Natalie Nixon
- Foresight and Innovation Expert
- President and Founder of Figure 8 Thinking
- Author and Creativity Guru
In Person-Fee 🛈
Fee Range
$30,000 - $50,000
Virtual Fee:
$15,000 - $20,000
Travels From
Pennsylvania
Natalie Nixon Speaker Biography
Natalie Nixon, Ph.D. 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.
Natalie 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 Natalie’s course “Lead with Inquiry, Improvisation & Intuition". Clients have included Microsoft, Salesforce, Comcast, Citrix, Morrison & Foerster, Living Cities, VaynerMedia, and Bloomberg.
A hybrid thinker, Natalie 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.
Natalie 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 Ph.D. from the University of Westminster in London.
When she's not dancing up a storm in hip-hop class, Natalie 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.
Creativity and Leadership: Getting Buy-In Through Empathy and Curiosity
“Curiosity is the new currency”. -Natalie Nixon
The businesses and organizations that lead with inquiry and empathy are ultimately the most innovative. Integrating design thinking, lean and agile methods are a few ways to do this. That’s because curiosity and empathic leadership are rooted in open, growth mindsets. They also generate collaborative work environments and lead to building customer-centered products and services. In this session, Natalie Nixon shares the major and practical business outcomes that are directly tied to inquiry-based leadership.
The Future of Work: The 4 Shifts Your Organization Must Make…Now!
“The best algorithms will still depend on humans asking a better question.” — Natalie Nixon
The future of work will require more than a familiarity with virtual reality, big data, artificial intelligence, and robotics. It will require people with a heightened creative capacity.
In the 4th industrial revolution where cloud technology, automation, and cryptocurrency are realities, boundaries between technology and humans have completely blurred. Now more than ever, the human quotient and creativity are critical business assets. In this session, Natalie Nixon offers provocative ways to embrace the future of work and outlines 4 shifts every organization must make to be nimble and adaptive.
Adapt and Disrupt: Getting Excellent at Change
“Plans are fiction. They haven’t happened yet. Learn to improvise.” — Natalie Nixon
We all know that the only constant in life is change, yet we don’t design adaptive organizations. Most companies are disrupted because they do not know what business they are actually in and what their customers really need. This session will lead you through principles of improvisation and the key questions your leadership should be able to answer and then use to assist teams and employees.
Innovation IQ: How to Master the 3 Drivers to Stay Out Front and Lead
“The more diverse the inputs, the more innovative the output.” -Natalie Nixon
Business management guru, Peter Drucker, was famous for having written that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” He was right. Unfortunately, most companies only pay attention to organization culture when it’s too late in the game. In this session, Natalie Nixon will leave you with tips for developing the 3 tenets of culture—people, process and place—to design an organizational culture that is primed for innovation and a prosperous future state.
