Dan Pontefract is an award-winning author and leadership strategist who helps organizations and leaders improve overall performance.
Dan Pontefract is a renowned leadership strategist, award-winning author, and keynote speaker with over two decades of experience helping organizations and leaders improve overall performance.
He has presented at four TED events and earned multiple industry awards, including Thinkers50 Radar, HR Weeklyโs 100 Most Influential People in HR, PeopleHumโs Top 200 Thought Leaders to Follow, and Inc. Magazineโs Top 100 Leadership Speakers.
Dan has written five best-selling books including his most recentโthe Gold Medal Winner of the Axiom Business Book Awards, โWork-Life Bloomโโand he also writes for Forbes and Harvard Business Review.
Dan Pontefract is a renowned leadership strategist, author, and keynote speaker with over two decades of experience in senior executive roles at companies such as SAP, TELUS, and Business Objects. Since then, he has worked with organizations worldwide, including Salesforce, Amgen, the State of Tennessee, Nestlรฉ, Canada Post, Autodesk, BMO, the Government of Canada, Manulife, Nutrien, and the City of Toronto, among others.
As an award-winning and best-selling author, Dan has written five books: WORK-LIFE BLOOM, LEAD. CARE. WIN., OPEN TO THINK, THE PURPOSE EFFECT, and FLAT ARMY. Dan also writes for Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and other outlets.
Dan is a renowned keynote speaker who has presented at four TED events and has delivered over 600 keynotes . He is an adjunct professor at the University of Victoriaโs Gustavson School of Business and has received over 25 industry, individual, and book awards.
Danโs career is interwoven with corporate and academic experience, coupled with an MBA, B.Ed, and multiple industry certifications and awards. Notably, Dan is listed on the Thinkers50 Radar, HR Weeklyโs 100 Most Influential People in HR, PeopleHumโs Top 200 Thought Leaders to Follow, and Inc. Magazineโs Top 100 Leadership Speakers.
Dan Pontefract
Leadership Strategist, Culture Change Expert, Author, Speaker
Dan Pontefract is a renowned leadership strategist, author, and keynote speaker with over two decades of experience in senior executive roles at companies such as SAP, TELUS, and Business Objects. In these roles, he focused on corporate culture change, leadership development, employee experience, and overall performance improvement. Since then, he has worked with organizations worldwide, including Salesforce, Virgin Media O2, Amgen, the State of Tennessee, Nestlรฉ, Canada Post, Autodesk, BMO, the Government of Canada, Manulife, Nutrien, and the City of Toronto, among others. Dan has firsthand experience in turning leaders and corporate cultures into a competitive advantage, and he believes that the future of work is now.
As an award-winning and best-selling author, Dan has written five books: WORK-LIFE BLOOM, LEAD. CARE. WIN., OPEN TO THINK, THE PURPOSE EFFECT, and FLAT ARMY. His third book, OPEN TO THINK, won the 2019 getAbstract International Book of the Year. His fourth LEAD. CARE. WIN. won the 2022 Nautilus Awards Silver Medal for Leadership. His fifth book, WORK-LIFE BLOOM, won the 2024 Axiom Business Book Awards Gold Medal for Leadership. Dan also writes for Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and other outlets.
Dan is a renowned keynote speaker who has presented at four TED events and delivers approximately 50 keynotes annually. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Victoriaโs Gustavson School of Business and has received over 25 industry, individual, and book awards. Furthermore, Dan hosts the popular Leadership NOW series, where he interviews famous thinkers, authors, CEOs, and other incredible leaders. Through these interviews, he seeks to understand what makes leadership and people better.
Before leaving the world of full-time gigs in 2018, Dan served as Chief Envisioner and Chief Learning Officer at TELUS, a Canadian telecommunications company with 50,000 global employees and over $14 billion in revenue. While at TELUS, he launched the Transformation Office, the TELUS MBA, and the TELUS Leadership Philosophy, all of which helped increase the companyโs employee engagement to nearly 90%.
Prior to his ten years at TELUS, Dan held senior executive positions for 12 years with SAP, Business Objects, Crystal Decisions, and the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). Danโs career is interwoven with corporate and academic experience, coupled with an MBA, B.Ed, and multiple industry certifications and awards. Notably, Dan is listed on the Thinkers50 Radar, HR Weeklyโs 100 Most Influential People in HR, PeopleHumโs Top 200 Thought Leaders to Follow, and Inc. Magazineโs Top 100 Leadership Speakers.
In 2010, Dan was acknowledged by CLO as a Vanguard Award winner. In addition, he was a 2-time winner by the Corporate University Best in Class Awards of the Leader of the Year in 2010 and 2011. In 2012, SkillSoft awarded Dan the โLearning Leader of the Yearโ for his work at TELUS, and CLO Magazine also bestowed the Learning in Practice
Innovation Award. He is also the recipient of the 2012 Brandon-Hall Gold Award in Strategy & Governance. In 2015, TELUS became a 10-time winner of the prestigious ATD BEST award under his leadership and was the first-ever recipient of the ATD Hall of Fame distinction.
Dan and his wife, Denise, have three children, two dogs and two cats and live in Victoria, Canada.
Dan Pontefract
A/V and Other Requirements for Keynote Speaking Engagements
If your A/V team has questions any of Danโs requirements, please feel free to put us in touch.
Weโre happy to help. Please reach out to speak@danpontefract.com
Keynote Speaking Intro Script
Feel free to use this script as is or tailor as you see fit.
โDan, what music do you want to come onto the stage with?โ Iโm asked that a lot. Here are three ridiculously good tracks that you might choose to use…
Courage (for Hugh MacLennan) by The Tragically Hip
Elevation (Influx Remix) by U2
Come On by Mondo Cozmo
By choice or out of necessity, the manner in which many workers make a living is undergoing a fundamental change. And to make a living is to accept that there is a congenital bond between work and life, between what people do and how they live.
The problem? Work-life balance is not the answer. The rising rate of employee burnout is a sign. In this talk, Dan Pontefract provides an assessment of the current state of work and life, offering an alternative. We must create the conditions to bloom in both work and life, not balance. After all, people bring their work into their lives and their lives into their work; an improved work-life model is vital.
Dan will introduce a new, if not more benevolent work-life philosophy. Itโs time for leaders to understand what it means to adopt a Work-Life Bloom mindset. Yes, people at all levels of the organization need to bloom not balance. Find out how itโs done.
OUTCOMES:
There are only two kinds of leadership in this world: leading self and leading others. Itโs that simple, only two. Your ultimate goal is to master and deliver on them both. Now, more than ever, how you lead yourself and others might become the defining moment of your career. Perhaps even your life.
There are nine key & critical leadership lessons that make up a โLead. Care. Win.โ leader. Considerate and engaging leadersโones who fully understand the critical importance of crafting meaningful, respectful relationshipsโare people who know how to truly reach and build bonds with their team members with these nine lessons.
Every human interaction is crucial. Every exchange can be mutually beneficial. The bottom line is that when you care enough to champion others, the workplace becomes happily engaged and your organization benefits in more ways than one. Do you care?
OUTCOMES:
The bottom line is that when you care enough to champion others, the workplace becomes happily engaged and your organization benefits in more ways than one.
Having a sense of purpose has become table stakes for many employees at work. Equally important, todayโs organizations are being pressured to begin exhibiting purpose in their operating practices. If there is a positive interconnection between both, the benefits will be felt by all stakeholders. Including you!
Dan Pontefract refers to this balanced state of purpose as the โsweet spot.โ The alignment of purpose between self, role and organization is critically important for both employees and leaders.
The more a leader can assist team members to understand this alignment of purpose, the quicker everyone will recognize how important the โsweet spotโ is to an engaging and fulfilling life and place of work. The quicker an employee defines, develops and decides their purposeโalongside how bought in they are to the organizationโs purposeโthe more engaged and innovative they will be in their role โฆ and in life.
OUTCOMES:
Leaders in any organization seeking to improve productivity and business results must first start with their own operating culture.
To improve organizational culture is to build up and unleash behaviours that permit employees to connect and collaborate with one another effortlessly. An employee only becomes engaged when the culture is open, transparent, communicative, collaborative, and trustworthy. These are just some of the behaviours that must define how an organization operates.
Dan Pontefract implores organizations to rethink their workplace culture by instituting systemic-wide methods that encourage people to work together versus operating in silos or competitively. The engagement of employees occurs as a result of how they feel about and interact with the organizationโs culture.
There is a way and Dan can show you how to turn your culture into a collaborative, competitive advantage.
OUTCOMES:
There is a crisis brewing. We have lost the ability to think critically, to be creative, and to contemplate ideas of the unknown. Itโs becoming a calamity.
Distractions, social media, technology, and an incessant demand for short-term results over long-term planning are the big winners. In order to mitigate such calamities including being โcrazy busyโ and the pressure to โdo more with less,โ individuals must return to a state of symmetry between the three components of productive thought: dreaming, deciding and doing.
In this talk, Dan Pontefract introduces tangible, actionable strategies to improve the way we think as organizations and individuals through the cyclical process of Creative, Critical, and Applied Thinking.
To become an Open Thinker, one must understand the relationship between reflection and action, and how it can negatively or positively affect an outcome. It is time to Dream, Decide, Do, and Repeat.
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