HEATHER MAKES COMPLEX TOPICS DIGESTIBLE, RELATABLE, AND ACTIONABLE.

Speech Topics:

SOLVE TOMORROW’S PROBLEMS
Harness Human Ingenuity to Navigate What’s Next
Move beyond problem-solving to problem-finding. Heather shows leaders how to ask better questions—the ones that unlock breakthrough opportunities.
Think organizations can’t change quickly?
HISTORY PROVES OTHERWISE.
When naysayers said “it can’t be done,” humans accomplished the impossible—in weeks, not years. Each pivotal moment reminds us of humanity’s most underestimated asset: our ability to adapt in the face of seemingly impossible odds.
In this perspective-shifting keynote, Heather challenges the myth that we resist change using unforgettable stories about a mop, a burrito, and a hermit crab to demonstrate how we can tap into our natural curiosity and hardwired drive to collaborate to see and shape what’s next.
Drawing from her bestselling books The Adaptation Advantage and The Empathy Advantage, Heather reveals how leading organizations thrive when they place adaptability at their core, allowing them to find breakthrough opportunities where others least expect.
OUTCOMES
The audience will leave able to:
-Identify problems worth solving before competitors do
-Lead people to their next chapter, not just their next task
-Look for the person behind the problem, not just the problem itself

Remember when being a leader meant having all the answers? Today’s most successful leaders are
ASKING BETTER QUESTIONS.

In a world of economic volatility, AI advancement, cybersecurity challenges, and employee mental wellbeing responsibility, leadership has evolved beyond simple command-control tactics to drive productivity.
Today’s exceptional leaders acknowledge complexity as a reality and leverage curiosity over unrealistic certainty, asking better questions amid constant change.
In this talk, Heather reveals how forward-thinking leaders succeed by unlocking their teams’ natural capacity to adapt and innovate.
You’ll discover practical frameworks to transform challenges into opportunities and evidence-based strategies replacing outdated leadership models. Through compelling research and real-world examples, learn how empowering teams, nurturing curiosity, building trust, and harnessing collective intelligence creates both agile organizations and fulfilled teams that thrive amid change.
OUTCOMES
The audience will leave able to:
-Adapt with confidence instead of fear
-Build cultures where unlearning accelerates growth
-Navigate uncertainty as a core leadership ability

THE AUGMENTED IMPERATIVE
Unleashing Human Potential in the AI Era

AI isn’t replacing us—it’s amplifying us. Heather explains how tools have always reshaped human cognition, and how leaders can preserve agency while using AI to extend capability.
Think you can’t remember phone numbers like you used to?
YOU’RE NOT ALONE.
As we hand off more tasks to technology, some of our more-human capabilities will naturally fade—yet while automation may lead to atrophy in some areas, augmentation opens doors to entirely new human capabilities. The key isn’t only using AI to replace what we currently do by automating it, but transforming work as we know it.
In this eye-opening presentation, Heather cuts through the AI hype to demonstrate why thriving alongside AI isn’t about having the right answers—it’s about asking better questions, framing new challenges, and enhancing what makes us uniquely human.
OUTCOMES
The audience will leave able to:
-Partner with AI to enhance—not erase—human value
-Use productive friction to know what to automate vs. augment
-Lead teams through technological transformation

Video:

Bio:

One of Forbes’ Top Futurists, Heather E. McGowan is a sought-after future-of-work strategist, keynote speaker, and 2x bestselling author. She equips leaders and organizations to navigate relentless change by activating their most critical resource: their people. By teaching audiences to ask better questions, she enables them to adapt at the speed of possibility to Solve Tomorrow’s ProblemsTM.

Heather’s audiences range from startups and government organizations to publicly traded Fortune 500 companies, including Google, JPMorgan Chase, Accenture, Mastercard, FedEx, AT&T, and Kaiser Permanente. Whether she’s engaging in intimate conversations with senior executives or delivering keynotes to thousands, she transforms perspectives through data-driven insights, powerful visual frameworks, and practical optimism. Her approach helps organizations turn their distinctly human capabilities—adaptability, empathy, and curiosity—into strategic advantages in times of rapid change.

Heather’s approach to innovation was shaped by her early career as an industrial designer. At Safety 1st, she helped transform the company known for its “Baby on Board” sign in to a comprehensive baby safety products’ leader, developing multiple top-selling products. Her success continued at Wilson Sporting Goods’, where she designed award-winning tennis footwear. Her innovative work extended to medical devices, where she designed surgical equipment controls, and sustainable consumer goods, creating a groundbreaking recyclable razor system that remains in production two decades later.

This hands-on experience taught her that true innovation isn’t just about finding solutions—it’s about asking better questions to Solve Tomorrow’s Problems. After earning her MBA from Babson College, Heather expanded into socially responsive investing and later led RISD’s Center for Design and Business, helping organizations integrate user-centric design thinking into business strategy.

As Strategic Architect at Philadelphia University (now Jefferson University), Heather created an award-winning, interdisciplinary college focused on innovation. Her achievements included integrating 18 existing programs into a new core curriculum and creating an immersive design thinking-based program. The curriculum won the Core 77 top National Design Award for Education.

Heather’s emergence as a global thought leader began with a viral LinkedIn series on the future of work—reaching 100,000 readers in 24 hours—which sparked speaking invitations worldwide. Her bestselling books include The Adaptation Advantage, which became an accidental guide to the pandemic, and The Empathy Advantage, named a Top 10 Business Book of 2023.

Heather holds a BFA in Industrial Design from Rhode Island School of Design, an MBA from Babson College focused on Entrepreneurship, and was recently awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Pennsylvania College of Art and Design for her contributions to innovating education.

Personal experiences, like mobilizing 7,000 strangers to find a life-saving bone marrow donor for her brother, fuel Heather’s unwavering optimism and core belief: humans are wired to help each other achieve extraordinary things. This drives her mission: to help leaders Solve Tomorrow’s ProblemsTM by teaching them to ask better questions today.