HOW HEATHER
BUILDS EXACTLY THE
RIGHT TALK
FOR YOUR EVENT
Every keynote Heather delivers is shaped by the specific challenges your audience is up against and the high-level outcomes you want them to achieve.
*Photo courtesy of SHRM
Step One
SEE IF WE’RE A MATCH
Once you submit your inquiry, Melissa from Heather's office will confirm availability and fees, then help you determine the best next steps.
Heather is represented by a select group of speaking bureaus and agents. Melissa will connect you with the one best suited to guide you through contracting and secure your date.
From your first message forward, you're supported by an experienced team that makes the process feel simple.
Step Two
PLAN YOUR EVENT
Once your contract is signed, Heather's team reaches out to gather everything she needs to customize the keynote specifically for your audience.
You'll share your audience's challenges, your organization's language and values, and what you want people to think, feel, and do when they leave the room. This happens through a streamlined intake process—which always includes the option of a prep call if you'd like to talk it through directly.
From there, Heather takes the wheel. She selects and shapes the right talk frame (with your guidance), weaves in your themes and language, and—if you connect her with other speakers on your agenda—builds on their ideas, too.
When it comes to coordinating her look, she's got that covered, too. Browse her curated glasses collection to call out your favorites by name.
The goal: deliver the presentation that fits your needs and makes the right connections for your audience, so that they don't have to work to find them.
Step Three
DELIVER THE EVENT
Heather approaches every event with one thing in mind: making yours a success.
She'll collaborate with your team on flow, format, and outcomes, and adapt to however you want to use her—keynotes, Q&A, book signings, or something more integrated into your program. For follow-on breakout sessions or customized conversations, get in touch.
No matter what your audience is up against, Heather creates an experience that helps them see what's changing, understand what it means, and know exactly what to do next.
THE THREE-STORY METHOD
PRIORITIZE THE EXCEPTIONAL
Each of Heather’s keynote talks are inspired by Angus Fletcher’s StoryThink narrative intelligence framework—bringing together unforgettable stories from science, history, and human behavior, so audiences are transformed by the narrative experience and can translate it to their work.
Heather prioritizes three exceptional narratives to pique the audience’s curiosity, grounding the insights she shares in compelling research so each story becomes a container people can believe in, before lighting a path to action.
CHECK OUT HEATHER'S FIVE TALK FRAMES BELOW
Each one walks you through the three stories behind the keynote and why they come together to put the audience in a place of newfound capability.
Solve
Tomorrow's ProblemsTM
Harness Human Ingenuity to Navigate What's Next
Clear
on Purpose
Turning Purpose
into Performance Through a
Shared Vision
Leading in
the Age of Uncertainty
The Curiosity
Advantage
Start
With
Trust
The Lifeblood of
High-Performing Teams
The
Augmented
Imperative
Unleashing Human Potential
in the AI Era
SOLVE TOMORROW'S PROBLEMS
Harness Human Ingenuity to Navigate What's Next
Move beyond problem-solving to problem-finding. In this talk, Heather shows leaders how to ask better questions—the ones that unlock breakthrough opportunities.
MOP
The inventors of the Swiffer didn’t ask customers what they wanted. They watched them clean their floors.
The insights they gleaned became a $2.5 billion product nobody asked for but everyone wanted.
The question Heather asks: What if you were one insightful question away from your next breakthrough?
BURRITO
A judge in Ohio ordered a woman charged with assault to work in the same restaurant where she’d thrown her incorrect burrito order at the person who made it.
This story is about what’s happening to humanity, but also what questions might help you understand why your organization is not yet operating at its full potential.
HERMIT CRABS
Hermit crabs only survive if they find a bigger shell to occupy as they outgrow the old. But they collaborate with other crabs to do this.
This story is about how a leader's job used to be about telling people what to do and how to do it. Now it’s about helping people get to their next shell so they can expand their capacity, increase their resilience, and Solve Tomorrow’s Problems.
CLEAR ON PURPOSE
Turning Purpose Into Performance Through a Shared Vision
Purpose is a performance driver. In this keynote, Heather shows how meaning and belonging create intrinsic motivation that outperforms perks.
MONARCH
MISSION + BATTLECRY
The monarch butterfly is highly adaptive—going through four state changes in its short life.
It's uniquely motivated in its pursuit of multigenerational migration.
This story teaches us the power of both adaptability and the motivational energy that can be found in the pursuit of a purpose larger than ourselves—and our connection to that purpose.
JEBEL
HUMAN PERFORMANCE
Humans leapt to the top of the food chain not because we were the strongest or fittest, but because of our ability to socially learn and collaborate at scale. That collaboration is breaking down right now.
The question Heather wants us to sit with: What is the cost of disconnection in learning, in productivity, in innovation, and in what we need most right now: our adaptive capacity?
LINCOLN
CULTURE + LEADERSHIP
Lincoln was a remarkable president not just because he led us through the civil war, but because he built his cabinet with people who had dissenting opinions. Most leaders look to fill their teams with people who agree with them. Lincoln chose people who challenged him to see his blind spots.
If we want to get clear on our purpose, this is the kind of leadership we need now.
THE AUGMENTED IMPERATIVE
Unleashing Human Potential in the AI Era
We shape our tools, then our tools shape us—and AI is no different. But the stakes are higher now. Without productive friction, we don't just lose skills; we cede the cognitive ground that defines our human potential. The opportunity isn't to resist AI—it's to engage with it in ways that expand us.
FIRE
TOOLS THAT CHANGE US
Fire was a major innovation that ultimately allowed us to change the world, but first it changed us by rewiring our brains through better nutrition, sleep, and socialization.
In today’s world, we fixate on what AI will replace or displace while missing how it will rewire the way we think for the better—if we pay attention.
First, Heather explains, it will change our cognition—and then it will allow us to completely reimagine our world.
OCTOPUS
POWER OF AUGMENTATION
The veined octopus is fragile and exposed. But instead of evolving to develop a permanent defense like a thicker skin or shell, it uses tools—carrying coconut shells to protect itself and hunt.
Heather tells the octopus story to remind audiences that the goal with AI is to remain nimble and adaptive to maintain our learning agility.
The question is how do we use AI tools with productive friction to expand our capabilities as we adapt?
ADMIRAL RICKOVER
"HUMAN IN THE LOOP"
Admiral Rickover led the development of nuclear submarines, but resisted full automation.
He insisted that human complacency is our greatest vulnerability and that we always need a human in the loop.
Heather tells the Rickover story to remind audiences what leadership looks like in an automated age.
It required a willingness to 1. Make critical decisions, 2. Own the consequences, and 3. Learn from them.
START
WITH TRUST
The Lifeblood of
High-Performing Teams
Trust isn’t soft—it's infrastructure. In this keynote, Heather shows how high-trust systems unlock innovation, collaboration, and performance.
INTERSTATE
TRUST: BRIEF HISTORY
In 1957, the U.S. began building the interstate highway system. 48,000 miles of roads connecting the entire country.
It’s hard to imagine coordinating something on such a large scale today. But at the time, the U.S. had some of the highest levels of institutional trust ever measured. Today, we have the lowest levels ever.
Heather uses this story to show audiences why trust is the precondition for every ambitious effort at scale, and what we can do about it.
BURRITO
TRUST + COLLABORATION
We put a man on the moon with less technology than we carry in our pockets today.
What’s more interesting is how that happened. No one person at NASA had all the information, but everyone trusted each other to take responsibility for what they did know—and speak up when it mattered.
Heather uses this story to show audiences what trust makes possible when high-performance teams set out to undertake the extraordinary.
BURKE
TRUST LEADERSHIP
In 1982, someone began tampering with Tylenol bottles.
Johnson & Johnson's CEO James Burke didn’t make excuses. He pulled every bottle off the shelves nationwide—a decision that cost the company millions but protected every customer.
This story shows audiences what most leaders miss: In a crisis, trust is the product.
We’re in the business of earning trust.
LEADING IN THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY
The Curiosity Advantage
Uncertainty is our new reality. In this keynote, Heather explains why every leader’s job isn't to try and eliminate that uncertainty but instead to guide people through it—and stay grounded in every storm.
FISH
ESSENTIAL CONTEXT
David Foster Wallace tells a story of two fish who are swimming along when an older fish swims by and asks, “Hey, how's the water?”
One fish turns to the other and says, “What the heck is water?”
Uncertainty is the water in which we've always swum. But our reliance on technology and the past convinces us we should be able to predict what comes next. David’s fish story is an excellent reminder that our job isn’t to eliminate uncertainty. That’s impossible. It's to lead through it.
WAVES
ORIENTATION
We're not dealing with one wave of change.
We're in the middle of three happening at the same time, each feeding into the next: a new human era, a new technology revolution, and a new economic paradigm.
Each one requires a shift in how we think, how we decide, and how we operate.
What Heather wants audiences to sit with is not only what's changing, but the reality that change is not episodic but normative. Change is now a normative state.
BICYCLE
UNLEARNING
Destin Sandlin is an engineer who rigged up a bike so that, when you turn the handlebars to the right, the front wheel turns left. Turn left, and the wheel goes right.
It took Destin eight months to learn how to ride the backwards bicycle. Because, under pressure, his brain kept reverting back to what it already knew.
Destin’s bicycle story reminds us that the greatest challenges ahead of us are not necessarily learning but the harder act of unlearning—which, in many cases, means rewiring our brains.
HOW HEATHER COLLABORATES
WITH OTHER SPEAKERS
Heather is happy to plan her talk alongside the other speakers on your agenda.
If it's helpful, she'll get on calls with them and look for the threads that connect.
She recently co-designed her talk with poet Tucker Bryant for an event in Orlando, where Tucker opened and Heather closed. She did the same with Riaz Meghji in Prague, where the two of them teed each other up on stage so the audience experienced their talks as a single conversation.
THE PAYOFF: Your audience experiences your event as one connected conversation, not a series of unrelated talks.
READY TO SOLVE TOMORROW’S
PROBLEMS, TODAY?