Described as endlessly optimistic, Nancy is a strategic futurist with a drive to help enterprise organisations and visionary leaders transform to meet the escalating expectations ahead. Recognized as one of the world’s top female futurists, she has spent her career building, shaping and evolving a portfolio of $50 billion worth of major global brands. With growing conviction of what will (and needs to) shift, executives value her unique abilities to sense and synthesize the terrain ahead, and guide those ready to build more relevant and sustainable solutions.
With a career at three of the top global advertising agencies and as founder of her own strategic inspiration company, Play Big Inc., Nancy has a rich history of advising and learning with some of the top companies in the world, including Nestle, Brinker International, The Coca Cola Company, Sprint and Acumen.
Her newest book, LEADERING: The Way Visionary Leaders Play Bigger, explores that new mindset that we need to build the future that we want. Structures put in place to reduce risk and drive success in the 20th Century are now often the very things creating vulnerability in the 21st Century. It’s time to ditch the outdated playbook and radically shift our approach from static leadership to dynamic leadering to think much bigger and ensure a thriving future for all.
A 10-year TEDx curator (and world’s first licensee), Nancy is a Singularity University guest lecturer, frequent panelist at South by Southwest, creator of the first Career Fair For The Future event for college + high school students, and remains an active strategist. For the past two years she has been on the board of retail trade association GMDC, on the advisory council of both Retail Tomorrow and Future Frontiers, co-designed + produced a fintech conference to strengthen community banking, and is helping champion two brands poised to weave a more human, distributed internet: Holochain + Holo hosting. In addition, Nancy just joined Austin artificial services company, Kungfu AI, to help visionary enterprise leaders learn, harness and sharpen their business prowess via custom designed AI applications.
A techno-optimist, Nancy is committed to advancing societal structures and new mindsets necessary to effectively harness the significant technology innovations heading our way… and ensure a safe and thriving future for us all.
Her vibrant presentations are about answers to your toughest questions. She meticulously crafts her talks based on the specific needs of your audience, spending time with you in advance to pinpoint the critical issues. If you are looking for a high-energy futurist who thinks like a strategist and acts like a creative marketer, she may be the perfect speaker for your next event.