
Cheryl Cran
Cheryl Cran is the CEO of Synthesis at Work Inc., a global consultancy dedicated to helping leaders, teams, and organizations evolve with clarity, creativity, and conscious leadership in a time of exponential change.
She is a visionary change leader who has worked with thousands of people globally to help them built the future ready skills needed to thrive in today’s fast changing and fast paced world. Named the #1 Future of Work influencer by Onalytica and ranked among the Top 10 Future of Work experts by GoCatalant, Cheryl is known worldwide for her bold insights, energetic delivery, and ability to inspire leaders to expand beyond what’s next—to create it.
She is the author of 10 books, including Super.Crucial.Human, NextMapping: Anticipate, Navigate & Create The Future of Work, and The Art of Change Leadership: Driving Transformation in a Fast-Paced World. Her thought leadership on the future of work, leadership, and humanity’s evolution has been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, HuffPost, Entrepreneur, Metro New York, Reader’s Digest, NBC Online, and CBS Online.
Speaking topics
- The Innovation Mindset: How Individuals and Teams Can Elevate Performance
This keynote is designed for forward-thinking leaders and organizations who want to stay ahead of change by cultivating the mindsets and energy states that fuel true innovation.
Drawing on Cheryl Cran’s research on the future of leadership, energetic intelligence, and human potential, this keynote reveals how innovation isn’t just about technology—it’s about people, energy, and mindset.
Innovation begins with how we think, expands through how we collaborate, and sustains through how we energize ourselves and others.
The leaders of the future will be those who embody a higher frequency of creativity, adaptability, and courage.
The audience will leave with:
- How to redefine innovation into ‘micro’ innovation and how that leads to transformation
- How mindset determines the ability to inspire performance for individuals and teams
- Ways to shift thinking from ‘what’s changing?’ to “what’s emerging?’ And how this leads to innovation
- Why emotional and energetic intelligences are now core innovation skills
- The Innovation Mindset model and how to apply it life, leadership and the workplace
- Rituals, language and leadership behaviours that sustain innovation
- Your innovation energy type and how to leverage it for transformative breakthroughs
“The future isn’t waiting for us—it’s responding to our mindset.”
When leaders elevate their thinking, expand their energy, and create from curiosity instead of fear, they unlock infinite potential within themselves and their teams.
- The Resilient Workplace : How Leaders and Teams Can Thrive Through Change
- This keynote explores the major societal shifts impacting worker attitudes and the way we work now and in the future. Flexible work IS the key and employees expect increasing autonomy over when and how they work.Flexibility is not new but it’s a NOW imperative in that there is a fundamental redefinition of work-life integration happening. With the rise of AI and robotics and statistics showing less available workers now and in the future, it is time to rethink traditional structures and embrace new models of productivity, trust and leadership.In this keynote for leaders or teams or both audiences will leave with:
- Research on the rise of asynchronous work and employee autonomy
- Why mindset about work is the biggest opportunity for leaders to innovate the workplace
- How the gig economy is reshaping how work will be structured now and in the future
- Why flexibility is the key driver to attracting and retaining talented employees
- How companies can build trust – based cultures that support non-linear workdays
- The long term impact of the shift in worker attitudes on leadership, performance and innovation
- Building a resilient workplace culture by leveraging digital transformation to help create the flexible work culture
- The Future of Work is now – are you ready?
Trends, Research and Insights into the Future of Work
Employee engagement, creating future ready leaders, attracting and retaining top talent are all elements that are rapidly changing and impacting the way we work and how we need to change to meet the challenges of the future workplace today.
This keynote will provide researched global business insights, thought provoking, creative, leading edge ideas and strategies on how leaders can take immediate action to increase team buy in, adaptability and execution NOW as we head towards 2030.
Attendees will leave with:
- A look at the trends and technologies shaping the future workplace today
- Ideas for leaders and their teams to adapt their personality style and leadership style to the fast changing workplace
- “How” to successfully work with and engage the multiple generations in the workplace
- Insights into how leaders need to adapt to the ever-changing reality of worker attitudes and shifting attitudes on loyalty, job satisfaction and how work is done
- Mindset model on how to navigate fast pace of change as we head to future of work
- Research on the multiple intelligences needed to navigate the future of work
- Case studies and examples of progressive companies and leaders on the leading edge of creating innovative future ready workplaces
- Strategies on how to get everyone on board with the overall future vision, build excitement for the company’s direction and create commitment and buy-in to taking action today and for the future
Cheryl’s style is dynamic high energy and interactive, she presents relevant research and her presentations always have fun movie clips and music. With Cheryl Cran as your keynote speaker you are guaranteed to have one of your best events ever with increased audience engagement, and an audience that leaves with easy to implement ideas as well as inspired to lead with 2030 vision to build the future workplace today.
- The Art of Change Leadership – Driving Transformation In a Fast Paced World
This change leadership keynote is for everyone because “everyone is a leader!” Increasing fast pace of change requires a culture where everyone is a change leader. Everyone in the workplace is working in times of intense technological innovation and dealing with ongoing rapid change and disruptions. The key is how to inspire and engage everyone to be ‘leaders of change’ and to dynamically increase innovation, collaboration and success for everyone in the company and for the business overall. This keynote focuses on how each individual can harness their own inner abilities to lead change and personal leadership in a positive and proactive way. This keynote is based on Cheryl’s book “The Art of Change Leadership” (Wiley 2015)
Attendees will leave this session with:
- Further insight into how is fast change is impacting the speed of work and how we as leaders need to build adaptability to the new reality
- A shifted perspective on how we as individuals can harness positive stress and leverage time in an increasingly fast-paced work environment
- A clear understanding of how each generation views change, deals with change and strategies to improve change responses and actions
- The change cycle and how to use this model to lead change for self and for others
- Insight into their own personal change behaviors and tools to leverage their individual ability to adapt more quickly to ongoing change with a positive approach
- Tools to lead change with multiple perspectives including emotional intelligence, generation intelligence and energetic intelligence
- A change leadership ‘next map’ that will outline your next steps to creating the future that you want to create
- The Future of Leadership
Never before have workplaces had so much ambiguity, uncertainty and constant change. Workers are challenged with doing more with less, learning at the speed of disruption and working with diverse situations. There is a massive opportunity for leaders to create the future for themselves and their teams. With the increase of digital transformation there is a calling for leaders to be connected, empathetic and inspiring for their teams.
In this keynote leaders will learn:
The most recent and up to date research on the future workplace and what it means for leaders today Statistics and sentiment analysis on worker attitudes and what workers want today and in the future from their leaders Leadership models on the ‘me to we’ mindset and mapping the future of the leadership journey Tips and strategies on how to leverage leadership mastery to increase the attraction and retention of top talent Inspiring ideas that can be put into immediate action to increase employee motivation and engagement Practical daily actions to help leaders feel energized and to help their teams to be inspired and excited to create the future of work Cheryl Cran future of work expert and founder of NextMapping shares inspiring, uplifting and practical ideas for leaders to be future ready now!
Video clips
Speaker testimonials
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.