble modern organisations: high pressure, limited rehearsal time, diverse personalities, and the expectation of flawless execution. Success depends on listening, timing, trust, preparation, and collective responsibility.
Bernhard uses these parallels to illustrate what creates high-performing teams. His stories from the world of opera and classical music offer memorable insights into leadership, collaboration, and resilience.
Rather than presenting music as entertainment, he positions it as a powerful leadership laboratory — a perspective that resonates strongly with executives and leadership teams navigating change.
As founder of RolePlays.ai, Bernhard Kerres works at the intersection of leadership development and artificial intelligence.
He demonstrates how AI can help leaders become stronger communicators, coaches, and decision-makers by allowing them to practise difficult conversations, negotiations, and high-stakes situations before they happen.
His work has attracted corporate learning teams and consulting firms across Europe, with clients including:
Bernhard offers a practical and balanced perspective on AI — showing how technology can strengthen leadership and learning while keeping human connection at the centre.
Bernhard Kerres combines artistic excellence with strong business credentials.
He holds an MBA from London Business School and has worked across consulting, technology, culture, leadership development, and innovation. His broad experience allows him to connect naturally with executive audiences, HR professionals, and organisations undergoing transformation.
His achievements have also been recognised through the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art.
Whether speaking at leadership conferences, executive offsites, or corporate events, Bernhard delivers keynote speeches that are insightful, engaging, and highly relevant for today’s organisations.
Bernhard Kerres is a sought-after keynote speaker for organisations looking for fresh perspectives on leadership, AI, coaching, collaboration, and human performance.
By connecting music, executive leadership, coaching, and technology, he delivers keynote experiences that are thought-provoking, practical, and memorable. Audiences leave inspired and equipped with new ways of thinking about leadership and performance in an AI-driven world.
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“Bernhard is the Co-Founder and CEO of Hello Stage. I also had the pleasure to work with Bernhard during his time as CEO of MTECH and during his time as CEO of the Konzerthaus Vienna. Bernhard’s great proficiency, deep expertise and dedication was and is instrumental to the very successful development of the companies he was and is in charge of. Bernhard is a passionate, focused, insightful and broad-minded executive that never stops learning. I truly enjoy working with him and can highly recommend him as a very entrepreneurial, honest, loyal, ambitious, inspirational and responsible leader.”
Alon ShklarekEntrepreneur | Enabler | Investor
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“Bernhard is an amazing coach. I highly recommend him. If you want to invest in a ‘better you’ for work, home, life he can help you get more of what you seek.”
Robin Lilley FCIPD PCCGlobal People Leader
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“I highly recommend Bernhard as a Business and Executive coach. His supportive presence and calm manner, together with asking skilled questions enabled me to get clear on my future plan very quickly. Thank you Bernhard!”
Kirsty Birnstiel ACC ICF / BACP regLife coach, counsellor & RTT therapist
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“Bernhard is an excellent Executive Coach. From the moment the session starts you feel at ease and able to table your concerns, challenges and goals. He always finds the right balance between challenge and support and has helped me to gain some valuable insights into patterns of my behaviour in ways I hadn’t considered before. I would highly recommend him.”
Lauren LewisChief Operating Officer @ OVO
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“I would highly recommend Bernhard as an insightful and creative client-centred coach.”
Emma SladeCharity founder, author and Buddhist nun
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“Bernhard is so much more than a coach. He is a top-level executive, entrepreneur, and company founder with Silicon Valley experience, a musician, and an all-around connoisseur of the arts. He brings an extraordinary wealth of life experience to every conversation. There isn’t a single exchange with him that isn’t enriching and inspiring. Above all, Bernhard is an incredibly empathetic and compassionate human being. He listens, he understands, and he asks the right questions. ‘When you’ve run out of answers, Bernhard has the right question’ is not just a slogan. I strongly recommend letting Bernhard guide you through a conversation.”
Alexander HanslikManagement Consultant
Keynote by Bernhard Kerres:
Why creativity will always outperform computation.
On October 29, 1787, Mozart wrote the entire overture to Don Giovanni in a single sleepless night in a Prague coffeehouse — fueled by coffee, chaos, and his wife Constanze’s jokes. The ink was still wet when the musicians copied it that morning. In an age where every leadership conversation revolves around AI, that story matters more than ever.
Just as Peter Drucker reminded us that culture eats strategy for breakfast, Bernhard Kerres makes the case that Mozart eats AI for breakfast. AI gives us efficiency. Strategy gives us direction. But meaning — the fusion of purpose and emotion that turns ideas into impact — still belongs to humans. AI writes what could be written. Mozart wrote what had to be written.
Audiences leave with
Best for
C-suite offsites · leadership conferences · L&D summits · AI transformation kickoffs
Format
30–60 minutes · 20-minute TED-style version available
Keynote by Bernhard Kerres:
Why psychological safety is not enough.
For the past decade, psychological safety has been the dominant framework in team performance research. Bernhard Kerres argues that we have reached a ceiling — and worse, created what he calls pseudo safety zones: teams that feel safe but stop telling each other the truths that matter.
Drawing on his work with C-suite teams across Europe and his experience leading some of the world’s most demanding artistic ensembles, Kerres introduces a Fifth Stage of team development that begins where Tuckman, Lencioni, and Edmondson stop.
Audiences leave with
Best for
Executive team offsites · leadership programs · HR and L&D conferences · board strategy sessions
Format
30–60 minutes · Workshop format available
Keynote by Bernhard Kerres:
Why leadership training doesn’t stick — and what world-class performers do differently.
A surgeon trains for ten thousand hours before operating alone. A concert pianist rehearses daily for a single performance. The average corporate leader receives two days of training and is then expected to handle a layoff conversation, a board challenge, or a public misstep flawlessly on the first attempt.
Bernhard Kerres calls this the rehearsal gap — the structural reason most leadership development fails to change behaviour — and shows what world-class musicians, surgeons, and athletes do differently from most corporate learning environments.
Audiences leave with
Best for
CHROs · Heads of L&D · leadership development conferences · learning technology summits
Format
30–60 minutes · Workshop format available
Watch Bernhard Kerres in action
