AI is transforming how we work, learn and communicate. Yet the most important changes are happening in how we think: when do we entrust a decision to AI, and when do we choose to trust a human?
Programme Purchase ticketIt is important to understand not only what we need to adapt to, but also what we should not allow ourselves to lose.
Gerda Asipavičienė, PCC, ACTC, is an ICF-credentialed individual and team coach and President of ICF Lithuania. With over 15 years of leadership experience, more than 10 years of working with leaders and teams, and close collaboration with international organizations, she brings a broad perspective to emerging leadership trends, effective practices, and the challenges organizations face connecting the perspectives of the individual, the team, the organization, and the deeper sense of purpose.
“Conversations end. Impact remains.” Gerda invites us to explore what makes human connection a foundation for meaningful change, and how our ability to listen, understand, and trust one another shapes our choices, relationships, and the way we work together.
Vice-Rector for Studies, Vytautas Magnus University
As AI becomes increasingly capable of doing things we once considered uniquely human, a fundamental question arises: what do we truly mean by being human today? What sets us apart from AI, and which human qualities and capabilities should we consciously nurture?
Is it our ability to think, feel, create, and make decisions? Or does our humanity reveal itself most clearly not just within us, but between us through our ability to truly listen, understand one another, embrace differences, build trust, and create something together that none of us could achieve alone?
Gerda will invite participants not only to explore these questions, but also to become active co-creators of the day’s experience. What do we each bring to our interactions? What can we create together? And what will determine the value and lasting impact of our time together?
Dainius Baltrušaitis is an organizational psychologist, economist, entrepreneur, public speaker, and LinkedIn Top Voice in Business Strategy and Human Resources (HR).
His work explores how psychology, behavioural economics, and the science of nudging can help us create organizations where people are more than functions and efficiency does not come at the expense of humanity.
Dainius challenges us to consider whether technological progress will free us for deeper human connection and wiser leadership, or simply turn us into instruments of increasingly efficient systems.
His philosophy is captured in one thought: “Being human is a given. But keeping our humanity is a choice!”
Organizations are experiencing a quiet but profound shift. What once helped bring people together no longer seems to work. We search for new ways to motivate employees, invest in engagement, and introduce more and more well-being initiatives. Yet engagement remains a challenge, while exhaustion and burnout continue to grow.
But what if the problem is not that we haven’t found the right tools yet? What if we have spent too long trying to answer the question “How do we motivate people to work?” without first asking “Why are we working together in the first place?”
Dainius is not bringing another recipe for organizational success. Instead, he invites us to pause and look deeper. Why does your organization really exist? And could it be that finding new answers requires us to first have the courage to question the very questions we have been asking?
Lise Bruynooghe, MCC, is an Executive Coach for fast-thinking, often unconventional leaders who navigate high-stakes complexity. She is known for creating lasting shifts in presence and impact through her work in the Swiss mountains and globally online.
A Master Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and former senior executive at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Lise spent her career leading transformation in complex, global systems.
She currently chairs the ICF Global Enterprise Board, is the founder of the Lise Bruynooghe Academy, and is a globally recognised speaker on leadership, complexity, and systemic transformation, including on TEDx.
The topic will be announced soon.
Dr. Gorka Bartolomé, MCC, holds a PhD in Psychology and is an ICF-credentialed coach, neuroscience researcher, and lecturer. With nearly 4,000 hours of individual and team coaching experience, he leads Master’s programmes in Coaching at the University of Lleida, trains coaching professionals, and serves as a mentor to coaches.
Gorka explores how non-directive coaching affects the human brain, particularly the neural processes associated with creativity and the emergence of new insights. His scientific research helps us better understand what happens in the human brain during coaching and why these processes are especially important in the age of artificial intelligence.
At a time when artificial intelligence generates as much enthusiasm as fear within the coaching profession, this session proposes a shift in perspective: instead of asking whether AI will replace us, let’s ask what coaching activates in the human brain that no machine can replicate.
Drawing on original EEG research on non-directive coaching and the Triple Network Model (DMN, CEN, and SN), we will explore what genuinely distinguishes human cognition from artificial intelligence, why that difference is a competitive advantage rather than a limitation, and how coaching, by activating the neural mechanisms of creativity and introspection, trains precisely what AI cannot generate on its own.
The session combines rigorous scientific foundations with interactive dynamics, closing with practical recommendations for keeping a healthy, creative brain in the age of AI.
Dr. Lisa Leit, PhD, MCC, ACTC, is an executive leadership coach, mediator, educator, and founder of Happy Whole Human. For more than 20 years, she has worked with leaders, teams, and coaches to understand the human patterns that shape how we think, relate, adapt, and lead through change.
Her work brings together developmental psychology, neuroscience, coaching, and Human Systems Architecture™ to help people remain thoughtful, resilient, and deeply human in complex systems. Lisa also trains and mentors coaches internationally and develops ICF-accredited education, assessments, and a privacy-first platform that integrates AI coaching copilots with the human coaching experience while ensuring ethical stewardship.
AI can inform, generate, remember, and increasingly participate in developmental conversations. But who is responsible for the integrity of the human system in which those conversations occur?
Drawing on Human Systems Architecture™ and more than twenty years of coaching, mediation, and systems work, Dr. Lisa Leit explores the human role as steward: the person responsible for the purpose, boundaries, relationships, and architecture of the container itself.
Participants will examine what makes a coaching relationship, team, or other developmental system worthy of trust, and leave with a practical framework for identifying where the integrity of a container they currently steward may be at risk.
Povilas Petrauskas, MCC, ACTC, is an ICF-credentialed individual and team coach, founder of Coaching.lt, creator of ICF-accredited coaching programmes, and winner of the 2026 ICF Nordic-Baltic Coaching Award.
His work focuses on personal growth, self-awareness, and building trust. Povilas invites us to see coaching not only as a tool for change, but also as a space where we learn to embrace human imperfection, navigate uncertainty, and find the courage to trust one another.
Trusting another person sounds like a beautiful idea. Until we remember what it really means: giving up some of our control to someone who might make a mistake, break a promise, or let us down.
Trust is not simply a comforting feeling. It is a decision to become vulnerable without guarantees. Yet in a world where more and more can be controlled, predicted, or delegated to technology, avoiding that risk becomes increasingly tempting. After all, AI won’t take offence, walk away, or disappoint us personally. Or will it?
But what happens when we stop practising the very ability that makes genuine trust possible: accepting the unpredictability of another human being?
This session invites us to explore risk as the inevitable price of trust and reflect on what we may be losing when, in our pursuit of greater safety and control, we become increasingly reluctant to rely on one another.
14:45 ICF Lithuania members’ general meeting
Marijus Perlavičius is a creative marketing and communications specialist, Head of Marketing and Communications at Kvadrant Consulting, and founder of Perl Agency. In his work, he combines AI, human creativity, and strategic thinking. He applies the same approach to endurance sports, turning ambitious goals into small, consistent steps.
Marijus has completed an Ironman, Mallorca 312, and other endurance challenges, and is currently preparing for new high-altitude adventures in Nepal. For more than seven years, he has also been involved in filmmaking and visual storytelling, capturing his own experiences and the stories of others along the way.
Marijus shares his personal experience:
“From completing an Ironman to pursuing mountain adventures, creative projects and a career in marketing, I’ve always looked for ways to challenge myself and grow.
Over the years, I’ve worked with sports coaches, personal coaches and mentors. Today, AI has become a big part of my own development. I use it to organise my thoughts, analyse my habits, build systems and turn ambitious goals into actionable plans. It has helped me do more than ever before.
But as more possibilities open up, I’ve started asking myself a different question: how do I find my trajectory and understand what truly matters to me? In my experience, coaches have helped me find answers not by giving me another plan, but by asking the right questions and helping me connect with what I actually feel and want.
AI can bring structure to our thinking, but how do we find our sense of purpose?”
It’s an invitation to a personal reflection on ambition, AI and why human connection may be essential not just to achieving more, but to understanding what we want to achieve in the first place.
Karl Van Hoey (ICF MCC, ACTC, EMCC Master Practitioner) is an executive and team coach with more than 3,500 hours of coaching experience across a wide range of industries worldwide. Before becoming an independent executive and team coach, he held senior HR leadership roles at international organizations, including AXA, British American Tobacco, Ernst & Young, and Sappi Fine Paper Europe.
Karl is a co-founder of The Team Coaching Global Alliance and contributed as a subject matter expert to the development of the ICF Team Coaching Competencies. He has taught leadership, change management, and coaching at international business schools and continues to contribute actively to the development of global coaching standards.
He is also the author of three books exploring coaching, organizational change, and the sustainable impact of coaching. At the heart of his work are leadership, team development, and the question of how coaching can create lasting impact rather than temporary change.
Live coaching demonstration
What really happens in a coaching session when the conversation moves beyond goals, actions, and solutions to touch the deeper level of human identity? And could artificial intelligence create the same connection and impact?
In this live demonstration, Karl Van Hoey (MCC, ACTC) invites participants to observe coaching at the highest level of mastery, with a particular focus on coaching at the identity level.
Participants will be invited to identify which ICF Core Competencies are most central to the session and assess which of the coaching behaviours demonstrated by Karl could, or could not, be replicated by an AI coaching bot in the same way.
The demonstration will be followed by personal reflection and Q&A, creating space to explore where true coaching mastery lies and what role human presence plays in a profession increasingly shaped by technology.
Paulius Ratė, PCC, ACTC, is an ICF-credentialed individual and team coach, mentor, facilitator, international trainer with Erickson Coaching International, and the school’s representative in Lithuania.
With more than 15 years of leadership experience and nearly 3,000 hours of coaching practice, Paulius works with leaders and teams and trains professional coaches in Lithuania and internationally, including across Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
He is also part of the creative team working with Erickson founder Marilyn Atkinson to develop and evolve Erickson’s team coaching programmes.
In his work, Paulius brings together practical leadership experience, systemic thinking and coaching philosophy. He is particularly interested in how the way we see ourselves and others shapes what we believe is possible. His work invites people to explore how relationship with another person can shift our perception and help us discover possibilities we may not see on our own.
With AI, we can talk anytime. It will respond quickly, intelligently, and never get tired. But in that conversation, are we truly with someone?
Paulius invites us to start with a simple question: Who are you? He himself is a coach, mentor, leader, facilitator… And one pattern quickly becomes clear: every identity is born in relationship. A coach without a client, a mentor without a mentee, a leader without a team, a facilitator without a group: these become only the titles.
We often say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The same situation can be seen as a “problem” or an “opportunity”, depending on the lens through which we look. And perhaps the most important question is: who is looking through that lens?
Milton H. Erickson once said: “There are no two people alike. No two people understand the same sentence in the same way… Therefore, when dealing with people, try not to fit them to your idea of what they should be.”
Paulius will invite us to explore what this means for each of us in the age of AI, and why some human choices still need another human being?
Evelina Gailė has been shaping HR practices at Varle.lt, one of Lithuania’s largest online retailers, for more than a decade. Having reviewed over 25,000 CVs and conducted more than 3,000 job interviews, she brings extensive hands-on experience to conversations about how we select, evaluate, and truly see people.
She works on leadership development, provides career consulting, explores coaching, and regularly shares her insights on the changing world of work in Lithuanian media. She is particularly interested in how we can preserve our humanity as technology transforms the workplace.
Artificial intelligence helps a candidate write their CV. Another AI system evaluates it during recruitment. One algorithm presents the person; another interprets them. But where is the human being in this conversation? And to what extent does the person we will work alongside tomorrow depend on how accurately technology has represented them?
Over the past decade, we have invested heavily in creating more human-centred organizations: employee well-being, pay transparency, psychological safety, and protection against workplace bullying. Yet today, a new paradox is emerging. In trying to meet the expectations of managers, organizations, or algorithms, we increasingly polish away our imperfections. We hide our doubts, vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and sometimes even our true opinions.
Have we, in our efforts to create more human-friendly workplaces, unintentionally created a new expectation: to become a flawless, AI-crafted version of ourselves?
Evelina invites us to explore this paradox from inside the organization. How are technological acceleration and the pursuit of efficiency changing the relationship between managers and employees, people’s well-being, and trust within teams? What happens when human beings, who get tired, have doubts, and make mistakes, are increasingly compared with technology that appears to have none of these limitations?
This is an invitation to rethink not only how we will work in the future, but also how much humanity we are willing to accept in one another.
Leda Turai is an ICF-credentialed individual and team coach, mentor, supervisor, leadership programme designer, and founder of L-CON Global. With more than 20 years of international experience, she works with senior executives and teams, supporting their growth and helping them navigate complex change.
Leda has served as Chair and Vice Chair of the ICF Global Board and has developed internationally accredited coaching programmes. Currently pursuing her PhD, she researches consciousness and personal transformation, bringing together perspectives from coaching, psychology, philosophy, and other scientific disciplines. At the heart of her work is the question of how people come to know themselves, transform, and remain conscious creators of their own lives.
Rimas Petrauskas, PCC, is an ICF-credentialed coach and Managing Director of L-CON Global, with more than 20 years of leadership and management experience in business organizations. He works with senior and middle managers and their teams, helping them strengthen leadership, effectiveness, and their ability to navigate increasingly complex and rapidly changing environments.
Rimas is an active member of the ICF community, a former Board Member of ICF Lithuania, and one of the initiators of the “Mano mokykla” (My School) project. An important focus of his work is helping people develop their capacity for reflection, independent decision-making, and taking responsibility for their choices.
Artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly capable of analysing human beings: our language, choices, behaviour, emotional signals, and recurring patterns. Sometimes, it can notice things about us that we have not yet put into words ourselves. But this raises a fundamental question: is knowing about a person the same as knowing what it means to be that person?
Leda and Rimas invite us to explore the significance of first-person experience in the age of AI. What does it mean not only to be described, interpreted, or predicted, but to experience, reflect, recognize, evaluate, and choose for ourselves? Who holds the epistemic authority to determine what my experience means: an external expert, data, an algorithm, or myself? And can I trust my own experience, knowing that it too is shaped by past experiences, expectations, and the models of the world I construct?
This is not to suggest that human subjectivity is infallible. On the contrary, the ability to examine our own experience, question our interpretations, and allow reality to challenge and correct them may become one of our most important human capabilities.
This perspective also raises questions about the role of coaching. Perhaps, in the age of AI, the value of coaching will become less about finding better answers or solutions. Perhaps one of its most important functions will be to help people remain the subjects of their own lives: to understand their experiences more deeply, distinguish experience from interpretation, consciously choose what and whom to trust, and retain responsibility for who they become.
Ultimately, the question “Who can know what it means to be me?” is not only a question about knowledge. It is a question about human authorship, responsibility, and our relationship with ourselves in a world where more and more can be entrusted to technology.
Simultaneous interpretation between English and Lithuanian will be provided throughout the event.
*The programme is still being finalised. The organisers reserve the right to change it.