Speaking

What changes when the room changes?

Nayli Russo Long brings original research, operating experience, and lived story to the moments where leadership, authority, and performance become more difficult to hold.

Her audiences do not leave with a list of leadership rules. They leave seeing the room differently.

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Founder, Russo LeadershipResearcher, Identity in the Room™Former MLB Strategy & People Executive

All for Her Luncheon

On Stage

Research you can feel before you have language for it.

Nayli uses story to open the question, research to sharpen it, and practical language to help the audience take it back into their own rooms.

ALPFA Pittsburgh Leadership Summit 2.0

All for Her Luncheon

Penn State Summer Discovery Program

Flagship Keynote

Identity in the Room™

What happens to who we are, what we know, and what we are willing to use when the room changes?

A leader can know exactly what they believe. Know what the situation requires. Know what they need to say. And still become less able to use that judgment in the room where it matters.

Identity in the Room™ brings Nayli’s ongoing qualitative research to the stage through story, tension, reflection, and practical language audiences can use to examine what happens when identity, authority, power, pressure, and the room collide.

The research currently spans 52 interviews across two waves and produced The Authorship-Permission Model™. The work remains theory-generating and explicit about what the evidence can and cannot yet establish.

01

See the Pattern

Recognize the difference between knowing what leadership requires and being able to use it in a particular room.

02

Read the Room

Examine how authority, expectations, norms, and pressure change what becomes easier or more costly.

03

Choose More Consciously

Leave with language for separating skill, adaptation, identity, and environment before deciding what needs to change.

Best for Leadership conferencesExecutive audiencesAssociation eventsCompany-wide leadership gatheringsResearch-informed events

Bring Identity in the Room™ to Your Audience

Additional Talks

Different rooms. The same deeper question.

Talk 02

Nayli Russo Long speaking at the Latino Convention

Leadership That Holds

When knowing what good leadership looks like is no longer enough.

Pressure changes behavior.

Urgency narrows range. Familiar strengths get overused. Leaders protect, avoid, rescue, overfunction, or become someone different when the stakes rise.

This keynote helps leaders examine what happens between knowing and doing, recognize the defaults pressure exposes, and build more conscious range when conditions are less than ideal.

Audience leaves thinking

What happens to my leadership when the stakes rise?

Best for Leadership conferencesManager and executive audiencesCorporate leadership eventsOffsites

Talk 03

Organizational Performance Under Pressure

When the people problem is actually an operating problem.

Organizations often send people to training for problems created by unclear authority, competing incentives, decision rights, structure, or an operating model that no longer fits.

Drawing from enterprise operating experience, Nayli helps executive audiences see the seams where strategy, organization, leadership, and execution begin pulling apart.

Audience leaves thinking

Are we trying to fix the person when the organization is producing the behavior?

Best for Executive teamsCEO and President forumsOwner and investor audiencesProfessional sportsGrowth organizationsExecutive offsites

Selected Audiences

Some rooms call for a more specific conversation.

Undeniable Latinas™

Identity, authority, visibility, and power in the rooms Latinas navigate.

A culturally specific application of the research for Latina professional and leadership audiences.

Best for Latina leadership eventsERGsProfessional associationsConferences

The Women Who Made You

What women teach the next generation without ever calling it leadership.

A story-led keynote about lineage, identity, inheritance, ambition, and the messages women carry forward, consciously and unconsciously.

Best for Women’s leadership eventsWomen’s History MonthIntergenerational gatheringsCommunity and association events

Nayli Russo Long speaking at the All for Her Luncheon

The Experience

Story opens the room. Research sharpens it. The audience does the rest.

She does not lecture the framework.

The audience experiences the question before the language arrives.
She lets tension stay unresolved.

Not every leadership problem has one clean answer.
She asks the room to locate itself.

Reflection is part of the experience, not something added at the end.
She gives the audience language that travels.

The point is what they can still see and use after the event is over.

Nayli Russo Long delivering the keynote at The Global Impact Forum in Philadelphia

“Watching her command the stage with insight, passion, and precision was a masterclass in leadership itself.”

Justin Aglio, Ed.D.

Associate Vice President, Penn State Outreach

On the keynote at The Global Impact Forum in Philadelphia, which he co-leads.

Selected Stages

The Global Impact Forum ALPFA Pittsburgh Leadership Summit All for Her Luncheon Penn State Summer Discovery Program Latino Convention

Formats

Built for the room you are filling.

Keynotes

Large-stage, research and story-led experiences.

Executive Sessions

More intimate conversations for leaders carrying consequential decisions.

Fireside Chats

Moderated conversations around leadership, identity, organizations, and pressure.

Conference Sessions

Interactive or keynote-format sessions for professional audiences.

Talks can be tailored for leadership conferences, company events, executive offsites, professional associations, women’s leadership events, and audience-specific gatherings.

Nayli Russo Long, founder and CEO of Russo Leadership

About Nayli

An operator’s lens. A researcher’s questions. A storyteller’s room.

Nayli Russo Long is the founder and CEO of Russo Leadership and the researcher behind Identity in the Room™, an ongoing qualitative research platform examining what happens to identity, authority, judgment, and leadership behavior when the room or stakes change.

Her career spans clinical healthcare, operations, the Office of the President, and senior strategy and people roles in Major League Baseball. Venezuelan-born and a former professional oboist, Nayli brings lived experience and an enterprise systems lens to questions that are often treated as purely personal.

Nayli Russo Long, PharmD, MBA

Founder & CEO, Russo Leadership

Researcher, Identity in the Room™

Bring Nayli to Your Next Event

What does your audience need to see differently when they leave the room?

Tell us about the audience, the moment you are creating, and what you want the conversation to make possible.

Ask About Speaking

KeynotesConferencesExecutive EventsFireside Conversations