Adam Markel
Adam Markel is a bestselling author, international keynote speaker, and business mentor who inspires organizations to discover the power of resilience.
Price range
- $25,000
Expert
- AI
- Change
- Corporate Culture
- Emotional Intelligence
- Employee Engagement
- Future
- Innovation
- Leadership
- Life Balance
- Management
- Mental Health
- Motivation
- Resilience
- Stress
- Wellness
Experience
- Law/Legal
Career
- 21 Years
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About
Adam Markel is a transformational business leader, workforce futurist, and resilience researcher who has spent over two decades guiding Fortune 500 companies and global enterprises through change, culture transformation and sustainable growth.As a seasoned C-suite executive, former commercial attorney and capability builder working with Fortune 50 companies like Citigroup, CVS Health and Home Depot, Adam brings real-world business acumen to every engagement. He built a successful multi-discipline law practice spanning nearly twenty years, giving him deep insight into high-stakes decision- making, risk management and strategic negotiations. His leadership extends to mentoring dozens of CEOs and senior executives globally on organizational development, culture creation and strategic resilience.A Wall Street Journal #1 bestselling author and Publishers Weekly bestseller, Adam has written influential books including Pivot, Change Proof and Re-Culture, essential reads for leaders navigating today’s volatile business landscape. The Huffington Post named him a top speakerto see.Adam’s keynotes and executive workshops seamlessly integrate proven business strategies, neuroscience research, and organizational psychology to drive measurable results.Adam’s powerful delivery style, combining strategic insight with compelling storytelling, creates transformative learning experiences that resonate from boardroom to front lines.As a TEDx speaker and host of The Change Proof Podcast, Adam shares cutting-edge strategies with business innovators worldwide. His messages have inspired tens of thousands of organizations to reimagine what’s possible when resilience becomes embedded in organizational DNA.Adam is Co-Founder & Chief Researcher at WORKWELL, where he leads research on workplace resilience and the future of work. His strategies help organizations become truly Change Proof, avoid burnout and turn uncertainty into competitive advantage.Adam’s leadership philosophy is informed by his executive experience and life-and-death lessons as an ocean first responder, where teamwork, rapid decision-making, and unwavering resilience were non-negotiable.Adam is grounded by his wife of over 30 years and their four children.
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Video Clips
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Topics
Adapt To Win – Unlocking the Power of Strategic Resilience to Lead Change and Fuel High Performance
The pace of disruption is now outpacing the pace of organizational adaptation — and the leaders who win are the ones who embed strategic resilience into the DNA of their culture. In this high-impact keynote, Adam Markel shows organizations how to move beyond reactive fire-drills and build a proactive capability for absorbing shocks, accelerating intelligent adaptation, and emerging stronger from every challenge. Drawing on insights from Re-Cultureand two decades of research, Adam illustrates exactly how high-performing organizations operationalize resilience as a strategic advantage — across leadership, team dynamics, and decision-making.Key Learning Objectives Include:● Understand the critical difference between operational resilience and strategic resilience — and why long-term success requires both.● Learn leadership practices proven to increase adaptability, psychological safety, and team-wide agility.● Gain frameworks to embed resilience into culture, strategy, and operations for consistent high performance during transformation.● Leave with a practical roadmap for building organizations that don’t just withstand change — they capitalize on it.This keynote gives your people a clear, repeatable blueprint for building systems, habits, and cultures that thrive in uncertainty. Attendees walk away equipped to lead with greater confidence, elevate team performance, and future-proof the business in a world where the onlyconstant is change.Resilience by Design – How to Future-Proof Teams & Thrive Through Uncertainty
Today’s workforce is under unprecedented pressure — rising expectations, constant change, and near-continuous transformation. Performance now requires more than skills; it requires Change Resilience — the ability to adapt, recover, and excel in real time. In this energizing keynote, Adam Markel delivers a powerful, research-backed approach to building resilient people and resilient cultures that perform at the highest levels without burning out.Through compelling stories and actionable tools, your organization will learn how to elevate well-being as a business strategy, reduce turnover, and create a culture where people consistently bring their best — because they have the capacity to do so.This talk is designed for leaders andindividual contributors alike, giving everyone a common language and a shared framework for sustainable, repeatable high performance.Key Learning Objectives Include:● Break through change resistance and empower teams to embrace innovation instead of fearing it.● Learn the four domains of resilience — mental, emotional, physical, and spirit-driven — and how they drive sustainable performance.● Discover practical strategies to increase energy, focus, and productivity withoutsacrificing health or engagement.● Reinforce a culture where well-being is viewed not as a perk, but as a performancemultiplier.This is the keynote that transforms how teams work, lead, and grow — not by doing more, but by becoming more resilient by design.The Change-Proof Advantage – How to Turn Adversity into Growth, Agility & Innovation
Change is no longer an event — it’s the environment. In this top-rated keynote, Adam Markel equips organizations with the proven strategies needed to embrace uncertainty, reduce burnout, and buildteams capable of sustained high performance in the face of nonstop change. Drawing from Change Proof and decades of leadership experience, Adam reveals how the world’s most adaptable organizations cultivate resilience across every level of the business — mental,emotional, physical, relational, and cultural. He shows leaders how to create a “Got Your Back” culture of trust and support that accelerates collaboration, innovation, and long-term success.Key Learning Objectives Include:● Foster innovation by creating conditions where creativity thrives — even inpressure-filled environments.● Identify and prevent burnout using practical tools your leaders and teams canimplement immediately.● Build individual and collective resilience to perform at a high level during continuous change.● Strengthen team cohesion, trust, and accountability through a “Got Your Back”cultural framework.● Drive consistent success with systems that create sustainable, repeatableperformance.This keynote transforms how organizations approach change — moving from reactive to proactive, from stressed to strong, and from disrupted to change-proof.Re-Culture: The Got Your Back Blueprint – Building Trust-Driven Teams That Attract, Retain, and Thrive
At a time when talent is scarce, burnout is rising, and engagement is declining, organizations need more than perks or policies — they need a culture that creates belonging, trust, and loyalty. In this transformative keynote, Adam Markel delivers the central message of his newbook Re-Culture: the most successful organizations are those that intentionally design a “Got Your Back” culture, where people feel supported, valued, and safe to perform at their highest level.Adam reveals a practical, evidence-based blueprint for building cultures that attract top talent, strengthen engagement, reduce turnover, and unlock innovation. These are the cultural foundations that turn organizations into talent magnets — and teams into communities that thrive.Key Learning Objectives Include:● Build resilience into your culture, enabling employees to navigate pressure and change with confidence.● Discover why trust and psychological safety are the ultimate differentiators intoday’s talent marketplace.● Learn how to significantly boost engagement through belonging, communication, and shared purpose.● Identify early signs of burnout and deploy systems for creating sustainable, high-performing teams.● Activate a culture where retention is the outcome — not the goal.This keynote is a culture-shaping experience that helps organizations create environments where people don’t just stay — they grow, contribute, and thrive.Turning AI Anxiety into Innovation – Building a Culture of Innovation & Future-Ready Workforce
AI is reshaping the world of work faster than most organizations can adapt — creatingboth unprecedented opportunities and very real fears. In this timely and forward-thinking keynote, Adam Markel helps leaders and teams turn AI anxiety into a catalyst for innovation, resilience, and competitive advantage.Adam demystifies AI’s impact on work, well-being, culture, and performance, offering ahuman-first framework for integrating AI in ways that enhance—not replace—humanpotential. Organizations leave with a roadmap for building adaptable, future-ready teams that use AI to reduce burnout, increase creativity, and strengthen productivity.Key Learning Objectives Include:● Clearly understand the role AI will play in workflows, leadership, employeeexperience, and cross-functional operations.● Learn how AI-enhanced processes can improve mental health, reduce stress,and create sustainable work-life balance.● Equip teams with tools to adapt faster, think more creatively, and embracetechnology with confidence.● Build resilience as a competitive edge during the accelerating pace oftechnological change.● Transform fear and uncertainty into growth, learning, and future-focusedinnovation.This keynote empowers organizations to build a workforce that doesn’t resist the future — but creates it.From Burnout to Breakthrough: Strategies for Protecting Profit, Performance & People
Burnout isn’t just a wellness issue — it’s a profitability crisis. Organizations lose an estimated $322 billion annually to burnout-related turnover, disengagement, and reduced productivity. Yet most leaders still treat burnout as an individual problem rather than what it truly is: a systemic, solvable business challenge with measurable ROI.In this transformative keynote, Adam Markel delivers the business case and the blueprint for burnout avoidance — equipping leaders with research-backed strategies that protect performance, reduce attrition, and unlock sustainable competitive advantage. Drawing from Re-Culture, Change Proof, and two decades of organizational resilience research, Adam reveals why the world’s highest-performing companies embed burnout prevention into their culture, operations, and leadership practices — and exactly how your organization can do the same.This is not a lecture on self-care. This is a strategic framework for building resilient, high-capacity teams that consistently outperform without burning out. Adam shows leaders how to identify early-stage burnout signals, implement tangible energy management systems, and create a “Got Your Back” culture where people feel supported, engaged, and equipped to thrive under pressure.Key Learning Objectives Include:- Understand the true cost of burnout — and the ROI of preventing it, including measurable impacts on retention, healthcare costs, productivity, and innovation.
- Learn the four domains of resilience that fuel sustainable performance: mental clarity, emotional regulation, physical energy, and purpose-driven motivation.
- Gain practical, immediately actionable tools for reducing team stress, managing workload intensity, and building recovery rhythms into daily operations.
- Discover how to build a “Got Your Back” culture that reduces isolation, strengthens trust, and creates environments where burnout is systematically avoided.
- Identify burnout warning signs before they escalate — and deploy early intervention strategies that protect both people and performance.
- Leave with a repeatable system for embedding burnout prevention into leadership development, team norms, and organizational design.
This is the keynote that turns burnout from an inevitable cost into a preventable risk — and resilience into your organization’s most powerful competitive advantage. -
Testimonials
7 people have recommended this speaker
“Thank you, Adam, for the tremendous message you gave our team today. As we head into some unprecedented times in our market, your message of resilience and grit couldn’t have been better timed. We couldn’t be happier. Thank you Adam, we appreciate you.”
“Adam is an amazing speaker who can keep the audience engaged all the time even in a virtual session. He goes beyond by sharing his unique resilience assessment tool which is a huge takeaway for everyone. We are super glad we decided to invite Adam to our event, he simply delivered great learnings in a true storytelling experience. Looking forward to having him again at one of our events”
“It was an absolute pleasure to have Adam on our program! He was wonderful! It was a very powerful message and presentation! We all loved him.”
“What a great talk from Adam Markel. Our 550 attendees jumped up with enthusiasm - they loved it! I personally got a lot of takeaways from this and we’re looking to schedule him with more groups. Great job, thanks, Adam.”
“Thank you so much. Adam was great and our clients kept talking about his message – so it really resonated!”
“We are 2 weeks post meeting and the energy remains high. People are speaking about the leadership meeting as transformative…that was our goal…notably your ending!!”
“His attention to detail and ability to tailor his messaging to our audience really came through in his keynote address. His energy was contagious, and our audience was eager to participate and learn from him. Adam gave the group a lot to think about as we define the next chapter for the Dunkin’ Operations Team.”