An influential keynote speaker can make or break an event’s success with the zest of influence, spark, and energy or the power of a mindset shift with a solid connection to the audience. A keynote speaker must set the event’s tone that resonates with the audience. A successful keynote speaker engenders an unforgettable experience for attendees, leaving them to see their world differently. Primarily a keynote speaker is a storyteller. Some keynote speakers motivate with personal stories of overcoming the seemingly insurmountable, some share stories of their triumph in creating something that did not exist, whether or a product, a technology, or a company, other keynote speakers offer a prism to view your existing world differently. Finding a multi-dimensional keynote speaker is a dicey task all made easier if the speaker is versatile like Heather Elizabeth McGowan.
A practical, keynote speaker leaves an impression on attendees and compels them to rethink life, approach work differently, or give them the courage to persist in the face of adversity. An experienced keynote speaker help the audience member find the perspective, passion, and persistence to reapproach their current challenges. A study deduced that 77% to 91% of youngsters look upon keynote speakers for life motivation.
Heather Elizabeth McGowan is a keynote speaker, future-of-work strategist, advisor, and author. She conducts over 75 events as a keynote speaker in a year for industries as diverse as education, finance, military and government, consumer products, technology, biopharmaceuticals, healthcare, management consulting, and more. If the organization engages human talent, McGowan is an ideal speaker. She is the author of The Adaptation Advantage: Let Go and Learn Fast to Thrive in the Future of Work, Disrupt Together: How Teams Consistently Innovate, and The Empathy Advantage: Leading the Empowered Workforce.
On April 17, 1971, McGowan was born in Boston, MA. She graduated from Norwell High School in 1989. Later in 1993, she completed her bachelor’s in fine arts in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. Inspired to connect her design thinking training to entrepreneurial education, she pursued an MBA from Babson College in 2001—long before design and business were viewed as a strategic and powerful combination. In acknowledgment of her par excellence contribution in expanding the application of design thinking to both business and education, the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2022.
McGowan’s professional career in design spanned toy design, baby products, medical, sporting goods, and consumer products. After acquiring her MBA, she further expanded her experiences by founding a boutique investment bank and management consulting organization.
Exploring her multifaceted personality, McGowan advised Stephen Spinelli Jr, currently President of Babson College, in establishing the Kanbar College of Design Engineering and Commerce (DEC) at Philadelphia University—the first of its kind undergraduate college with a focus on transdisciplinary innovation. As the Assistant Provost, McGowan was the strategic architect of the curriculum and organizational structure for the new institution. She incorporated some of the most innovative subjects in the curriculum for all students, such as design thinking, anthropology, business models, and biomimicry, and completely re-conceiving the business core curriculum from 13 disconnected courses to a handful of integrated modules
Expanding her wings as a strategist, McGowan was appointed a Swinburne University Centre faculty member in Melbourne, Australia, with a focus on research into how tacit knowledge is created and transferred between humans and retained in organizations
In 2014, McGowan began to share her perspectives and insights about the evolving world of work in writing on LinkedIn. Those articles went viral, and requests to speak poured in from all over the world. Since then she has spoken to the audience of various prestigious events organized by AMP Financial, SAP, AbbVie, Biogen, Fidelity, FIS, Mastercard, AT&T, Financial Times, Siemens, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Kaiser Permanente, JPMorgan Chase, Lockheed Martin, MassMutual, MetLife, Best Buy, Raytheon, The US Army, Accor Hotels, Paramount, Chevron, AARP, Zendesk, Tableau, de Beers, Professional Beauty Association, and The World Bank, among other global organizations.
Her honest, relatable, and authentic style distinguishes her from other keynote speakers. Without creating hustle and unnecessary drama, she delivers her speech simply and without intimidation. She empowers the audiences with Illuminating graphic frameworks and powerful metaphors, all backed by deep research.
The critically and internationally acclaimed keynote speaker has received many awards and recognitions. She was ranked as one of the Top 50 Female Futurists in the world by Forbes and also deemed one of the Top 10 Female Speakers of 2021 by Big Speak. LinkedIn ranked her as its Number One Global Voice for Education in 2017. Her speaking notes often become the center of attraction in major media tabloids, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Her academic and strategist role in one of the oldest novel institutes, the Rhode Island School of Design, is also notable.
In 2012, the DEC curriculum designed by McGowan won first place in the Core 77 Design Awards. She co-authored and co-edited numerous books, including The Adaptation Advantage: Let Go, Learn Fast, and Thrive in the Future of Work, ranked third in business management books on Amazon and was named among the best business books of 2021 by Soundview. Her latest book, The Empathy Advantage: Leading the Empowered Workforce, has been selected as a finalist by the Next Big Ideas Book Club and a best-selling debut book by her corporate distributor Porchlight Books.
In the era of digitalization, very few speakers could mark themselves on popular mainstream media, and Heather Elizabeth McGowan is moon among the stars. Heather E McGowan is a highly active keynote speaker focusing primarily on the lens of the future of work. The future of work is complex and has multilayer facets, including empowerment, engagement, diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB), and resilience. In times of high employee turnover, creating an engaging workplace requires nurturing a solid culture that retains and engages talent is a strategic business imperative. McGowan is never as powerful as she is on stage, where her illuminating graphics, and rich metaphors, all backed by deep research, help transform her audiences’ thinking in under an hour.
