Keynote Speaking · Workplaces · Schools · Conferences

The keynote about the one layer most wellbeing programs forget.

Bring the science of environmental wellbeing to your team, your school, or your stage. Built on twenty years of design experience across Brazil and Australia, the Department for Education project that won the Learning Environments Australasia prize, and peer-reviewed nervous system research. Available across Australia and internationally.

Available across Australia · Virtual or in person · Booking Q3 and Q4 2026

Etienny Trindade, keynote speaker on environmental wellbeing

I help workplaces, schools and conferences turn their wellbeing budgets into measurable regulation and performance, without renovations, capital works or another program, by naming the operational layer that sits underneath every wellbeing strategy.

Why this work exists

Twenty years in design. One classroom that changed everything.

I spent the first thirteen years of my career inside boardrooms and multi‑million‑dollar fit-outs. Spaces engineered for productivity that were quietly extracting it.

Then I was asked to design a learning environment for neurodivergent children. The project won an award. Within weeks, every educator was telling me the same sentence.

"The children are different."

Not the curriculum. Not the educators. The room was finally helping them regulate.

For seven years I have only worked through that lens. The same science that helped those children regulate was being mirrored, in reverse, inside the rooms I had spent the previous decade fitting out for adults.

I bring this to your stage for one reason. Once your team sees how the brain reads a room, hour by hour, they cannot unsee it. And from that moment on, the rooms quietly start to regulate them.

Signature talks

Three keynotes. One operational layer.

Talk 01 · Leadership & Corporate

The Operational Layer

Why your engagement scores will not move until you fix the room. Why your high performers are leaving even though you raised their salary. Why your wellbeing budget is paying for symptoms while the cause is sitting in your floor plan.

Built for: HR leaders, People & Culture teams, leadership offsites, corporate wellbeing summits, Big Four firms, banks, government.

Talk 02 · Schools & Education

The Sixteen Percent

The science behind the largest empirical study of classroom design ever conducted (Salford, 2015), showing that the physical room accounts for 16% of a child's learning progress in a single year. What it means for your principals, your educators and your wellbeing strategy.

Built for: principals, Heads of Wellbeing, Directors of Teaching & Learning, educator professional learning days.

Talk 03 · Parent & Family

The Calm Home Keynote

How home environments shape a child's regulation, focus, sleep, behaviour and emotional wellbeing. The shifts parents can make this week, no renovation required. The conversation families take home and act on by Monday morning.

Built for: school parent evenings, P&F forums, family wellbeing events, parent communities inside corporate organisations.

"The room is not neutral. It is either regulating your team, or quietly working against them. That is the conversation worth having."

Etienny Trindade

The research underneath the keynote

This is not opinion. It is the strongest research stack in environmental wellbeing.

61%

Higher cognitive function in optimised office spaces. Biggest gains: strategic thinking and crisis response.

Harvard, Allen et al., 2015–2016

16%

Of pupil learning progress in a single year is accounted for by classroom design alone. Across 153 classrooms, 27 schools, 3,766 students.

University of Salford, Barrett et al., 2015

25 weeks

Average time off work for a psychological injury claim. Four times longer than physical injury. The fastest‑growing claim category in Australia.

Safe Work Australia

US $8.9T

Annual global cost of disengagement. The single largest line item your wellbeing budget is competing against.

Gallup, State of the Global Workplace

Every one of those numbers is sitting inside your organisation right now. The room is the lever most strategies forget to pull.

Credentials

Twenty years of design that moves people.

2020 · Learning Environments Australasia

The LEA Prize-winning learning environment

Recognised by the leading body for educational design across Australia and New Zealand for a project designed around the nervous systems of the children inside it.

2020 · South Australian Department for Education

Eight inclusive school buildings

Lead designer on eight new and refurbished schools designed for neurodivergent learners and the staff who teach them, across metropolitan and regional South Australia.

Twenty years · Brazil and Australia

A career across two countries and four sectors

Multi‑million‑dollar fit-outs across hospitality, retail, commercial, and education. Two decades on the corporate and commercial side of design before bringing the same lens home.

Published author

Creating Healing Spaces for Children

A practical guide for parents, educators, and designers on how the room itself can either regulate or dysregulate a child's nervous system. Available on Amazon Australia.

The podcast

Happy Healthy Homes

Weekly conversations on how the spaces we live and work in shape how we think, feel, and recover. Featured guest on the Mindful Parents Podcast and other Australian wellbeing podcasts.

More about Etienny

Booking enquiries

Bring this conversation to your stage.

Share a few details about the event, the audience, and the format you are exploring. I reply personally, usually within 48 hours.

Fees are set per engagement and include preparation, travel, and the follow-up your team needs to keep the work alive after the talk.

Enquire about a keynote

Australia‑wide · Virtual or in person · Reply within 48 hours