Katie Iles

Katie Iles is a generational theorist, executive advisor and leadership strategist who helps organisations transform trust, culture, and performance. Author of Lichen Leadership (Wiley 2026) and founder of The Praxis Collective, she combines rigorous social research with two decades in senior leadership and systems thinking to surface the invisible architecture driving how people lead, engage, and thrive. 

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Her argument is both provocative and precise: the friction, disengagement, and change resistance leaders are experiencing across generations isn't primarily driven by entitlement or poor work ethic. It's produced by five generations operating across three fundamentally different models of work — each carrying a distinct social contract around trust, safety, and merit — inside systems never designed to hold them simultaneously. When those models collide, the result looks like a people problem. It almost never is.

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Katie has spent over a decade researching generational formation, change and leadership translating that research into frameworks that leaders can actually use. She has delivered to thousands of leaders across Australia, New Zealand, and the UK — from AusPost and NAB to public health systems, research institutions, and high-growth startups — and is consistently described as one of the sharpest and most practically useful voices in the room.