Create an experience with Dr Emily Heath

Dr Emily Heath is a behavioural neuroscientist, speaker, researcher and business leader. Emily makes change simple, real and achievable. If you are facing a behavioural challenge, complex problem, or simply seeking to better understand yourself or your world, Emily can help.

Emily has been engaged to speak, publish and consult globally on issues of behavioural, organisational and social change by clients across public, private and NGO sectors. She fuses neuroscience with decades of practical experience.

As a business leader, Emily has held senior leadership roles in both small and large companies, including as a Director and sub-service line leader at EY, one of the world’s largest professional services firms. She led a team of over 50 staff designing and delivering large-scale behaviour change programs working across areas as diverse as financial services, technology and telco, energy, education, STEM, First Nations engagement, health and the future of work.

Emily has also worked extensively in the financial sector applying the neuroscience of financial decision making to product and service design. She has supported clients and government to design programs, services and communications to support customer financial wellbeing, build financial capability, prevent scams and support vulnerable customers, including advising on Australia’s National Financial Capability Strategy.

Beyond her extensive practical business experience, Em also holds a PhD in behavioural neuroscience from the University of Sydney Brain and Mind Centre, a graduate certificate in behavioural economics from UTS, a first-class honours degree in biochemistry and a a certificate in sustainable business from Harvard Business School Online.

As well as speaking at events such as SXSW, Em has published extensively including in academic journals such as the European Journal of Neuroscience, and authored papers such as 10 Principles: What Really Works in Changing Financial Behaviour, Game On: How Video Games Change Work, and Purpose-Driven Leadership.

Emily is co-founder and director at Alchemy Labs, a Sydney-based behaviour change agency.

Speaker Topics

Harnessing the Science of Behaviour Change

Most organisations focus on telling people what needs to change, but awareness and information alone don't drive behaviour. This session reveals the science behind why we resist change, and the practical levers leaders can pull to make new behaviours stick. Using real-world case studies and interactive examples, Dr Emily Heath shows how to design behaviour change initiatives that work with human psychology, not against it.

Drawing on behavioural science and over 15 years' experience designing large-scale behaviour change initiatives, Emily shows audiences how to move beyond awareness, information and good intentions, and create the conditions that make meaningful change last.

Audiences leave with concrete tools they can apply immediately: how to reduce friction in decision-making, build motivation through small wins, and create environments where better actions are the easy choice. This is particularly valuable for leaders managing organisational transformation, culture shifts, or large-scale performance improvement.

Audience Takeaways:

• Understand the gap between intention and action, and how to close it using behavioural science
• Learn practical tools to reduce friction and build momentum for new behaviours
• Recognise the hidden barriers derailing behaviour change initiatives, and how to design around them
• Apply evidence-based strategies to make behaviour change faster, easier and stickier

Perfect for: Organisational leaders and change managers, HR professionals and operations teams, and anyone driving culture or performance transformation.

Why Smart People Make Bad Decisions

Every day, we make decisions that shape careers, teams, customers, cultures and futures, and the quality of those decisions matters. Good decisions drive good outcomes. Bad decisions can drive disastrous ones.

The truth is, smart people make poor decisions every day, not because they lack information, but because our brains are wired with hidden biases, mental shortcuts, and blind spots.

This session takes audiences inside the decision-making engine, revealing the emotional, cognitive and neurological forces that shape our choices under pressure. Dr Emily Heath explores why rational thinking often isn't, how biases hide in plain sight, and what strategies actually work to overcome them.

With real-world examples from business, finance, and leadership, this presentation equips executives and teams with practical frameworks to cut through noise, recognise their cognitive traps, and make better decisions when it matters most. It's essential for leaders navigating complexity, managing risk, and building teams that think clearly under pressure.

Audience Takeaways

• Identify the cognitive biases and mental shortcuts that derail good decision-making
• Learn practical tools to pause, reflect and choose better in high-pressure moments
• Discover strategies to support better decisions in life, work and leadership
• Apply decision-making frameworks that reduce risk and improve outcomes

Perfect for: Executive teams and risk professionals, project leaders and financial professionals, and any group making high-stakes decisions.

Be Heard. Make Meaning. Drive Action.

Unleashing the science of storytelling and communication to turn messages into momentum. 

In a noisy, distracted world, clear communication is a competitive advantage. Yet most messages fall flat, not because they're wrong, but because they don't connect with how humans actually process information, emotion and trust. This session explores the neuroscience and psychology of impactful communication: how to cut through noise, make your message memorable, and move people to act. Because even the best message can fall flat if it does not connect with the humans receiving it. 

Dr Emily Heath reveals how emotion, story and context shape perception, and provides practical techniques for bridging the gap between what you mean and what people hear. From crafting narratives that stick to avoiding hidden communication traps, this session helps leaders, communicators and salespeople create messages that resonate, influence and inspire action.

Audience Takeaways:

• Understand why we forget, and why memory is more trainable than we realise
• Discover practical tools to improve recall in everyday work and life
• Learn simple memory techniques, including mnemonics and association
• Explore how repetition and practice help build expertise over time

Perfect for: Learning and development professionals and trainers, educators and technical experts, and any group wanting to boost retention and skill development.

The Memory Cheat Code

The science of remembering more and forgetting less.
Ever forgotten someone's name moments after meeting them? Walked into a room and wondered why you were there? Or lost the one thing you swore you would remember?
Memory is powerful, practical and wonderfully imperfect. In this fun, interactive masterclass, Dr Emily Heath explores the science of how we remember, why we forget, and how to work with the brain's natural quirks to boost recall.
Audiences will discover practical, science-backed techniques for remembering names, facts, ideas and to-dos, and learn why memory is shaped by attention, emotion, association and practice. From everyday recall to building expertise over time, this session helps people understand their memory, train it, and use it with more confidence.

Audience Takeaways:

• Understand why we forget, and why memory is more trainable than we realise
• Discover practical tools to improve recall in everyday work and life
• Learn simple memory techniques, including mnemonics and association
• Explore how repetition and practice help build expertise over time

Perfect for: Learning and development professionals and trainers, educators and technical experts, and any group wanting to boost retention and skill development.

Why Smart People Get Scammed

How to protect people before, during and after a scam takes hold.Every scam relies on a human being deceived.As scams become more sophisticated and losses continue to rise, organisations are under increasing pressure from customers, regulators, legislators and internal stakeholders to keep people safe. But protection cannot rely on systems, warnings and controls alone. Scams are a human problem, and they require human-centred solutions.

Scammers are not just exploiting technology, they are exploiting human psychology, vulnerability and trust. No matter how much organisations invest in detection, prevention and response, humans can remain the weak link if systems are not designed around how people actually think, feel and act under pressure.

In this evidence-based session, Dr Emily Heath explores the behavioural science of scams, and what it reveals about prevention, intervention and support. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology and real-world scam prevention research, Emily shows how organisations can better understand the human factors scammers exploit, reduce vulnerability, interrupt scam decisions and design protection around real human behaviour.

This session will help you:

• Understand the human factors that make scams work, and what this means for prevention and response
• Recognise how systems, processes and messages can unintentionally increase scam vulnerability
• Explore practical ways to protect customers, teams and communities before, during and after a scam takes hold
• Build more human-centred approaches to scam prevention, intervention and support

Perfect for: Banks, financial services and telco organisations, fraud, risk and customer protection teams, and anyone responsible for keeping customers, staff and communities safe from scams.