The Creative Kickoff

Imagine audience members sharing stories that even their closest friends haven't heard.

Imagine a technical concept suddenly making sense because Chris illustrated it with a story about NASA, Paw Patrol, or the Wu-Tang Clan.

Imagine leaving a keynote with a transformed sense of what the day is really about, and what you might be able to contribute to it.

Chris brings wide-roving curiosity to the stage and uncovers unlikely connections. He digs into the experiences and viewpoints in the room, finds unexpected ways into the subject at hand, and uses stories, humor, questions, and the occasional gloriously weird analogy to help people see familiar things differently.

You know a keynote is working when the audience starts doing things you didn't script: laughter breaks out, phones come out to capture an idea, strangers start comparing notes, someone tells a story they hadn't planned to tell, and the energy in the room shifts from “I'm here for a keynote” to “we're figuring something out together.”

That's the experience Chris aims to create: not just a good hour on stage, but a room full of people more curious about one another, more connected to the theme of the event, and a little more excited about what they might accomplish together.

Chris Leonard helps people build legendary teams without burning out.

A speaker, facilitator, consultant, and longtime practitioner of the messy art of getting people to work well together, Chris brings an unusual mix of experience to the stage. He has spent his career at the intersection of people, technology, creativity, and high-pressure work, from consulting with major healthcare organizations to managing productions on the road with professional musicians.

Today, his work focuses on a question that has become harder to ignore:

How do we build teams that can do extraordinary work without grinding the people inside them into dust?

Chris speaks about the human side of adaptation: how teams communicate when the pressure is on, how they navigate conflict and feedback, how they make room for creativity, and how they keep their sense of purpose when everything around them seems to be changing at once.

His talks are practical, energetic, and often a little unexpected. Rather than handing audiences another collection of leadership clichés, Chris looks at what makes great teams actually work. He explores the hidden costs of saying yes to everything, the difference between productive friction and destructive conflict, why feedback is a team sport, and what happens when organizations adopt new technology faster than their people can adapt to it.

His current signature talk, Burnout in the Age of AI, looks at the strange new reality of working alongside rapidly evolving technology. AI can remove tedious work and give people extraordinary new capabilities. It can also create an endless expectation that everyone should move faster, produce more, and somehow keep up with everything that just changed. Chris helps teams think through that tension without falling into either AI hype or AI panic.

Across his work, one idea keeps coming back: legendary work is rarely the product of one brilliant person. It happens when people bring different strengths, perspectives, experiences, and talents to the same problem, and create something bigger than any one of them could have created alone.

That means building teams where people can challenge one another without tearing one another down. Where disagreement can make the work better. Where someone else's strength doesn't threaten your own. Where people know when to lead, when to listen, and when to get out of the way.

Chris has worked with organizations including Merck, Amgen, Pfizer, Prime Therapeutics, and SmileDirectClub, helping teams navigate large-scale change, improve collaboration, and deliver complex work. He has also spoken for more than 100 organizations, companies, and professional association chapters.

His professional credentials include PMP, ICP-ENT, ICP-ACC, SAFe SPC, A-CSM, and ITIL-F certifications, but his favorite credential is probably the one you can't put after your name: years of watching real teams succeed, struggle, improvise, recover, and occasionally surprise themselves.

Whether he's talking about burnout, feedback, resilience, leadership, communication, or adapting to change, Chris's goal is the same:

Help people do work that matters, with people they trust, without losing themselves in the process.

Just two turntables and a microphone. Hold the turntables.

Chris will need:
• HDMI connection to the presentation screen/projector
• Podium or small presentation table
• Power source with USB-C connection
• Two working microphones: lavalier preferred; wireless handheld second choice; wired handheld available as backup
• Standard stage/presentation lighting with even, front-facing illumination. Please avoid strong backlighting, colored stage washes, or lighting that leaves the presenter in shadow.
• A stage or designated presentation area with clear sightlines to the audience

Chris is comfortable working with standard conference AV setups and does not require elaborate staging.