Penny Locaso
Behavioural Scientist, Leadership Coach, Provisional Psychologist & Speaker
Penny Locaso is one of Australia’s most influential female entrepreneurs, a behavioural scientist and women’s impact advocate. She empowers women to own their expertise, amplify their influence and create meaningful change. Penny is a sought-after speaker for organisations committed to inclusive leadership and impact.
Quick Contact
Penny Locaso works with organisations where pace and urgency leave little room for error in leadership decisions.
As AI accelerates the speed and volume of work, the conditions that support sound judgement are increasingly impacted, placing decision quality, trust, and long-term consequences under strain.
Many organisations experience this as constant busyness, while the deeper risk shows up in rushed decisions, narrowed trade-offs, and leadership choices that carry more weight than systems are designed to hold. Penny’s work focuses on strengthening leadership judgement
at this exact point of pressure.
A behavioural scientist and provisional psychologist, Penny brings over two decades of commercial leadership experience together with evidence-led insight into how judgement operates under high-pressure conditions. Her original qualitative research, published as The Compassion Advantage, reframes compassion as leadership capability infrastructure and a scientifically proven edge, strengthening the conditions that support judgement, trust, and integrity as pace and responsibility increase.
Penny supports leaders and organisations to strengthen discernment where it matters most.
Her work focuses on reshaping the decision conditions leaders operate within, including how decisions are paced and framed and how trade-offs, responsibility, and human impact are held day to day.
The focus stays on simple, usable practices leaders can apply immediately under pressure, helping them slow the right decisions while sustaining performance.
She has worked with organisations, government and universities, including Deloitte, Microsoft, SingularityU, NAB, Google, and Booking.com.
Her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, the Australian Financial Review, and on the TEDx stage.
Penny is based in Australia and works with corporate and conference audiences seeking serious, evidence-backed insight and practical ways to strengthen leadership capability in an AI-shaped world.
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Topics
Flagship Keynote
The Compassion Advantage
Strengthening leadership judgement and decision quality as pace accelerates
This keynote is designed for organisations operating under sustained urgency, where leadership decisions carry real human and commercial consequence. Drawing on behavioural science and original research behind The Compassion Advantage, Penny helps leaders understand
how pace shapes judgement and what can be done, practically and immediately, to stabilise decision quality under pressure.
Outcome:
Leaders leave with clearer judgement, stronger decision discipline, and practical ways to slow the right decisions while sustaining performance as pace and pressure increase.
Flagship Keynote Variations
The Compassion Advantage is the core keynote and can be positioned in the following ways to suit different audiences and briefs.
Leading in an AI-Shaped World
Why faster systems demand stronger human judgement
Designed for organisations investing in AI, automation, and digital transformation who are seeing leadership complexity increase alongside speed.
Outcome:
Organisations strengthen the human judgement capabilities AI cannot replace, enabling leaders to hold accountability, ethics, and consequence as decision speed accelerates.
When Busy Becomes a Leadership Risk
Moving from constant urgency to better decisions
Designed for organisations experiencing overload, decision fatigue, and reactive leadership patterns.
Outcome:
Leaders gain shared language and practical techniques to reduce reactivity, widen decision space, and make sound choices when time, attention, and tolerance are tight.
Decision Quality Under Pressure
Leading when everything feels urgent
Designed for leaders navigating high-pressure environments where decisions stack quickly, and tolerance for error remains low.
Outcome:
Leaders gain shared language and practical techniques to reduce reactivity, widen decision space, and make sound choices when time, attention, and tolerance are tight.
