Lead Like an Athlete: Why High-Performance Tech Leadership Starts With Self-Care?

We’re excited to welcome Conny Ploth, Vice President of Global AI Transformation at Santander, as our featured guest speaker.

Conny will present “Lead Like an Athlete: Why High-Performance Tech Leadership Starts With Self-Care.” In the fast pace of tech, leadership often gets framed as endurance: more hours, more pressure, more output. Conny offers a different playbook - one inspired by athletic high performance - where sustainable success starts with protecting your energy, training your habits, and treating well-being as part of the job, not a side quest.

Drawing from her experience working with ambitious leaders and teams, Conny will unpack why self-care is not a luxury, but a strategic leadership skill, and how the way you take care of yourself sets the tone for how others perform, thrive, and recover.

You’ll learn how to:

• Treat self-care as a strategic KPI, not a luxury.
• Redefine strength.
• Build habits that sustain you.
• Reflect intentionally as the holiday period approaches
  What’s one personal KPI you’ll track next year?
  And what’s your training plan for your own well-being?

This session will be packed with practical reflections and mindset shifts to help you lead with clarity, stamina, and humanity - without burning out on the way there.

The event will kick off with a 30-minute keynote from Conny, followed by a Q&A session before one-on-one networking begins.