About Speaker Ideas

Speaker Ideas was founded in Tokyo over 30 years ago by Eithne Jones. Now based in Amsterdam and still personally led by Eithne, we have become a trusted, impartial partner to senior corporate clients across Europe, Asia and the Americas. Our work is grounded in four business values: openness, reliability, speed and integrity.

Today, global financial institutions, professional services firms, technology companies, manufacturers, consumer brands and industry associations turn to us when the stakes are high and the audience is senior. They rely on us to secure speakers who are not only accomplished on paper, but who can truly land a message in the room.

Every brief is treated on its own terms. We take time to understand your audience, your objectives and the dynamics of your event before we make a single recommendation. We represent a select group of speakers exclusively, but our only agenda is to get you the right speaker, every time.

Just as our clients and their events are global, so is our search. We are not constrained by geography, affiliation or self‑interest. We go wherever the brief takes us to find the right speaker. With over 30 years of experience, we go well beyond matching topics and budgets. We know the speakers personally: their strengths, their blind spots, and whether they will connect with your culture and deliver when it matters. That kind of judgement comes from experience, relationships and careful listening.

From first conversation to event day, you work directly with Eithne and her team. We handle everything: shortlists, speaker preparation, contracts and logistics, so you can focus on the event, not the admin.

We curate speakers on the issues that matter most to senior leaders today:

Leadership & Change
AI, Digital Transformation & Innovation
Global Economics & Political Affairs
Sustainability & Environment
Motivation & Inspiration

The speakers we recommend are proven leaders or experts with the credibility to inspire, educate, challenge and entertain senior audiences worldwide. Whether your event is live, virtual or hybrid, our aim is simple: to make choosing the right speaker the easiest part of your job.

We keep things simple

Speaker Ideas ensures highly personalised attention to both speakers and clients. From the first conversations about event objectives, through the speaker selection, logistics and briefing process and ending with a post-event debriefing. We keep things simple.

About Eithne Jones

Eithne Jones founded Speaker Ideas over 30 years ago when she saw an opportunity in Tokyo to represent and connect experts and thought leaders to organisers of conferences and events. By 2000, Eithne had established a base for Speaker Ideas in Amsterdam from which she expanded to meet the needs of top clients in multiple markets in Europe, Asia and America.

With her lively curiosity about innovation and the power of ideas, together with her strong people skills, Eithne has built a loyal global network of speakers and clients. Today, Speaker Ideas is listed as one of Top 28 Global Speaker Bureaus (https://keynotespeakers.info/bureau).

Eithne was born in Co Roscommon in Ireland and studied Japanese and International Marketing in Dublin. After graduation she moved to Japan where her first role was coordinating relations with their international residents for a City Hall just north of Tokyo. This was followed by two years as an international sales consultant for a company providing tailored business communication programs for executives from Japan’s top 100 companies.

Eithne is a founding member of the European Association of Speaker Bureaus (EASB) and a member of the International Association of Speaker Bureaus (IASB https://www.iasbweb.org/). She has been a long-standing Board member of the Ireland Netherlands Business Association (INBA www.inba.nl).

Eithne is totally committed to delivering excellence in service to both clients and speakers. She’s a big fan of walk ‘n talk meetings, loves cooking and feels very fortunate to be exposed to so much inspiration and knowledge in her work.

What People Say About Us

Client Testimonials

When our directly-sourced keynote speaker backed out with a week to go before our client summit, Eithne and her team came to the rescue with a quick shortlist of alternative and available candidates from which we were able to find a suitable fallback speaker. We’ve been involving Speaker Ideas right from the start of our planning process since then.

We trust Speaker Ideas to find us the best fit speakers and facilitators for our coaching, keynote and masterclasses around a broad range of topics and venues.

“We have relied on Eithne and her team for a number of years to help us identify and recruit the kinds of speakers that we need to address not just the “big picture” but how global issues impact and relate to the unique needs of our very specialized sector. They have consistently done a great job, not just in terms of identifying alternatives but facilitating subsequent discussions about how presenters can adapt to our specific requirements, and making the booking process very streamlined for us”

"Eithne and her team at Speaker Ideas are trusted partners of SPAR International for over 10 years. The personal touch and the willingness to develop an in depth knowledge of our business, and our culture is the key point of difference which ensures Speaker Ideas consistently finds the right speaker to motivate, challenge and energize at our international events all over the world."

"We have always experienced Eithne as someone who listens carefully, thinks with us along the lines of our event briefings and comes up with great speaker ideas."

Over a number of years Speaker Ideas has become our go to source for content-rich, inspirational and though-provoking guest speakers for our leadership meetings and client events. We trust Eithne and her team to offer us unbiased and relevant proposals to match our planning briefs and to follow through with their support right up to and including the event itself.

We choose to work with Speaker Ideas for our client events because of the quality of their speakers and their consistently professional service.

Our annual leadership conference is held in a different capital city between Europe, Asia and the Americas every year. Speaker Ideas have never let us down in finding keynote speakers to meet the brief and also speakers to provide a ‘local’ flavour.