Dr. Fons Trompenaars

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Fons Trompenaars's Biography

Dr. Fons Trompenaars is recognised around world for his work as consultant, trainer, motivational speaker and author of various books on all subjects of culture and business.

He has spent over 30 years helping Fortune 500 leaders manage and solve their business and cultural dilemmas to increase global effectiveness and performance, particularly in the areas of globalisation, mergers and acquisition, HR, Managing Change, leadership development and digitalisation.

Listed regularly as one of the world’s most influential, living, management thinkers, he has been awarded the International Professional Practice Area Research Award by the American Society for Training and Development. Fons was voted one of the top 20 HR Most Influential International Thinkers 2011 by HR Magazine. He is also ranked in the Thinkers50 2011, 2013 and 2015 as being one of the most influential management thinkers alive. He was inducted in the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2017 which salutes distinguished Management Thinkers and their contributions whose names and legacies are added to the ranks of those who have arrived before them. They are distinguished thinkers who have all made a lasting and vital impact on how organizations are led and managed. They are the giants upon whose shoulders managers and leaders stand.

Fons joined Shell in 1981 and moved into the HR department for Shell in Rotterdam. From 1985, he worked in job classification and management development at the Shell Research Laboratories in Amsterdam. In 1989 he founded the Centre for International Business Studies, a consulting and training organization for international management. Since 1998 we operate as Trompenaars Hampden-Turner. Fons Trompenaars and his team have worked as consultant/trainer/speaker for amongst others, Shell, BP, ICI, Philips, Heineken, TRW, Mars, Vodafone, General Motors, Nike, Cable and Wireless, CSM, Citigroup, CDPQ, GKN, MTR, LIDL and Merrill Lynch.

Fons wrote Riding the Waves of Culture, Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business. This book sold over 200,000 copies and was translated into 16 languages amongst them, Chinese, Estonian, French, Dutch, German, Hungarian, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish and Turkish, He is co-author amongst others of Nine Visions of Capitalism: Unlocking the Meanings of Wealth Creation, Servant Leadership Across Cultures, M&A Tango on Mergers and Acquisitions and Rewarding Performance Globally.