Heather McGowan
Future of Work Strategist
Future of Work · Adaptation · Continuous Learning
Speaking Fee
Fee on request
Based In
United States
Signature Topic
Future of Work
Format
Keynote
About Heather
Heather McGowan is a future of work strategist and two-time bestselling author who works on a single question: what has to change about how organizations develop people when the half-life of a specific skill keeps shortening. Her answer, and the reason the material lands with executives, is that the unit of value has moved from what an employee already knows to how quickly they can learn something else.
She is the coauthor of The Adaptation Advantage, written with Chris Shipley and published in 2020 with a foreword by Thomas Friedman, who has described her as the oasis on questions about the future of work. Forbes has named her among its top futurists, and Inc. has listed her among its top management and leadership experts. LinkedIn ranked her its number one global voice for education in 2017.
Her audiences run from startups and government bodies to publicly traded multinationals, including Google, JPMorgan Chase, Accenture, Mastercard, FedEx, AT&T, and Kaiser Permanente. She holds an MBA from Babson College and came to the field through industrial design, alongside academic roles including at Swinburne University.
The design background shows in the presentation itself. She is known for research-dense graphic frameworks that make an abstract argument legible in a single slide, which is a meaningful difference in a category where most futurist content is either anecdote or projection with nothing underneath it.
Her framing of artificial intelligence is deliberately about workforce structure rather than about the technology. The organizational questions, which roles change, how people are redeployed, what learning infrastructure has to exist for that to be possible, are harder and slower than the technical questions, and that is where her material concentrates.
Keynote Topics
The Adaptation Advantage
Leading Through Continuous Change
AI and the Restructuring of Work
Building a Learning Organization
The Future of Talent and Workforce Development
Best For
- Executive leadership and strategy offsites
- HR and workforce development conferences
- Future of work and innovation summits
- Higher education and workforce policy events
- Association annual meetings
Booking Heather McGowan: Frequently Asked Questions
What is Heather McGowan's speaking fee?
Heather McGowan's fee is not published and is quoted per event. Fees are driven by event date, location and travel, session length, and whether the booking includes an executive strategy session or workshop in addition to the keynote. Submit an inquiry with those details to receive a current quote and availability.
What is The Adaptation Advantage about?
The Adaptation Advantage, coauthored with Chris Shipley and published in 2020, argues that as the useful life of any specific skill shortens, the unit of value in an organization shifts from what an employee already knows to how fast they can learn something new. Thomas Friedman wrote the foreword.
How does she approach AI in her keynotes?
Heather McGowan frames artificial intelligence as a workforce structure question rather than a technology question. Her material concentrates on which roles change, how people are redeployed, and what learning infrastructure has to exist for redeployment to be possible, on the grounds that those organizational problems are harder and slower to solve than the technical ones.
What kind of audience is the best fit?
Executive leadership teams, HR and workforce development audiences, and strategy offsites are the strongest fit, because the material asks an organization to change how it develops and redeploys people. Her clients include Google, JPMorgan Chase, Accenture, Mastercard, FedEx, AT&T, and Kaiser Permanente, alongside government bodies and universities.
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Heather McGowan
Future of Work Strategist
Fee on request
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