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Pauline Nguyen

From Extreme Adversity to Success

Pauline is a best-selling author and award-winning businesswoman and her achievements are even more impressive for her having escaped Vietnam on a boat and survived a Thai refugee camp. She overcame by transforming her approach by re-engineering her beliefs, questioning the status quo and hacking cultural norms.

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Bio

Pauline Nguyen is a best-selling author and award-winning businesswoman – and her achievements are all the more impressive for her having escaped Vietnam on a boat and survived a Thai refugee camp. She has overcome these adverse beginnings to transform her approach to success by re-engineering her beliefs, questioning the status quo and hacking cultural norms to become one of Australia’s most successful entrepreneurs.

As the owner of Red Lantern the most awarded Vietnamese restaurant in the world, in 2012 Pauline won the Australian Telstra Business Award for Medium Business. However, that is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Pauline’s achievements; her memoir, Secrets of the Red Lantern, has been critically acclaimed around the world and appeared in numerous bestseller lists. She holds a BA in Communications from the University of Technology, Sydney, and in 2008 won Newcomer Writer of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards.

Pauline has achieved outstanding success as an entrepreneur, author, businesswoman and acclaimed speaker with the unique ability to connect with her audience in a profound way, empowering them to change their story for a better future.

Pauline is an original ‘Rare Bird’ – one of Australia’s top 50 influential female entrepreneurs – and is included in Blackwell and Hobday’s global recognition of 200 Women Who Will Change the Way You See the World.

She has a high-performing Western business background combined with an Eastern slant of spirituality - and her unique philosophy is taught with warmth and humour, telling her own story of what can be achieved through key alignment of thoughts and intentions.

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Keynotes

Featured Keynote

The Warchest of a Modern Leader
For the life of a modern entrepreneur, the highly competitive business environment is a battlefield. And as resolute, strong and prepared as you are as a warrior, without an adequate war chest, you don’t stand a chance against the en emy.

Pauline explains the necessity in our day and age to utilise The War Chest of a Modern Leader in entrepreneurial battle. The War Chest of a Modern Leader is full of powerfully practical and sustainable ways we can not only improve as leaders, but also win the entrepreneurial battle against our adversaries. From utilising the power of nature to rejuvenate, regain energy and heal, to realising true leaders are in their core compassionate as well as assertive, Pauline breaks down the seven weapons in The War Chest of a Modern Leader.

In this keynote, Pauline merges modern scientific methods for leadership excellence, including breathwork, nature’s medicine and the importance of resting, with ancient modalities of being conscious, protecting your inner peace and being radically transparent. Audiences learn:
- How to take radical personal responsibility for your own personal and professional development
- How to positively influence your nervous system, in order to remain calm and intelligent in the face of adversity
- How to lead with vulnerability, compassion, and competence – with Power and not Force
- How rest is a weapon and how to utilise it effectively
- The importance of a wise counsel to a warrior
- Why the best offense is a good defense
- Who should be in your phalanx

It's Time to Disrupt the Disruption
It's Time to Disrupt the Disruption
These last couple years have proved one certainty - there is no certainty.

COVID-19 has shown itself to be a black swan - an unseeable anomaly that has changed the way we conduct ourselves as a society, as people and as businesses. But, as Charles Darwin famously noted, “It is not the strongest of species that survive, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.”

The recent business disruption the world over has been rife; upending industries, creating tailwinds and forcing entrepreneurs to rapidly adapt to the new normal. Pauline explains the ways your business can pivot and adapt to business disruption, starting with the most important foundation in your business - you.

As a working CEO herself, Pauline has been right there in the trenches for two decades. Since 2020, she has pivoted multiple businesses to not only survive during the uncertainty of the global pandemic, but to thrive. As Pauline says, “Business development cannot happen without business disruption first.” Audiences learn:

How to deal with crisis and using it as an opportunity

How to master the process, not the outcome

That people don’t have business problems, they have personal problems that reflect in their business

How to navigate the seemingly un-navigable future

Actionable strategies and takeaways for the new business paradigm
Leading the New Paradigm of Work
Leading the New Paradigm of Work
The pandemic has ensured that the way we work will never be the same again. It has accelerated a trend that has slowly been developing - a new, hybrid workspace consisting of both remote working and in-person traditional work.

But, this new paradigm has come with its own unique set of challenges. Lockdowns, isolation and at-home work have contributed significantly to mental health problems, which aren’t just terrible in their own right, but adversely affect our working capacity. Stress and anxiety have become commonplace, with the difficulty to disconnect work and personal life being one of the leading problems with current employees.

So, how do we approach work in this new paradigm? Pauline explains how the new zeitgeist is developing and how you and your workforce can take advantage of it. Pauline distils twenty years of human management into actionable takeaways on the new world of work. Audiences learn:

How to lead teams effectively in the new work paradigm with calm courage, resonating resilience and tacit grit

How to disconnect and reconnect to and from work and personal life

How to manage feelings of displacement, confusion and trauma

Scientifically proven strategies to deal with stress

How to curate the optimal work environment for physical and mental harmony
Post Traumatic Healing and Growth
Post Traumatic Healing and Growth
We’ve all heard of post-traumatic stress. Pauline herself knew it first-hand, her father suffering from PTSD due to his involvement in the Vietnam War. Coming to Australia as a refugee and living in a refugee camp provided many opportunities for Pauline’s trauma to overcome her, too - but she took a different path.

In this keynote, Pauline teaches the ability to channel post-traumatic healing and growth. This is the ability to turn traditionally perceived trauma and cultivate a therapeutic learning and growth opportunity from it, with unbridled flow on effects including personally, with relationships and in business.

Using her own experience in the field of trauma, Pauline explains in layman's terms how to take your past hardships and use them to make yourself a more powerful, learned and savvy person - with direct impact on your professional life. Audiences learn:

The Four R’s of Healing

How to develop actionable mechanisms for dealing with past trauma

Why “self-care” isn’t sufficient for personal growth

How to turn traumatic happenings into strength
The Four Pivotal Components of Evolving Leadership
The Four Pivotal Components of Evolving Leadership
Diversity& Inclusion, Vulnerable Leadership, Self Mastery, Self Leadership

A broad and dynamic keynote, in this powerful experience Pauline explains four of the most pivotal components in becoming a successful leader. This isn’t your regular business coaching speech - dive into deep, controversial and complex topics, distilled eloquently for execution today.

Pauline explains the importance of self-mastery, required before mastering anything else in life. Drawing on learnings from running the world’s most awarded Vietnamese restaurant, Red Lantern, she imparts why true leaders hold others accountable whilst being ‘compassionately assertive’. That those who want to be part of the new future of leaders must walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

From her experience coming to Australia as a refugee and eventually garnering accolades including being one of Australia’s Top 50 Influential Female Entrepreneurs, and worldwide recognition as one of 200 Women Who Will Change the Way You View the World, Pauline explains why the greatest leaders of our time lead with diversity and inclusion not as just social responsibilities, but as powerful weapons for business.

Find out why The Huffington Post described Pauline as “the most grounded spiritual entrepreneur on the planet”. Audiences learn:

Diversity and Inclusion – How embracing multiple perspectives leads to more powerfully effective problem-solving skills

Vulnerable Leadership – How to lead with power and not force

Self Mastery – How to manage your energy and your emotions to become the most calm ,and composed Leader

Self Leadership - What do Leaders Do? They go first. How to scientifically increase your intuition and awareness to intelligently lead your team with competence, courage and charisma
UNSHAKEBALE
UNSHAKEBALE
How to move from Transactional to Transformational

These last couple of years have proved one certainty - there is no certainty. But what if you could walk away from your event with one absolute certainty? Their unwavering internal certainty. No matter what role you play in your industry, Pauline Nguyen explains the you’re your organization can innovate, thrive, and grow, starting with the most important foundation in your business - YOU. Self-Leadership is Key. Self-Mastery is Key. Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. As a gifted storyteller, working CEO, and through her lens of self-mastery, this dynamic force combines her knowledge and personal experience to provide the stories, tools and strategies to master your inner game so that you can unlock your infinite potential – Fearless, Stress-Free and Unshakable in business and in life. Because every Next Level of your life will demand a Next Level version of you. Key takeaways include:

How to move from transactional to transformational.

How to master the process, not the outcome.

How to use Fear as a tailwind and not a headwind.

Actionable strategies and takeaways for the new business paradigm.
NAVIGATING THROUGH CHANGE AND DISRUPTION
NAVIGATING THROUGH CHANGE AND DISRUPTION
Calm Courage, Resonating Resilience, Tacit Grit

Recent times have shown on a global scale that there are no certainties in life and that disruption is unavoidable; yet Pauline’s message shines through the chaos. As she says, “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is the choice.” Pauline truly knows at a cellular level that courage is feeling the fear and doing it anyway. As a winner of the Telstra Australia Business Award for Medium Business and as an original Rare Bird (Australia’s Top 50 Influential Female Entrepreneurs), Pauline has a deep, vital understanding of what it takes to lead from the front. Speaking from direct experience, Pauline shares her invaluable skills of self-mastery, courage, resilience, and grit, and how these traits are the ultimate foundations to personal and professional success. Audiences learn:

How to rid yourself of stress and fear to lead from a place of calm courage.

How to be prepared to learn and prepared to act.

Why you must shun the idea of competing with others, in order to rise to the top of your field.

What it takes to be a leader of power and substance in times of change and disruption.

How to create, and embody courage, resilience, and grit, at a personal and organizational level.

Why joy, fulfilment, and inspiration is the key to a recipe of success for an organization and how to get more of it.