CALIBR 2025 Fall Leadership Conference Overview
Viveca Fairbanks Henderson (Senior Vice President, Global Enterprise Programs at Ecolab) and Andre Branch (CEO of r.e.m. Beauty) lead a discussion on growth resilient leadership and building enterprises that thrive through change.
CALIBR member Anitra Farmer (Senior Human Resources Director at Kellanova) shares financial planning insights during a session focused on adaptive strategies to protect your wealth during times
of change.
CALIBR Board Member Shavonne Gordon (Managing Director, Global Head of Talent and Diversity for Wealth Management at Morgan Stanley) moderates a panel discussion on Asset Agility featuring Morgan Stanley Certified Financial Planners Kleo Curry and Peggy Ledvina.
CALIBR’s 2025 Fall Conference delivered more than 24 hours of executive development experiences on relevant, resonant, and culturally responsive topics, including CALIBR’s 5Ds of Disruption: Navigating from the Front — a framework designed to help leaders turn turbulence into traction. The 5Ds represent the five forces shaping the next decade of enterprise and leadership transformation. Each of these forces is rapidly redefining markets, talent ecosystems, and the nature of executive readiness.
By focusing on these five factors, the conference invited participants to move beyond ‘managing change’ toward leading from the front of it — seeing disruption not as a threat to stability, but as a call to innovate, foster agility, and drive reinvention.
The Leadership Imperative and Call to Action
Disruption doesn’t diminish leadership — it demands new literacies of leadership. The 5Ds framework challenges CALIBR members to lead from the front, using disruption as fuel for transformation rather than as friction to progress.
- Detect and define the disruptions shaping their industries and organizations
- Distill insights into actionable leadership practices
- Design adaptive strategies for their teams and business functions
- Drive outcomes that strengthen both equity and enterprise performance
- Develop and manage a strategic contributions dashboard that tracks commercial value creation
From Awareness to Action: Building a Playbook for the Future
Participants took part in discussions to create their own Personal, Professional, and Organizational Playbooks, applying the 5Ds to their unique contexts:
- Personal Playbook: Identify how disruption impacts your career trajectory and leadership mindset. Define your reinvention cadence—how often and how intentionally you evolve your skills, network, and brand visibility.
- Professional Playbook: Translate disruption into opportunity within your functional area or business unit. Map where technology, data, and human adaptability intersect—and use that to strengthen your team’s contribution to the enterprise’s strategic direction.
- Organizational Playbook: Partner with peers and senior executives to position your organization not as a reactor to market shocks, but as a shaper of markets. Focus on building organizational muscle that anticipates shifts and converts volatility into value creation.
Leading Ahead of the Curve
The conference’s emphasis on the 5Ds was a reminder that executive longevity depends on the ability to:
- Sense early, decide clearly, and adapt rapidly.
- Convert insight into foresight, and foresight into influence.
- Operate from a creative stance—defining where you play before disruption defines it for you.
In a world where the shelf-life of strategies is shrinking, CALIBR’s mission is to equip leaders with the frameworks, peer learning, and tools to stay future-fit—not just to survive disruption, but to design through it. CALIBR participants learn from C-suite and other senior executive leaders who have not just successfully navigated these forces but are shaping the modern leadership landscape. Some of our most prominent speakers included six distinguished members of The Executive Leadership Council (ELC), alongside other industry luminaries and forward-thinking vanguards.
Distinguished executives included:
- Andre Branch, CEO, r.e.m. Beauty (former CALIBR member)
- Oral Muir, VP, Hilton Worldwide, and ELC Board Executive Committee Member (former CALIBR member and President)
- Viveca Fairbanks-Henderson, SVP, Ecolab, and member of The Executive Leadership Council (ELC) (former CALIBR member)
- Michael Watson, VP, Allstate, and member of The Executive Leadership Council (ELC) (former CALIBR member and President)
- Joy Brown, CIO, Boston Medical Group, and member of The Executive Leadership Council (ELC)
- Martin Taylor, Managing Partner, Vista Equity Partners
To watch the fall conference session recordings, contact info@mycalibr.com.
CALIBR Coaches were present throughout the conference, facilitating sessions, moderating table discussions, and engaging in personalized conversations that helped participants translate insights into action.
For participants seeking continuing education credits (CEUs) or professional development units (PDUs) through topical deep dives, CALIBR offers extended learning opportunities with its network of certified executive coaches. To inquire, contact info@mycalibr.com.
Preliminary Feedback from Conference Attendees
95% of CALIBR 2025 Fall Conference attendee survey respondents stated that they were satisfied with their experience as a CALIBR customer.
100% of CALIBR 2025 Fall Conference attendee survey respondents stated that they were satisfied with the conference.
94% of CALIBR 2025 Fall Conference attendee survey respondents stated that they were satisfied with the conference session Leading with a Whole Systems Mindset to Scale Enterprise Value in the AI-Driven, Tech Empowered Era.
95% of CALIBR 2025 Fall Conference attendee survey respondents stated that they were satisfied with the conference session Growth Resilient Leadership: Building Enterprises That Thrive Through Change.
100% of CALIBR 2025 Fall Conference attendee survey respondents stated that they were satisfied with the conference session Strategic Identity Reinvention: Shaping Who You Must Become.