NSB Logo Betsy Myers Betsy Myers

Betsy Myers

Speaker

Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Leadership Authority & Former COO of Obama for President

A leadership expert, author, and consultant, Betsy Myers is speaking at conferences and workshops around the world on the changing nature of leadership. Her book, Take the Lead: Motivate, Inspire, and Bring Out the Best in Yourself and Everyone Around You, continues to be the basis of her work as her experience spans the corporate, political and higher education arena. She is the former Chief Operating Officer of Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign and the Founding Director of the Center for Women & Business at Bentley University.

Keynote Speeches

The Leader in You – How to Be Your Authentic Self While Also Being Strategic to Get Results

So many people have a difficult time accepting the realities of their workplace today. The driving theme of this speech is that it’s irrelevant whether you like a boss, colleague, constituent, or donor. What is relevant, however, is navigating every situation to achieve the best possible outcome while preserving your integrity. This is the only way to prosper in your company. It all starts with you. True leadership is when you step into who you really are, when you discover, understand and embrace your own personal story. In addition to being your true self, successful leadership is also learning about the people around you and what they need. This combination enables leaders to create an environment and culture in which people offer their best selves to a team, partnership, or relationship in order to achieve desired results. This speech will share strategies and best practices that will help you become an authentic leader who establishes meaningful relationships in order to drive your career forward.

Leadership Creates a Feeling – How to Create a Modern Workforce for the 21st Century

Every company today is grappling with a staggering statistic — 50-70% of American workers are disengaged in the workplace. Clearly, the old masculine model of command-and-control leadership is no longer effective in this new environment; so a new leadership model must take hold in order to recruit and retain vital and vibrant talent at all levels of the organization. Indeed, as this speech explains, leaders today must be conscious about their behavior and its impact on others. More specifically, they must be self-reflective and try to understand their strengths and weaknesses. In addition, they must ask questions, not just provide answers, in order to build relationships and facilitate teamwork and collaboration. And, finally, they must bring out productive feelings in the people around them. When people feel valued, supported, appreciated, and understood, they do their best work. Based on Betsy Myers’ book, Take the Lead: Motivate, Inspire, and Bring Out the Best in Yourself and Everyone Around You, this speech will explain what leaders must do differently and better if they want a workforce that is both happy and profit-driven.

Engaging Men – The Way Forward for Women in Business

Most companies aren’t making real progress when it comes to gender equity today. Indeed, women’s issues often appear to be pushed to the side. Unfortunately, though, the old strategies and continuing lack of focus aren’t helping organizations recruit, retain and advance talented women. Women currently hold just 10%-15% of the senior leadership (C-Suite) positions in corporate America, even though they hold 50% of the middle-management positions. This speech offers a sweeping new approach for boosting gender equity in US companies — engaging men on behalf of women. In addition to offering strategies that will help men effectively mentor women, the speech will also show how to establish trust-based professional relationships between men and women that will lead us to a gender progress that has been elusive for so many years.

The Resilient Leader

Unfortunately, no one escapes life without occasional failure, heartbreak, betrayal, disappointment or unwanted change. But the critical issue is what we do and how we manage ourselves in the midst of this pain — whether it’s in our personal or professional sphere—that create a path to resilience.

Betsy Myers will explore this in an empathetic and path-breaking keynote speech that shows how resilient people lead themselves and others when life’s disruptive and disorienting changes invade their lives and take them down a rabbit hole of grief, anguish or disbelief. Myers will explain their commonality and how they ask themselves, “What is the gift in this troubling situation? What can I learn from it, and how can I help others?” She will also share a host of strategies and action steps that resilient leaders employ when they’re dealing with life’s setbacks. This informative and inspirational speech shows how the resilient muscle is built, and it exhorts people to become the leaders of their lives, in both good and bad times. 

Leadership Lessons and President Donald Trump
Many books have tried to explain Donald Trump’s unique approach to management. But Trump’s leadership style wasn’t fully examined until recently, when he ran for the presidency. Now we have a much better sense of how this entrepreneur-turned-politician really operates.

What have we learned? And what leadership lessons can corporate executives garner from this extraordinary chapter in U.S. political history? These are the two central questions that will be addressed in a provocative keynote speech by Betsy Myers, a former advisor to Presidents Clinton and Obama.

In addition, Myers will explain why so many voters gravitated to candidate Trump. It’s too early to predict whether President Trump’s approach to managing and governing will succeed. But, as Myers will make clear, there are five core leadership take-aways from this president’s early success and failure with historical perspectives that corporate leaders can learn from as our nation’s newest occupant of the Oval Office begins his term of office.

Leadership Lessons and President Donald Trump

Many books have tried to explain Donald Trump’s unique approach to management. But Trump’s leadership style wasn’t fully examined until recently, when he ran for the presidency. Now we have a much better sense of how this entrepreneur-turned-politician really operates.

What have we learned? And what leadership lessons can corporate executives garner from this extraordinary chapter in U.S. political history? These are the two central questions that will be addressed in a provocative keynote speech by Betsy Myers, a former advisor to Presidents Clinton and Obama.

In addition, Myers will explain why so many voters gravitated to candidate Trump. It’s too early to predict whether President Trump’s approach to managing and governing will succeed. But, as Myers will make clear, there are five core leadership take-aways from this president’s early success and failure with historical perspectives that corporate leaders can learn from as our nation’s newest occupant of the Oval Office begins his term of office.

Audience reviews:

  • If you want someone to motivate you, to teach you how to move a project from A to B, to help you understand how to get a job done, done right and done on time, there’s no one better than Betsy Myers. I’ve seen first hand what she can do and its always first rate.

    - Former White House Chief of Staff & Senior Adviser to President Bill Clinton
  • Betsy Myers enthralled our audience by sharing personal experiences that motivated and inspired our audience to utilize their personal power and step into leadership. She was engaging and creative in her presentation and we left with a greater understanding of our personal power and how we can each make a difference.

    - Director, Women’s Leadership Institute
  • Betsy was fabulous and your team was super helpful throughout!

    - Events & Communications Manager, Surrey Board of Trade
  • We brought Betsy into our workplace as part of a pilot employee networking program, and she facilitated a well-attended session. The feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive and our team is already using the strategies they learned to breakdown silos and create better employee alignment and job satisfaction.

    - Vice President, Strategic Alignment and Human Resources/CHRO, Massachusetts Medical Society
  • She immediately engages, excites and encourages her audience to apply the lessons learned. It was an honor to share in her message

    - CEO Hattie Hill Enterprises

Speaker Biography

Betsy Myers is currently speaking and leading workshops around the world on the changing nature of leadership. Her book, Take the Lead: Motivate, Inspire, and Bring Out the Best in Yourself and Everyone Around You, continues to be the basis of her work as her experience spans the corporate, political and higher education arena.

In May 2011, Betsy was appointed Founding Director of the Center for Women & Business at Bentley University.  The Center was a repository of best practices for corporate America to recruit and retain women leaders. Betsy worked with corporations and shared information about putting these practices into place.

In 2003, Betsy served as Executive Director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. During her tenure, Betsy focused the Center’s teaching and research around authentic inner leadership. The results and impact were immediate and staggering. A strategic educational partnership between Harvard and The Hoffman Institute was developed which continues today. Betsy also increased the Center’s efforts around women and leadership while working closely with Harvard’s Women’s Leadership Board.

As senior official in the Clinton Administration, Betsy was the President’s senior adviser on women’s issues. As Deputy Assistant to the President, Betsy launched and was the first Director of the White House Office for Women’s Initiatives and Outreach. She played a critical role in Clinton’s re-election effort in 1996 and figured prominently in shaping the Administration’s legislative agenda on issues such as domestic violence, reproductive choice, breast cancer and women in business.

Betsy also served as the Associate Deputy Administrator for Entrepreneurial Development in the U.S. Small Business Administration. She implemented the SBA’s national requirements under President Clinton’s Welfare to Work Initiative and was responsible for the agency’s technical assistance, management, and distance learning programs. In a previous post, she served as the Director of the Office of Women’s Business Ownership at the SBA where she was an advocate for the 9.4 million women entrepreneurs in our country.

Currently, Betsy serves on the Council of National Advisors of Springboard Enterprises, a national not-for-profit organization that educates, coaches and supports high growth women-led businesses that are seeking venture capital for expansion.

Prior to joining the Clinton Administration, Betsy spent six years building Myers Insurance & Financial Services based in Los Angeles. She specialized in the small business and the women’s market providing insurance and retirement planning.

A Public Service Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, Betsy graduated with a Masters in Public Administration, and then served as the School’s Director of Alumni Programs & External Relations before her role at the Center for Public Leadership.