INSPIRATIONAL AND MOTIVATIONAL KEYNOTE SPEAKER IN HO CHI MINH, VIETNAM
Behavioural Psychologist | Zayed Award for Speaking | Fortune 500 & World Champions | 30+ Countries
Ho Chi Minh Keynote Speaker
Duncan Stevens can be booked as an inspiring motivational speaker in Ho Chi Minh. As a keynote speaker, he helps some of the world’s most recognisable companies, teams and leaders become more influential and more effective and readjust to industry changes through what they say and how they act.
With over a decade of expertise, Duncan has established himself as an in-demand and in-demand keynote speaker due to his content-rich, highly engaging, motivating and entertaining keynote speeches and masterclasses. He is the founder and CEO of the Influence Association and best-selling author of the best-selling book Effective Influence. He is a successful entrepreneur, award-winning ‘mentalist’ and is considered as among the world’s leading authorities on influence, persuasion, high performance and adapting to change. Duncan’s humorous, engaging and visual presentations motivate delegates to develop different perspectives. His collaboration with teams and leaders, whether it’s through leadership training, sales coaching, or speaking takes teams from pretty good to superb or from excellent to market-leading through difficult economic times. Before Duncan become a keynote speaker, he earned an Honours degree in Business Management, served as an officer in the UK’s Royal Navy, was a business coach and trainer as well as a senior executive for some globally recognised brands. Find out more about Duncan here.
With over ten years of prior experience, Duncan is globally recognised as the leading authority on persuasion and performance. All of his keynote presentations are relevant, tailored to each event, memorable and motivating. He is widely regarded as an easy-to-work-with speaker and has presented at conferences and sales kick-offs worldwide and all throughout Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh.
Watch Duncan’s Ho Chi Minh Extended Showreel Below:
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Reasons Ho Chi Minh City Event Planners
Trust Duncan Stevens With Their Events
At Ho Chi Minh City events, audiences from technology, manufacturing and finance respond best when the speaker brings tools and thinking that apply to the specific pace of a fast-growing economy.
1,000+ Keynotes, 30+ Countries, 1.1M+ People Inspired
He has done this before, at scale, for audiences exactly like yours. From the first briefing to the final applause, your event is in safe hands.
FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES AND OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALLISTS
Microsoft, Toyota, Shell, Deloitte, KPMG and Olympic gold medallists. The world’s most demanding organisations do not book the same speaker twice by accident.
BUILT FOR YOUR AUDIENCE NOT BORROWED FROM SOMEONE ELSE
Every keynote is shaped around your industry, your people, and your priorities. Not adapted. Built.
BEHAVIOURAL PSYCHOLOGY, NOT MOTIVATIONAL NOISE
Scientific rigour over slogans. Content built on evidence, not on what sounds good from a stage.
THE MAGIC WHEEL OF HIGH PERFORMANCE™
A proprietary five-pillar framework. 23 evidence-based principles. Tools your audience can apply immediately.
PRACTICAL OUTCOMES BEYOND THE EVENT DAY
Stronger leaders. Higher performing teams. Better collaboration with a lasting message and tools people can use after the event.
Trusted by:
Conference Topics for Ho Chi Minh City Audiences
Turning High Potential Into High Performance: Duncan’s signature keynote equips executives and leaders with the behaviours and mindsets to deliver strategic goals, drive change, inspire teams and enhance the culture. Where leadership potential across Ho Chi Minh City’s industries and business environment is not yet translating into performance, this keynote provides the bridge.
The High-Performing Team Advantage: This inspiring, entertaining and educational keynote equips teams with the tools and tactics to enhance collaboration, drive marginal gains, take ownership, & thrive in times of change. Turning fragmented groups into cohesive units across Ho Chi Minh City’s complex organisations, this keynote delivers the team performance blueprint.
The Magic of Collaboration: This keynote equips teams with the behaviours, mindsets, and proven strategies to bridge silos, strengthen trust, share ownership, and achieve more together than they could alone, both internally and externally. Regularly commissioned by Ho Chi Minh City’s manufacturing and financial services sector when breaking down silos and building shared purpose is the brief.
Keeping Pace With Change: This keynote provides practical strategies for navigating uncertainty, overcoming resistance, building resilience, and fostering a culture of adaptability when conditions are at their most demanding. Ho Chi Minh City’s manufacturing and financial services organisations use this session to move their people from change resistance to change confidence.
The Psychology Of Influence: This talk equips audiences with proven principles of influence and persuasion that will help you build trust, communicate with impact, shape decisions, and inspire positive action. As commercial and relational stakes rise across Ho Chi Minh City’s dynamic market, this keynote delivers the persuasion toolkit professionals need to perform.
The Human Edge In The World of AI: This keynote helps teams and leaders adapt their mindsets, behaviours, and skills to thrive alongside artificial intelligence technology to positively impact the bottom line, culture and growth. Where AI anxiety is limiting performance and engagement across Ho Chi Minh City’s business community, this keynote reframes the challenge as opportunity.
Additional Speaking Topics
Ho Chi Minh City’s manufacturing and financial services sector also commissions Duncan for a broader set of specialist sessions, covering:
Some of Duncan's Global and Ho Chi Minh Clients Include:
“Duncan really is a pro when it comes to speaking and delivering on his promises. This is not just a keynote speech but so much more. It was funny, entertaining and full of loads of highly actionable and really strong content. His Effective Influence model was received really well by all and we hope to collaborate with him at an event again.”
Key Sectors for Duncan Stevens in Ho Chi Minh City
Ho Chi Minh City is Vietnam’s commercial capital, with an electronics manufacturing sector that has made Vietnam one of the most significant export manufacturers in Southeast Asia, a technology industry built around FPT Software and the Quang Trung Software City, and a professional services community serving the multinational corporate base. Duncan works across all three.
Manufacturing
Intel Products Vietnam in the Saigon Hi-Tech Park and Samsung’s significant regional presence anchor the southern Vietnam electronics and light manufacturing sector, which has become one of the world’s most important supply chain destinations as production continues to diversify away from China. In 2026 Vietnam is navigating the next phase of US-Vietnam trade relations as the commercial relationship continues to deepen. Manufacturing businesses in Ho Chi Minh City bring Duncan Stevens in for site leadership events, operations director programmes, and the industrial management conferences held for the southern Vietnam manufacturing community. The questions he addresses with manufacturing leaders here are about running large production operations in a high-growth market: building the quality systems and leadership culture that keeps export manufacturing competitive, and developing the operational management that can scale production rapidly while maintaining the standards that international customers require. His high performance leadership keynote is one of his most commonly requested topics in the manufacturing sector.
Technology
The Quang Trung Software City is home to FPT Software, VNG Corporation, and Sky Mavis, the blockchain gaming company behind Axie Infinity, and in 2026 Vietnam’s technology sector is navigating significant growth as the country positions itself as a destination for high-skill technology work in the region, with FPT Software now delivering complex technology services across global markets from its Ho Chi Minh City base. Technology companies hire him for engineering leadership events, founder conferences, and the major technology events held in the city throughout the year. What he talks about with technology audiences in Southeast Asia is the leadership challenges of building businesses that compete globally from this base: developing the product and delivery cultures that earn the trust of international clients, and building the leadership teams that make ambitious decisions about where to take the business next. For more on this, his change management keynote page goes into more detail.
Professional Services
PwC Vietnam, KPMG, and the international legal and management consulting firms operating from the District 1 business district serve the large multinational corporate community that uses Ho Chi Minh City as its Vietnam and regional operations base, and in 2026 the advisory practices serving Vietnam’s business community are managing demand that reflects the country’s rapid economic growth, strong in financial advisory, technology consulting, and the regulatory work that comes with a fast-developing legal and compliance environment. Professional services firms book Duncan Stevens for partner retreats, firm-wide leadership events, and the management development programmes that bring senior people together. His keynotes are about what advisory leaders are actually dealing with in a fast-developing market: building the institutional standards that attract and retain the best professionals in a competitive market, and developing the partners who can build client relationships that outlast any single engagement. His influence and persuasion keynote is regularly booked for events in the professional services sector.
Other Key Sectors for Duncan Stevens in Ho Chi Minh City
Duncan Stevens also speaks for organisations in financial services, transport and logistics, and retail in Ho Chi Minh City.
The industry list on this page is selective, and Duncan’s industries keynote speaker page provides the wider catalogue of sectors.
Duncan Stevens: High-Performance Keynote Speaker in Ho Chi Minh City
Ho Chi Minh City is the commercial and industrial capital of Vietnam and the highest-density manufacturing supply hub in Southeast Asia, hosting the head offices of the major Vietnamese banks, the regional offices of most multinational consumer electronics, apparel, and retail firms operating in the country, and a deep cluster of venture-backed Vietnamese startups. The corporate event identity centres on the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Center (SECC) in District 7 and the cluster of premium hotel ballrooms across District 1, the historic central business district. The audience for a corporate keynote tends to be commercially direct, manufacturing-fluent, and used to a register that combines Vietnamese corporate culture with the wider pan-ASEAN export economy conversation.
In Ho Chi Minh City, behavioural psychologist Duncan Stevens delivers a high-impact breakdown of the MAGIC Wheel of High Performance™. This session focuses on the mechanics of corporate trust and persuasion, allowing teams to consistently match expectation with measurable strategic outcome. The session transforms abstract cognitive science into practical workplace habits, shaped completely by the unique industrial constraints of the host organisation.
In brief: International speaker Duncan Stevens combines behavioural science and corporate strategy to unlock team performance for audiences based in Ho Chi Minh City. He delivers tailored keynotes, executive sessions, and offsite presentations across Ho Chi Minh City’s primary event ecosystems, including the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Center, the District 1 historic core, and the major Vietnamese manufacturing and consumer technology summits.
Top Professional Venues Across Ho Chi Minh City
Ho Chi Minh City’s venues span the SECC complex in District 7 and the premium hotel event rooms in District 1:
- Saigon Exhibition and Convention Center (SECC) (District 7, Phu My Hung): 8,500-capacity exhibition complex, the default home for major Vietnamese trade shows including Vietnam Manufacturing Expo and the larger international association congresses.
- Park Hyatt Saigon (District 1, Lam Son Square): 600-capacity heritage hotel ballroom for premium corporate galas and senior partnership events overlooking the Saigon Opera House.
- Sheraton Saigon Hotel & Towers (District 1, Dong Khoi Street): 1,200-capacity hotel ballroom for major corporate annual meetings and senior banking industry events.
- New World Saigon Hotel (District 1, Le Lai Street): 1,000-capacity hotel ballroom for mid-scale corporate annual meetings and partnership events.
Ho Chi Minh City Event Execution & Technical Nuances
From an operational perspective, the months of September to November see an immense surge in conference bookings right across the city with the autumn manufacturing trade industry cycle running at scale, peaking around Vietnam Manufacturing Expo. February to May carries the spring corporate strategy launches. The Lunar New Year (Tết) window in late January or early February effectively closes the corporate calendar. Lead times are four to six months for the SECC during peak windows, scaling to eight months for keynote slots aligned alongside major manufacturing trade weeks. Tan Son Nhat International (SGN) is the operational anchor for international speakers, sitting around eight kilometres north of District 1 with transfer times that vary heavily depending on traffic. Vietnamese visa rules require an eVisa or visa for most non-ASEAN nationalities. One Ho Chi Minh City-specific quirk worth flagging: city traffic is dense and unpredictable, with the District 7 to District 1 transfer particularly affected during morning and evening rush windows, so production schedules need generous buffers.
Next Steps: Reserving Your Keynote Slot in Ho Chi Minh City
Ho Chi Minh City keynotes typically lock in four to six months ahead for SECC slots during peak windows, scaling to eight months for major manufacturing trade week alignment. Ho Chi Minh City sits within the Asia-Pacific regional speaker hub, and organisers running a multi-city Vietnamese programme often pair Ho Chi Minh City with Singapore or Hanoi, distributing visa and travel logistics across the booking process. To discuss how Duncan can allow your Ho Chi Minh City delegates to consistently match their highest potential, reach out via the official contact form to secure your preferred date.
What to know about booking a leadership speaker in Ho Chi Minh City:
Duncan Stevens is a leading international keynote speaker for manufacturing and financial services leadership conferences in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The organisations that trust Duncan Stevens with their most important leadership events include Shell, Microsoft, KPMG, Deloitte, and Toyota, companies whose standards for content quality and speaker credibility are among the highest in the world. That trust is built on fifteen years of international keynote work, more than one thousand presentations across over thirty countries, and a track record that spans Fortune 500 boardrooms and Olympic training programmes. Ho Chi Minh City’s corporate event market, hosted at venues including the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Center, has grown rapidly alongside Vietnam’s emergence as a major global manufacturing hub, and senior leadership audiences expect content that connects directly to the pressures of managing at scale in a fast-moving economy. Duncan delivers at that level.
Organisations that have booked Duncan Stevens for keynotes across South-East Asia and Vietnam consistently report measurable improvements in leadership alignment, team performance consistency, and the application of high-performance behaviours beyond the conference room. Manufacturing and financial services organisations in Ho Chi Minh City specifically note that the MAGIC Wheel of High Performance™ framework gives their leadership teams a shared language for performance that translates from the keynote into daily management practice. The durability of the outcomes organisations report reflects a keynote design principle built into the MAGIC Wheel of High Performance™: content structured around 23 specific behavioural principles produces longer retention and higher application rates than content built around inspiration or narrative alone.
Duncan Stevens’ technical requirements for keynote events in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam are minimal and straightforward. A standard conference laptop, clicker, large-format projection screen, lapel or headset microphone, and standard stage lighting are all that is required. Beyond standard conference AV, Duncan’s keynote has no unusual technical requirements. The session is self-contained and designed to work within the standard technical infrastructure of any professional conference venue. The Saigon Exhibition and Convention Center and comparable Ho Chi Minh City venues are fully equipped to handle these requirements without modification.
Duncan Stevens travels internationally to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam for keynote engagements, with all travel logistics agreed during the booking process. Tan Son Nhat International Airport serves major international connections, and Duncan typically travels from the United Kingdom via a Gulf or South-East Asian hub. Travel, accommodation, and ground logistics are incorporated into the full engagement agreement, with full cost transparency from the first conversation. Lead time for an international booking at this distance is typically four to six months, though shorter-notice enquiries are always considered. Content preparation for Ho Chi Minh City’s manufacturing and financial services audiences begins at booking confirmation.
Duncan Stevens is available for keynote engagements in other parts of South-East Asia and the wider Asia-Pacific region beyond Ho Chi Minh City, with a schedule that covers the full breadth of the region’s corporate conference circuit. His active schedule includes engagements in Hanoi, Las Vegas, and London. Full regional availability is on his Asia-Pacific keynote speaker page. His broader credentials profile is available through his conference keynote speaker overview.
Duncan’s MAGIC Wheel of High Performance™ drives the content of every leadership keynote he delivers in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The MAGIC Wheel of High Performance™ is Duncan’s proprietary behavioural framework, structured across five pillars and built on 23 evidence-based principles of behavioural psychology. Those five pillars (Mastery of Self, Accelerated Growth, Grit and Mental Toughness, Inner Drive, and Co-Creation) give organisations a precise vocabulary for performance that is directly applicable to the leadership challenges Ho Chi Minh City’s manufacturing and financial services environment creates. In Ho Chi Minh City, Accelerated Growth and Inner Drive are the pillars that resonate most immediately: Vietnam’s manufacturing boom means organisations are scaling at a pace that constantly tests whether individual leaders can develop as fast as the business demands.
Duncan Stevens is a proven keynote speaker for manufacturing and financial services leadership events in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh City’s manufacturing sector entered 2026 absorbing a second consecutive year of record foreign direct investment, driven by EVFTA-accelerated supply chain diversification from China, with new facility openings outpacing the available experienced management pipeline and creating significant leadership capability gaps across the sector. Financial services organisations face a parallel challenge: Vietnam’s State Bank implemented its digital banking regulatory framework in 2025, and the 2026 compliance and operational build-out is placing leadership demand on banking teams that most are not yet structured to meet. Duncan’s change management keynotes address the behavioural dimension of both pressures. His manufacturing sector keynote brings direct credibility to Ho Chi Minh City’s event planners in that industry.
Duncan Stevens covers a range of high-performance leadership and behavioural psychology topics at corporate events in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Core programmes address leadership through rapid organisational growth, building high-performance team cultures in manufacturing and financial services environments, navigating large-scale operational change, influence and persuasion for senior executives managing complex commercial and regulatory relationships, and sustaining individual performance under sustained growth pressure. All programmes are grounded in the MAGIC Wheel of High Performance™ framework and its 23 evidence-based principles. For Ho Chi Minh City’s manufacturing and financial services audiences, content connecting Accelerated Growth and Inner Drive to the specific challenge of developing leaders faster than the organisation is growing is consistently the most requested direction.
Securing Duncan Stevens for a Ho Chi Minh City keynote use the contact form, from which point the process from initial enquiry to confirmed booking is handled person to person without agency involvement. Because there is no agency or bureau in the process, the response time from initial enquiry to confirmed availability is measured in hours, not weeks. Duncan reads every message personally and replies within one business day, which is the kind of responsiveness that Ho Chi Minh City event planners managing tight conference timelines consistently describe as one of the most practical advantages of booking directly. Begin the process at duncanstevens.com/contact.