His career started, not in a boardroom, but under the lights on theatre stages and in circus rings. As a former British National gymnast and professional acrobat, Duncan spent years performing in an environment where trust, precision, and timing weren’t corporate buzzwords - they were the difference between success and failure in front of a live audience.

That experience would shape the way he led for the rest of his career.

Decades later, as Chief Operations Officer of Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group, Duncan was tasked with guiding one of the world’s most iconic entertainment companies through one of the most difficult moments in its history. In the wake of the COVID pandemic and its bankruptcy, Duncan was the person Cirque turned to to bring the shows back. He was the architect of, and led, the global relaunch, piecing together touring routes across borders and between continents, rebuilding teams scattered across the planet, and finding ways to keep the magic alive while the rulebook was being rewritten daily.

Over the course of his career, Duncan has lived at the intersection of creativity and operational mastery. Before Cirque du Soleil, he’d cut his teeth running equestrian spectaculars with Cavalia, large-scale corporate experiences at C2 Montréal for brands like Google and Microsoft, and even a Fourth of July event for a U.S. president.

In Duncan’s world, every night is opening night. The audience doesn’t care what went wrong that afternoon; they only see what you put under the lights. That pressure has taught him how high-performance teams really work: how you align thousands of people behind a single cue, how you keep people safe when risk is built into the job, how you protect creativity inside a disciplined system, and how you deliver the same standard of experience whether you’re in Montreal, Mumbai or Melbourne.

What Duncan brings to a room isn’t management theory; he brings real experience from a life spent balancing risk and wonder, structure and spontaneity, art and execution; stories from muddy back lots, midnight load-ins and opening nights that nearly didn’t happen - but did. By the end, a circus tent becomes a mirror: a way to see your organization’s resilience, precision and performance in a new light - and to imagine what might be possible if you really did run your business like a circus. Read Less ^