The speakers I just said yes to

I get pitched to add speakers to my roster almost every day. I say no to most of them.

Not because they aren't accomplished. Most are. I say no because being accomplished isn't the bar. The bar is whether you built something people told you was impossible, and then learned how to make a room believe they could do the same.

When I started this, people assumed it was an AI bureau. Fair, since most of my speakers work in and around AI. But the through-line was never the topic. It was the mindset. The keynote that lands hardest changes how a room thinks about what's possible, and that rarely comes from matching your industry's hottest buzzword.

Three new speakers just cleared that bar. They could not be more different on paper. That's the point.

Abigail Posner spent 13 years at Google. She led the team building AI-powered creative strategy for YouTube's biggest advertisers. Her keynote, "Becoming Irreplaceable in an AI World," goes straight at the fear under every leadership team right now: what is my edge once the machine can do the task? Her answer is a real framework, not a pep talk. She calls it expansiveness, the practice of pulling from all your skills and experiences at once to create something no algorithm can predict. For any audience quietly worried AI is coming for their value, she's who I'd put on stage.

Nicole Malachowski was the first woman to fly with the Air Force Thunderbirds. She flew 188 combat hours and commanded a fighter squadron over a 21-year career. Then a tick-borne illness nearly took her ability to walk and speak for the better part of a year, and she fought her way back. Nicole teaches teams to move past resilience, which she thinks is an overused word, into what she calls being resurgent. One of her lines has stuck with me: the runway behind you is always unusable, all you have is the runway in front of you. She's one of the most decorated speakers I represent, and audiences give her standing ovations for a reason.

Suneel Gupta was a twice-failed founder before he built RISE, a wellness company Amazon acquired. He went on to write two international bestsellers, become a visiting scholar at Harvard Medical School, and get named "The New Face of Innovation" by the New York Stock Exchange. His talks are about the thing that quietly decides whether a team keeps going, and it isn't strategy. It's energy. His framework, The Game of Now, flips the usual advice: instead of waiting until you feel ready to act, you take action and let courage catch up along the way. For a team that's capable but stalling out, he's the reset.

Three speakers, three completely different rooms, same reason they made the roster.

If one of them fits an event you're planning this year, just reply to this email and we can discuss next steps.

Till next time,
Noah

Do More With Less Using AI

PS: I really do say no to most speakers who ask to be on the roster. If you know someone who actually did the impossible in their field and can teach a room to do the same, send them my way.