Non-binding request for Polly LaBarre
Polly LaBarre
Polly LaBarre helps leaders reimagine how organizations change, innovate, and thrive in times of profound disruption.
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5.00 of 5
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Why book Polly LaBarre for your next event
- Through the Management Lab, Polly has co-developed groundbreaking methodologies and tools to reinvent how organizations lead, manage, and innovate at scale.
- Polly has advised Fortune 500 companies and global changemakers, bringing cutting-edge ideas to life through leadership development and large-scale transformation.
- As a founding team member of Fast Company, she helped redefine what it means to lead and succeed in a new era of work and innovation.
Non-binding request for Polly LaBarre
Authority on organizational change, resilience, and the future of work
Polly LaBarre is one of the most influential voices shaping how organizations respond to change, complexity, and uncertainty. As a bestselling author, co-founder of the Management Lab, and founding team member of Fast Company, she has spent more than 20 years helping leaders rethink how work gets done. Polly challenges conventional management thinking and replaces it with human-centered, future-ready approaches that build resilience, imagination, and momentum. Her keynotes are inspiring, provocative, and grounded in real-world experience, giving leaders the clarity and confidence to act boldly in a world where everything is on the table.
Polly LaBarre and the future of organizational change
Polly LaBarre’s work sits at the intersection of leadership, innovation, and human potential. In an era defined by constant disruption, she helps organizations understand how to change how they change. Her focus is not on short-term fixes, but on building the enduring capabilities that allow organizations to adapt again and again. Polly brings a sharp lens to the forces reshaping work and leadership, offering leaders new ways to respond creatively rather than defensively.
At the heart of her work are three essential questions: how organizations can support human flourishing, how leaders can cultivate the audacity of imagination needed to solve hard problems, and how individuals and institutions can become endlessly resilient. These questions shape every keynote, workshop, and experiment she leads.
Book Polly LaBarre for your event
When you book Polly LaBarre for your event, you invite your audience into a conversation about what leadership must become. Her keynotes resonate with senior executives, emerging leaders, and change-makers alike because she speaks to real challenges people face inside complex organizations. Polly combines big ideas with practical frameworks, helping audiences move from insight to action.
She is known for delivering high-energy, thoughtful presentations that provoke reflection while sparking momentum. Whether addressing large global conferences or intimate leadership gatherings, Polly adapts her message to meet the moment and the audience.
Co-founder of Management Lab and management innovator
As co-founder of the Management Lab, alongside Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini, Polly spent a decade developing new methodologies and tools to accelerate organizational change. Through large-scale experiments in “hacking management,” she helped leaders inside major organizations challenge outdated practices and build more adaptive systems. This work engaged a global community of more than 35,000 management innovators, all committed to reinventing how organizations operate.
This hands-on experience gives Polly a rare perspective. She does not speak about change from theory alone, but from years of experimentation inside real organizations wrestling with real constraints.
Bestselling author and Fast Company founding team
Polly is co-author of the bestselling book Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win, named a Book of the Year by The Economist and recognized as a pivotal work on modern management. The book captures her long-standing fascination with unconventional leaders and organizations that outperform by thinking differently.
Earlier in her career, Polly was part of the founding team of Fast Company, where she played a central role in redefining how people think about work, leadership, and success. That experience shaped her voice as a storyteller and thinker who can translate complex ideas into compelling narratives.
A global speaker and trusted voice
A sought-after keynote speaker, moderator, and interviewer, Polly LaBarre has delivered hundreds of talks around the world. Her insights have appeared in Fast Company, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Fortune, McKinsey Quarterly, and The Huffington Post. She has also appeared frequently on CNBC, PBS, Good Morning America, and the Today Show, and served as a business and innovation correspondent for CNN.
Beyond the stage, Polly is deeply engaged in community and creative life. She serves on the board of CitySeed, supporting a just and healthy food system in New Haven, Connecticut. A Yale University graduate, she lives with her family in New Haven, where she is also an avid gardener, cook, and devoted yogi.
Book Polly LaBarre for your event if you want a speaker who challenges assumptions, energizes leaders, and helps organizations build the imagination and resilience needed for the future.
Customer Reviews
5 of 5
“Many thanks for the session you ran for us on Friday. As you could tell – it was energizing and fun and I really think it helped to move the ball forward for us. Not only did it surface some great ideas we can adopt immediately but we learned how to hack problems and opportunities which I hope will become part of our DNA!”
Sarah Dunn Global Human Resource Officer, COACH
5 of 5
“Polly was the perfect addition to our conference. Her keynote was the ideal complement to those that both preceded and followed her. She was very approachable, engaging and a true pleasure to work with – both for the accompanying speakers and the technical and production teams. The rave reviews continue to roll in.”
Regional Vice President MarketingINFOR
5 of 5
“Thanks again for speaking at our Women's Leadership Forum. Your remarks made quite an impact with our younger leaders, in particular. I spoke with several of them later and they were so energized by your talk, they are off implementing change!”
Vice PresidentNarrowband Communications and Program Manager, Lockheed Martin
5 of 5
“Thanks so much for coming to Santa Barbara for our NBC retreat. You were both energetic and inspiring – and, trust me, I would have been thrilled to have one or the other! You gave us a lot to think about and you set the perfect tone for a lot of the issues that are facing us right at this moment.”
ChairmanNBC Entertainment
5 of 5
“Thanks so much, Polly was a HUGE hit. We couldn't have asked for a better suited speaker. So much so that a lot of our attendees are asking for the video footage of the day so they can re-watch it.”
Director of MarketingVision Critical
5 of 5
“I would like to tell you that the Planetree audience loved your presentation! Great job! I heard comments that you were the best keynote we have ever had by far! Thank you again for the presentation and also meeting with our staff afterwards. It was sensational!”
Chief Creative OfficerPlanetree
5 of 5
“Polly was FABULOUS!!! Articulate, provoking, exciting, strategic, practical, humble…a good representation for women!!! Everything I was hoping for. I would recommend her!”
Vice PresidentFarm Credit Services of America
5 of 5
“I had high expectations, but you completely exceeded them! You were absolutely brilliant on all fronts: content, delivery, timing, storytelling, and more. Everyone I talked to cited your talk as the highlight of our conference.”
CEOPerkins+Will
5 of 5
“We could not have had a better presentation to close out our Wednesday session. Your insight on innovation in the workplace as well as how we can better incorporate innovation into our core company DNA was a hit!”
President and Chief Executive OfficerAerospace Industries Association
5 of 5
“She is truly gifted in making connections and keeping all engaged.”
Business SpecialistBaldrige Performance Excellence Program
5 of 5
"Polly hit it out of the park. She was warm and well received. Attendees loved how she kept the concepts simple and digestible. We loved having her."
Senior DirectorHireVue
5 of 5
“Her keynote was exceptional. Powerful messages, spot on delivery – great way to end this conference experience on a high note.”
Experient
5 of 5
“She was spot on. Did exactly what we needed. I love that woman!”
Ontario Municipal Employee Retirement System (OMERS)
5 of 5
“…after your session other speakers were referring back to your speech, the result being that the content felt connected with the various presentations referencing common key points and take-a-ways. Your session also received great feedback in our conference survey. 98% of the audience rated your session as a 4 or greater out of 5, and 75% gave it a prefect 5 out of 5! An excellent rating.”
Prophix Software
5 of 5
“Man, you knocked it out of the park this morning! The room was full, attendees were snapping pictures of your slides – clearly you hit a sweet spot. Thank you so much for being here and inspiring our partners to innovate.”
Content ManagerMicrosoft Inspire
5 of 5
“The feedback on the conference has been unbelievable! We can’t thank you enough. Your message that today’s leaders can come from all directions and different roles and that power is a product of contribution, not position, resonated deeply with our clients. We will follow up with a formal thank you with great stats and feedback from the conference, but we wanted to send you this note ahead of time because we can’t express our gratitude enough for being the keynote speaker at our conference.”
Bank of America
5 of 5
“Polly was really good. She packed A TON in and I was sitting next to two people that absolutely loved her and her message. She did such a perfect job of customizing her speech to the audience and to her bike family cred - it was spot on.”
CEOPeopleForBikes
5 of 5
“Your speech was outstanding and resonated well. I appreciate you investing your valuable time with us.”
Director of SalesC Spire Business
5 of 5
“Polly was really great—probably one of my favorite speakers we’ve had.”
Visier
5 of 5
“The feedback from the organization and (CEO) has been great, your messaging hit the mark and provided a nice bow for the end of the meeting.”
Associate Director, Product CommunicationsBayer
5 of 5
“We had overwhelmingly positive feedback on Polly! In our post-event survey, many of our leaders cited Polly’s talk as the highlight of the event. She set the tone for the rest of the day, inspiring and energizing the attendees. The idea that great change leaders create an environment where radical ideation is possible is one our teams needed to hear.”
Sr. Digital Experience ConsultantAflac
5 of 5
“Thank you, Polly, for leading these sessions! I have received very positive feedback already from various people! It really resonated well.”
Head of Business EnablementGoogle
Rated 5.00/5 based on 22 customer reviews
Keynotes
Keynote by Polly LaBarre:
Leading in the New Work Order
A monster wave of change has set off a vast reckoning with our taken-for-granted beliefs about every aspect of how and where work gets done. Every leader today must grapple with the inescapable imperative to create and embrace a comprehensive agenda for meaningful change on the design of work and the interconnected urgent challenges of our time—deep inequities, structural dehumanization, and environmental calamity.
Polly LaBarre takes leaders on a journey across this new landscape—inspiring them with fresh thinking on the work of leadership and equipping them with powerful new approaches for this new work order, including:
- How to transcend the seemingly intractable tradeoffs between performance imperatives and responsibility for people and planet.
- How to cultivate an “audacity of imagination” and galvanize people around a shared sense of purpose.
- How to “leader-proof” your organization.
- How to design platforms for involving, equipping, and connecting people.
- How to build organizational respond-ability by enlarging individual responsibility.
- How to grow your own resilience in the face of daunting uncertainty.
Keynote by Polly LaBarre:
Roll With Change
Who hasn’t been rocked by change in the last few years? While we’ve all been forced to rethink, adjust, and adjust again, the gravitational pull of the status quo remains a stealthy enemy of innovation. What does it take to wake up an organization’s inner insurgent to change ahead of change? These times demand every organization dramatically amp up its agility, inventiveness, and adaptability.
Drawing on her research and work inside some of the world’s most innovative and progressive organizations, Polly LaBarre lays out actionable strategies for building a perpetual innovation engine:
- What mindsets, practices and behaviors allow you to see the world differently and subvert the status quo.
- Where to look for the future—and how to generate a whole new map of possibility.
- How to embed innovation as a social process.
- What it takes to create a robust architecture of collaboration for a distributed, ever-evolving cohort of innovation peers and partners.
- How to build a resilient organizational microbiome by embedding the mindset and methods of experimentation into everything you do.
Keynote by Polly LaBarre:
The Human Edge: Designing Work to Create a Cultural Advantage
Today’s whirlwind of challenges—pandemic, social turbulence, economic uncertainty, looming climate catastrophe—has revealed just how inhospitable our organizations are to the human beings who work inside them. It’s not enough to ask which is the right hybrid work policy. It’s past time to ask: what kinds of organizations would we design if we genuinely believed in the inherent value, fundamental goodness, and unlimited potential of every person? Short answer: they’d be very different.
In this talk, Polly LaBarre unpacks design rules for unleashing your organization’s full human and creative capacity and lays out a path for humanizing work, including:
- How to unleash, mobilize and amplify the often unruly, but essential human qualities—imagination, energy, resourcefulness, curiosity, intuition, empathy, artistry, eccentricity, passion, and more—without losing control.
- How to cultivate a culture of agency, activism, and ownership where every person makes it their job to change things for the better.
- How to equip and involve every person in the organization as a creator, strategist, and entrepreneur.
- How to build a community of peers that amplifies belonging, contribution, and voice.
- How to maximize engagement by investing in wellbeing and widening the circle of care.
Keynote by Polly LaBarre:
Designed to Flourish: Develop People, Defeat Disruption
Change is an inside-out job. It’s not about reacting to external events or chasing trends, so much as it’s about developing your respond-ability—your elasticity, maturity, plasticity, openness, emotional dexterity, regulatory power, and more. Organizations that deliberately develop that capacity in every individual shore up their own resilience. In other words, “adult development” doesn’t just promote individual growth, it’s a cornerstone of organizational flourishing.
Polly LaBarre takes the audience on a quick tour of the organizations and leaders investing in human flourishing in powerful new ways—and offers up a short course in “adult development,” including:
- How to begin, again (and again).
- How to change your mind—cultivating consciousness, mediating mindsets, biases, blinders.
- How to develop intuition—learning to tune into your inner knowing.
- How to train like an artist, a monk, and an athlete.
- How to design and run self-experiments to accelerate your growth loops.
- Principles for adult capacity building.
Becoming Rugged and Durable Amid Relentless Change
Watch Polly LaBarre in action!
Generating Ideas More Quickly Isn't Hard
Watch Polly LaBarre in action!
