Leadership Conferences, Corporate Events & Retreats, HR, Wellness & Culture Summits, Resilience & Change Workshops
Unlocking the Power of Strategic Resilience to Lead Change and Fuel High Performance
In a world defined by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), leaders and organizations must go beyond reactive responses to crises and instead build strategic resilience—a proactive, purpose-driven capability to absorb shocks, adapt intelligently, and emerge stronger. This keynote explores how cultivating strategic resilience and adaptability as core strategic assets enables leaders to navigate disruption, empower teams, and future-proof their organizations.
Through a blend of real-world examples, research-backed insights, and actionable frameworks, participants will gain a deeper understanding of how to embed adaptive capacity into the culture, operations, and decision-making processes of their organizations.
Key Learning Objectives Include:
This keynote delivers a strategic shift for leaders to embrace resilience not just as a reaction to disruption, but as a proactive driver of long-term success. By integrating strategic resilience into leadership, team dynamics, and daily operations, organizations can unlock greater consistency, adaptability, and impact across every level. With Adam’s powerful insights, attendees will leave inspired, equipped, and ready to lead with confidence—leveraging the strength of their people, the support of their teams, and the adaptability that drives performance across the organization.
How to Future-Proof Teams & Thrive Through Uncertainty
In today’s demanding and fast-paced workplace, employees are being asked to do more with less, meet continuously increasing goals, and navigate constant change—all while maintaining peak performance. The cost of this relentless pressure is staggering: burnout alone costs businesses an estimated $62 billion annually in health and safety expenses, not to mention the toll it takes on productivity, morale, and retention. The ability to sustain high performance in this environment isn’t just about skill or effort—it’s about developing “Change Resilience.”
Adam Markel brings a transformative perspective to resilience, drawing on a rich and diverse background that includes 18 years as a trial attorney, 9 years as a CEO, and even 7 years as a lifeguard on Long Island’s beaches. For organizations, resilience is the unsung hero of success, creating a culture where well-being and performance go hand in hand. Without resilience, employees cannot meet the rising expectations placed upon them, let alone thrive within them.
This dynamic presentation is designed for leaders and individual contributors alike, offering actionable strategies to build a resilient culture that prioritizes employee well-being while empowering individuals to excel. Through engaging stories, audience participation, and practical tools, Adam educates audiences about what resilience is …. And what resilience is not. By integrating resilience into the core of organizational strategy and personal practice, individuals and teams can rise to meet the demands of constant change that defines today’s workplace.
Through engaging narratives and practical strategies, Markel elucidates how resilience is not merely about enduring but about thriving—transforming adversity into opportunity and growth.
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This keynote delivers a strategic shift for organizations and individuals to embrace strategic resilience as the foundation for sustainable success. By integrating well-being into the core of their strategy, leaders and contributors alike can create a workplace where people not only meet expectations but exceed them—thriving in every sense of the word. Adam’s insights will leave audiences inspired, equipped, and ready to embrace resilience as the ultimate performance advantage.
In a world where change is accelerating at an unprecedented pace, resilience and adaptability have become the cornerstone skills for thriving in the modern workplace. Adam Markel’s keynote on Change Proof resilience offers a transformative framework for equipping individuals and organizations with the tools they need to not only navigate disruption but to lead innovation and achieve extraordinary success. Drawing from his extensive experience as a resilience researcher, bestselling author, and business leader, Adam provides a roadmap for cultivating resilience as a proactive, multifaceted skill set—one that empowers employees to embrace uncertainty, adapt to evolving challenges, and drive meaningful innovation.
Through compelling storytelling and actionable strategies, Adam demonstrates how resilience is not just about enduring adversity but about leveraging it as a catalyst for growth and creativity. His latest bestseller, Change Proof: Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty to Build Long-term Resilience, underscores the importance of developing resilience before it’s needed, emphasizing its holistic nature across mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual dimensions.
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This keynote offers a transformative perspective on Change Resilience, emphasizing the critical role of resilience to achieve and sustain success in today’s dynamic world. Through his compelling narrative and evidence-based strategies, Adam inspires a shift towards a more resilient, adaptable, and proactive approach to personal and professional challenges, leaving audiences energized, empowered, and ready to transform disruption into unprecedented success.
Building Trust-Driven Teams That Attract, Retain, and Thrive
In today’s fast-paced and high-pressure workplace, organizations face a critical challenge: how to create an environment where employees are there to stay, engaged and thriving. With talent shortages, rising turnover costs, and increasing burnout, the need for a workplace culture that fosters engagement, innovation, and resilience has never been more urgent. The solution? A Got Your Back (GYB) culture—one rooted in trust, collaboration, and mutual support.
In this dynamic session, Adam Markel reveals how cultivating a GYB culture can transform your organization into a magnet for top talent while boosting engagement and retention. By prioritizing employee well-being and fostering a sense of belonging, organizations can create a thriving environment where individuals feel empowered to innovate, adapt, and perform at their best. This isn’t just about keeping the talent you have—it’s about attracting the talent you need to grow and succeed in an ever-changing world.
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This session offers a powerful blueprint for creating a workplace that not only survives disruption but thrives because of it. By embracing a Got Your Back culture, your organization can unlock the full potential of its people, driving innovation, resilience, and long-term success.
Build a Culture of Innovation & Future-Ready Workforce
AI is here to stay. Leaders who recognize its benefits and learn how to catalyze them to future-proof their teams will enhance productivity and retain a competitive advantage, regardless of the changes on the horizon. Embracing this transformative force for greater productivity, collaboration, stress mitigation, and overall employee well-being is critical.
However, AI also presents a multitude of challenges that must be addressed in order to fully realize its benefits. In this dynamic and compelling conversation, Adam guides organizations through the intricate adoption of AI in the workplace, sharing effective strategies to empower teams and leaders alike to foster learning, growth and innovation.
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This session is a call to action for leaders and organizations to embrace the dual power of resilience and AI, crafting a future-ready workforce capable of thriving in any environment. Together, we’ll uncover how to navigate the currents of change with strength, adaptability, and purpose.
Adam Markel is a sought after leadership speaker, resilience and change expert and workforce futurist who helps organizations achieve high-impact performance by harnessing the power of resilience for sustainable success amidst constant change. With over 18 years as a trial attorney and 20+ years as a CEO and professional trainer, Adam brings unique insights on resilience, culture, and change. His experience as an ocean first responder taught him the importance of sustainable performance and teamwork in high-pressure environments.
In his bestselling book, Change Proof, Adam shows how businesses can not only manage change but use uncertainty to drive growth. Recognized as one of Huffington Post’s top speakers and #1 WSJ bestselling author, Adam has inspired and empowered tens of thousands worldwide. He is the Co-Founder and Chief Researcher of WORKWELL, a TEDx speaker, and host of The Change Proof Podcast..
Adam is inspired daily by his wife of 35 years and their four children.
Adam Markel, keynote speaker, workforce futurist and resilience researcher, guides individuals and organizations to tap the power of resilience to master the challenges of constant change. His work redefines resilience and engagement in the workplace and equips organizations to create healthier, happier high-performing work cultures that are truly Change Resilient.
Adam has much to share about resilience, culture and change from his 18 years as a trial attorney building a multi-million dollar enterprise and 20+ years as a CEO in the professional training and development space, as well as researching and consulting with organizations of all sizes and industries. Yet, some of his most enduring lessons came from his years as an ocean first responder – a life and death environment where Adam learned the importance of cultivating high performance capacity and impeccable teamwork.
In his latest bestselling book, Change Proof, Adam shows how those principles of resilience are equally relevant today for any business that wants to move beyond merely managing change to actively embracing it and using times of uncertainty, crisis, and chaos to create opportunities and stimulate individual and team growth.
As one of Huffington Post’s top speakers to see and the #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Pivot, Adam’s messages have inspired tens of thousands worldwide. His keynotes, corporate workshops, and consulting integrate practical business strategies, personal development insights and a unique delivery style to create a high-energy and impactful learning environment.
Adam is currently the Co-Founder and Chief Researcher of WORKWELL, a TEDx speaker and influencer, and host of The Change Proof Podcast, facilitating insightful discussions with business leaders and social innovators and sharing strategies to fully embrace an uncertain world and build Change Proof organizations.
Adam is continuously inspired by his wife of more than 30 years and their 4 amazing children.
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“Resilience isn’t about bouncing back, it’s about bouncing forward. Resilient teams don’t just survive change, they transform it into opportunity.”
Adam begins with a powerful lifeguard story, connecting the urgency of saving lives to the everyday responsibility leaders carry in guarding families, clients, and businesses. He emphasizes that true resilience is built before crisis hits and spans mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual dimensions.
He reframes high performance as recovery-driven, not burnout-driven, urging audiences to prioritize self-care as a leadership model. Adam underscores that resilient workplaces foster well-being, drive performance, and ultimately—change the world.
0:00 – The lifeguard whistle story: resilience as vigilance.
0:38 – Everyone is guarding something—family, clients, health.
1:10 – Resilience must be developed before it’s needed.
1:32 – High performance = recovery, not exhaustion.
2:15 – Self-care is leadership, not selfishness.
3:00 – Resilient teams as cultural drivers.
3:45 – Workplaces as engines for well-being.
4:20 – Closing: “Resilient teams change the world.”
“Work-life balance is a myth. What we truly need is harmony—an adaptable blend of work, life, and well-being that fits the moment.”
Adam challenges the popular idea of work-life balance, calling it unrealistic and exhausting. Using the image of someone holding a difficult pose, he illustrates that while balance can be achieved for a moment, it cannot be maintained without depletion.
He stresses that language matters. Instead of balance, Adam introduces the concept of harmony, likening it to seasoning food—never in equal proportion, but blended in the right way for each individual and circumstance. Harmony, unlike balance, adapts to changes in life stage, needs, and priorities.
Drawing on Zen philosophy, Adam emphasizes the principle: how you do anything is how you do everything. He explains that small habits and consistent actions in daily life are indicative of how we handle larger challenges. By focusing on harmony and alignment, we can create resilience and sustainability across all areas of life.
0:00 – The myth of balance: holding an impossible position.
0:40 – Balance is exhausting; language matters.
1:10 – Balance vs. harmony: why equal proportions don’t work.
1:50 – Life is about blending, not dividing work and life equally.
2:20 – Algorithms and formulas can’t define harmony—it’s personal and evolving.
2:45 – Zen philosophy: how you do anything is how you do everything.
3:15 – Small actions reflect larger life patterns.
3:40 – Focus on harmony to navigate the big challenges.
“True resilience isn’t about bouncing back to where you were — it’s about bouncing forward, stronger than before.”
Adam Markel emphasizes that resilience requires a shift in mindset. Fear itself is not the enemy — stagnation is. Growth and transformation are only possible through continuous small adjustments, or “pivots,” a concept he explores deeply in his book Pivot.
Drawing on research from organizations that weathered the 2008 global financial crisis, Adam explains that those thriving today are not the ones that simply returned to baseline. Instead, they are the ones that bounced forward — evolving, adapting, and innovating beyond where they were before the disruption.
He highlights resilience as a cycle: we cannot grow without resilience, and we cannot build resilience without growth. By embedding this philosophy into organizations, leaders, and teams, Adam shows how transformation becomes sustainable. It’s not semantics — it’s a redefinition of resilience as progress, not recovery.
0:00 – Fear isn’t the enemy — stagnation is.
0:25 – Small pivots create transformation in teams and organizations.
0:50 – Resilience and growth are inseparable.
1:15 – Lessons from the 2008 financial crisis.
1:40 – Thriving organizations didn’t just bounce back — they bounced forward.
2:05 – Why words matter: redefining resilience as forward momentum.
A: Adam blends research, personal stories, and practical tools with a deeply human approach that resonates across industries.
A: Yes. Adam delivers both live and virtual sessions with the same energy and impact.
A: Absolutely. He tailors every keynote to audience challenges, goals, and culture.
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A: Adam blends research, personal stories, and practical tools with a deeply human approach that resonates across industries.
A: Yes. Adam delivers both live and virtual sessions with the same energy and impact.
A: Absolutely. He tailors every keynote to audience challenges, goals, and culture.
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