NSB Logo Neil Pasricha Neil Pasricha

Neil Pasricha

Speaker

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Expert on Leadership & Happiness in Business

Neil Pasricha helps people live happy lives. He is a top-rated leadership keynote speaker, New York Times bestselling author, and positive psychology researcher focused on the relationship between happiness and leadership in business.

Keynote Speeches

Virtual Keynotes & Webinars
Contact us for more information about this speaker & their virtual presentations. Click here for some of the most popular formats for virtual events.
You Are Awesome: How to Navigate Change, Wrestle with Failure, and Live an Intentional Life

We live in a world where we’re bombarded by expectations. So many of us are anxious, uncertain, unprepared for the future.  We no longer have the tools to handle failure or even perceived failure. We lack resilience. We are turning into an army of porcelain dolls, about to break with just the slightest jolt. Social media tells us we’re never good enough, and we cower and crumble. The rates of depression, loneliness, and suicide? All rising!  You Are Awesome offers advice on how to become more resilient, how to bend instead of break, and how to get back up after failure and loss knocks you down. Mixed with stories of his own personal failures, Neil shares nine story-based, science-backed secrets to help you build up fortitude and live a happier, more intentional life. By taking this journey with Neil as your guide, you’ll learn how to positively reframe your own perceptions of failure, and ultimately, how to become your most unbreakable and awesome self.

Be Happy First: Resilience and Breakthrough Performance In Times Of Change

After Neil Pasricha’s wife left him and his best friend suddenly took his own life, he crash-landed in an empty downtown bachelor apartment. Just twelve months later, he was working directly for the CEO at Walmart, running the International Academy of Digital Arts and Science’s “Best Blog in the world”, and had just published The Book of Awesome which stormed the New York Times bestseller list and sold over a million copies. The lesson was clear: resilience, change, and growth can come from times of challenge. This inspiring talk is for anybody looking for simple practical ways to lift performance to new heights. In Neil’s case, he realized before life could change, he had to change. Leadership ultimately comes from within. When company execs would ask him “How did you get so happy?” he’d share the secret is to “Be happy first” and let the mindset you cultivate ultimately enable your success. Neil’s presentation leaves audiences with five clear tools they can use to achieve their biggest goals.

Building Trust in Distrustful Times: 3 Ways to Increase Trust With Customers

According to the Edelman Trust Barometer trust in media, business, and government are at an all-time low. We have never believed less, agreed less, or trusted less. Yet, building trust, and developing the community that surrounds it remains imperative for any organization, influencer, startup or brand. So what are the new ways to build trust and community in an era of mistrust? Highlighting current business examples, learn about what works, what doesn’t, and how to figure out who to really believe and rally behind. With his signature humor, New York Times bestselling author Neil Pasricha, shares three modern ways organizations can build more trust:

  • Finite Over Infinite: In an era of infinite choice, the value of curation skyrockets
  • Human Over Algorithm: In an era of bots, we trust brains
  • Go All In, Show All In: The more chips you push into the middle, the more we buy your hand
Lead Yourself First, Before You Lead Others

Which company is #1 on the Fortune 500 today and has been for more than a decade? Walmart. The retail behemoth’s rise to half a trillion dollars in sales with over two million employees spread across the globe has been well-documented. But what hasn’t been documented is how they develop, nurture, and grow leaders up through those ranks. Neil Pasricha served as Director of Leadership Development inside Walmart for the past ten years – working directly for two CEOs and partnering with Harvard Business School to develop the first global executive program inside the retail giant. Join him as he shares a window into what his research and work reveal about what truly makes leaders tick and walk away with clear takeaways on how they can drive you and your teams. How do you lead a team of two, two hundred thousand, or even two million people? It starts with yourself. Let Neil show you how.

The Subtle Art of Happiness

Why can so few people at work genuinely say, “I love my job”? Gallup reports 87% of the global workforce is disengaged. But what if there were subtle, secret weapons that could turn employees into their most powerful, engaged, and productive selves? It’s not crazy talk. It’s actually happening. Using his unique blend of counter-intuitive research and sidesplitting stories, Neil illuminates a clear path forward into workplaces where people show up inspired, do great work, and leave with full minds and full hearts. Raw, hilarious, and heartwarming, this is the perfect keynote to kick off or close your conference with the ultimate high. 

The Science of Positive Growth Mindset

Does great work lead to happiness? Or… does happiness lead to great work? Neil Pasricha shares counterintuitive research-based answers in this fun, fast-paced, research-grounded tour of the emerging neuroscience and positive psychology landscape. He challenges your audience by asking: “Would you press a button and have 31% higher productivity, 37% higher sales, and 300% greater creativity on Monday morning?” When heads start nodding, he shows how to get there. Based on fresh research Neil published in Harvard Business Review together with the latest in neuroscience and positive psychology, this speech is not true motivation – it’s application. Perfect for left-brained, analytical, or even skeptical audiences. 

Audience reviews:

  • Coronavirus is affecting our business on every level. Everyone who can is working remotely, we continue to support our customers, and there is a lot of uncertainty, juggling and change for all of us. Neil's virtual keynote was like a balm for our employees. It calmed people down, connected us as humans, and left people feeling inspired and engaged. I can't recommend it enough! - Allstate Insurance
  • Neil was very well received by our audience. We've heard nothing but positive comments. We appreciated Neil's warmth and wit, his connection to and interaction with our audience, his vulnerability in sharing his personal triumphs, tragedies and lessons learned, as well as his straightforward approach to achieving the ‘awesome’ in each one of our lives. - Senior VP Global Marketing, AdvoCare International
  • Attendees were more visibly energized and they began taking Neil's advice to be more positive in their own lives. We feel it helped them at work and with their families as well. A life-changing talk. Thank you, Neil! - Marketing, Uber
  • Neil is a rock star! He visited the Googleplex and you could hear a pin drop while he was speaking. Everyone loved his models for living happier lives. Many commented he was the best speaker we’ve had in some time!

    - Sales Executive, Google
  • We all LOVED Neil’s keynote and received amazing feedback from our clients. We tallied the results this morning and his presentation earned a 4.9/5!! - Content Marketing Manager, Indeed
  • The buzz after you left 3M was how and when we could get you back. You struck a chord. It is rare to find a speaker that can ignite such passion and unify the audience on a common theme that transcends generation and function. Please keep writing books. Your changed my life.

    - Executive Director, Consumer Business Group, 3M
  • His happiness lessons were the highlight of the show. He is always on point, thought-provoking, and receives near perfect ratings. Listen to him!

    - SVP After Sales, Audi
  • Neil Pasricha was the highlight of the day. From my perspective, the highlight of the year! What a genuine, authentic, inspiring person. He connected with the audience to make our themes come to life and inspired us all!

    - National Technical Director, Microsoft

Speaker Biography

Neil Pasricha thinks, writes, and speaks about intentional living. All his current work focuses under themes of gratitude, happiness, failure, resilience, connection, and trust. Neil is the author of nine books and journals including: The Book of Awesome, a spinning rolodex of simple pleasures based on his 100-million-hit, award-winning blog 1000 Awesome Things, The Happiness Equation, originally written as a 300-page love letter to his unborn son on how to live a happy life, Awesome Is Everywhere, an interactive introduction to guided meditation for children, Two-Minute Mornings, his simple daily morning practice, and You Are Awesome, a nine-step guide to building resilience told through stories and research. Neil’s books are New York Times and #1 international bestsellers, have spent over 200 weeks on bestseller lists, and have sold over two million copies across dozens of languages.

Neil also gives over 50 speeches a year at places like Harvard, SXSW, and Shopify. His first TED talk “The 3 A’s of Awesome” is ranked one of the 10 Most Inspiring of all time and his second is called “How do you maximize your tiny, short life?”, an artistic side-project called the world’s first TED Listen, composed entirely of questions. Neil gave the most attended feature keynote at SXSW 2019 called “Building trust in distrustful times”.

Neil hosts an Apple “Best of” award-winning podcast called 3 Books where he is on an ‘epic 15- year-long quest to uncover the 1000 most formative books in the world.’ Each of the 333 chapters discusses the 3 most formative books of an inspiring person like Brené Brown, David Sedaris, Malcolm Gladwell, Roxane Gay, Cheryl Strayed, Vishwas the Uber Driver, Kevin the Bookseller, Seth Godin, David Mitchell, Mark Manson, or Judy Blume. 

He has spent a decade as Director of Leadership Development at Walmart, where he perfected the art of distilling academic white papers into simple and actionable models for business managers. He now conducts and publishes original research for Harvard Business Review and Fast Company.

Neil has degrees from Queen’s University and Harvard Business School.

Neil lives in Toronto with his wife Leslie and their four boys.