Cheryl Cran
We are living in a time of flux — ongoing disruption, uncertainty, and accelerated change. Leaders and teams today are navigating economic volatility, technological transformation, identity shifts, and rising pressure to deliver results while supporting human wellbeing. These times call for more than strategy alone. They call for discernment, adaptability, and the capacity to lead through change with clarity, energy and empowered action.
Cheryl Cran has spent over twenty years working at the intersection of leadership, change, and the future of life and work.
Long before founding her consulting practice in 2000, Cheryl built her leadership foundation inside complex, highly regulated environments. She spent a decade in senior leadership roles in the financial sector, including insurance and credit unions, where she led multi-million-dollar operations and navigated high-stakes decision-making, performance pressure, and continuous change.
Speaking topics
- What The Flux? Lead change through uncertainty
How to lead change when nothing feels certain anymore
When everything happening in the world, at work, and in our personal lives makes us ask, “What the…?” — it’s a sign we’re trying to make sense of chaos in real time. Nothing seems clear anymore. It’s harder to know what’s real, what’s AI-generated, and how to trust our own judgment. World events, economic uncertainty, AI acceleration, workforce fatigue, and personal stressors are colliding — leaving leaders and teams overwhelmed, reactive, and exhausted.
This keynote reframes disruption as a deeply human experience and offers profound ways to meet change with hope, inspiration, and clarity that leads to meaningful action.
Audience takeaways:
- A new way to understand change as a human state, not a series of circumstances — shifting from resistance and anxiety to resilient adaptability and deep empowerment
- Practical ideas and tools to stay centered, focused, and effective amid uncertainty, pressure, and competing demands
- A powerful model to make sense of ongoing change challenges by asking better questions of ourselves and others — questions that cut through illusion and lead directly to truth and solutions
- Insight into how AI, market shifts, and social change are impacting people emotionally, and how to consciously leverage emotional intelligence during these times
- Renewed energy to lead — and live — with optimism, clarity, and faith in the future
Cheryl’s latest book: What the Flux?
- The Future is Flex
How Human Adaptability Will Define the Future in an Age of AI, Complexity, and Continuous Change
In a world of rapid transformation, strategy alone isn’t enough. The true differentiator is human adaptability — the ability to respond, recalibrate, and stay relevant without losing trust, purpose, or wellbeing.
This keynote shows why flexibility is the future-ready core leadership trait and organizational capability — and how it can be consciously cultivated.
Audience takeaways:
- Research-backed insight confirming why adaptability is the most critical leadership skill today
- Practical ways to reduce resistance, fear, and rigidity during transformation and change initiatives
- Clear understanding of how AI can be leveraged and optimized to free humans for higher-value, human-to-human collaboration
- Tools to help teams move from control and certainty-seeking to trust, discernment, and responsive decision-making
- A mindset model that supports both increased wellbeing and personal performance in fast-changing environments
- The Power of Flow - Create ease and alignment in life & work
Leading and Working at Your Best In a World That Never Slows Down
Most leaders and teams are operating in a constant state of push — trying to do more, move faster, and keep up in systems that never seem to pause. The result isn’t higher performance; it’s change fatigue, fragmentation, and overwhelmed leaders and teams.
This keynote reframes flow as a practical, strategic advantage — showing how alignment, clarity, and energy intelligence create sustainable results without burnout or over-effort. Unlike resilience or stress-management talks that focus on coping, this keynote focuses on resourcing ourselves and aligning with flow strategies.
Audience takeaways:
- A clear understanding of flow in how we structure our work and personally structure our energy for optimal outputs
- Insight into energy intelligence and hot to leverage it to increase our ability to enhance focus, creativity, and decision-making
- Practical ways leaders can empower teams to self-resource, and create outstanding results
- Ideas to support mutual accountability, increased engagement, and next level collaboration
- A new lens on hustle culture that helps us to prioritize alignment, clarity, and long-term effectiveness
Video clips
Speaker testimonials
On behalf of our entire team I want to extend our sincere thanks for your outstanding keynote presentation on “Flex – The Resilient Workplace” Your insights on adaptability, future readiness, and fostering resilience in today’s rapidly evolving workplace was not only insightful but incredibly inspiring. Your ability to connect with the audience, deliver actionable takeaways and spark meaningful conversation left a lasting impact. Thank you again for sharing your expertise with us – it was a pleasure having you as our keynote speaker we hope to collaborate again in the near future.
I’m happy to report that Cheryl Cran was a huge success as our inspirational speaker. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback on her content and on they way she delivered it as well. She was knowledgeable, engaging and really kept the crowd engaged the whole way through. I loved the effects and technology from her virtual studio and taking in comments and questions live – it made the session so much more personalized.
On behalf of the Board of Directors and the entire CIOCAN Team, thank you for contributing your time, insight, and expertise to this year’s CIO Peer Forum in Vancouver. With over 270 attendees, it was our most successful forum yet, and your thought leadership played a major role in that success. I don’t always have the opportunity to sit in on all the sessions, fortunately I was present for yours and saw how you both connected with our audience. Your style, content and presence resonated with our community! If you would like to extend your PPT presentation to our community, we’ll be happy to share.
We’re grateful for partners like you who help strengthen the CIO Association of Canada and support our mission to connect IT leaders, share best practices, and foster executive development across the country.
Rave reviews from Side Conference Audience of 1100:
Thank you for your inspirational talk! -M. Miller
I loved your keynote! -A. Rocks
Cheryl…loving this! Incredible way to kick off Day 2 – Your Keynote was fantastic!
I enjoyed your interactive keynote! You are a rock star!
Thank you for helping me see “share” as a superpower!
You are amazing! Thank you for your wisdom!
Cheryl thanks for bringing us your amazing energy! -D. Gunther
Thank you so much! You inspired our whole team – we are here with 3 brand new agents and you left a huge impression!
You were amazing I am bummed my business partner wasn’t here to hear it! -B. Hopkins
Amazing keynote – resonates on so many levels and re-energizes – Thank you
OMG this entire keynote was designed for me! That was awesome thank you.
Thank you again for being part of this milestone event.
The event was incredible on Tuesday, as Cheryl was very engaging and promoted great discussion! The team really enjoyed her keynote and some of the tools she showcased. We couldn’t have asked for a greater way to bring the team together on a day 1 of our meeting!
Thank you Cheryl! Your closing keynote for our Raising The Bar conference in Orlando was spot on. Our leaders gained immense value from your strategic insights on how to leverage collaboration for greater success. The ‘me to we’ model provided all of us with a framework to self assess and improve our leadership abilities. We loved your interactive style of texting and polling with the group – we were engaged! You definitely helped us ‘raise the bar’!”
I want to congratulate you on giving our 600+ attendees lots of food for thought in your session: The Future of Leadership. Your energy, enthusiasm and compassion for all that our attendees are dealing with came through loud and clear. Many of our attendees came up to me after your session and said: “Home Run”. Sometimes being the first presenter in the morning of the second day of a conference can often be a tough spot to draw: you immediately established a strong connection with all of us and kept us engaged and energized.
Great presentation ! You are sharing many thought provoking insights!
We want to thank you again for such a fantastic afternoon. Keynote speaking is an art form, and you have mastered it with your ability to inspire, inform, and captivate the audience. Sitting at the back of the room, I saw a sea of heads taking notes, completely enthralled, which was so great to see—The afternoon was an experience that will stay with many for a while afterward. 🙂
Feedback from those we have heard from has been nothing but positive. Thank you for being so personable, and I hope to connect again in the future. We will be watching your journey and cheering you on from the sidelines!
The event was incredible on Tuesday, as Cheryl was very engaging and promoted great discussion! The team really enjoyed her keynote and some of the tools she showcased. We couldn’t have asked for a great way to bring the team together on a day 1 of our meeting!
Thank you to you, your team and Cheryl!”
We had Cheryl as our Keynote speaker at our annual strategic retreat for our senior leaders. Her presentation on “Leading With Power, Energy & Passion” was exactly what our team needed. Cheryl has the unique ability to ‘hear’ what we needed and to completely create a customized message that was EXACTLY what we needed . Her knowledge of technology, leadership tools and emotional intelligence and her ability to give us tools to leverage our skills was right on track with where we need to go as a leadership team. We have a team of highly intelligent and accomplished leaders who are quite jaded and we had one of our long term leaders say, “I have been coming to these for years and Cheryl was by far the most relevant and excellent leadership expert we have had to date”. As a leadership expert Cheryl combines research, applied knowledge and tremendous insight that ultimately will help our leaders to perform to their next level of success.
We had Cheryl Cran as one of our main speakers at our annual HR Summit 2013 in Singapore, this event is the largest HR event of its’ kind in Asia. Cheryl’s session on ‘Lead With 2020 Vision’ was eye opening and very relevant to the HR professionals attending this event. Her combination of trend research, humour, and audience interaction was a hit with our group. We would love to work with Cheryl again.
Cheryl Cran is not Sheryl Crow but she is a rock star none the less! We had Cheryl as our closing keynote speaker for a series of programs for our leadership groups. Cheryl worked with us on over a dozen events where she delivered to about 6000 general managers in total from the AT&T system. Her keynote, “Lead with 2020 Vision” was THE icing on the proverbial cake of our two day events. Her ability to weave in the messages of the other presenters, her ability to engage the groups with humor, fun, authenticity and provocative thought was quite simply amazing and EXACTLY what we needed as a close to our events. Her stage presence, her use of audience interaction and her depth of knowledge on how today’s leaders can lead change, transform people and grow business in the digital age was the reason we hired her and she is so easy to work with, it was a pleasure to have her on our team. We would definitely work with Cheryl again.
Cheryl Cran was our keynote speaker at our leadership conference and her keynote titled: “The Art of Change Leadership – Make it Happen Make it Matter” was a great success with our store leadership team. At Rubicon we are growing and experiencing lots of internally driven change and externally imposed change. Cheryl’s research and customization for our group made an impact with us. We appreciated the texting, polling and interaction along with the usable content, actionable ideas and follow up responses to the groups text questions. Cheryl delivered on our objectives and helped our store leadership team to think in new and elevated ways about change, integration of business and future success.
Cheryl Cran was our keynote speaker at our recent MISA BC conference for municipal IT professionals – Cheryl’s keynote was a hit with our group! I appreciated a number of items with Cheryl’s keynote – there was the perfect balance of content, research and ideas along with inspiration. Feedback from our attendees was phenomenal and they were grateful for the ability to text questions to Cheryl and her candid responses along with the polling to engage the group. Attendees left Cheryl’s keynote feeling energized, inspired and ready to take ideas and action back to the workplace and put into place right away for increased success. Cheryl exceeded our expectations!
Cheryl was our keynote speaker at the UVA Wise Economic Forum and she presented “The Future of Work is Now – Are You Ready?” The response from our audience included comments such as: “Fantastic and inspirational view of the future” “Loved the blend of practicality along with a push to help us be more innovative” “Phenomenal ideas on how we can innovate and increase real time creativity for future success” “Excellent research and statistics on the future of work and its relevance to both education and business” “Inspired by Cheryl Cran” We would definitely have Cheryl back to provide more insights on the future of work, innovation and change leadership.
Cheryl Cran was a hit at our ISBN conference. Cheryl’s content was perfectly timed for our group of C-Level executives as it helped them organize a conference full of ideas into a concrete strategy to move their organization forward. Our group is very discerning and can be critical of speakers outside of the salon and spa industry, but Cheryl’s keynote dynamic and was right on the money. Cheryl customized her keynote for our group, The Future of Work Is Now – Is Your Salon Ready? and her message was the perfect balance of research, relevant ideas, enlightening looks into the future as well as preparing for future disruptions. Unlike most keynotes, Cheryl proactively offered teaser materials, including a video a blog and also offered to survey the attendees as well as conducting live polling engagement and including their feedback in her keynote. We also had Cheryl facilitate a mastermind discussion on attracting top talent and her group was standing room only. We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend her to others.
Cheryl Cran was our keynote speaker and workshop facilitator for our Calgary Stampede Leadership Summit. Her keynote: Future Ready Teams – How to Create Agile, Adaptive and Future Ready Teams was phenomenal and very engaging for our people leaders. During the workshop, many of our people leaders text Cheryl during the keynote and were very complimentary about her thorough explanation and genuine responses. Our people leaders were excited about the content and eager to apply what they were learning to their roles. Cheryl’s time and care in preparing and ensuring she was in tune with our group was greatly appreciated including her pre survey to attendees, interactive polling during the keynote as well as the text message of questions. Cheryl modeled what it looks like to leverage technology while engaging and inspiring people to go from ‘me to we’. Cheryl provided excellent insights into future trends affecting business and she gave some creative ideas on how we can leverage our success. Cheryl’s approach is intuitive, research based and highly interactive which was the perfect fit for our discerning group of leaders.
Cheryl was our opening keynote speaker for our Innovation Unplugged Skills Summit in Toronto. From our first conversation it was obvious that Cheryl was very knowledgeable in the Future of Work and took the time to understand the objectives of our organization and our event. Her presentation was engaging and informative and set up the rest of our day perfectly. We had a diverse audience which included secondary school students, educators, industry experts and government officials. Everyone took something away from Cheryl’s speech and commented on the power of the presentation in their feedback comments. I would welcome working with Cheryl again in the future.