About Jillian Reilly

Jillian Reilly is a keynote speaker and author of The Ten Permissions: Redefining the Rules of Adulting in the 21st Century. She is also a facilitator and mentor, working closely with leaders and organisations facing complexity, disruption and sustained uncertainty.

With more than three decades of professional experience across Africa, Asia and Central Europe, Jillian has worked in international development and organisational change in environments where volatility is part of daily reality. This global perspective shapes her understanding of leadership as something lived, not performed and change as a condition to work within, rather than a project to complete.

Her work sits firmly at the intersection of leadership, culture and human behaviour. She examines how inherited assumptions about success, authority and progress often limit an organisation’s ability to adapt. By making these patterns visible, she helps leaders regain agency and create space for experimentation, learning and forward movement.

The Ten Permissions Framework

Through decades of hands-on work in complex systems, Jillian developed the Ten Permissions framework. At its core, the framework challenges outdated operating assumptions about how adults, leaders and organisations “should” behave.

Instead of relying on rigid plans and fixed answers, the Ten Permissions invite leaders to:

• Question inherited rules that no longer serve the present reality

• Strengthen individual and collective agency

• Embrace experimentation as a path to clarity

• Rebuild trust in human judgement and adaptability

The framework forms the foundation of Permissions Labs immersive experiences designed to help teams think differently and move again when they feel stuck. In these Labs, participants confront the hidden scripts shaping their decisions and explore new, more adaptive ways of working.

Jillian’s approach is practical and grounded. It does not offer quick fixes. It offers reframes that shift how leaders see their role, their teams and the environments they operate in.

Jillian Reilly as a Keynote Speaker

When you book Jillian Reilly for your event, you invite your audience into a bold and deeply human conversation about leadership in the 21st century. Her keynotes combine strategic insight with lived experience from diverse cultural and organisational contexts.

She challenges audiences to move beyond inherited definitions of success and control. In their place, she offers a more relevant model of leadership one built on adaptability, responsibility and courage in the face of ambiguity.

Her TEDx talk, Vain Aid, provides a powerful lens on leadership and systemic change, questioning well-meaning interventions that fail to address deeper dynamics. Her ideas have also been featured in major international publications, reflecting the global relevance of her work.

On stage, Jillian creates space for honest reflection while maintaining clear strategic direction. Leaders leave with sharper awareness, stronger language for navigating complexity and the confidence to act with intention rather than reaction.

Navigating Change as a Lived Condition

Many organisations still approach change as a project: defined by timelines, milestones and end points. Jillian reframes change as a lived condition an ongoing reality that demands adaptive capacity at every level of the organisation.

This shift has significant implications. It means leadership is less about controlling outcomes and more about cultivating environments where people can respond intelligently to what emerges. It requires stronger agency, deeper trust and a willingness to test, learn and adjust.

Jillian’s work equips leaders with:

• A clearer understanding of human behaviour under pressure

• Tools to surface and question cultural assumptions

• Practical reframes that restore momentum in stalled systems

• Greater confidence in navigating ambiguity

Her sessions are particularly relevant for organisations undergoing transformation, facing market disruption or operating across diverse cultural contexts.

Book Jillian Reilly for Your Event

Jillian Reilly is a compelling choice for conferences, leadership summits and internal strategy days where the focus is complexity, cultural change and adaptive leadership. She speaks to senior leaders, emerging leaders and cross-functional teams who recognise that traditional models are no longer sufficient.

Booking Jillian means offering your audience more than inspiration. It means giving them language and frameworks that endure beyond the event. Her combination of global experience, conceptual clarity and practical insight ensures that participants leave thinking differently and ready to move forward with greater clarity and confidence.

Jillian Reilly does not promise certainty. She equips leaders to work intelligently within uncertainty and to shape cultures capable of evolving with the world around them.