G5 Leadership Speakers

We bring you the brightest minds to speak on leadership, strategy, teamwork, change, and communication.

Every G5 Leadership speaker has impeccable credentials, business-savvy, and is an engaging speaker. No exceptions.

David Allen

David Allen is an author, consultant, international lecturer, founder and CEO of the David Allen Company. He is widely recognized as the world's leading authority on personal and organizational productivity. His thirty years of pioneering research, coaching and education of some of the world's highest-performing professionals, corporations and institutions, has earned him Forbes' recognition as one of the top five executive coaches in the United States. He was also named one of the "Top 100 thought leaders" by Leadership Magazine.

Fast Company hailed David Allen "One of the world's most influential thinkers" in the arena of personal productivity, for his outstanding programs and writing on time and stress management, the power of aligned focus and vision, and his ground-breaking methodologies in management and executive peak performance.

Time Magazine labeled his first book, Getting Things Done as "the defining self-help business book of its time." David Allen is the author of three books; the international bestseller, Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress-Free Productivity, Ready For Anything, and Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and Business of Life. Getting Things Done has been a perennial business bestseller since its publication in 2001, and is now published in 28 languages.

Connie Dieken

Gifted with insight and a strikingly original approach, Connie is raising the communication intelligence of business leaders around the world. Her clientele includes Apple, Olympus, McDonald's, Moen, The Cleveland Clinic, Deloitte, Diebold, Pacific Life, American Greetings as well as many other organizations. Most recently she released Talk Less, Say More: 3 Habits to Influence Others and Make Things Happen (Wiley & Sons, 2009) and a trio of new training programs; The Influential Communicator, The Influential Presenter & The Influential Media Spokesperson, aimed at helping top-level professionals communicate at the peak of their ability as different situations demand. Her work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CNBC, The Los Angeles Times, Crain's Business, The Chicago Tribune, Women's Day, and in dozens of publications across the country.

She's been named a top 5 speaker for 2010 by speaking.com and is also a former Emmy award-winning TV news anchor, talk show host and inductee of the Radio/ Television Broadcasters Hall of Fame. She is a multiple Emmy© award-winning and Telly© award-winning journalist and has represented more than 50 companies as their spokesperson, including Intel, Sealy, GE, American Greetings, Ernst and Young and Goodyear. Connie teaches a G5 Leadership workshop on powerful presentation and persuasion skills: The Pitch.

Steve Farber

Steve Farber is the president of Extreme Leadership, Incorporated, an organization devoted to the cultivation and development of Extreme Leaders in the business community. His latest book, Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson In Leadership, was a Wall Street Journal® and USA Today® bestseller. His second book, The Radical Edge: Stoke Your Business, Amp Your Life, and Change the World, was hailed as “a playbook for harnessing the power of the human spirit.” And his first book, The Radical Leap: A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership, received Fast Company magazine’s Readers’ Choice Award and was recently named one of the 100 Best Business Books of All Time.

A subject-matter expert in business leadership and a frequent guest on news-talk shows around the country, Farber is a senior-level leadership coach and consultant who has worked with and spoken to a wide variety of public and private organizations in virtually every arena, from the tech sector to financial services, manufacturing, health care, hospitality, entertainment, retail, and even the US government.

In 1989, after having run his own financial services company, Farber devoted his professional life to the field of leadership development and has been at it ever since. He was director of service programs at TMI, an international training consultancy, and then worked for 6 years as Vice President and Official Mouthpiece (that’s what it said on his business card) of The Tom Peters Company. In 2000, Farber established his own company, Extreme Leadership, Inc, where he is president and CEO. Steve delivers a leadership and mentoring session for G5 Leadership titled, Greater Than Yourself.

Marshall Goldsmith

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is a world authority in helping successful leaders get even better – by achieving positive, lasting change in behavior: for themselves, their people and their teams. Marshall is the million-selling author of many books including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. His latest book, MOJO, is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, translated into 14 languages.

In November 2009 Dr. Goldsmith was recognized as one of the fifteen most influential business thinkers in the world in the bi-annual study sponsored by The London Times and Forbes. The American Management Association named Marshall as one of 50 great thinkers and leaders who have influenced the field of management over the past 80 years. Major business press acknowledgments include: BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Economist (UK) and Fast Company, among others.

Dr. Goldsmith’s Ph.D. is from UCLA where he has been named one of the 75 great alumni of the last 75 years. He teaches executive education at Dartmouth’s Tuck School and frequently speaks at leading business schools. He served on the Board of the Peter Drucker Foundation for ten years. He has been a volunteer teacher for US Army Generals, Navy Admirals, Girl Scout executives, International and American Red Cross leaders where he was a National Volunteer of the Year.

Dave Logan

David Logan studies how people communicate within a company -- and how to harness our natural gifts to make change within organizations. He looks at emerging patterns of corporate leadership, organizational transformation, generational differences in the workplace, and team building for high-potential managers and executives.

Much of Logan's work is derived from a ten-year study of over 24,000 people published at Tribal Leadership (2008), which shows how organizational culture evolves over time and how leaders can nudge it forward. Dave teaches management and leadership in the USC Executive MBA, and is also on the faculty at the International Centre for Leadership in Finance (ICLIF), endowed by the former prime minister of Malaysia, and on the Foundation for Medical Excellence in Portland.

From 2001-2004, he served as Associate Dean of Executive Education at USC. During that time, he started the Master of Medical Management (MMM), a business degree for midcareer medical doctors. He also initiated new executive education programs (often, in concert with the USC School of Policy, Planning and Development) with organizations as diverse as the Sierra Health Foundation, Northrop Grumman, and the City of Los Angeles. Logan is co-author of four books including Tribal Leadership and The Three Laws of Performance.

David Marcum

David Marcum is a leading expert on sales and negotiation, and has written two books on communication and leadership. His first two books are published by Simon & Schuster (egonomics) and Wiley (businessThink) in 24 languages and over 50 countries.

Marcum’s writing, speaking and business ideas have received acclaim from Stephen Covey, Ram Charan, Marshall Goldsmith, Harvard Business School, Thunderbird, and embraced by such client organizations as GE, Accenture, Baptist Health Care, Microsoft, Cox Communications, American Express, and State Farm.

Dave’s global expertise is in complex sales and business leadership. His work has been featured by CBS MarketWatch, The Dallas Morning News, The Arizona Republic, The Irish Times, BusinessWeek, U.S. News and World Report, and Portfolio.

Dave delivers 3 unique sessions for G5 Leadership: the difficult conversations workshop Cool Under Pressure, a team collaboration workshop titled Best Idea Wins, and the forthcoming negotiation workshop, Agreed.

Scott Page

Scott Page is a common name (well, less common than Steven Smith), so you might be wondering if I am the Scott Page that you know, used to know, or might want to know. Other Scott Page's lead fascinating fulfilling lives as well. This Scott Page grew up in Yankee Springs, Michigan on Gun Lake, pumped gas and dipped ice cream cones at Page's Resort. This Scott Page used to have really big hair, so big in fact that during his fourth grade picture session the photographer found a six inch stick caught in his 'fro from recess.

This Scott Page attended Middleville-Thornapple Kellogg High School played basketball, sang poorly in musicals, wrote for the school paper (only to get punished for an unfortunate cartoon regarding the school administration), and got rid of the politically offensive "slave day" only to see it resurrected a year later.

This Scott Page was an undergrad at Michigan, majored in math, led walking tours, and was elected MSA president. This Scott Page taught math at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, dressed as a box of Junior Mints for Madison's annual Halloween party, helped unionize the teaching assistants and failed to win an intramural basketball championship. This Scott Page taught statistics and decision theory at Kellogg Graduate School of Management, finally won an intramural basketball championship (though not in the open division), and appeared on late night "you too can be a volunteer for Chicago public schools commercials". Scott is the author of The Difference (Princeton University Press). Scott delivers the G5 Leadership workshop on team collaboration and intellectual diversity titled, Diversability.

Tim Sanders

Tim was the Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo! and later their Leadership Coach. Prior to these senior positions Tim created and led the Yahoo! ValueLab, an in-house "think tank" which delivered futuristic insight on technology and human behavior. He was also an early member of Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner's broadcast.com, the most successful opening day IPO in history.

His first book, Love is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends is a New York Times and international business best seller, translated in a dozen languages. His follow up, The Likeability Factor explains the concept of emotional talent and the importance of creating an engaging experience. It was the basis for a PBS Special, produced by leading affiliate WQED.

His newest book, Saving the World at Work, examines the external relationship between a business, its people and society. It makes a strong business case for corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability initiatives being at the top of a company's strategic agenda. The book was named as one of the top 30 business books of 2008 by Executive Soundview.His work is frequently featured in the media, most recently in The New York Times, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and Fast Company. Tim attended Loyola Marymount University and studied in the graduate school of communications at the University of Arizona. Tim delivers a session for G5 Leadership on Emotional Intelligence titled, Emotional Talent.

Steven Smith

Smith has written two books on communication and leadership and is working on a third. His first two books are published by Simon & Schuster (egonomics) and Wiley (businessThink) in 24 languages and over 50 countries.

Smith’s writing, speaking and business ideas have received acclaim from Tom Peters, Ram Charan, Marshall Goldsmith, Harvard Business School, Thunderbird, and embraced by such client organizations as Hilton, Disney, Baptist Health Care, Microsoft, Cox Communications, American Express, and State Farm. With degrees in management, psychology and expertise in team collaboration and leadership, Microsoft Live Meeting featured Smith for two years as top leadership faculty. His work has been featured by CBS MarketWatch, The Dallas Morning News, The Arizona Republic, The Irish Times, BusinessWeek, U.S. News and World Report, and Portfolio.

Voted as one of the top 100 business thought-leaders in the country, his work has been adopted by several universities across the country as an example of what the real business world is about. Steve teaches 3 unique sessions for G5 Leadership: the emotional intelligence and talent workshop, Pure Confidence, an interpersonal communication workshop on candor, Listen Up, Speak Up, and the forthcoming change workshop, Shift. Steve is also working on his third book: Us: Why we matters more than me and how to bridge the gaps between us.

Bob Sutton

Robert Sutton is Professor of Management Science and Engineering in the Stanford Engineering School, where he is Co-director of the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization, an active researcher and cofounder in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and a cofounder and active member of the new “d.school,” a multi-disciplinary program that teaches and spreads design thinking. He is also an IDEO Fellow and a Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

He has published 8 books and edited volumes. He co-wrote The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Firms Turn Knowledge Into Action, which was selected as Best Management Book of 2000 by Management General. His book Weird Ideas That Work: 11 ½ Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation, was selected by the Harvard Business Review as one of the 10 best business books of the year. Sutton is also the New York Times bestselling author of The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, and Good Boss, Bad Boss.

Sutton’s research and opinions are often described in the press, including the New York Times, The Times (of London) , BusinessWeek, Financial Times, Fortune, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe, Business 2.0, Wired, Strategy & Leadership, San Francisco Chronicle, and San Jose Mercury. He has also been columnist for CIO Insight and a guest on numerous radio and television shows, including Bloomberg, BBC, PBS, NPR, Tech Nation, and CNN. Bob is delivering the management session, Good Boss, Bad Boss, for G5 Leadership this year.

William C. Taylor

Bill Taylor is a writer, a speaker, and entrepreneur who has shaped the global conversation about the best ways to compete, innovate, and succeed. As a cofounder and founding editor of Fast Company, Bill launched a magazine that won countless awards, and earned a passionate following among executives and entrepreneurs around the world. His book, Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win, was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, and was named a “Business Book of the Year” by The Economist and the Financial Times. His latest book, Practically Radical, is published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Bill wrote a regular business column (“Under New Management”) for the New York Times as well as a monthly column for London’s Guardian newspaper. He now writes a popular management blog for Harvard Business Review. He is an adjunct lecturer at Babson College and the co-author of three other books on strategy, leadership, and innovation. A graduate of Princeton University and the MIT Sloan School of Management, Bill lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts with his wife and two daughters. Bill is delivering a G5 Leadership session on innovation titled, Practically Radical.

Amy Edmondson

Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School. Edmondson’s research examines leadership, learning and innovation in teams and organizations, and has been published in numerous academic and managerial articles.  Her emphasis is on teaming – the activities that comprise collaborative work across boundaries – rather than on stable team structures. She is currently studying collaborative innovation in the context of the built environment, with a particular focus on projects developing eco-districts and sustainable cities.

Amy teaches MBA and Executive Education courses in leadership, team effectiveness, and organizational learning, and a doctoral course in field research methods. She has served on 26 doctoral committees and is the author of more than 25 Harvard Business School case studies, including cases on The Cleveland Clinic, General Motors Powertrain, Prudential Financial, Simmons Mattress Company, YUM brands, IDEO product design, Arup, and NASA's failed Columbia mission.  In 2003, the Academy of Management's Organizational Behavior Division selected Professor Edmondson for the Cummings Award for outstanding achievement in early mid-career, and in 2000 selected her article, "Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams," for its annual award for the best published paper in the field. 

Before her academic career, Edmondson was Director of Research at Pecos River Learning Centers, where she worked with founder and CEO Larry Wilson to design and implement organizational change programs in a variety of Fortune 100 companies. In the early 1980s, she worked as Chief Engineer for architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller, and her book, A Fuller Explanation, clarifies Fuller's mathematical contributions for anon-technical audience.

Edmondson received her PhD in organizational behavior, AM in psychology, and AB in engineering and design, all from Harvard University.

Scott Belsky

Scott Belsky is the founder and CEO of Behance, a company that develops products and services for creative industries. Behance's premier service is the Behance Network, the world's leading online platform for creative professionals. Hundreds of thousands of creative professionals use Behance.net to display their online portfolios on Behance as well as LinkedIn, AIGA, AdWeek, and other sites and exclusive curated galleries around the web. Users can also build their own custom online portfolios with Behance's ProSite service.

Top creative companies around the world use Behance to post jobs and find talent. Millions of creative enthusiasts visit Behance sites every month to watch and follow the latest and greatest work by creative professionals across industries.

Scott is also the author of the national bestselling book Making Ideas Happen (Portfolio Imprint, Penguin Books). Through his work at Behance, Scott has become an advocate for technology and community initiatives that empower the careers of creative professionals and help businesses leverage the creative potential of their people. He has worked with leading media and Fortune 500 companies, including GE and Hewlett-Packard, and has traveled as far as the Kaospilots School in Aarhus, Denmark to talk about his findings. He has appeared in the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek, and has shared Behance's research in segments on ABC News, MSNBC, and with the United States State Department and CIA.

Scott has also guest lectured at Cornell University, Harvard University, VCU Brand Center, and UC Berkeley among other institutions, and serves as a small business expert on American Express' Open Forum website. In 2010, Scott was included in Fast Company's "100 Most Creative People in Business" list.

Scott chairs the Board of Reboot, serves on the Advisory Board of Cornell University's Entrepreneurship Program, is a board member for the Art Director's Club, and is a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. He attended Cornell University as an undergraduate and received his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Stephen M.R. Covey

Stephen M. R. Covey is co-founder and CEO of CoveyLink Worldwide. A sought-after and compelling keynote speaker and advisor on trust, leadership, ethics, and high performance, he speaks to audiences around the world. He is the author of The SPEED of Trust, a groundbreaking book that challenges our age-old assumption that trust is merely a soft, social virtue and instead demonstrates that trust is a hard-edged, economic driver—a learnable and measurable skill that makes organizations more profitable, people more promotable, and relationships more energizing.

He advocates that nothing is as fast as the speed of trust and that the ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust with all stakeholders is the critical leadership competency of the new global economy. Covey passionately delivers that message and is dedicated to enabling individuals and organizations to reap the dividends of high trust.

He is the former CEO of Covey Leadership Center, which, under his stewardship, became the largest leadership development company in the world. Covey personally led the strategy that propelled his father’s book, Dr. Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, to one of the two most influential business books of the 20th Century, according to CEO Magazine.

A Harvard MBA, Covey has gained considerable respect and influence with executives and leaders of Fortune 500 companies as well as with mid- and small-sized private sector and public sector organizations he’s consulted.

David Ulrich

Dave Ulrich is a Professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. He studies how organizations build capabilities of leadership, speed, learning, accountability, and talent through leveraging human resources.  He has helped generate award winning data bases that assess alignment between strategies, organization capabilities, HR practices, HR competencies, and customer and investor results.

He has published over 175 articles and book chapters and 23 bestselling and highly-acclaimed books including The Why of Work, Why the Bottom Line Isn’t and The Boundaryless Organization.

Dave's honors include:

  • Nobels Colloquia Prize for Leadership on Business and Economic Thinking
  • Ranked #1 most influential international thought leader in HR by HR Magazine
  • Ranked #1 most influential person in HR by HR Magazine
  • Dyer Distinguished Alumni Award from Brigham Young University, Marriott School of Management
  • Named by Fast Company as one of the 10 most innovative and creative thinkers of 2005
  • Ranked #1 management educator and guru by Business Week
  • Listed in Forbes as one of the “world’s top five” business coaches.

Erik Wahl

His consulting firm, The Wahl Group, challenges organizations to implement breakthrough thinking techniques to accomplish extraordinary results.

Erik’s unique understanding of vision traces back to his experience as an artist. Erik earned his bachelor's degree in Business Communication before embarking on an eight year career as a partner in a corporate firm. After first working in the business world and playing with his art; Erik now PLAYS in the business world by WORKING with his art. Erik’s sought after artwork can be seen hanging in executive offices around the world. And as one of the country’s top platform speakers, Erik shares his powerful message with audiences from coast to coast.

Carol Roth

Carol Roth is a business strategist, deal maker and author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Entrepreneur Equation. Carol has worked with hundreds of companies, ranging from a single entrepreneur with an idea to Fortune 500 businesses, on all aspects of business and financial strategy. Collectively, she has helped her clients raise more than $1 billion in capital, complete $750+ million in mergers and acquisitions, secure high-profile licensing and partnership deals, brand loyalty programs and more.

Ms. Roth puts her vast experience with the “good, bad and ugly of business” to work on a daily basis. She has over 16 years of business advisory experience, which began at investment banking firm Montgomery Securities in San Francisco (currently Banc of America Securities), where she rapidly rose internally to become one of the youngest officers of the company by age 25.

She is known for her significant knowledge base, can-do attitude, extreme efficiency, client dedication, frank opinions and “colorful” vocabulary. Her experience has encompassed a wide variety of products and services, including initial public offerings (IPOs), secondary offerings, private equity placements, private debt placements, buy-side M&A, sell-side M&A, LBOs/MBOs, recapitalizations, valuations, fairness opinions, licensing, marketing services, franchise work, start-up advisory and general strategic advisory work.

Ms. Roth holds a B.S. Degree from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude. She has coined a number of terms and phrases ranging from “Cirque-du-So-Lame” (something that is beyond pathetic and pitiful) to “jobbie” (a hobby disguised as a job, career or business) to "business beer goggling". 

Carol is also a frequent radio, television and print media contributor on the topics of business and entrepreneurship, appearing on Fox News, MSNBC, Fox Business, WGN TV Chicago, among others. Additionally, Carol’s Unsolicited Business Advice blog at CarolRoth.com was recently named as one of the Top 10 small business blogs online and she is a contributing blogger to outlets like The Huffington Post and Crain’s Chicago Business/Enterprise City.

Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. Previously, he was the chief evangelist of Apple. Kawasaki is the author of ten New York Times bestselling books including Enchantment, Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Nancy Duarte

Nancy Duarte is a communication expert who has been featured in Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, Wired, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times and on CNN. Her firm, Duarte, Inc., is the global leader behind some of the most influential visual messages in business and culture and has created more than a quarter of a million presentations. As a persuasion specialist, she cracked the code for effectively incorporating story patterns into business communications. Resonate, her latest book, spent nearly a year on Amazon’s top 100 business book bestsellers list.

Duarte, Inc. is the largest design firm in Silicon Valley, as well as one of the top woman-owned businesses in the area. Nancy has won several prestigious awards for communications and entrepreneurship and was recently honored in Watermark’s “Women Who Have Made Their Mark 2011” ceremony. She has been a speaker at a number of Fortune 500 companies and counts many more among her firm’s clientele. She also speaks at business schools and teaches classes at Stanford University several times a year.

Nancy has 20 years of experience working with global companies and thought leaders, and she has influenced how the world perceives some of the most important brands and entities, including Apple, Cisco, Facebook, GE, Google, HP, TED, Twitter, and the World Bank. She is the author of two award-winning books. Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences identifies the hidden story structures inherent in great communication, and it spent more than 300 days on Amazon’s top 100 business book bestsellers list. Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations teaches readers to think visually and has been translated into eight languages.

Joseph Grenny

Joseph Grenny has consulted with thousands of leaders on every major continent from the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies to the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. Over the past twenty years, he has advised CEOs and senior executives on more than a dozen major change initiatives. Joseph was formerly president of California Computer Corporation and an executive for the Covey Leadership Center.

Joseph is coauthor and contributor to eight books, including three New York Times bestsellers, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking when Stakes are High and Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior. An expert in topics ranging from leadership and interpersonal communication to organizational change and effectiveness, Joseph has been cited in dozens of newspapers including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. He has also appeared on more than one hundred radio and television programs including CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, and the Today Show.

Susan Scott

Susan Scott is a bestselling author, sought-after Fortune 100 public speaker and renowned leadership development architect. Susan founded Fierce, Inc. in 2001 after 13 years leading CEO think tanks, more than 10,000 hours of conversations with senior executives, and one epiphany: While no single conversation is guaranteed to change the trajectory of a career, a business, or a life—any conversation can.

In 2002, Susan decided to share her insights in a book. The result was the award-winning Fierce Conversations. Published in four countries, it was recognized on The Wall Street Journal and United Press International bestseller lists and named one of USA TODAY'S top 40 business books of 2002.

While working on sustainability with her clients, Susan had another “a-ha” moment. She realized many of the “best” practices in organizations were continuously getting in the way of success; yet, surprisingly, they remained unquestioned. This led to her second book, Fierce Leadership. Published in 2009, it was recognized on The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times bestseller lists and was one of USA TODAY'S top 40 business books of 2009.