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Natalie Nixon      

Future of Work Expert, Author of "The Creativity Leap", Innovation, Creativity & Leadership Strategy Consultant

Natalie Nixon, PhD is "the creativity whisperer for the C-Suite". She is a creativity strategist who advises leaders on achieving transformative business results by applying wonder & rigor. She is a highly sought after global keynote speaker, valued for her accessible expertise on creativity, the future of work and innovation.

Nixon was selected for Real Leaders' "Top 50 Keynote Speakers in the World for 2022" list; and has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company and INC. She is the author of the award-winning The Creativity Leap - an honoree in the creativity category of Fast Company's 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards. Her firm, Figure 8 Thinking, was named among the top 20 women-led innovation firms in 2021 by Core 77. In 2022, LinkedIn launched Nixon’s course “Lead with Inquiry, Improvisation & Intuition". Clients have included Microsoft, Salesforce, Comcast, Citrix, Morrison & Foerster, Living Cities, VaynerMedia and Bloomberg.

A hybrid thinker, Nixon consistently applies her background in cultural anthropology, fashion, design thinking and dance. She is an early-stage investor at two social impact ventures, valued for her ability to work at the intersection of commercial value and stakeholder equity.

Nixon is a trustee of the Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt Design Museum; Vassar College; and Leadership+Design. She has lived in Germany, Brazil, Portugal, Israel, and Sri Lanka and is proficient in Portuguese and Spanish. She is certified as a Foresight Practitioner by the Institute for the Future. She received her BA (honors) from Vassar College, and her PhD from the University of Westminster in London.

When she's not dancing up a storm in hip-hop class, Nixon is fine-tuning her salsa, foxtrot and tango on the ballroom floor. She lives in her hometown of Philadelphia with her husband, John Nixon, and is the proud stepmother of Sydney.

Speech Topics

The Future of Work is Jazz

This talk explores how the most successful and flourishing companies will be ones that are adaptive and improvisational. Attendees will learn the connections between jazz improvisation and optimal organizational design. The talk will break down what improvisation is, and how to improvise more at work. It will also explain what foresight is and how any team can build this competency for more relevant strategic planning.

Soft Skills Are Hard Core

Just as we have IQ and EQ, we also have a CQ- or a creativity quotient. This talk explores the links between creativity and leadership and how leaders with a high CQ behave, interact with stakeholders, and co-create a strategic vision. Fundamental to the capability is developing the 3iCreativity™ framework: inquiry, improvisation, and intuition.

4 Creativity Leaps You MUST Make for the Future of Work

We tend to talk about the future of work as a binary proposition- either ”run for the hills, the robots are taking over” or “automation and ubiquitous cloud will make life easier and amazing for all!”. The 4th Industrial revolution is characterized by ubiquitous cloud tech, automation, and AI. This talk explores the opportunities for technology to amplify what is uniquely human vs humans getting overwhelmed by the technology. This talk takes the audience through 4 pivotal creativity leaps we must make to be prepared for the future of work.

The WonderRigor™ Organization

This talk explains how to set up your organization for more wonder AND more rigor. Companies are clamoring to innovate but they are not investing the time to design processes and systems for creativity. They spend too much time in the weeds and forget that creativity is the engine for innovation. It goes beyond only setting up an innovation lab or center. Creativity requires wonder and rigor and it's the catalyst for innovation.

Creativity's Business ROI

This talk builds the business case for creativity and why the best leaders are creative to their core- no matter the sector. The challenge is that creativity isn’t mentioned in the corporate boardroom because people don’t really understand what creativity is. At the end of this talk, audience members will be equipped with a simple and unique definition of creativity as well as tips to regularly exercise creativity for strategic outcomes and business impact with their teams and clients.

News

Your “invisible work” is key to your most productive self
Creativity strategist Natalie Nixon says that time spent thinking, wondering, or doing something else makes us more creative and productive and, ultimately, innovative.

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