Conversations that shift thinking and lead to real change.
Meaningful change doesn’t come from more information. It comes from shared understanding, clearer language, and alignment on what actually needs to be different. My keynote talks and leadership roundtables create the conditions for that — for L&D, HR, and leadership teams navigating complexity, technology change, and the gap between strategy and how people actually work.
Topics I Speak On
Why AI and Technology Adoption Fails, and What to Do About It
Most organisations treat AI and technology rollouts as implementation problems. They’re not. They’re behaviour problems. This talk reframes adoption through a behavioural science lens — showing why smart people revert to old ways of working, what’s actually blocking change, and what leaders and L&D teams can do differently to make new tools and ways of working genuinely stick.
Best for: HR and L&D conferences, technology leadership events, executive offsites
Repositioning L&D as a Business Performance Driver
L&D teams work hard. But if the board sees learning as a cost centre rather than a performance driver, the work stays invisible. This talk shows how to reposition L&D as an essential partner in organisational performance — with the language, evidence, and strategic framing to make the business case for learning impossible to ignore.
Best for: L&D conferences, HR leadership events, internal learning summits.
Making Learning Impact Visible
Completion rates and satisfaction scores don’t move boards. This talk reframes learning impact through behaviour, performance, and business outcomes, and gives L&D and HR leaders a practical way to speak the language of the business with confidence and credibility.
Best for: L&D conferences, internal L&D team development.
Format
Keynote talks: 30 to 60 minutes, conference or event format, designed to provoke thinking and create shared language across a leadership or professional audience.
Leadership roundtables: facilitated sessions for smaller groups, creating space to make sense of complexity together, reframe assumptions, and align on what change actually looks like in practice.
Available for conferences, HR and L&D leadership events, organisational development forums, and executive offsites.
Past talks and events
Events
World of Learning — Roundtable 2025: A facilitated roundtable on behaviour change and learning impact. Pre-recorded session available on the World of Learning website and YouTube channel.
Learning Technologies Awards — Judges Panel 2025: Invited judge for the Learning Technologies Awards Winners Showcase.
The Learning Network Connect Conference — November 2024: From Aspiration to Action: Using Strategic Frameworks for Aligned and Impactful L&D Solutions — an interactive session on making learning initiatives drive real organisational change.
LD Free Spirits Live — Spring 2026: Designing a Sustainable Freelance Business Without Burning Out — a session exploring why burnout is structural, not personal, and how to use behavioural science and systems thinking to redesign how you work.
The Learning Network — Webinar 2021: An exploration of applying design thinking principles to learning design.
One of the most interesting takeaways for me as an L&D professional was thinking about the questions – “What do they [our people] have to do? & why aren’t they doing it?” This has really stuck with me – such a simple way to frame how we view learning priorities & get our senior managers within organisations to really think about the problem they are trying to solve. This is a really transformative way to consider how we move away from a world of “organise this training for me.
Emily Gordon – Senior Learning and Development Partner at CreateFuture
As Houra highlighted, initiatives rarely fail because measurement at the end is difficult; they fail because outcomes weren’t clearly defined at the start… What I appreciated most about the session was its practicality. Rather than painting an unattainable “ideal state”, the discussion focused on simple, actionable steps that any organisation can take to drive behaviour change as a core outcome. It was insightful, relevant, and immediately applicable.
James Warburton – Learning and Development Business Partner at Midwich Group plc
Podcasts
Managing Potential with Daniel Taylor: The shadow leaders cast on performance — how unclear signals, silence, and misaligned expectations shape what people actually do at work.
Multiply Transfer Radio with Fergal Connoly: The True Measure of Learning — Why completion metrics are undermining L&D credibility — and a practical behavioural science approach to measuring what actually matters, starting with baseline business indicators rather than learning hours.
Mindboost Moments with Caleb Foster: The art and science of learning — a conversation on the intersection of behavioural science, human emotion, and the role of curiosity in building more impactful learning experiences.
Houra Amin is the founder of Blue Jay Learning, an independent L&D and behaviour change consultancy. She has spent over a decade working inside complex, regulated, and global organisations — including Worley, HSBC, and GSK — designing large-scale capability and change initiatives where getting adoption wrong carries real consequences. She applies insights from behavioural science to diagnose what’s actually blocking change, then designs learning and strategy that targets exactly that. She writes for Training Journal, judges the Learning Technologies Awards, and mentors L&D professionals through The Learning Network.
