The Hope Room: Leadership Workshop
Description
A Leadership Working Room
This is not a traditional workshop. The Hope Room is a facilitated working session designed for leaders who carry responsibility for decisions with long-term consequences. It is a structured space to slow decision making, broaden perspective, and engage in the conversations that materially influence organisational direction, culture, and risk.
You will work alongside like minded peers in a confidential, considered environment focused on clarity, meaningful decision making, and leadership under uncertainty.
Leadership today demands more. And rightly so. We want to lead the way alongside you.
In 2026, as leaders doing work that matters, it is important to see beyond your role, understand what you are shaping, and act with courage and care at the same time.
The Hope Room enables you as leaders to:
expand perspective beyond function, title, or formal remit
identify the unseen dynamics shaping behaviour, trust, and risk
translate values and strategic intent into decisions that genuinely move outcomes
strengthen confidence to lead when certainty is unavailable
You will leave better equipped to:
make bold decisions that build trust and align with long-term strategy
turn good intentions into clear, executable choices
take responsibility for impact - not just delivery or results
hold conversations that surface truth, tension, and possibility
influence across levels, functions, and external ecosystems
connect strategic thinking with human consequences, in real time
This is leadership practiced where it counts in the moments that shape culture, people, and the future that follows.
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Strategic Purpose and Social Impact
This event also marks the formal launch of Nakuru Hope into an exciting new phase of awareness in Sydney.
Your ticket proceeds are donated 100% to Nakuru Hope's Gabriel’s Learning Centre in Kenya, supporting children who live in dire poverty now safe, having free access to education, food, clean water, medical assistance and refuge.
Through Nakuru Hope’s work, these children now have:
access to education and learning stability
food security and safe refuge
counselling and emotional care
basic resources essential to dignity and wellbeing
Participation in The Hope Room represents a dual investment:
strengthening leadership capability at a time of increasing complexity
contributing directly to tangible, life-changing outcomes for vulnerable children
This is leadership with consequence inside the organisation and beyond it.
Get education. Give Education.
The team at Nakuru Hope are grateful beyond measure to our following supporters to ensure this event has a 100% of funds go directly to the children.
Cuppa Co-Lab was first on board with an immediate YES to give their beautiful Barangaroo room for us to spend the day in.
Our guest speakers Dave Clare, Abang Othow and Suzanne Rosa have graciously offered their time in a very busy schedule to spread their expertise for us all the learn, grow and make impact together.
There have been many collaborators who lent us their time, contacts, and ideas to ensure this event happens and raises as much money as possible, whilst educating and growing a community here in Sydney.
We are excited to serve you at this special launch event, and your attendance will help us save lives.
Lineup
Suzanne Rosa
Suzanne Rosa is a Sydney based behaviouralist, humanitarian and curator. Her focus is on embedding healthy relationships within ethical systems for business, community and culture, across the globe with people who touch the lives of many others. She's an active ambassador for R U OK?, the founder of The Rosa Centre and a former curator of TEDx. A twice published author, Suzanne has also been nominated for Western Australian of the Year for her community work. https://suzannerosa.com/
Abang Othow
Abang Anade Othow; educator, speaker, writer, and Deputy Chair of the Asylum Seekers Centre. She is the founder of Buckets of Hope, a transformative visual wellbeing framework. A survivor who rebuilt her life through education, she now empowers communities and organisations worldwide. Her upcoming HarperCollins book shares her journey and framework for emotional literacy, courage, and collective wellbeing. https://www.bucketsofhope.com.au/
Dave Clare
Dave Clare is an award-winning leadership and culture practitioner and the CEO & Founder of Circle Leadership. For 20+ years he’s helped leaders navigate change, build trust, and turn purpose and values into everyday behaviors—so people thrive and performance follows. Dave is Pacific Ambassador for the Global Company Culture Association, author of humAIn: How AI Is Making Workplaces More Human, and is writing It’s Time to Lead Different. His philosophy: humans first, employees second. https://www.daveclare.com/
Susan Saleeba OAM
Susan Saleeba OAM an Australian humanitarian, Founder and Chair of Nakuru Hope, a not-for-profit charity based in Nakuru, Kenya that provides free education, food, shelter and hope to destitute children and families living in extreme poverty. She first travelled to Kenya as a volunteer in 2004, where she was moved by the hardship she witnessed and began teaching skills like sewing to empower women and help communities become self-sufficient. From these beginnings, she has established a school, orphanages, a farm a medical clinic and community programs that now support hundreds of children with free education, food and a safe refuge. Her volunteering work through Nakuru Hope has been widely recognised: she has been awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for service to the international community of Kenya, as well as honours including the John Curtin Medal and a Paul Harris Fellowship for her humanitarian leadership. Susan splits her time between Perth, Western Australia and Kenya, returning regularly to oversee the charity’s programs and to raise awareness and support for the vulnerable communities she serves. https://www.nakuruhope.org/
FAQs
- Who does my ticket support?
Your ticket goes directly to Nakuru Hope, an Australian Charity founded by Susan Saleeba OAM, and has been running strong for 21 years. Gabriel Learning Centre is located in a slum in Nakuru, Kenya, providing food, water, education, clothing, refuge, personal hygiene products, clothes, and counselling to those who are destitute, hungry and illiterate.
The charity is voluntarily administered by an Australian Board of Directors.
- Does my ticket or donation go 100% to the charity?
Absolutely. All money collected from ticket sales for this event goes 100% to the children in Nakuru, Kenya.
- Why should I choose this event for professional development?
This event is run by professional development experts, supporting the Nakuru Hope charity. Choosing to spend time in leadership development is crucial to business longevity, success and impact. The charity has chosen to provide a high calibre PD event that fulfils your professional development needs whilst sending 100% of the sales and donations from the event, to support the needs of the children in Kenya. We believe this is a win win for all involved.
Agenda
- 9:00 am - 9:15 am
Welcome
- 9:15 am - 9:45 am
Suzanne Rosa - Looking Sideways
Often we long for governments, society or organisations to deliver for us, and miss the everyday chances to look sideways at our peer group to bolster and support in ways that are often far more effective because they are collective. Looking sideways, is filled with a positive narrative about best placing our responsibility where we have most impact in times of relentless deficit world messages. Such as: > What is enough? How starting small often is bigger > Enhancing our civic responsibility - IS - leadership > Building healthy cultures that are productive and caring > Proactively question what we need to let go of in order to be useful > Brings about how we show up for others without leaving ourselves aside in the process. Weaving an energetic yet meaningful storyline, Suzanne shares a hopeful message of possibility inspired by events from an orphanage in Kenya, and coupled with her background as a behaviouralist, she unpacks practical, real life tools and wisdom. This uplifting experience raises the energy of the room to ensure a productive and meaningful conversation occurs far beyond your event, leaving the audience feeling a surge of “hopeful responsibility”.
- 9:45 am - 10:00 am
Susan Saleeba OAM
Hear from Nakuru Hope's founder Susan Saleeba. From renting a venue for our first school since 2008, we have our very own school on our own land. Gabriel Learning Centre was designed to be a place of learning, not only for education but for children to attend and feel at home. We embrace family values, caring for and sharing with each other. Our centre includes children from 42 different Kenyan tribes, as well as those with disabilities, those living in extreme poverty, and those who feel forgotten. Our school is a place ‘where everybody is somebody’, and where we all care for and support each other, along with their families within our slum community of Kaptembwo.
- 10:00 am - 11:00 am
Abang Othow - Buckets of Hope
Buckets of Hope is a visual and emotional framework I created to help people understand, express, and transform their inner world. It began as a survival tool—born from my own lived experience as a child refugee—and evolved into a method I now share in classrooms, communities, and organisations. The framework uses five coloured buckets to represent different emotional states: joy, growth, survival, resilience, and flow. It helps people not just name what they’re carrying, but begin to heal. ==================== My story began in the shadows of war. At five years old, I was separated from my family during the brutal civil conflicts in Sudan and Ethiopia. I became a child refugee, navigating six regions, surviving displacement, violence, illness, and heartbreak. From refugee camps to classrooms, women’s shelters to fashion runways, I carried pain—but also quiet strength. Over time, I turned that pain into purpose. I became a teacher, a speaker, a mother, and an advocate. Today, I speak not for recognition, but for the freedom of others whose stories are still waiting to be heard.
- 11:00 am - 11:15 am
Break
- 11:30 am - 12:00 pm
Surprise!
- 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Dave Clare - You Don't Answer to Someone. You Answer to Something
*You Don't Answer to Someone. You Answer to Something.* What if leadership isn't about who you report to, but what you stand for? In this session, Dave explores what happens when leaders anchor to purpose first—not position. When everyone answers to something bigger than themselves, leadership stops being about hierarchy and becomes about depth. Self, team, business. All-around, not top-down.
- 1:00 pm - 1:45 pm
Lunch - Plate it Forward
Plate it Forward has changed the game by creating unique and impact-based catering and events. From the comfort of your home to corporate gatherings and special events, our catering options offer a taste of our restaurant's best. We'll tailor packages to match your needs and budget, ensuring every guest is treated to something special. And with each meal served, you're helping us give back to Sydney's communities in need. https://plateitforward.org.au/
- 1:45 pm - 2:45 pm
Context Circles - Complex Thinking Activity
This session creates space to turn all your insights, ideas and thoughts into a clear tangible action plan! It's time to synthesise and create forward momentum. ===================== Thinking in complexity requires the ability to perceive across multiple perspectives and contexts. This process is a living kaleidoscope of conversation in which information and formulation of cross-contextual knowing is generated. The conversational process is designed to seamlessly engage multiple theoretical principals in a practical format. This is a process tool for revealing relationships that are integral and woven into the complex fabric of the issues we are working on, the process allows us each to see new patterns, new causations, and to respond to them with a much broader comprehension. In this way, the process enables new societal responses to complex challenges.
- 2:45 pm - 3:00 pm
Cuppa Co-Lab Founder Luke Cook
More Than a Venue — A Home for Purposeful Gatherings We’re living in a time of noise, burnout, and surface‑level everything. But people are craving something more. Real connection. Real stories. Real change. That’s why we created the Cuppa Co-Lab — a space designed for thinkers, doers, storytellers, teams, authors, and creators to come together not just to meet, but to make meaning. Whether you’re launching a book, filming a show, running a workshop, or hosting a panel, the Co-Lab is where conversations go deeper — and ripple out further. This isn’t just where events happen. It’s where movements take flight.
Tickets for good, not greed Humanitix dedicates 100% of profits from booking fees to charity