The Leadership at the Speed of Science summit in Calgary explored how stress reshapes decisions, teamwork, and what leaders are capable of under pressure.
“Fireworks were spitting on the spaceship.”
Astronaut Chris Hadfield let the words hang as the room sat in darkness. On the twin screens flanking the stage, video from his space missions flickered, holding 250 people at the BMO Centre in Calgary in total silence.
What looked like glitter outside the International Space Station was liquid ammonia, the coolant that kept the entire station from overheating. If the leak continued, the $150-billion laboratory would be lost.
In that moment, Hadfield did what leaders must do in crisis: solve the problem.
He split the crew. Two astronauts were sent to check gauges and figure out what was leaking. Two more dug into the ship’s data for clues. From the command seat, Hadfield coordinated with Mission Control in Houston.
“You never have enough information,” he said. “And sometimes your leadership is at speed.”
After piecing the evidence together, they realized the main cooling system was venting into space. If it failed completely, the crew would have to abandon the ship.
They solved the problem, but not with instant answers. What looked like a split-second decision was really the product of decades of training, rehearsal, and competence built long before the crisis, Hadfield said.
“You don’t need leadership when things are going well. The only reason we need leadership is to deal with stuff going wrong or to try and make change.”
That moment set the tone for the Leadership at the Speed of Science Summit on Oct. 1. Produced by Cortical Consulting & Coaching in partnership with the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, the event was designed to challenge how leaders think about performance when pressure is high and conditions are uncertain.
Tammy Arseneau, founder and CEO of Cortical Consulting & Coaching, framed the day around a central question.
“What if the missing link in leadership isn’t more models or frameworks?” Arseneau asked. “What if it’s just about understanding ourselves better in those moments of stress. In those moments where it really matters and we need to step up? What if it’s in those moments where we’re leading our team and we have a better understanding of who they are and what motivates them, or what’s happening during high times of change?”
She told the audience the purpose of the summit was to examine how leaders think and perform under pressure, bringing astronauts, scientists, executives, and coaches into one conversation.
In her consulting work, Arseneau focuses on organizational effectiveness and change. She works with leadership teams to make sense of complexity, build clarity in high-pressure periods, and improve how they decide and work together during scaling, mergers, and culture shifts.
Dr. Matt Hill, a neuroscientist at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, expanded on that idea.
“A lot of us actually require stress in some capacities to perform at our optimal levels,” said Hill. “Stress is a bit of a double-edged sword. It can actually motivate and push us to do things, but at the same time, it can also work against us and damage us.”
He warned leaders not to be seduced by guarantees.
“If anyone advertises programs that are guaranteed to do this and that, that’s the biggest red flag,” Hill said. “There’s no such thing as one size fits all.”
Arseneau said that was exactly why she wanted neuroscientists and leaders at one event. For her, the experiment shows it’s not about using the same tools, but unlocking perspective.
“Today was never about coming in with frameworks,” she said. “It was about leaving with an open mind, so you can find the answers for yourself.”
When the wheels come off
Longtime science broadcaster Jay Ingram, best known as host of Daily Planet, was the emcee for the event. After the morning keynote, he shifted the stage into a talk-show format with former oil CEO and now mental health advocate and tech entrepreneur, Kenneth Irving. Irving was joined by astronaut Chris Hadfield, and neuroscientist Matt Hill.
The setting was informal but probing, with a live band playing between segments and Ingram steering the conversation toward the moments when pressure strips leadership down to its core.
When the focus turned to Irving, the tone in the room shifted.
He described 2010 as the year “the wheels came off.”
“My mind sort of got worn out,” Irving said. “I was managing the expansion of a business, navigating a tense family succession, and holding together personal relationships that were fraying.”
Childhood trauma he thought he had left behind came rushing back. He began to experience disassociation, gaps in memory, fear that was out of proportion to real events, and a deep sense of shame. Eventually, he was hospitalized.
On the outside, Irving looked like the picture of success. Inside, stress had warped his thinking and stripped away his ability to cope.
“For me, it took it so far away from thinking about my personality or my character and more about, ‘Oh, I’m living life with this brain that’s going along for the ride. I better take care of it,’” he said.
Over the past 15 years, Irving has reframed his experience not as an ending but as a transformation.
“When the wheels came off, I was given an opportunity to rethink who I was and rethink my life experiences,” he said. “At this point, I really feel transformed. I feel very different about the world. I can feel success in a way that really does make me happy.”
When word spread that Irving would be speaking at an event in Calgary, former colleagues travelled across the country to hear him. Many in the room remembered him as an empathetic leader who put people first. Ingram reminded the audience that this reputation made Irving’s openness even more striking.
“Everything that’s ever said about you as a CEO was how empathetic you were,” Ingram said. “On the outside, you were an amazing person to be with, but on the inside you weren’t.”
That contrast gave the conversation its weight. Irving’s willingness to show what was beneath the surface turned vulnerability into a form of leadership. It was not a retreat from strength, but an expansion of it.
Arseneau said these stories were the reason she wanted to convene the summit.
“When pressure rises, leaders need to understand what is happening inside their own nervous system,” she said. “But they also need to recognize what is happening across their teams. That is where performance either unravels or holds together.”
Through her consulting practice, Arseneau works with leadership teams on organizational effectiveness and change, helping them build clarity and strengthen how they operate during periods of complexity and strain.
The science of stress
The personal stories shared at the summit pointed to the impact of stress on leaders and organizations. Hill explained why, drawing on his research at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, where he chairs the Mental Health Initiative for Stress and Trauma.
“A lot of what we’re trying to understand here is, at a basic level, what the impacts of trauma, be it physical trauma like a concussion or head trauma or emotional trauma, have on the brain, and how the changes that are evoked in the brain increase vulnerability to illness,” Hill said.
When it comes to stress, he said it is not fixed or uniform.
“Stress is not objective,” Hill said. “It is an incredibly subjective experience. I always tell people, stress is in the eye of the beholder. You determine what is stressful or not.”
Hadfield picked up the thread with an example from his own training.
“The greatest antidote for fear is competence,” Hadfield said.
Hadfield told the audience that learning to ride a bike showed how stress changes with skill. Nobody is born knowing how, and the danger never goes away. You can still fall, break bones, or knock out teeth. What changes is the rider. By studying, practicing, and wobbling through early attempts, you eventually build the competence to ride with confidence even though the risks are the same.
“The bike didn’t change at all,” he said. “The danger stayed exactly the same. The only thing that allowed you to get over your stress was to modify who you were and change your level of competence. A rocket ship is just a complicated bicycle. Running a business is just a complicated bicycle.”
His story reinforced Hill’s point that stress can be both fuel and hazard, depending on how people respond.
“Stress can sharpen focus and fuel performance, but it can also cause damage,” said Hill. “At its core, what we often refer to as toxic stress is almost always defined by unpredictability and uncontrollability. If we have any ability to exert control over it, that seems to be a main aspect of preventing aversive outcomes.”
That connection between science and leadership was what drove Arseneau to bring neuroscientists into the conversation. As she told the audience, when pressure rises, leaders need to recognize what is happening inside their own nervous system and across their teams.
Hill said that stress does not disappear when the moment passes.
“Stress leaves a biological imprint,” he said. “That is why experiences of trauma or prolonged strain continue to shape how people react long after the moment has passed.”
Where science meets lived leadership
The afternoon workshops gave participants a chance to test those ideas in practice.
Psychiatrist Dr. Araba Chintoh, Olympic skeleton champion Duff Gibson, and former national speed skater and health advocate Crystal Phillips spoke about the edge of performance, showing that elite results depend as much on recovery and support systems as they do on drive. Leaders were asked to consider how overtraining, whether in sport or business, undermines performance and resilience.
Neuroscientist Dr. Sarah Hewitt, energy executive Jason Rakochy, and Calgary entrepreneur Craig Latimer looked at how organizations handle scientific information. They challenged leaders to notice where expertise is ignored or distorted, and to build decision processes that rely on evidence rather than assumption.
Hill was joined by neuroscientist Dr. Leah Mayo and filmmaker Greg Hemmings, and the three connected brain research with lived experience, showing how personal stories of trauma and recovery help translate science into action. Their session pressed leaders to think about how stigma still silences people in workplaces, and what happens when that silence erodes trust.
Across the sessions, leaders were pressed to see recovery as part of performance, to ground decisions in evidence, and to use stories as the bridge that makes science actionable inside organizations.
Resilience when systems collapse
After recounting moments of crisis, Hadfield shifted to how leaders chart direction when the horizon is uncertain.
He said leadership can also mean setting goals far beyond what seems possible. He pointed to John F. Kennedy’s 1961 speech committing the United States to land on the moon.
“‘We choose to go to the moon,’ Kennedy declared, at a time when the U.S. had a total of 15 minutes of human spaceflight experience. No one had even orbited the Earth. There were no spacesuits, no rockets, no mission control, no computers. Yet he set the goal anyway, and that declaration defined the next decade.”
Hadfield emphasized the power of the word “choose.”
“Not we hope to go. Not we’d like to go. Not maybe if things go well. We choose to go to the moon. That’s leadership,” he said.
That theme of pressing forward under uncertainty was echoed by Max Schramm, President and CEO of Lufthansa Technik Canada.
Now based in Calgary, Schramm grew up in East Germany, where reunification collapsed the systems around him and left him feeling like he was starting from zero. He described carrying an “invisible chip” on his shoulder, pushing through early rejections, and relying on apprenticeships to gain a foothold. Persistence carried him into leadership, even when the path forward was anything but clear.
“I think that was the first time I ever remember [the concept of] resilience, or noticed resilience is not a weakness. It’s actually that we are growing stronger through hardship,” he said.
Schramm told the audience his leadership now rests on three principles: authenticity, putting people first, and what he calls a “failure culture” that makes it safe to learn from mistakes. Those foundations, he argued, are what keep teams moving forward when change wipes out the old certainties.
The theme also turned to Calgary’s business community, where pressure often shows up in culture as much as in competition.
Deborah Yedlin, president and CEO of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, told the audience that mental health cannot be treated as a side issue for organizations.
“When someone breaks a leg, they are flooded with meals, flowers, and visitors,” she said. “When someone is depressed, they are often met with silence.”
Yedlin described supporting her own son through mental health struggles and said the cost of ignoring those realities is steep. Through the Chamber’s Mental Health Mondays initiative, she has worked to normalize conversations that leaders often avoid. She said the challenge for her is whether organizations will confront stigma directly and make openness part of how success is measured.
Hadfield wrapped his keynote with a personal reflection from his childhood, sitting in Grade 5 in southern Ontario and staring up at the moon.
“I can still picture that boy,” he said. “Corduroy pants, V-neck sweater. Sitting there, looking at the sky, thinking maybe this is possible.”
That boy, he told the audience, never really left. He became the voice in the back of Hadfield’s mind through training flights, spacewalks, and the long years it took to reach orbit.
For Hadfield, everything comes down to one question, and it’s the only thing anyone can truly control: “What am I going to do next?”
That challenge carried throughout the summit and Arseneau told the audience that leadership at speed is not about waiting for calm, but about recognizing how stress reshapes decisions and actions when the pressure is greatest.
Digital Journal is the official media partner of Leadership at the Speed of Science summit.
