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Keynote speakers are critical to the success of conferences. They aim to bring people to an exact focal point simultaneously. A professional and creative atmosphere can be generated through the Keynote speaker, which tends to create a proficient ambiance. Over the past few years, the world has witnessed an American keynote speaker and strategist Heather Elizbeth McGowan, who synthesizes complex and often disparate information into a compelling vision of the future.
Heather Elizbeth McGowan is a renowned keynote speaker focused on the Future of Work. Her speeches amalgamate topics such as engagement with diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) with technology acceleration and psychological safety. She emphasizes creating a safe and trustful organizational environment to extract the best out of the employees. Her use of strong metaphors and analogies with, rich graphic frameworks, all backed by in-depth research, make her one of the finest keynote speakers. She aligns and inspires the audience toward an owned, embodied, and shared vision.
McGowan began her career as a designer for a company called Safety 1st, initially known for creating the Baby on Board sign, now part of Dorel Industries Inc. Post that, she did numerous designing consignments for different medical, sporting goods, and consumer products brands. Later McGowan worked as a boutique investment banker and management consultant.
Diligent with her work, McGowan collaborated with the current president of Babson College, Ms. Stephen Spinelli Jr. in the creation of the Kanbar College of Design Engineering and Commerce (DEC) at Philadelphia University, now part of Jefferson University. In creating this new college within the university that incorporated 18 different undergraduate majors, McGowan integrated design thinking, anthropology, business models, and biomimicry into a novel foundational curriculum.
Her curriculum design for DEC won first prize in the Core 77 Design Awards in 2012. While serving as assistant provost and advisor to the president, McGowan began speaking internally to faculty and externally to corporate partners and donors, from which she discovered her passion for speaking. From this and other academic and corporate consulting experiences, McGowan emerged as a Future-of-Work strategist–a nascent field of growing importance today.
McGowan, a leading female keynote speaker, Future-of-Work analyst, and strategist, started helping organizations to develop plans and frameworks to prepare their organizations for exponential growth in technological capabilities, rapid changes in consumer demands, frequent business model transformations and persistent labor shortages. Everyone from newbies to Fortune 100 companies is amazed by her incredible communication skills, deep research, authentic and relatable delivery, even with complex and twisted topics.
With her data-driven and proven strategies, McGowan has addressed multinational companies, including 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, Hess, AARP, Zendesk, Tableau, de Beers, Professional Beauty Association, and The World Bank, among other global organizations. The world suffered severely during and after COVID-19, and so did the companies. Catering the hour of need, McGowan assisted leaders both during the pandemic and now helps organizations prepare their people and organizations for post-pandemic work.
McGowan is the co-editor and author of the book, Disrupt Together: How Teams Consistently Innovate (Pearson, 2012), a collaborative effort that sprung from the experience of creating the Kanbar College of Design, Engineering, and Commerce. McGowan’s first book on the Future-of-Work was The Adaptation Advantage Let Go, Learn Fast, and Thrive in the Future of Work, published in 2020 by Wiley. The book was ranked third in business management books on Amazon and listed among the Best Business Books of 2021 by Soundview magazine. McGowan’s most recent book, The Empathy Advantage: Leading the Empowered Workforce, was published in March 2023 and was a finalist for the Next Big Idea Book Club and has been touted as one of the top 10 business books in 2023 by Business Chief.
McGowan was ranked in Forbes as one of the Top 50 Female Futurists in 2020 and was recognized as the leading global voice for education in 2017 by LinkedIn. She was described as “The Oasis” by New York Times writer Thomas Friedman for her contribution to the Future-of-Work. In the height of the pandemic lockdown in April 2020, McGowan gave an outstanding online dialogue on the Future of Work during the “Brainfood Marathon 2020,” which became the most watched and requested sessions.
McGowan was born in Boston on April 17, 1971, to Sandra and Robert McGowan. She completed her higher studies at Norwell High School in 1989. McGowan graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1993. Later in 2001, she did her MBA with a specialization in entrepreneurship from Babson College. In recognition of her incessant efforts, the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design awarded her an honorary Doctorate. Nowadays, she is living in Massachusetts with her husband, Patricia Coryell.
Heather Elizbeth McGowan is an exceptional Future-of-Work keynote speaker and in-depth thought leader advocating innovation to create a more diverse workforce. Her Future-of-Work keynote speeches comprise numerous valuable events, conferences, and sessions. McGowan’s keynote speeches are featured and appreciated in New York Times. She is entitled as an advisory board member at Sparks & Honey. McGowan established herself on the world’s canvas through her authentic and relatable approach that can transform any business into a successful one.
