Speaking & Keynotes
Your Culture Is Talking to You. What Is It Saying?
ENGAGEMENT MAKES IT STICK — workshop-style keynotes built to reach every learning style in the room.
Book Kathryn to SpeakLive Keynote · “Ground Rules for Work & Life”
“Engagement Makes It Stick.”
Every keynote and workshop is built to be lived in, not sat through — colorful visuals, dynamic teaching, and real interaction designed to reach every learning style in the room, so what your people hear on stage is still shaping how they work months later.
The Core Truth
Every organization has two cultures: the one printed and framed on the wall, and the one people actually experience every day.
This is the opening truth behind Kathryn's signature keynote — and the reason it consistently becomes the on-ramp to deeper work with Empty the Cup. Built from 41 years across 300+ organizations, it's not a motivational talk. It's a working diagnosis your leadership team will recognize immediately.
Ideal for: Annual Conferences · Leadership Summits · National Sales Meetings · Executive Retreats · Culture Transformation Kickoffs
Signature Keynotes & Workshops
01
Trust & CultureThe Trust Reset Every AI Rollout Skips
Every failed AI rollout has the same root cause, and it's never the technology. It's a workforce that was never asked to trust the people driving the change. Empty the Cup is the framework that resets trust before you introduce disruption — not after morale has already cracked.
Audiences Leave WithA working model for introducing any major change without losing their people in the process.
The Big Question: What is your team quietly protecting themselves from right now — and what is it costing you?
02
Trust & CultureCulture doesn't collapse in a single dramatic moment. It unravels — one skipped conversation, one broken promise, one "we'll deal with it later" at a time. This keynote names the unraveling most leaders can feel but can't yet articulate, and hands them the language and framework to stop it before the thread runs out.
Audiences Leave WithThe ability to spot the early signals of culture erosion, months before it shows up in turnover numbers.
The Big Question: If your culture has been quietly unraveling, how much longer before everyone can see it?
03
AI & TechnologyAI is not coming. It is already inside your organization, whether you planned for it or not. This is not a technology talk — it's a readiness talk, built for leaders who need their people prepared for a shift that isn't waiting for permission.
Audiences Leave WithA clear, practical readiness checklist they can start using the next morning.
The Big Question: When AI changes your team's roles, will your culture bend — or break?
04
AI & TechnologyThe more automated business becomes, the more the human moments matter — and the more they get quietly deprioritized. This keynote is a recalibration: what to protect, what to elevate, and how to keep your people feeling like more than a workflow, even as the workflows multiply around them.
Audiences Leave WithA short list of "non-negotiable human moments" to protect inside any process they automate.
The Big Question: What's the last thing at your company that only a human can do — and are you still investing in it?
05
LeadershipForty-one years of doing this work across recessions, pandemics, layoffs, and leadership turnover teaches you one thing: certainty was never the job. Steadiness was. This keynote gives leaders a real, tested model for leading with clarity when the ground keeps moving — built on decades of proof, not theory.
Audiences Leave WithA leadership-under-pressure framework proven across 300+ organizations and four decades.
The Big Question: Your team already knows when you're rattled. What are they learning from watching you right now?
06
LeadershipThe org chart says who has authority. It says nothing about who your people actually trust, follow, and go to when something's wrong. This keynote exposes the real influence map hiding inside every organization — and shows leaders how to work with it instead of against it.
Audiences Leave WithA practical way to identify the informal leaders actually shaping their culture, whether or not they hold a title.
The Big Question: If you mapped who your people really trust, would it match the boxes on your org chart?
07
Trust & CultureMost feedback fails because it's delivered as judgment, and judgment makes people defensive, not better. This keynote introduces the Rules of Engagement behind Profitivity's Mentor Training model — a way to observe and reinforce behavior that builds trust instead of eroding it, one conversation at a time.
Audiences Leave WithA repeatable, judgment-free feedback method their whole leadership team can use starting that week.
The Big Question: The last time you gave feedback, did it build trust — or did it just feel like being graded?
08
GrowthThere's a specific moment when an employee stops watching the business happen to them and starts acting like it's theirs. This keynote maps exactly what triggers that shift — and gives leaders the tools to engineer it deliberately, instead of hoping it happens on its own.
Audiences Leave WithA concrete model for converting disengaged employees into people who act like owners.
The Big Question: How many of your people are spectators at a business they could be building?
09
LeadershipPolicy manuals don't build loyalty. Partnership does. This keynote makes the case — backed by real client results — that leaders who treat their teams as partners in the outcome consistently outperform leaders who manage by rulebook, and shows exactly how to make that shift without losing structure.
Audiences Leave WithA specific playbook for replacing top-down policy language with partnership language, without losing accountability.
The Big Question: Does your team follow your policies, or do they believe in your mission?
10
GrowthDisruption isn't optional anymore — it's the operating environment. This keynote is the difference between organizations that get flattened by chaos and organizations that use it as raw material to build something more intentional than what they had before.
Audiences Leave WithA design framework for turning disruption into deliberate culture-building, instead of just surviving it.
The Big Question: Is your culture happening to you, or are you designing it on purpose?
11
GrowthTurning Service Into Your Real Growth Engine
Most companies treat customer service as a cost center to minimize. The organizations actually growing treat it as a sales engine — and the difference is a specific, teachable framework, not a mood. This keynote introduces RELATE: Greet, Comfort, Engage, Educate, Invite, Follow-Up — the same system driving measurable sales and retention gains inside Profitivity's client base. Every session is customized to your organization's specific customer touchpoints, so your team leaves with a framework built for the customers they actually serve, not a generic script.
Audiences Leave WithThe RELATE framework, customized to their business, and a direct line from customer experience to revenue they can start tracking immediately.
The Big Question: Is your team serving customers, or selling them on staying?
More Than Just a Speaker
Kathryn Dager is a powerhouse business consultant who knows how to whip businesses of all industries, sizes, and locations, into shape. She founded Profitivity Inc. in 1985 and, in the 41 years since, has helped hundreds of organizations around the world achieve cultural agility, self-managing teams, higher performance, sustained profitability, and growth — including American Express, Old Navy, JCPenney, Crate & Barrel, and Party City.
Her mission is heartfelt: end needless suffering in the workplace, and transform team discord into sacred alignment. She shows leaders how to turn employees into exuberant stakeholders — weaving dinner-table values into the work itself. Rooted in those same values, she lights up everyone around her: her family, her clients, her community — so they all truly thrive.
She holds a Master's in Applied Psychology and 6 certifications; she spent 20 years speaking and exhibiting at the National Retail Federation's Big Show, where she built the Fortune 500 relationships that would define her career — including a 22-year working partnership that began in 1999 with an Irish business owner who recruited her after hearing her speak. Together they built 6 businesses that are still thriving to this day!
Her keynotes and breakouts carry that same thread: not theory, but proven proprietary processes, tested across decades, industries, and economic cycles — delivered the way she believes all learning should happen. Interaction and engagement make the tools stick.
Give yourself and your team a treat and book an Introductory Call.
Every keynote is customized to your audience. Tell us a bit about your event, and Kathryn will follow up personally.