Sara Ross

Leadership has always been demanding, but today, it feels like an unsustainable pressure cooker of complexity and competing demands where no amount of effort ever seems enough. These circumstances aren't temporary—they are trademarks of today's workplace. The question isn't how to overcome them; it's how to expand our capacity to sustainably thrive within them.

Drawing on nearly two decades studying the science of human behavior, advising leaders, and conducting a multi-year study of workplace vitality captured in her bestselling book Dear Work, Something Has to Change—Sara Ross believes the answer is found in LeadFULLTM —a full person approach to vitality-fueling leadership.

Grounded in research but geared for real life, this keynote focuses on the Self-Leadership pillar of LeadFULL™ and teaches the transformational power of learning to operate from the Vitality State. From here, performance excellence becomes more enduring, emotional intelligence skills more accessible, relationships more enriching, and purpose reignited creating a ripple effect of thriving across teams and organizations while deepening vibrancy in all dimensions of life.

This Keynote is Best for Audiences Who:

• Are caught in an exhausting cycle of reactivity and diminishing returns despite hard work.
• Want to achieve career success without sacrificing health, happiness, or relationships.
• Need practical strategies to create high-performing cultures that prioritize well-being.
• Feel disconnected from their original spark and want to reignite purpose and passion in their work.

Audiences Will Leave Able to:

• Break the Drive-Til-You-Drop Cycle — Intentionally shift into the Vitality State to expand their capacity and meet complexity with resiliency, agility, and (joyful) sustainable high performance.
• Transform Firefighting into Energy Amplification — Create white space in their day with an empowerment framework to extend ownership of problem-solving, deepen empathy, and multiply capability and energy across the board.
• Bypass Common Pitfalls — Recognize why traditional work-life balance and well-being approaches often undermine exactly what they aim to enhance—and learn what works.
• Become Your Own Chief Vitality Officer — Strategically integrate energy-generating practices, eliminate ‘rest guilt’ and fully enjoy the life they're working so hard to create.

In today's rapidly changing workplace, where organizations are fiercely competing to leverage AI's potential while attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent, a powerful truth stands clear: an organization's greatest untapped competitive advantage is human potential. While new technologies and evolving policies continue to transform how and where we work, the ability of leaders to unify talents and convert them into collective excellence (without exhausting everyone in the process) remains the true differentiator between organizations that merely function and those that truly excel. LeadFULL™—a vitality-fueling approach to human-centered leadership developed by Sara Ross—provides a powerful, science-backed blueprint for just that.

Grounded in the Lead Others dimension of the LeadFULL™ model, this keynote builds on data from over 10,000 survey responses to what brings the best out in others. In it, Sara focuses on three interconnected transformative human-centered leadership insights—accountability, empathy, and empowerment. In a world of complexity, Sara provides clarity, transforming how leaders approach and elevate their roles with instantly applicable tools to drive vitality-fueling success that benefits everyone—from team members with a ripple effect out to customers and beyond.

This Keynote is Best for Audiences Who:

• Face compounding pressures—AI transformations, organizational shifts, rising customer demands, and critical talent challenges.
• Excel technically but recognizes the need for deeper levels of emotional intelligence.
• Aim to transform siloed, exhausted, or disengaged teams into high-performing collaborative powerhouses—in-person and virtually.
• Seek practical strategies to elevate their leadership impact and overcome the invisible barriers holding them and their teams back.

Audiences Will Leave Able to:

• Lead by Example — Apply a personal accountability framework that strengthens self-awareness, harnesses energy, and activates curiosity for better agility, connection, and impact.
• Redefine Empathy as a Performance Catalyst — Discover how true empathy isn't lowering expectations—it's identifying the emotions that unlock or block excellence, enabling better collaboration across teams and better understanding between people.
• Forge High-Trust, Empowering Environments — Engage in ways that people feel cared for, connected, and challenged to innovate boldly, speak openly, and courageously stretch their skills, comfort levels, and perspectives in today's digitally evolving world.
• Architect a Vitality-Fueled Culture — Leverage their leadership influence to shape a culture where people feel energized and equipped to sustain performance in today’s ‘always-on’ world.

In today's dynamic world, there are two human operating states from which we can approach change: the Scarcity State, where we're reactive, stressed out, frustrated, and change-fatigued, or the Vitality State, where we're strategic, energized, resilient, and future-ready. With research suggesting the average organization has undergone five enterprise changes in the past three years—and 73% expecting more ahead—leading change from the Vitality State isn't just an option; it's a competitive advantage.

Drawing on nearly two decades of experience researching, coaching and advising leaders and their organizations through change efforts, Sara shares how operating from the Vitality State transforms resilience from a reactive tactic called upon in moments of crisis—to a proactive practice strengthened daily. From here, stress is converted to a strength that reveals purpose, uncertainty becomes a gateway to innovation, and resistance shifts into a catalyst for energizing, momentum-creating growth. This is how to stay future-ready in a changing world.

This Keynote is Best for Audiences Who:

• See signs of stress, burnout, change fatigue, and disengagement.
• Recognize the urgent need to strengthen future-readiness, particularly around AI integration.
• Want practical approaches to embrace change, influence buy-in, and overcome resistance.
• Wonder if focusing on vitality means ignoring challenges, forcing positivity, or lowering standards (it doesn't).

Audiences Will Leave Able to:

• Activate the Vitality State — Navigate change from the Vitality Operating State by working with their brain's negativity bias to activate a growth-oriented possibility mindset.
• Become Genuinely Future-Ready — Apply behavioral science-based insights to better work with stress, boost uncertainty tolerance, harness energy to fuel resilience from a place of resourcefulness.
• Master the Emotional Landscape of Change — Channel the full spectrum of change emotions—including fear and resistance—into powerful drivers of connection, collaboration, and performance.
• Dismantle FAUX Resilience — Replace toxic positivity, isolation, and exhaustion with a FULL Resilience framework rooted in realistic optimism, community support, and sustainable well-being.

It all started with a letter. What began as a personal reflection on the consuming nature of work quickly evolved into a research-backed mission to find a better way to work. That letter, and the journey it sparked, became the foundation of Sara Ross’s bestselling book, Dear Work, Something Has to Change.

If you’ve ever found yourself pursuing bold goals but running on fumes, feeling stuck between choosing success or well-being, or frustrated that work-life balance strategies just aren’t cutting it, you’re not alone. In a world where exhaustion is often accepted as the price of excellence, Sara Ross has the data to prove otherwise.

In a multi-year study exploring our relationship with work through the lens of organizational culture, personal energy management and performance science, Sara found that people who thrive with vitality in demanding environments aren’t less ambitious or committed, but they do hold fundamentally different beliefs about success, stress, and rest. This keynote delivers mindset shifts and science-backed strategies to help people bring their best, most vitality-fueled standout selves forward and transform workplace cultures trapped in burnout cycles.

This Keynote is Best for Audiences Who:

• Work in high-demand environments and see signs of burnout, fear, and disengagement.
• Want to achieve career success without sacrificing health, happiness, or relationships.
• Feel disconnected from their original spark and want to reignite purpose and passion in their work.
• Struggle to fully disconnect from the 'always on' work culture and find truly rejuvenating rest.

Audiences Will Leave Able to:

• Break Free from the Excellence-Exhaustion Trap — Learn to recognize when they are operating from the Scarcity versus Vitality State and master simple shifts to break the burnout cycle, boost happiness, and bring their best forward.
• Decode Their Brain's Hidden Saboteurs — Uncover the two deceptive negotiations the brain uses to lure high performers into energy-depleting "success traps" and how to neutralize them, turning sustainable excellence into an achievable reality.
• Harness Stress as a Superpower — Transform how they engage with stress, removing it where possible and converting it to a source of meaning, motivation, and momentum where helpful.
• Revolutionize Their Self-Care Strategy — Implement the science of strategic renewal to disconnect meaningfully from work, embrace guilt-free rest, and reignite authentic vitality across every dimension of their life.