Looking for the keynote speaker for your next big corporate event? Finding the right speaker can make or break the success of your event. As you prepare to research and select a speaker, lay out some base information first: Who is your audience? What’s your budget? What’s the primary goal of the keynote session?
Pursuing a well-known speaker can deliver a big impact, but it can also come with a price tag to match. To make the most of your budget, consider choosing a speaker specific to your industry for a personalized experience that will resonate with your audience. Here are a few speakers who are leading the way in their industries.
Jonathan Keyser
Jonathan Keyser is a commercial real estate broker who’s disrupting the industry with a service-first approach. His team operates on the radical idea that you don’t have to be ruthless to win. The 15 core principles at Keyser are all centered around selfless service.
In fact, Keyser insists that his employees “give first” with the confidence that helping others in tangible ways will lead to personal fulfillment and success for the business. Keyser employees seek to build relationships and serve others long before they’re customers, knowing that a generous reputation and goodwill go further than any marketing tactic.
Lena Requist
Lena Requist is the creative force behind Driver’s Ed, a productivity course designed to put you in the driver’s seat of your own career. As president at Ontraport, Requist leads the company’s culture of ambition and curiosity, placing a high value on productivity, empowerment, and free thinking.
This unique culture has led Ontraport to be recognized by awards like Forbes’ Great Places to Work. Requist also leads Ontraport’s Women in Business community, which hosts monthly workshops about pertinent issues for businesswomen for its more than 300 members.
Brian Solis
Brian Solis has dedicated his career to understanding and humanizing digital trends to make them approachable and actionable. His mission is to make innovation meaningful and inspire business leaders to embrace the change demanded by today’s fast-paced digital landscape.
Solis speaks on a wide range of topics, including the effects of digital distractions and how to foster an agile, disruption-proof culture in your organization. He was formerly a principal analyst at Altimeter, a research and advisory firm that seeks to understand the intersection of technology and the human side of business.
Chris Dyer
Chris Dyer is an innovation speaker and certified SCRUM Master who specializes in helping teams work through obstacles quickly and effectively. He focuses on a variety of challenges faced in the modern workplace centered on your most important asset: your people. Dyer hosts speaking sessions and workshops to teach business leaders how to retain top talent, encourage employees to learn from their mistakes, and navigate cultural barriers like generational diversity.
As CEO of PeopleG2, he leads his team with three principles in mind: mastery, autonomy, and purpose. Employees are encouraged to master their roles and given the autonomy to get the job done, always aligned with the company’s purpose of protecting clients.
Tracey Grace
Tracey Grace is a champion of workplace diversity, empowering women and minorities to rise through the ranks in male-dominated industries like tech. She’s a tech entrepreneur and speaker who’s won a multitude of awards, including AMEX’s “On the Rise” award.
As CEO at IT consulting firm IBEX, Grace not only prioritizes building diverse teams within the firm, but also continuously evaluates vendors and partners for diversity. In fact, she is a big proponent of industry-level action to create real change. She advocates this leadership approach as the only way to truly impact the entrenched inequalities that exist in some industries today.
Carrie Kerpen
Carrie Kerpen speaks on a variety of topics relating to women in business. Her sessions range from forward-looking trends in media to parenting in a digital age. As CEO of Likeable Media, she runs a team of passionate media pros who do it all, from consulting to creative to paid media and community management.
On her “All the Social Ladies” podcast, Kerpen hosts influential women in marketing to talk social media and more.
David Marquet
A U.S. Navy veteran, David Marquet focuses his speaking sessions on intent-based leadership. He’s known for rejecting the leader-follower structure so common in military organizations. In the Navy, Marquest observed that a system set up to encourage compliance rather than critical thinking often left people feeling marginalized and uninspired. Over time, he turned his ship from worst to best in fleet by seeking to create leaders, not followers. As a speaker and leadership coach, he urges leaders to stop giving orders and start giving people the room to excel.
Go Specialized With Your Next Speaker
Selecting a speaker for your event can be overwhelming. Narrowing your list of options to speakers within your industry is a great way to ensure your keynote session will pack a punch. As you research, look for speakers who — like those listed above — are applying their own principles to make waves in your industry. You’ll leave your audience buzzing with excitement long after the event is over.
