Melissa Clark-Reynolds is a street-smart futurist and tech entrepreneur who helps leaders cut through noise, tackle change head-on, and build clear pathways to tomorrow.
Trained by the Institute for the Future and appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the technology industry, she's worked with everyone from Spark and IAG to NASA and Australian Pork, tackling everything from company strategy to digital disruption. Melissa brings principled insight and practical tools that help teams turn uncertainty into direction.
People often leave her sessions with their minds blown and their thinking reset - about risk, responsibility, and what to act on now. Whether she's guiding a CEO through a tough transition or challenging a conference audience on the future of AI, Melissa is known for her grounded foresight and ability to call it like it is, with clarity and warmth.
Speaking topics
From Search to Advice
How AI is rewriting the customer journey, and what it means for your brand.
The sale is increasingly being made by an algorithm before your customer ever reaches you. Their first human interaction with your brand may not involve a human at all. Search now has an opinion, AI agents are starting to shop and compare on your customers' behalf, and the old funnel of awareness, consideration and loyalty is collapsing into milliseconds.
Futurist Melissa Clark-Reynolds maps what this shift means for marketing, sales and customer experience, and shows which businesses are pulling ahead. And for organisations not there yet, that is exactly why this session matters: they leave knowing where to start.
Format: 45 to 50-minute keynote plus Q&A.
Audience: Marketing, CX, Sales and Leadership.
Through this presentation, your audience will learn how to:
- Understand why customers may stop finding them the way they used to, and what to do about it
- Influence how AI tools describe and recommend their brand, so they are not left off the shortlist
- Get ahead of the AI shopping assistants now comparing and choosing on their customers' behalf
- Keep customer trust and loyalty as more of the buying journey happens without a human
What Keeps the Boardroom Up at Night
Signals for ANZ directors on the risks now landing on their desk.
The risk register just got a lot longer. Geopolitics, generational change, climate and AI are no longer someone else's problem, and the organisations getting caught out are the ones not yet reading the signals.
Futurist Melissa Clark-Reynolds helps ANZ directors read the horizon like a futurist, not a fire warden. This session puts the shocks that matter on the radar early, so directors can prepare while there is still time to act.
Format: 45-minute keynote, or a half-day governance session that works the signals into your board's own risk register.
Audience: Boards, NEDs and C-suite.
Through this presentation, your audience will learn how to:
- See how global instability could hit their supply chains, markets and costs, and prepare before it does
- Plan for an ageing population and shrinking workforce, and the talent and cost pressures they bring
- Treat climate as the financial and audit risk it has become, not just a sustainability line item
- Ask the AI questions the board should be raising now, before the risks land on their watch
Seeing Around Corners
Foresight is a leadership skill, not a crystal ball, and it can be taught.
The best leaders are not lucky. They have trained themselves to see what is coming. Foresight is not a gift reserved for a few; it is a discipline that can be built, rehearsed and made part of how a leadership team works.
Futurist Melissa Clark-Reynolds shows senior leaders how to scan for the signals that matter without drowning in noise, and how to build foresight into their normal operating rhythm. Organisations that practise it recover faster from shocks, and often see those shocks coming. Audiences leave with a practical foresight toolkit they can put to work immediately.
Closing provocation from Melissa: what have you stopped questioning because it has always been true?
Format: 45 to 50-minute keynote, or a full-day "Strategic Foresight for Leaders" workshop that builds the toolkit hands-on with your team.
Audience: Senior leaders, NEDs and strategy teams.
Through this presentation, your audience will learn how to:
- Build foresight into how the team works, so the business stops being caught off guard
- Cut through the noise to focus on the few signals that actually matter to their future
- Plan for several possible futures, so one wrong bet does not sink the strategy
- Spot the blind spots that cause even strong teams to miss change until it is too late
Turning Signals into Strategy
How to spot the shifts reshaping your industry before your competitors do.
Every leadership team is reading the same headlines. Only a few act on what sits underneath them, and that gap is where market share is won and lost. The future may be uncertain, but it is not unknowable.
In this highly customised keynote, futurist Melissa Clark-Reynolds decodes the real signals shaping your sector right now and shows your team how to turn them into practical strategy. Audiences leave with foresight they can use in Monday's leadership meeting, not theory for someday.
Format: 50-minute keynote plus interactive session.
Audience: scales from boardroom to main stage.
Through this presentation, your audience will learn how to:
- Spot the shifts reshaping their market before competitors turn them into lost customers or missed revenue
- Tell a passing fad from a lasting shift, so time and investment go where they will actually pay off
- Turn the risks that feel most threatening into their next source of growth and advantage
- Apply practical futures thinking straight away, starting at their next leadership meeting
Testimonials
What a way for our conference to open - we couldn't have wished for better. Melissa Clark-Reynolds was outstanding - we couldn't have asked for more. Gut-wrenching emotion, laughter, tears, 'sudden intakes of breath'. Melissa touched the audience in so many ways.
CE, Lampenalectus Recruitment
"We treasured your contribution to the Summit, not just your truly fabulous presentation but also your lovely energy and enthusiasm. You totally hit the mark!"
Chair, NZ Angel Association
"You stimulated our Board thinking for the rest of the day. A key message being the jobs we are educating our children for, possibly won't exist by the time they leave school! "
Chief Executive, Trinity Schools Trust Board, Masterton NZ
"Fantastic presentation! You tailored it beautifully to our audience and it had lots of great takeaways."
Event & Relationship Manager, Master Plumbers
"Her passion for tech, research, creativity, and the human elements within tech was inspirational."
CIO, FletcherTech
Melissa was so thought provoking! We had so much positive feedback. She definitely set the conference off in high gear!
Executive Officer | NZ Ethical Employers
Melissa doesn't just leave people inspired, she leaves them thinking differently. One of the most valuable and inspiring keynote sessions our team has attended.
General Manager, Product Management, Brevil
She was incredibly easy to work with and down to earth.
Transporting New Zealand
Melissa was great at taking on feedback and continuing to iterate her presentation based on what was best received by the audience.
TradeMe Property
