Association, Nonprofit & Foundation Speakers
The speaker your members are still talking about at next year's conference.
Association programming is different. Your audience isn't an anonymous crowd — they're members, donors, colleagues, and community. They showed up because they care, and they'll tell everyone they know what they thought of your speaker.
Outspoken Agency represents speakers who understand that assignment. Voices that honor the shared mission of your membership while challenging and inspiring them to go further. Speakers who make your annual conference, gala, or summit the one people talk about all year.
We work with professional associations, nonprofits, foundations, and mission-driven organizations across hospitality, insurance, medical, real estate, security, HR, travel, construction, women's groups, family offices, and dozens of other verticals. Whether you're a YWCA chapter planning an annual luncheon, a nonprofit hosting a membership summit, or a trade association running a multi-day conference, we'll find the voice that moves your room.
Why Outspoken
A different kind of agency.
Diverse rosters across every topic. The speakers you need.. Women-owned, independent agency. No hidden fees. Honest pricing.
Most speaker bureaus are databases with sales teams. We're a boutique, women-owned agency with real opinions about what makes a speaker right for a specific room. We've watched enough annual conferences, gala dinners, and donor summits to know the difference between a speaker who fills an hour and one who fills a membership, or a mission, with renewed purpose.
Whether you're a trade association, a nonprofit, a foundation, or a mission-driven organization of any kind, we'll be honest with you about fit, realistic about fee, and relentless about finding the right voice for your event. No hard sell. No hidden fees. Book a consultation and we'll handle the rest.
Jaz Ampaw-Farr
RESILIENCE REVOLUTIONARY & SPEAKERS HALL OF FAME INDUCTEE
Leadership ★ Resilience ★ Human Connection
A three-time Speaker of the Year winner, Speakers Hall of Fame inductee, and "British Oprah" — Jaz Ampaw-Farr is one of the most electric presences on the global speaking circuit, full stop. Her origin story is extraordinary: raised in poverty and abuse, she was rescued by five teachers who became her everyday heroes, a journey she now chronicles in her debut memoir Because of You, This Is Me and her Cannes-awarded short film. Her keynotes on resilience, human-first leadership, and what it takes to be 10% braver have moved audiences from Fortune 500 boardrooms to government agencies. For associations, she's the speaker your members will thank you for booking years later — equal parts laughter, tears, and genuine transformation.
Anu Gupta
AUTHOR OF BREAKING BIAS (FOREWORD BY DALAI LAMA)
Mindfulness & Science ★ Belonging ★ Unconscious Bias
NYU-trained lawyer. Cambridge social scientist. Founder of Be More with Anu, a B Corp that has trained 100,000+ professionals across 300+ organizations — including Google, HSBC UK, the American Medical Association, and the United Nations. TED speaker. Guest on Oprah's Apple TV+ series. His book Breaking Bias (Hay House, 2024), with a foreword by the Dalai Lama, was named a winner of the Non-Obvious Book Award, the Axiom Business Book Award, and the International Book Award. Anu's PRISM Toolkit — five science-backed, somatically informed tools for unlearning bias — gives association audiences practical methods for creating cultures of belonging that go far beyond compliance. A compelling, warm, and rigorously researched keynote for medical, legal, hospitality, and HR associations especially.
Cori Lathan
NEUROSCIENTIST, ROBOTICS INVENTOR & TECH FUTURIST
Entrepreneurship ★ Future of Work ★ Gig Economy
MIT PhD neuroscientist. Co-founder of AnthroTronix — a woman-owned R&D company she led for 22 years, working with DARPA, NASA, NIH, and NSF on everything from robots for children with disabilities to VR experiments on the International Space Station. Her FDA-cleared brain performance platform won a Gold Edison Award. Named MIT Technology Review's Top 100 Innovators, Fast Company's Most Creative People, and Smithsonian permanent collection for women in STEM. Now author of the bestselling Inventing the Future: Stories from a Techno-Optimist, Cori's keynote is an electrifying, optimistic exploration of AI, robotics, and what happens when technology is designed to amplify human capability rather than replace it. A standout choice for medical, security, government, and technology-adjacent associations.
Jesse Israel
HUMAN PERFORMANCE EXPERT & FOUNDER OF THE BIG QUIET
Leadership & Wellbeing ★ Peak Performance ★ Meditation
Jesse Israel is a globally recognized human performance and wellbeing expert whose singular mission is helping leaders, teams, and organizations quiet the noise — and unlock the possibilities, performance, purpose, and power that live on the other side. Founder of The Big Quiet mass meditation movement, 5x Audible worldwide bestseller, and the keynote partner Oprah Winfrey chose for every stop of her most recent national arena tour. His Amplified Quiet Framework has helped thousands of leaders — from top CEOs and senior White House advisors to Grammy and Academy Award-winning performers — cut through what holds them back and access their full potential. Jesse's keynote is immersive, experiential, and unlike anything else on the association stage — a genuine performance in the truest sense, leaving audiences with tools they'll use the next morning.
Amanda Slavin
AI & EDTECH ENTREPRENEUR & CO-FOUNDER OF LEARNINGFREQUENCY
EdTech & Learning ★ Digital Environments ★ Engagement Design
Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Cannes Lion winner, three-time TEDx speaker, and co-founder of both CatalystCreativ and LearningFREQUENCY — Amanda Slavin sits at the intersection of education, technology, and human connection in a way few speakers can. Her work reshapes how organizations think about engagement not just as a metric, but as an ecosystem — designing digital and physical learning environments that create equitable, meaningful experiences for the people inside them. With a curriculum co-developed with HubSpot that is taught in MBA programs worldwide, and clients ranging from Google and Coca-Cola to The Nature Conservancy, she brings both the practical framework and the urgent vision. For associations in education, HR, hospitality, and technology — especially those navigating the tension between digital convenience and human depth — Amanda's talk on the future of learning and connection is one of the most relevant on the circuit right now.
Brittany Barreto
“THE VOICE OF FEMTECH” & GENETICIST
Innovation & Equity ★ Women’s Health ★ Health Technology
A molecular geneticist with a PhD from Baylor College of Medicine, serial entrepreneur, venture investor, and the global authority on FemTech — the $1 trillion+ market for women's health innovation that most industries are only beginning to understand. Founder of FemHealth Insights, host of the #1 FemTech podcast in the world (listened to in 100+ countries), Forbes contributor, and former Chair of the Innovation Committee at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr. Barreto's keynote on the business of women's health — why women were excluded from clinical trials until 1993, what that costs the global economy, and where the most transformative innovation is happening right now — is essential programming for medical associations, healthcare conferences, insurance industry events, and any CPG organization that serves or employs women, which is to say, all of them.
Cara Yar Khan
UN HUMANITARIAN & DISABILITY STORYTELLER
Disability Inclusion ★ Courage ★ Human Rights
Cara Yar Khan's TED Women closing talk — The Beautiful Balance Between Courage and Fear — has been viewed nearly 3 million times and translated into 27 languages. A former UN humanitarian who served in 10 countries including Haiti, Angola, and China, and a White House political appointee who advised on international disability rights at the U.S. Department of State, Cara was diagnosed at 30 with a rare progressive muscle-wasting disease and refused to stop. She is the subject of a documentary executive-produced by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, and a 2025 recipient of the Dole-Harkin Award for distinction in public service. For associations focused on inclusion, courage, and purpose-driven leadership, she is one of the most impactful speakers available on any stage.
Soon Yu
AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR & PODCAST HOST
Innovation ★ Brand Strategy ★ AAPI Leadership
Stanford MBA. Former Global VP of Innovation at VF Corporation, where he built a $2 billion innovation pipeline for The North Face, Vans, and Timberland. And the author of two books that challenge everything associations in product- and service-driven industries think they know about marketing, brand awareness, and member engagement. Iconic Advantage makes the case that the most powerful innovation strategy is deepening what already makes you irreplaceable. Friction (with a foreword blurb from Adam Grant) flips conventional marketing wisdom entirely: the goal is to introduce the right kind of friction to drive exclusivity, belonging, meaning, and deeper engagement. He is also the host of Aconic, a podcast dedicated to candid conversations with Asian and AAPI icons about their personal journeys of challenge and triumph, reflecting his broader commitment to amplifying underrepresented voices.
Dr. David Fajgenbaum
CO-FOUNDER OF EVERY CURE & PENN MEDICINE PROFESSOR/PHYSICIAN
Medical Innovation ★ AI & Drug Discovery ★ Resilience
Named to TIME100 Health 2025 as one of the world's most influential people in health. UPenn Associate Professor, one of the youngest faculty ever to receive tenure at Penn Medicine. Georgetown quarterback. Oxford scholar. Wharton MBA. And a man who, while dying from a rare disease during his third year of medical school, studied his own charts between hospitalizations, identified a repurposed treatment, and saved his own life. He then built Every Cure to use AI and computational pharmacophenomics to unlock hidden cures from existing medicines for the 7,000 rare diseases that remain untreated. His story is one of the most remarkable at the intersection of medicine, data science, and sheer human will. Essential for medical, pharmaceutical, research, and healthcare associations and any audience that needs to believe one person can still change the world.
Kristin Goodwin
USAF (Ret.) Brigadier General & Leadership Under Pressure
Women’s Leadership ★ Change Management ★ Resilience
Brigadier General Kristin Goodwin (USAF, Ret.) logged over 3,000 flight hours and became the first woman to command an Air Force Bomb Wing. She served as an architect of the U.S. Space Force's Space Operations Command, advised at the Pentagon, and has since brought her leadership frameworks to Harvard, the Smithsonian, and executive boardrooms nationwide. Her signature RIZE framework (Radical Curiosity, Innovation, Zest, and Excellence) gives leaders at every level a concrete, battle-tested approach to thriving under uncertainty. She is also the first openly gay general officer at the Air Force Academy, making her especially resonant for associations committed to authentic, inclusive leadership. Her career is proof that the hardest rooms are where the best leaders are made.
Rina Bliss
RUTGERS SOCIOLOGIST & EMERGING GENETIC SCIENCES SCHOLAR
Genetics & Intelligence ★ AI & Equity ★ Human Potential
Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, member of the Human Genome Synthesis Project, consultant to the National Academies of Science and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and consultant to PBS's Finding Your Roots. Her award-winning book Rethinking Intelligence: A Radical New Understanding of Our Human Potential (HarperCollins) challenges the IQ-and-DNA assumptions baked into how organizations hire, develop, and evaluate talent. Her latest, What's Real About Race? (W.W. Norton, 2025), is already shaping national conversations about genetics, identity, and equity in medicine and science. For associations in healthcare, education, legal, and HR, Rina offers something rare: hard science, accessible delivery, and genuinely new thinking about how institutions can unleash human potential they're currently leaving on the table.
Michael Hebb
FOUNDER OF LIFE OVER DINNER & DEATH OVER DINNER
Dialogue & Connection ★ Community Building ★ The Art of Gathering
Michael Hebb co-founded the pop-up restaurant movement, won the AIA People's Choice Award for urban community design, and served as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Washington's Graduate School of Communication — all before becoming the man who convinced the world to talk about the things it keeps avoiding. His organization Life Over Dinner uses the shared meal as a design technology for catalyzing the most meaningful, difficult, and necessary conversations in any community. A speaker at the Obama Foundation Summit, World Economic Forum, Clinton Global Initiative, Cleveland Clinic, and Google X, Michael's keynote on the art of gathering, community building, and dialogue design is especially powerful for associations whose entire purpose is connection and who want to leave their annual conference feeling more like a community than a crowd.
Thomas Sadoski
TONY-NOMINATED ACTOR AND HUMANITARIAN
Storytelling ★ Humanitarian Leadership ★ Communication Skills
Tony-nominated Broadway, television, and film actor known for HBO's The Newsroom, Billions, and the the film Lilly alongside Patricia Clarkson. Also the Founding Ambassador of War Child USA, a board member of INARA and Refugees International, and a passionate advocate who has traveled to active conflict zones to bear witness and amplify the stories of children affected by war, raising over $1.5 million for War Child in five years. His keynote bridges two worlds: the actor's precision with storytelling, pacing, and communication, and the humanitarian's urgency about what it means to act with integrity when it matters. For associations hosting awards galas, annual conferences, or leadership events where the speaker needs to both anchor the room and move it, Thomas Sadoski is the rarest combination of craft and conscience on the market.
Theresa Payton
FIRST FEMALE WHITE HOUSE CIO & AUTHORITY ON CYBERSECURITY
AI Strategy ★ Cybersecurity ★ Digital Trust
The first woman to serve as White House Chief Information Office, securing critical systems for President George W. Bush, Theresa Payton went on to found Fortalice Solutions, a Forbes-featured cybersecurity firm advising Fortune 500 boards and government agencies on AI strategy and threat mitigation. A patented inventor, author of Manipulated (named one of The Guardian's Top 10 Books About Cybercrime), and the real-world intelligence expert behind CBS's Hunted, she has a rare gift for making AI and cybersecurity immediately actionable for non-technical audiences. For insurance, legal, healthcare, and government associations, her keynote consistently lands as the best a conference has ever booked.
A Peek at Some Industries We Serve
Associations, nonprofits, foundations, and everyone in between.
Hospitality
Service culture, guest experience, workforce development, and what belonging means in a frontline industry.
Insurance
Trust, behavioral economics, end-of-life planning, and the AI disruption reshaping the industry from the inside out.
Security
Leadership under pressure, AI and emerging threats, human performance, and building high-stakes teams that don't break.
Construction
Safety culture, workforce mental health, leadership in the field, and the future of building in a changing environment.
Medical & Healthcare
Clinical innovation, health equity, AI in medicine, and the human conversations that science alone can't have.
Real Estate
Resilience, market disruption, community belonging, and what it means to build places where people actually want to be.
Travel & Tourism
Innovation in experience design, belonging across cultures, and what moves people to become loyal advocates for a place or brand.
HR & People Ops
Bias in hiring, engagement science, belonging at scale, and the behavioral research behind why teams thrive or fracture.
Women's Groups
Courage and authenticity, career advancement, health equity, community, and the stories that make women feel seen.
Legal & Professional
Managing up, trust dynamics, end-of-life law, AI and professional responsibility, and bias in practice.
Technology
AI and human performance, the ethics of innovation, and what it means to build products that serve people rather than extract from them.
Nonprofits & Foundations
Purpose-driven leadership, donor engagement, board development, humanitarian storytelling, and the resilience it takes to sustain a mission.
Frequently Asked Questions
What association planners ask us most.
What makes a great keynote speaker for an association annual conference?
Association, nonprofit, and foundation audiences are different from corporate ones. They've self-selected into a community they care about, they know each other, and they're evaluating the speaker through the lens of their shared professional identity or collective mission. The best speakers for these rooms honor that. They do their homework on the organization, they connect their message to what that community actually wrestles with, and they leave members or donors feeling proud to be part of something meaningful. Tell us about your organization and we'll match you to speakers who get that instinctively.
Can you find speakers for niche association verticals like insurance, construction, or travel?
Absolutely, and this is one of our strengths. We work with professional associations, nonprofits, foundations, and mission-driven organizations of all kinds, and we ask detailed questions about your audience's world before making any recommendation. We've placed speakers at events ranging from hospitality and insurance conferences to YWCA annual luncheons, family office summits, and foundation donor gatherings. Browse our full topic directory and reach out. We'll tell you honestly what fits and what doesn't.
What topics are most popular for association keynotes right now?
The highest-demand topics for association audiences include resilience and navigating uncertainty, AI's impact on specific industries, belonging and member engagement, women's health and workforce equity, leadership under pressure, and conversations around death, legacy, and end-of-life planning (especially for legal, insurance, and medical associations). We track what's resonating across verticals so book a consultation and we'll share what we're seeing.
Do you offer speakers for association galas, awards dinners, and emcee roles?
Yes. Several speakers in our roster also work as skilled emcees and event hosts. For gala or awards formats, tone matters as much as content. We take the time to understand what kind of energy and presence your event calls for and make recommendations accordingly. Get in touch with your event details and we'll find the right fit.
How do I book a speaker for my association event?
The fastest path is our speaker inquiry form. Share your event date, association type, audience size, topic priorities, and budget range. We respond within one business day with tailored recommendations. We handle all contracting, logistics, travel, and pre-event coordination, so your team can stay focused on the event itself.
Your members, donors, and community deserve a speaker worth the trip.
Whether you're planning a trade association conference, a nonprofit gala, a foundation summit, or a chapter event. Tell us about your audience and we'll send tailored speaker recommendations within one business day. No obligation, no pressure.