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Jay Guilford      

Creator of Cirque du Soleil's SPARK Leadership Training; Founder, CoWorks Leadership Strategists

For over 15 years, Jay Guilford has designed and delivered leadership solutions to executives and their teams from top-performing companies. In this capacity, Guilford has acted as a trusted advisor to company founders and namesakes of brands.

Most notably, Guilford created Cirque du Soleil’s leadership training program – SPARK. With SPARK, Guilford strapped executives into circus equipment and flew them high across Cirque du Soleil’s theaters and training studios. Instead of simply talking about trust, teamwork, and healthy risk-taking, executives experienced these concepts in real time.

Guilford has designed fully realized leadership programs for organizations and has trained executives and their teams from Google, Adobe, Microsoft, Mastercard, Swiss Life, SABMiller Brewery - Latin America, Club Med - Punta Cana, Kmart Australia, and other top-performing companies.

In his keynotes, workshops, and fireside chats, Guilford leverages his wealth of experience working with leaders and teams across a wide range of industries to impart practical, applicable guidance to audiences.

Guilford has a BA from Emory University and an MA from Columbia University.

Speech Topics

CREATE-OVATION: 3 KEYS TO HARNESSING CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION AMONG LEADERS AND TEAMS

Drawing upon his many years collaborating with artists, directors, and technicians across various Cirque du Soleil shows, Jay shares insights on what it takes to nurture creativity and to continually innovate. In this talk, Jay uncovers, and then debunks, three myths that keep leaders and teams from tapping into their full creative power. Audiences discover that no matter what their role or industry, we all have the ability to devise new, exciting, innovative products, services, and solutions. We only need to be audacious and unwavering as we bring our shining, inspired ideas to life.

NOT WHERE WE WORK BUT HOW WE WORK: TOOLS TO ENGAGE EMPLOYEES AND MAXIMIZE RESULTS IN IN HYBRID, RETURN-T0-OFFICE, OR WORK-FROM-ANYWHERE ARRANGEMENTS

In this talk, Guilford draws on his 15-years of experience training top executives and his work advising leaders and teams in the RTO/ WFH/WHA arrangements. He outlines three critical leadership competencies every leader needs to manage, mentor, and motivate teams in hybrid and remote work arrangements. Guilford connects these core leadership skills to winning "The War for Talent" and avoiding the fallouts of "The Great Resignation". The insights shared in this talk will help both leaders and their teams meet the moment we are all facing and succeed into today’s new world of work.

Getting “Woke” at Work: New Perspectives to Refresh & Transform Your DEI Efforts

This talk takes listeners on a deep dive into bias. In this conversation, Guilford defines three forms of bias and then illustrates how these biases affect hiring, promotion, and pay, as well as a team’s level of creativity and an organization’s potential to increase its profitability. Guilford urges audiences to move beyond simply taking a moral stance about DEI by showing how such initiatives are business- and profit-critical in the midst of globalization, work-from-anywhere, and The Great Resignation. Next, Guilford provides examples of effective DEI initiatives used by top-performing companies. He closes by outlining three strategies organizations can immediately apply to increase the impact of their DEI initiatives.

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