Member since July 2021
Lisa Duerre is CEO and Co-Founder of RLD Group, a WBENC-certified leadership consulting collective, and an AI Leadership Alignment and Leadership Systems Strategist.
Drawing on more than 20 years of Fortune 500 technology leadership, coaching, organizational development, and applied research, Lisa helps organizations reduce fragmentation and strengthen alignment across leaders, teams, and systems. Through RLD Group’s I | WE | US lens, she helps people, priorities, decisions, and execution move in the same direction as AI accelerates the speed and complexity of work.
Lisa is the lead co-author of RLD Group’s applied research, AI Leadership: Create Value Through Alignment, based on interviews with 25 senior leaders. She is also a co-author of Conversations Worth Having®: The Human Accelerator for Artificial Intelligence QuickStart Guide and a Certified Conversations Worth Having® Practitioner.
Known for creating highly interactive experiences, Lisa combines practical leadership tools, evidence-based conversation practices, applied research, and real-world technology experience. Her keynotes, workshops, executive forums, and facilitated conversations help leaders turn insight into action while strengthening trust, accountability, learning, and sustainable performance.
Lisa is also a workplace inclusion and lipedema advocate whose lived experience informs her work on fat bias, hidden disability, women’s health, and healthier leadership systems. She hosts CTRL+ALT+DELETE with Lisa Duerre™, and her work has been featured by The Wall Street Journal, Authority Magazine, ATD, and other media.
AI Leadership Alignment creates the conditions for top-line opportunity and bottom-line impact.
Helping organizations align the human and technical sides of AI adoption
Strengthening leadership systems across I | WE | US
Designing conversations that build trust, learning, and shared ownership
Turning AI readiness into responsible action and measurable business value
Preventing burnout by addressing the leadership systems that create it
Advancing women in technology and leadership
Challenging workplace fat bias and advocating for lipedema, women’s health, and disability inclusion
One of the stories I love to bring into my talks comes from the famous grape-stomping episode of I Love Lucy.
Lucy goes to an Italian vineyard because she wants to prepare for a role in a movie. She climbs into a vat with an experienced grape stomper who speaks Italian. Lucy does not understand the instructions, but she desperately wants to look like she knows what she is doing.
So she watches, imitates, and keeps stomping.
She does not pause to confirm what is expected. She does not want to reveal that she is confused. She keeps moving because everyone around her seems to know what they are doing, and she wants to succeed.
Then the stomping becomes a competition. Tension rises, grapes fly, and the entire situation falls apart.
It is hilarious because it is Lucy. It is also remarkably familiar.
I see leaders and teams doing a version of this with AI every day.
The technology is moving quickly. Instructions are incomplete. Expectations keep changing. People look around, imitate what others appear to be doing, and keep moving because they do not want to be the person who asks the “obvious” question.
Activity becomes confused with progress.
Teams launch pilots without understanding the larger strategy. Leaders hesitate to admit what they do not know. Employees experiment without clear guardrails. Everyone keeps stomping, hoping they are doing it right and wondering what others will think if they stop to ask.
The greatest risk is not a lack of intelligence or effort. It is what happens when curiosity disappears and the conversations people need are never designed.
That is when I ask the audience:
Where are you still stomping because you are afraid to pause and ask a better question?
That question opens a different conversation about AI readiness. It creates space to notice assumptions, surface uncertainty, and reconnect individual action, team learning, and organizational direction across I | WE | US.
AI scales what is already true. If people are afraid to ask, it can scale confusion and false confidence. When leaders make curiosity visible and create Conversations Worth Having®, AI can strengthen learning, alignment, and responsible action.
Sometimes the most important leadership move is to stop stomping long enough to find out whether everyone is making the same wine.
I spent more than 20 years leading inside Fortune 500 technology companies. I loved the people, the pace, and the opportunity to build teams that created meaningful results. I also saw what happened when organizations rewarded nonstop execution without creating the conditions for people to think, connect, and lead well.
I lived that tension myself.
At one point, I was in the emergency room waiting to learn whether I had experienced a heart attack. I was still worried about finishing an executive presentation for the next morning. That moment revealed how deeply I had internalized the belief that being dependable meant continuing to deliver, regardless of the cost.
Later, when my mom needed hospice care, my family brought her into our home for the final months of her life. I had to decide what being present for the moments that mattered would actually look like. That experience changed how I thought about success, leadership, and the relationship between our work and our lives.
Soon afterward, I chose to Ctrl+Alt+Delete out of my corporate executive role. In 2017, my husband Randy and I founded RLD Group.
I knew extraordinary leaders who cared deeply and still found themselves caught inside systems that created burnout, silos, unclear decisions, and constant pressure. I wanted to help leaders address those patterns closer to their source. Over time, RLD Group grew into a collective of experts helping leaders, teams, and organizations strengthen alignment across what we now call I | WE | US: the individual leader, the team and cross-functional relationships, and the larger organizational system.
My own journey continued to shape the work. Navigating chronic illness, hidden disability, ADHD, and lipedema strengthened my commitment to inclusive workplaces where people can contribute without having to hide important parts of their experience. It also reinforced something I had seen throughout my career: what looks like an individual performance or resilience problem is often connected to the system around the person.
Today, AI is increasing the urgency of that work. Through RLD Group’s applied research with senior leaders, we found that AI is exposing and amplifying many of the same leadership gaps I witnessed throughout my career: silos, reduced curiosity, and under-designed conversations and collaboration.
That is why I speak about AI Leadership Alignment, leadership systems, Conversations Worth Having®, burnout prevention, and workplace inclusion. These topics are connected by one question that has guided my work from the beginning:
What becomes possible when we create the conditions for people, priorities, decisions, and systems to move in the same direction?
That is the work I built RLD Group to do. We help leaders reduce fragmentation, strengthen the human and organizational sides of change, and create the conditions for top-line opportunity and bottom-line impact.
That is what it means to build the plane while flying it.
In this interactive experience, Lisa Duerre draws from RLD Group’s applied research with senior leaders to explore why AI progress often slows after the initial excitement. Participants will examine how silos, a reduced explorer mindset, and under-designed conversations create fragmentation across leadership systems.
Using RLD Group’s I | WE | US lens, Lisa helps participants identify where readiness is breaking down and determine what leaders can do now to strengthen learning, alignment, and execution.
Participants will:
Best for: Technology, service and support, HR, operations, transformation, and cross-functional leaders navigating AI adoption while expectations and conditions continue to evolve.
Available as: Interactive keynote, conference breakout, executive forum, or workshop.
AI adoption is often approached as a technology challenge. Yet progress frequently slows because leaders and teams are not having the conversations required to learn, make decisions, address concerns, and move forward together.
AI scales what is already true. When conversations are unclear, avoidant, or under-designed, AI can amplify confusion, mistrust, and fragmentation. When conversations strengthen curiosity, clarity, and shared ownership, they can accelerate responsible adoption and business value.
In this highly interactive workshop, Lisa Duerre introduces practical Conversations Worth Having® practices and helps participants apply them to real AI-related situations. Using an I | WE | US lens, participants explore how everyday conversations influence individual behavior, team learning, and organizational readiness.
Participants will:
Best for: Leaders at all levels, cross-functional teams, HR and talent leaders, technology teams, and organizations preparing people to adopt and use AI responsibly.
Available as: 60- or 90-minute interactive session, half-day workshop, full-day experience, or customized team lab.
Participants may receive the Conversations Worth Having®: The Human Accelerator for Artificial Intelligence QuickStart Guide, co-authored by Lisa Duerre and fellow Conversations Worth Having practitioners, as a practical resource for continued application.
In this interactive leadership experience, Lisa Duerre helps technology leaders recognize where misalignment is affecting communication, collaboration, accountability, decision-making, and sustainable performance. Participants use the I | WE | US lens to examine leadership at the individual, team, and organizational levels and practice tools they can use immediately.
Participants will:
Best for: technology leaders and professionals, government IT, engineering, service and support organizations, and emerging leaders.
In this highly interactive experience, Lisa Duerre draws from RLD Group’s applied research with senior leaders and more than 20 years inside technology organizations. She helps leaders recognize where fragmentation is slowing AI progress and use RLD Group’s I | WE | US leadership lens to reconnect individual leadership, team execution, and organizational systems.
Participants will complete an Alignment Fast Scan, identify the leadership conditions AI is already amplifying, and choose one practical move they can make within 30 days. The goal is to increase speed and trust while creating the conditions for top-line opportunity and bottom-line impact.
Participants will:
Best for: C-suite and senior functional leaders, technology and transformation leaders, HR and talent executives, and cross-functional teams responsible for AI adoption and execution.
When conversations are under-designed, uncertainty quickly becomes confusion, resistance, rework, or burnout. Lisa Duerre helps leaders slow down the right moments so they can ask better questions, make clearer choices, and move forward together.
Using practical conversation methods and RLD Group’s I | WE | US lens, this interactive experience helps participants apply what they learn to a real leadership challenge rather than a hypothetical case.
Participants will:
Best for: leaders at all levels navigating change, competing priorities, organizational transformation, or sustained uncertainty.
Drawing from her experience as a former technology executive, organizational strategist, and woman living with lipedema, Lisa Duerre creates an honest and practical conversation about how bias shows up in workplace systems, policies, interactions, and assumptions.
This interactive experience helps participants move beyond awareness and identify meaningful actions that make workplaces more inclusive, flexible, and humane.
Participants will:
One of the stories I love to bring into my talks comes from the famous grape-stomping episode of I Love Lucy.
Lucy goes to an Italian vineyard because she wants to prepare for a role in a movie. She climbs into a vat with an experienced grape stomper who speaks Italian. Lucy does not understand the instructions, but she desperately wants to look like she knows what she is doing.
So she watches, imitates, and keeps stomping.
She does not pause to confirm what is expected. She does not want to reveal that she is confused. She keeps moving because everyone around her seems to know what they are doing, and she wants to succeed.
Then the stomping becomes a competition. Tension rises, grapes fly, and the entire situation falls apart.
It is hilarious because it is Lucy. It is also remarkably familiar.
I see leaders and teams doing a version of this with AI every day.
The technology is moving quickly. Instructions are incomplete. Expectations keep changing. People look around, imitate what others appear to be doing, and keep moving because they do not want to be the person who asks the “obvious” question.
Activity becomes confused with progress.
Teams launch pilots without understanding the larger strategy. Leaders hesitate to admit what they do not know. Employees experiment without clear guardrails. Everyone keeps stomping, hoping they are doing it right and wondering what others will think if they stop to ask.
The greatest risk is not a lack of intelligence or effort. It is what happens when curiosity disappears and the conversations people need are never designed.
That is when I ask the audience:
Where are you still stomping because you are afraid to pause and ask a better question?
That question opens a different conversation about AI readiness. It creates space to notice assumptions, surface uncertainty, and reconnect individual action, team learning, and organizational direction across I | WE | US.
AI scales what is already true. If people are afraid to ask, it can scale confusion and false confidence. When leaders make curiosity visible and create Conversations Worth Having®, AI can strengthen learning, alignment, and responsible action.
Sometimes the most important leadership move is to stop stomping long enough to find out whether everyone is making the same wine.
I spent more than 20 years leading inside Fortune 500 technology companies. I loved the people, the pace, and the opportunity to build teams that created meaningful results. I also saw what happened when organizations rewarded nonstop execution without creating the conditions for people to think, connect, and lead well.
I lived that tension myself.
At one point, I was in the emergency room waiting to learn whether I had experienced a heart attack. I was still worried about finishing an executive presentation for the next morning. That moment revealed how deeply I had internalized the belief that being dependable meant continuing to deliver, regardless of the cost.
Later, when my mom needed hospice care, my family brought her into our home for the final months of her life. I had to decide what being present for the moments that mattered would actually look like. That experience changed how I thought about success, leadership, and the relationship between our work and our lives.
Soon afterward, I chose to Ctrl+Alt+Delete out of my corporate executive role. In 2017, my husband Randy and I founded RLD Group.
I knew extraordinary leaders who cared deeply and still found themselves caught inside systems that created burnout, silos, unclear decisions, and constant pressure. I wanted to help leaders address those patterns closer to their source. Over time, RLD Group grew into a collective of experts helping leaders, teams, and organizations strengthen alignment across what we now call I | WE | US: the individual leader, the team and cross-functional relationships, and the larger organizational system.
My own journey continued to shape the work. Navigating chronic illness, hidden disability, ADHD, and lipedema strengthened my commitment to inclusive workplaces where people can contribute without having to hide important parts of their experience. It also reinforced something I had seen throughout my career: what looks like an individual performance or resilience problem is often connected to the system around the person.
Today, AI is increasing the urgency of that work. Through RLD Group’s applied research with senior leaders, we found that AI is exposing and amplifying many of the same leadership gaps I witnessed throughout my career: silos, reduced curiosity, and under-designed conversations and collaboration.
That is why I speak about AI Leadership Alignment, leadership systems, Conversations Worth Having®, burnout prevention, and workplace inclusion. These topics are connected by one question that has guided my work from the beginning:
What becomes possible when we create the conditions for people, priorities, decisions, and systems to move in the same direction?
That is the work I built RLD Group to do. We help leaders reduce fragmentation, strengthen the human and organizational sides of change, and create the conditions for top-line opportunity and bottom-line impact.
That is what it means to build the plane while flying it.
In this interactive experience, Lisa Duerre draws from RLD Group’s applied research with senior leaders to explore why AI progress often slows after the initial excitement. Participants will examine how silos, a reduced explorer mindset, and under-designed conversations create fragmentation across leadership systems.
Using RLD Group’s I | WE | US lens, Lisa helps participants identify where readiness is breaking down and determine what leaders can do now to strengthen learning, alignment, and execution.
Participants will:
Best for: Technology, service and support, HR, operations, transformation, and cross-functional leaders navigating AI adoption while expectations and conditions continue to evolve.
Available as: Interactive keynote, conference breakout, executive forum, or workshop.
AI adoption is often approached as a technology challenge. Yet progress frequently slows because leaders and teams are not having the conversations required to learn, make decisions, address concerns, and move forward together.
AI scales what is already true. When conversations are unclear, avoidant, or under-designed, AI can amplify confusion, mistrust, and fragmentation. When conversations strengthen curiosity, clarity, and shared ownership, they can accelerate responsible adoption and business value.
In this highly interactive workshop, Lisa Duerre introduces practical Conversations Worth Having® practices and helps participants apply them to real AI-related situations. Using an I | WE | US lens, participants explore how everyday conversations influence individual behavior, team learning, and organizational readiness.
Participants will:
Best for: Leaders at all levels, cross-functional teams, HR and talent leaders, technology teams, and organizations preparing people to adopt and use AI responsibly.
Available as: 60- or 90-minute interactive session, half-day workshop, full-day experience, or customized team lab.
Participants may receive the Conversations Worth Having®: The Human Accelerator for Artificial Intelligence QuickStart Guide, co-authored by Lisa Duerre and fellow Conversations Worth Having practitioners, as a practical resource for continued application.
In this interactive leadership experience, Lisa Duerre helps technology leaders recognize where misalignment is affecting communication, collaboration, accountability, decision-making, and sustainable performance. Participants use the I | WE | US lens to examine leadership at the individual, team, and organizational levels and practice tools they can use immediately.
Participants will:
Best for: technology leaders and professionals, government IT, engineering, service and support organizations, and emerging leaders.
In this highly interactive experience, Lisa Duerre draws from RLD Group’s applied research with senior leaders and more than 20 years inside technology organizations. She helps leaders recognize where fragmentation is slowing AI progress and use RLD Group’s I | WE | US leadership lens to reconnect individual leadership, team execution, and organizational systems.
Participants will complete an Alignment Fast Scan, identify the leadership conditions AI is already amplifying, and choose one practical move they can make within 30 days. The goal is to increase speed and trust while creating the conditions for top-line opportunity and bottom-line impact.
Participants will:
Best for: C-suite and senior functional leaders, technology and transformation leaders, HR and talent executives, and cross-functional teams responsible for AI adoption and execution.
When conversations are under-designed, uncertainty quickly becomes confusion, resistance, rework, or burnout. Lisa Duerre helps leaders slow down the right moments so they can ask better questions, make clearer choices, and move forward together.
Using practical conversation methods and RLD Group’s I | WE | US lens, this interactive experience helps participants apply what they learn to a real leadership challenge rather than a hypothetical case.
Participants will:
Best for: leaders at all levels navigating change, competing priorities, organizational transformation, or sustained uncertainty.
Drawing from her experience as a former technology executive, organizational strategist, and woman living with lipedema, Lisa Duerre creates an honest and practical conversation about how bias shows up in workplace systems, policies, interactions, and assumptions.
This interactive experience helps participants move beyond awareness and identify meaningful actions that make workplaces more inclusive, flexible, and humane.
Participants will:
