Errol Benvie

What if you could treat your brain like a device you can learn to use deliberately? In this session, Errol Benvie explores the latest neuroscience showing how our brains predict, explore and adapt.

Using the metaphor of play – the most powerful learning engine in childhood – Errol invites adults, especially those with ADHD, to reimagine how we engage with our own thinking.

Errol will show how outdated mental models can be upgraded, and how applying these insights can turn challenges like distractibility and time-blindness into opportunities for growth in a fast-changing world.

Bio

Errol Benvie’s first career spanned nearly three decades in leadership and CEO roles during South Africa’s Apartheid and Post-Apartheid eras, navigating the legendary socio-political complexities of that period. For much of his professional life, the concept of VUCA was not theoretical but lived reality.

After emigrating to Australia in 2006, he undertook full-time study, completing a Master’s in Organisational (Applied Psychology) Coaching at the University of Sydney.

There he discovered a profound truth: much of what he had previously understood intuitively – his “backwards understanding” – had already been researched, labelled, and published in thousands of academic papers.

He went on to co-found the leadership consultancy WisdomLab. As practitioner-scholars, he and his colleagues mine the Humanities databases for knowledge that can be translated into practical applications for clients. The aim is to strengthen clients’ own “backwards understanding” of their lives and businesses, enabling them to develop sustainable and successful predictive strategies for the future.