Luke Williams will be the featured speaker during Opening General Session at WEFTEC® 2014. Photo courtesy of the Washington Speakers Bureau (Alexandria, Va.).
Luke Williams — bestselling author, professor, and commentator — will take center stage during the Opening General Session at WEFTEC® 2014, where he will speak about innovation and leadership.
As change occurs more rapidly, leaders need to use innovation and out-of-the-box thinking to successfully respond to emerging challenges. Williams, author of Disrupt: Think the Unthinkable To Spark Transformation in Your Business, will discuss how water professionals can embrace change on all levels to thrive. This new approach can help address evolving and unpredictable water management challenges.
“The water industry is in the midst of a sea change that, over the next several decades, will bring increases in population, urbanization, and wasteloads that will be complicated by the dramatic effects of climate change,” said WEF President Sandra Ralston.
Williams, also a professor at the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at New York University and a former employee of the design firm, Frog Design Inc. (San Francisco), works with organizations on challenges from creating new products and services to transforming organizational processes and behaviors. In addition to speaking at events worldwide and being featured in many different publications, he holds more than fifty U.S. patents for new technology. For more information, see Williams’ biography.
“WEF is fortunate to have a diverse membership that represents the connected water industry — used water, stormwater, and water reuse — which makes us well-positioned to adopt a new integrated model that will sustain our shared environmental mission,” Ralston said. “Luke’s message about innovative leadership is perfectly timed with the technical programming and events we have planned for WEFTEC 2014.”
During the Opening General Session, scheduled on Sept. 29 at 8:30 a.m. in the New Orleans Morial Convention Center, Ralston will introduce the theme of “Embracing Change in a Disruptive Age,” by highlighting such WEF efforts as cross-sector collaboration and recognizing wastewater treatment as a resource recovery process. Register for WEFTEC to take part in WEFTEC 2014, which also includes 145 technical sessions, 35 workshops, 11 mobile sessions, 8 facility tours, and about 1000 exhibiting companies.
— Jennifer Fulcher, WEF Highlights
August 13, 2014
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