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David Houle      

Global Futurist & Strategist, Honorary President and Futurist of the Future Business School of China. Houle won two Emmys, a Peabody award and the Heartland award for "Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream"

David Houle is a futurist, thinker, and keynote speaker. He has keynoted numerous conferences across the country and internationally. In the last fourteen years, he has delivered 1200+ presentations and keynotes on 6 continents and 16 countries. He is regularly invited to speak at corporate management retreats. Houle won a Speaker of the Year award from Vistage International, the leading organization of CEOs in the world. He is often called the “CEO’s’ futurist,” having spoken to or advised 4,000+ CEOs and business owners in the past eleven years.

Houle spent more than 20 years in media and entertainment. He has worked at NBC and CBS and was part of the senior executive team that launched MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1, and CNN Headline News. Houle has won a number of awards. He won two Emmys as co-executive Producer for a nationally syndicated children’s program, “Energy Express.” He won the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award and the Heartland Award for Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream and was nominated for an Academy Award.

Houle writes a popular and respected newsletter, Evolutionshift.Substack.com. During 2010, Houle was a featured contributor on Oprah.com.

He has been speaking about the future for 11 years, and his influential first book, "The Shift Age," was published in 2007. His second book, "Shift Ed: A Call to Action for Transforming K-12 Education," written with Jeff Cobb, was published in March 2011. "The New Health Age: the Future of Health Care in America," co-authored with Jonathan Fleece, was published by Sourcebooks in January 2012 and became a #1 best seller on Amazon in the categories of Medicine and Future of Health Care.

“Entering the Shift Age” was published by Sourcebooks in January 2013. It is also a #1 Amazon best-seller in the category of Business Planning and Forecasting. Houle published the ebook “Is Privacy Dead: The Future of Privacy in the Digital Age” in November 2013. His sixth book, “Brand Shift: The Future of Brands and Marketing,” with co-author Owen Shapiro, was published in August 2014 and named one of the top five marketing books published worldwide in 2014.

In December 2015, he published “This Spaceship Earth” with co-author Tim Rumage. This book became the basis for Houle to found the global non-profit This Spaceship Earth, Inc. in April 2016. This non-profit aims to create “crew consciousness” as we face Climate Change.

In 2019, Houle published “Moving to a Finite Earth Economy-Crew Manual” written with Bob Leonard. This book answers the question: how can humanity successfully face climate change and do so by 2030?

In 2020, Houle published the first of a series of high-level, short books on the decade of the 2020s. This first book is “The 2020s: The Most Disruptive Decade in History”. This was followed by “2021: A Look Ahead – Acceleration / Collapse / Rebound," published on 1/1/21, and “The 2020s: A Decade of Cognitive Dissonance” in June 2021.

In December 2021, “The 2020s: The Golden Age of Design and Redesign,” co-authored with James Fathers, was published to great acclaim from the global design community. Shortly thereafter, “A Look Into 2022 – A Split-Screen Year.”

Houle has delivered speeches to scientists at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden CO, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Burning Man. He has delivered 5 TEDx talks in the last 10 years.

Houle is a Futurist in Residence and Guest Lecturer at the Ringling College of Art + Design in Sarasota, Florida, and the Honorary President and Futurist of the Future Business School of China. Houle has served as a futurist in residence and high-level strategic advisor to blabs, a new, 21st-century form of incubator/think tank, for more than a decade.

Speech Topics

The 2020s: The Most Disruptive Decade in History

An overview of the most disruptive decade in history. Why is this the most disruptive decade? What is going to happen between now and 2030? What are the major dynamics, the ascendant trends, and how will they change our realities. This decade is and will be one of the most important historic transitions in all of history. What was is fast giving way to what will be. This is Houle’s most popular keynote topic, based upon the book series that has already become a much discussed series about our collective future.

Trajectories of the Future

This high-level long-range presentation looks at the two trajectories now facing humanity today. Which one will we take, the long-future of 100,000-200,000 years or the short one of 100-200 years? The next few decades will determine this and what we do in the next few decades will determine which trajectory we will be on. This presentation looks at Climate, Intelligence, Population, Capitalism, and Consciousness and the unlimited potential on one trajectory and probably extinction with the other. This presentation is what you want if the goal is to provide your attendees with a mind-bending look as to what lies ahead for those alive today.

Age of Intelligence

We have entered the Age of Intelligence here in the 2020s. What will it look like? When will the tipping points occur? What can AI do now and what will it be able to do in the future? What can we do to insure a true and safe partnership between Technological Intelligence and Human Intelligence? Any new and significant technology always disrupts the existing reality. How will AI alter our reality 10,20,50 years out? This presentation offers insight to this and will leave the audience with expanded minds.

Is Privacy Dead? The Future of Privacy in the Digital Age

This presentation, based in part on Houle’s eBook of the same name, takes a new look at privacy today and in the future. After a quick look back at the history of privacy, Houle presents why we have lost so much of our privacy in the past decades and years and why those dynamics will continue to eviscerate personal privacy in the future. Incorporating a look at technological innovation, accelerating electronic connectedness, Big Data freedom versus convenience and the loss of the Concept of Place, this is a powerful presentation about one of the most important and topical subjects of our time.

The New Health Age

This presentation provides a large, contextual and conceptual understanding of the huge forces and changes that are and will completely transform the health care and medical landscape in America and around the world in the next ten years. This presentation is based upon the #1 Amazon best-seller of the same name. Houle has spoken to and been booked by numerous associations and health care companies, providing them with the vision and understanding of the huge changes that are inevitable. This is a presentation for any health care or medical meeting.

Brand Shift: The Future of Brands & Marketing

A brand new presentation for 2015! Based upon the just published and already highly acclaimed book of the same name, Houle first takes a quick look at the history of branding, then the current and future trends that are and will disrupt brand marketing in the years ahead. The presentation ends with concepts and prescriptions for the marketing of brands for the next decade. A high level and high-powered presentation for any marketing conference, corporation or entity concerned about the future of their brand.

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Entering The Shift Age

This is Houle’s most requested and most delivered speech, based upon the 2013 #1 Amazon best-seller in the category of business planning and forecasting. Futurist Houle identifies and explains the new age we have entered. He looks at the three forces of the Shift Age, the Five Contexts of the Shift Age and how they will affect us as individuals, business people and leaders. He takes a look at the future of generations, women, technology, energy, education, IP, big data and other topics and provides the audience with eye opening transformations dead ahead. The Shift Age is one of, if not the most, transformative and exciting times in human history. Houle leaves us with suggestions for how to prepare for and adapt to this new age. A big picture presentation that is pertinent for any group or organization. It can be customized for any industry or business sector.

Shift Ed: A Call to Action for Transforming K-12 Education.

This presentation is based upon Houle’s new and already much acclaimed book of the same name. As a futurist involved in education, Houle calls for nothing less than the transformation of K-12 education for the twenty-first century. He frames this transformation in both the history of education and the future of this new century and the Shift Age. This presentation has already been praised widely by educators as a needed vision of the future of education.

Leading and Succeeding in the Transformation Decade.

Houle has called 2010-2020 the Transformation Decade. Much of humanity and the world will be transformed during these ten years. Houle presents a look at the Shift Age, the Transformation Decade and all the incredible changes that will occur. He takes a look at the rapidly changing workplace and then presents the qualities and concepts needed to lead, manage and succeed in this decade of incredible change and transformation.

Entering the Shift Age.

This presentation is brand new for 2013 and is based on Houle’s latest book of the same name. Futurist Houle identifies and explains the new age we have entered. He looks at the three forces of the Shift Age, the Five Contexts of the Shift Age and how they will affect us as individuals, business people and leaders. He takes a look at the future of generations, women, technology, energy, education, IP, big data and other topics and provides the audience with eye opening transformations dead ahead. The Shift Age is one of, if not the most transformative and exciting times in human history. Houle leaves us with suggestions for how to prepare for and adapt to this new age. A big picture presentation that is pertinent for any group or organization. It can be customized for any industry or business sector.

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