Keynote Speaker

Erica is on a mission to advise businesses and organizations like yours to unleash innovation across generations, become masters of connectional intelligence, “spar” in order to reach your goals more quickly, and prepare your global workforce for the future. Through her keynote speeches and interactive presentations she’ll do just that.

Equal parts business strategist, motivational speaker and people expert, her speaking style is personal, fresh, humor-laden and energetic. Erica is a gifted presenter who is able to read a room, customize her approach and style accordingly, and draw audiences in with her storytelling and pragmatic solutions to your organization’s most pressing challenges, setting her apart from anyone else you’ve heard.

Prior to each speaking engagement Erica’s team conducts detailed research in order to ensure event outcomes are achieved and tailored to your audience. Speaking engagements include: pre-event conference call, confidential data review, and one page take-home handout. Upon request, Erica does not charge more than her regular keynote fee to do a breakout, moderate a panel or emcee a session provided she can return home same day. Upon request, Erica can provide an article for a client's trade publication, newsletter or website following the event.

Erica has presented to corporations, universities, technologists, entrepreneurs, government agencies, and many other groups. Private corporate speaking has included places like World Economic Forum at Davos, FedEx, The White House Project, Navigant, Morgan Stanley, WICT, Harvard, MIT, The Wharton School, Bakers law firm and Rotman School of Management.

Book Erica to Speak

Signature Keynotes

:: Unleash Innovation with the Power of Connectional Intelligence™

Coined by globally recognized leadership expert Erica Dhawan, Connectional intelligence™ (CxQ) is ability to build and realize value from networks of relationships, to harness units of knowledge and reuse them to innovate, to convene communities, to marshal a variety of resources for breakthrough results. In our new world of an embedded digital, global infrastructure that connects all of our lives, the power of connectional intelligence holds exponential, and previously untapped, potential for breakthroughs in ways we can barely begin to imagine in the workplace. To harness CxQ, we have to work with the youngest members of our workforce (millennials) differently – because they are ahead of the rest of us in harnessing connective capacity.

In this session, Erica Dhawan shares insights into how to bring out the connectional intelligence of your employees and utilize the talents that Gen-Yers, Gen-Xers & Baby-boomers all bring to the table. This is a powerful, interactive presentation for leaders who seek to breakthrough generational friction, drive innovation and transform the untapped connectional intelligence of your entire workforce.

Learning Objectives:

Understand the resources each generation brings to the workplace
Decode the connectional capacity of each generation and use that knowledge to significantly improve innovation
Transform workforce conflicts into growth points
Create processes designed to maximize the ability to connect people, ideas and resources for breakthrough results

Ideal for: Managers, multi-generational teams, marketing and communication departments, seminars, workshops, dealer events

:: Build a Culture of Sparring™

Traditional mentoring takes a top-down approach — older people give advice, younger people zip their lips and take notes. But old models don’t work in our multi-generational, global workforce.

Innovation Sparring Zones™ are zones of power free collaboration that become optimally innovative, responsive, and flexible by taking full advantage of a groups collective experience and of their diverging viewpoints and abilities. In Sparring Zones, CEOs, middle managers and millennials must all co-lead, allowing everyone to be heard and for multi-generational ideas to flourish. It is a launching pad that creates the foundation needed to unleash productive conflict across diverse teams and ideas.

Build a Culture of Sparring™ will teach participants sparring, a cross-generational style of coaching that allows Baby-boomers, Gen-Xers & Gen-Yers to provoke each other, with mutual respect & encouragement. The result? Friction-free communication, an open flow of ideas and profitable collaboration. This session provides new tools for a new era of collaboration and generational conflict. By adopting this sparring approach, leaders send powerful messages to employees about each individual employee’s ability to add value to the company and as a result employees are more likely to stay at the company, increase the bottom line, and drive results.

Learning Objectives:

Learn to spar with your team in a way that brings results, more ideas, and greater execution
Learn what questions to ask, which suggestions to make and how to adapt their styles to the styles of those on their team
Practice a mini sparring session and understand what it takes to become a sparring coach in your company

As a participant in this interactive presentation you will learn how to leverage Connectional Intelligence and create Sparring Cultures in your workforce, therefore creating superior results more quickly.

Ideal for: executive retreats, corporate events, professional development events

:: Selling Across Generations: How to Brand Effectively for the Future

Every generation has temperaments and habits and experiences that set them apart from the generations before them. Not understanding these differences can negatively impact the success of your marketing campaigns and destroy your sales.

Fortunately, Erica is an expert at teaching people how to sell across generations.

In this presentation she’ll share:

How to take one product and make it as appealing to a Gen-Yer as it is to a Baby-boomer
The selling strategies that are most effective across generations and the best way to tap into each one without sinking your entire marketing budget
Sales scripts that work and where to use them
Compelling case studies of what works and what doesn’t so you know what you should and shouldn’t be doing to reach your customers

If you are in the business of selling products and services, this is a presentation you’ll want at the top of your dance card.

Ideal for: sales teams, marketing departments, workshops and trainings, recruiting managers

:: Preparing for the Global Workforce

When you pass someone in the hallway at work or you sit across from someone in a strategy meeting you are not just crossing paths with someone of a different age or rank, you are crossing paths with someone whose beliefs, ideas, goals and world view are far different from yours due to the culture they came from and the generation into which they were born. Failing to recognize these differences and use them to your and each employees’ advantage will make attracting and retaining top talent a significant challenge.

Erica’s research has extended to the generations in a number of specific countries around the world, including India. Drawing on this experience she is uniquely qualified to develop a customized session, focusing on the areas of the world that are most relevant to your business.

By the end of this presentation you’ll be confident in your ability to identify and hire top talent all over the world, to address which talent practices make sense today, to harness the use of collaborative technologies globally and to build a unified cultural brand across the world.

Ideal for: international conferences, corporate events, talent recruiting events, dealer client events

:: Leading as a WOMAN: Intuition, Empathy, & Creativity at Work

Intuition, empathy & divine creativity aren’t qualities we normally associate with ‘leadership’. But we should. There’s a gap in the corporate world that only women can fill — and it’s our responsibility to prove that leadership has nothing to do with aggression or ruthless competition. A rousing keynote for gatherings of women at any level who want to live & lead on their own terms.

Ideal for: women’s events, women’s history month engagements, women’s professional development seminars and conferences, and commencements

VIDEOS:

Testimonials

We received extremely positive feedback on Erica’s keynote presentation on Millennials. She delivered an informative, compelling session and captivated the audience with her energetic, dynamic delivery. Thank you for an outstanding presentation!

- Tannis Redenkopp, Next Generation Leadership Summit, Rotman School of Management

Erica was one of the best speakers we've had. Her message was of great value to our teams at FedEx who ranged from Gen Y to Traditionalists! We left with specific actions we could use right away to drive more innovation across our teams.

- Mary Haley, Senior Advisor, FedEx Corporation

Erica is an extremely passionate & inspirational speaker. I would recommend her to any organization that is looking to take their young employees and leaders to the next level — and provide them with tools to be truly successful.

- Jo-Ann Tan, Marketing Manager, Acumen Fund

Erica deserves major credit for making everyone feel welcome at her workshop, and for throwing a great deal of fun into the mix (Bollywood Dance, anyone?) I’ve gained confidence and learned more about myself — and nearly a week later, I’m still inspired by Erica. If you want to be thoroughly inspired, this is the woman you want.

- Vanessa Lewis, Founder | Dorchestors Daughter Publishing

We hired Erica to help move our Institute to the ‘next level’, and her support helped us define our core mission, clarify key opportunities for profitable growth, and develop a powerful strategic retreat. Thanks, Erica, for your great work!

- Otto Scharmer, Founder | Presencing Institute.

Erica is very gifted teacher, learner and leader. I recommend her enthusiastically to any organization that requires learning, teaching, and leadership.

- Marshall Ganz, Professor | Harvard University

Erica's session on coaching made our Strong Women Strong Girls conference a homerun! Everyone today is thirsty for insight into how to connect and empower the next generation of young women — and Erica delivers real-life training, clarity, and the tools to make it happen.

- Lindsey Hyde, Founder | Strong Women Strong Girls

Erica's Innovation is an Art workshop was totally engaging and you could tell from the conversation, the comments, how long people stayed and their enthusiasm around the work that it was a huge success! Erica has a natural ability to make everyone feel at ease and dive into the work, and then learn from each other through a sharing of experience.

- Michelle Stanners, Founder of Cultural Agents Initiative | Harvard University

Erica's Business as a Movement workshop at MIT was excellent. Her preparation really was apparent, and I benefited by participating in the smaller and larger group discussions. My biggest takeaway was how to use questions and probe to find common ground for programs and projects I am involved in, and to help in gaining commitment from other parties — a very useful toolbelt addition for anyone in business.

- Neheet Trivedi, MIT Sloan MBA student | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

It was a great pleasure to have been a part of the Building Relationships workshop facilitated by Erica Dhawan. She taught us the keys steps to building relationships and designing effective teams in a way that is seamless and effortless. Her hands-on approach allowed me to learn the importance of establishing trust in professional relationships. Erica is a true leader who speaks to you, not at you. Her drive and passion inspires me to seek opportunities to collaborate with colleagues and build effective teams.

- Alyssa Cooke, Young Black Women’s Society

Charisma, versatility, and charm make Erica’s Bollywood dance workshop a can-do for people of all ages and abilities! Before you know it, total strangers are engaged in a group dance like nothing you have experienced before.

- Rachel Keyser, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center

Erica's Navigating your Career workshop was game-changing. Erica helped me see the structures that had been blocking me, which I had not even realized. The strength of her training was that she posed simple yet profound questions, focused on the individual. I ran to my desk after those sessions, energized to work through the questions that she had posed. Within a one-hour training and two-hour homework session, I had re-connected with my calling and my fears had receded in the face of the resolve I now felt to pursue my path.

- Voop de Vulpierres, Harvard University

Erica delivered one of the best workshops I have ever attended, bar none. Erica’s words & moves inspired me to accomplish more than I ever expected. I jump-started a project I had been wanting to get to for some time, and came home with an action plan for moving my work forward. Extraordinary.

- Martha Thayer, Entrepreneur

Previous Speaking Experience

· World Economic Forum, Leadership Models Across Generations - Davos, Switzerland

· Harvard's Ignite Innovation Conference

· Rotman School of Management, Keynote: Millennials, The Next Generation of Leadership Symposium

· Women in Cable & Telecom Annual 2012 Conference, So You Think You Want a Revolution?

· POWER Women Conference, Managing Across Generational Teams

· FedEx – Managing Across Generations

· Levo League – Building Mentors & Sponsors to Change Your Life

· 85 Broads – Navigating Power & Politics

· The White House Project – Building Your Life Gameplan

· Morgan Stanley – Building Your Life Gameplan