Sekou Andrews is an award-winning entrepreneur,
top public speaker, thought leader, and Grammy-
nominated spoken word poet who harnesses the art
of emotional intelligence to teach your industry
leaders how to challenge archaic conventions,
unearth bolder perspectives, humanize their
leadership, and rise to their own occasion.
Sekou Andrews is an award-winning entrepreneur, top public speaker, thought leader, and Grammy-nominated spoken word poet who harnesses the art of emotional intelligence to teach your industry leaders how to challenge archaic conventions, unearth bolder perspectives, humanize their leadership, and rise to their own occasion.
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Keynotes That Make Meetings More Moving, Meaningful & Memorable
“It got our whole organization and our whole leadership team focused… it helped us have a really productive meeting thereafter.”
“Over three quarters of our audience gave Sekou a 5 out of 5… I’ve never seen a response that positive.”
“The reception by this conservative audience was beyond belief. Run! Run now and book Sekou.”
Sekou personalizes every keynote, transforming ideas like
disruption & innovation… into human resonance.
He ignites company messages and themes into personal anthems and manifestos.
Simply put: Sekou takes your strategic goals, and gives them goosebumps.
Keynote Selections
Tailored Inspiration That Ignites Culture and Innovation
01 Disruption
D.i.Y. Innovation
Themes: Owning Innovation | Change Management | Humanizing Leadership | Successful Failure | Cultivating Creativity | Technology/AI Collaboration
“Innovation is the difference between ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ and ‘Why didn’t I think LIKE that?’” This keynote knows what you’re thinking. It knows your brain is racing with AI strategies; your heart is racing from automation challenges; your organization is racing the clock to implement “big I” innovations – digitization, block chain, and other exponential technologies. So, this keynote will help you win the race with “little i” innovation – harnessing your individuality, imagination, inspiration, and idiosyncrasy as force multipliers for human ingenuity. Offering unexpected perspectives on successful failure, narrative architecture, and Human-AI symbiosis, this keynote teaches leaders how to upgrade your company’s Human Operating System. The human creativity innovators wield in ways no algorithm can replicate; The perspectives innovators engage that make change emotionally digestible; The mindset innovators cultivate to stop fearing the future and start forging it… this keynote will help you think like that.
Length: 40 – 60 min
You Will Learn / Experience:
- How leaders encourage “successful failure” to empower your team’s innovation mindset
- 3-5 human creativity tools that DiY innovators need to achieve Human-AI Symbiosis
- How to balance creative collision with belonging to empower a culture of innovation
- “Little i” frameworks that help you think and lead like an innovator by innovating from within
- How to harness Resonance as the differentiator in AI-augmented communication
Disruption Mindset Shift
Themes: Self-Disruption | Reframing Change | Tactical Creativity | Hacking Perspective | Thriving through Uncertainty | Technology/AI Collaboration
“SHIFT HAPPENS” This keynote will NOT keep you safe. Because this keynote IS disruption. It is intentionally edgy, to help you thrive at the human edge. It is aware of the geo-political uncertainties, AI automations, and emerging competitors that threaten your safety, and it knows you won’t be compelled to navigate them by a speech that plays it safe. So this keynote will shift constantly, without warning, to turn your neurological anxieties into narrative anthems that teach you to prepare for the unknown. It will employ neurolinguistic resonance to articulate your turbulence, while using emotional onboarding to calibrate you to uncertainty. It will trigger discomfort while getting you comfortable with it. It will not keep you safe from disruption. But it will be the most fun you’ve had learning how to harness the mindset of a disruptor, shifting from early adopter to “early adapter,” so you can perpetually expect not to expect what you expect to come next.
Length: 40 – 60 min
You Will Learn / Experience:
- Powerful mindset practices for training yourself to unlock the opportunity in uncertainty
- Emotional onboarding tools to help teams feel disruption differently and embrace change
- Genius ways that teams – from marketing and sales to operations and HR – are upleveling in times of upheaval
- How to balance AI pattern recognition with creative pattern disruption to optimize Human-AI symbiosis
- Rituals for finding refuge in community, strength in vulnerability, and joy in humanity during times of turbulence
02 Growth, Impact & Culture
The Audacity of “What If?”
Themes: Impact/Purpose | Human-AI Symbiosis | Collaboration/Team | Enriching Culture | Innovation/Creativity | Celebrating Identity/Story
“What if there is a better way?” This keynote will give you the audacity to ask: What if we can harness the power of our technology, our growth and each disruption, without losing touch with our humanity, our purpose, and each other? Make no mistake, this keynote is audacious. It will start in a theatrical way that leaves you laughing at your truths while feeling truly seen. Then it will unexpectedly turn your event into a playground, using biological resonance to rekindle the joy in your work. Next, it will challenge you to boldly defy convention, deny limitations, and define yourselves for yourselves, while celebrating your unique impact on the communities you touch. As only poetry can, this keynote will repurpose the word “touch” as a metaphor for connection, collaboration, and impact. So prepare to have your hearts and minds touched and leave with a new narrative anthem to help you celebrate who you are, or a new battle cry to help you grow into who you will become.
Length: 40 – 60 min
You Will Learn / Experience:
- How to use intersectionality to turn “business as usual” into “business as mutual”
- How to deploy Narrative Architecture as a strategic humanizing engine for culture
- Tips to help your people celebrate their value while collaborating with AI to amplify it
- How to connect leadership and culture to purpose and possibility to drive ROI
- Ways to harness human ingenuity, identity and idiosyncrasy as a competitive moat
The NEXT, Next Level
Themes: Transformation Mindset | Resilience/Fortitude | Adaptability | Cross-Functional Evolution | Resonant Leadership | Human Capital/Community
“The NEXT, next level is not about reaching new heights, but reaching new depths.” As kids, humans have one growth-oriented goal: get bigger. However, when height plateaus we don’t stop growing. We simply shift focus from getting bigger to being better, healthier, wiser, more resilient. Just so, an organization seeking to perpetually reach its next levels must evolve from only growing revenue to growing resonance, leadership, innovation, culture, and well-being. This high-energy keynote will trigger your next “growth spurt” and help your human stack match your tech stack by amplifying your mindset, adaptation, and communication to meet the pace of AI, quantum computing, and digitization. You will learn how to go higher by going deeper – deepening connections, amplifying collaboration, and expanding possibility so that you rise to your own occasion. Because this keynote has one growth-oriented goal: to help you and your business “grow up” in the most comprehensive and sustainable ways so that you can perpetually reach your NEXT, next level.
Length: 40 – 60 min
You Will Learn / Experience:
- How to fall with grace and recover with grit by growing next-level fortitude
- Creative ways to develop a perpetual-growth mindset that transforms leadership
- How to grow culture and productivity via collaboration, not competition, with AI
- Practices to grow your Human Operating System and prevent next-level digital fatigue
- How to grow strategic storytelling muscles to drive next-level results and impact
Note To Self
Themes: Mental Health | Confidence | Self-Care | Change Management | Proactive Lifestyle | Limiting Beliefs | Connection & Belonging | Growth Mindset | Changing Narratives | Workplace Well-Being | Stress & Overwhelm
More than “you are what you eat”, you are how you breathe, you are how you give and how you receive. You are how you love, how you laugh, how you lead. You are how you perceive and how you believe.
Length: 40 – 60 min
Key Takeaways:
- How to lullaby limiting beliefs by telling yourself more empowering stories
- How to know when to fight and when to surrender your way to success
- Ways to serve your “SELFs”: self-care, self-love, self-perception, self-permission
- How to deepen connections to heighten belonging at work
- How to unearth secret sources of wellbeing at work
- Top tools and tips for strengthening confidence, positivity and a growth mindset
03 Human-Tech Collaboration
The Golden Hour of A.I.
Themes: Artificial Intelligence & Emerging Tech | Leading Through Uncertainty | Human-Tech Collaboration | Future-Proofing Mindset | Humanizing Leadership
“Part exhilarating… part terrifying” This keynote knows that the birth of AI – the headaches, horrors, headwinds and hope of it all – is leaving many feeling part exhilarated… and part terrified. However, the best way to grow into our greatness is to intentionally push ourselves into places that feel part exhilarating and part terrifying. So, this keynote will push you in an upending but uplifting way to help you process what AI can be when it grows up, by looking at it through the metaphor of parenting. It will arm you with new leadership tools to harness the Human-AI Symbiosis needed for your teams – from sales and communication, to HR and operations – to celebrate their value and accelerate results. Like a newborn placed on the parent’s chest in the first “golden hour” of life, to awaken the bond, trust and symbiosis between them, we are also in that metaphoric “first hour” of AI’s birth. This keynote understands that how we teach it, learn from it, bond with it, and model for it what it means to be human, is what will prepare us for the AI-era… and empower us to make that era golden.
Length: 40 – 60 min
You Will Learn / Experience:
- Empowering new ways to process the fears and possibilities around AI initiatives
- How to master narrative architecture and emotional onboarding to lead through uncertainty
- Tips to harness the neuroscience of biological resonance to deepen human connections
- Unconventional ways to use idiosyncrasy to amplify trust and authenticity
- Tools to increase Human-AI Symbiosis to help tech collaborations drive ROI
- A safe space to laugh at our humanity and marvel at our capacity for evolution
04 Bold Thinking & Leadership
The Science of Wavemaking
Themes: Challenging Convention, Bold Thinking, Leading Change, Inspiring Communication, Power of Partnership, Advocacy, Harnessing Imagination
“It’s not that we don’t understand the science behind waves… it’s just that we like YOUR version better.” Big ideas and bold thinking are not traits exclusive to pioneering leaders. They have been lying dormant within each of us since childhood, waiting to be reignited. This speech is the spark that rekindles your access to the imagination and creativity required to stir the waters and make waves in your industry.
Length: 30 – 60 min
The Lightning Machine
Themes: Overcoming Impossible Odds | Amplified Influence | Growing Greatness | Mental Health | Entrepreneurship | Successful Failure | Grit | Self-Inspiration
There is only one reason to experience this speech: You need a new spark… You need a power surge… You need to ignite the next level of greatness within you to accomplish a next level goal before you. Maybe your company has just audacious new goals… or you just committed to a seemingly impossible mission… or your passion has recently flatlined and left you believing Impossibility’s whispers that “your shine doesn’t have enough power to defeat darkness.” If so, then this keynote is officially your supercharger! In it, Sekou Andrews celebrates the mindset of lightning-makers who step into the dark places and choose to be the light for others. He will teach you uncommon, effective ways to grow your grit, amplify your influence, fail successfully, fortify your self-care, and harness the power of inspiration to overcome impossible odds. Prepare for an electrifying keynote experience that will defibrillate the giant within you and help you bring Impossibility to its knees.
Length: 40 – 60 min
Key Takeaways:
- How to develop a visionary mindset that sees through darkness
- The top tools of trailblazers who pave roads for others to follow
- How to amplify the power of your voice to galvanize others around your light
- Ways to ignite the self-care, self-love, self-inspiration, and self-permission needed to transcend your own limits
- How to perpetually “pass the spark” to ignite lightning in your team or community
05 Healthcare
Love Affair With Healthcare
Themes: Caregiving, Reigniting Passion, Reconnecting to Purpose, Inspiring Health, Work-Life Harmony, Celebrating Impact, Humanizing Healthcare
“When is the last time you wrote a love poem at work… ABOUT work?” What if you could remind your audience of the moment they fell in love with healthcare? What if you could reignite the passion in providers – caregivers, executives and housekeeping alike – to connect with patients on a human, heartfelt level? If you could do that – write a love poem to healthcare that makes your audience fall back in love with it – this keynote is how it would sound.
Length: 30 – 60 min
The Pinky Promise of Care
Themes: Transforming Healthcare, Patient-Centricity, Patient Safety, Leading Change, Innovation in Healthcare, Bold Thinking, Recommitment
“You made me an UNspoken but UNmistakably UNderstood pinky promise when I was admitted into your care…” The provision of quality healthcare is a beautiful topic. Patient safety and medical error?… not so much. So, in true poetic voice fashion, Sekou transforms this important and uncomfortable subject into a roller coaster ride of laughter, tears and valuable insight that holds every team member accountable to giving the highest quality, most human, and safest care possible.
Length: 30 – 60 min
Strategic Inspiration
for
Strategy Implementation
When people connect
emotionally with a strategy,
they carry it into action.
Emotionally and intellectually immersive
experiences that deliver what every
meeting planner hopes for:
Emotionally and intellectually immersive experiences that deliver what every meeting planner hopes for:
a defining moment
/dih-fahy-ning moh-muhnt/ noun
- A moment when the room is fully engaged and captivated.
- A moment when the message hits differently and gives chills.
- A moment people talk about long after the conference ends.
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