<p>Heather R Younger, J.D. is a trusted contributor to leading news outlets, like <em>Forbes, Fast Company</em>, <em>Bloomberg, NBC</em> and <em>ABC</em> and one of the world’s leading experts on Caring Leadership® and active listening at work. </p><p>She is the visionary Founder and CEO of Employee Fanatix, a preeminent employee engagement and workplace culture consulting firm to Fortune 100 companies. Employee Fanatix conducts annual research on workplace culture, relying on employee voices for what is relevant now, to help companies redefine their culture strategy. Heather has personally read over 30,000 employee surveys and facilitated over 100 employee focus groups, including her signature “Art of Active Listening Sessions.” </p><p>With over 25 years of successfully managing teams, she has worked in customer experience, sales, and large account management for multi-million dollar accounts and multiple industries such as tech, staffing, healthcare, professional services, the public sector, and the financial sector. She's a renowned keynote speaker, drawing insights from current data and putting into practice what she teaches in her Caring Leadership Transformation Model™.</p><p>Heather is an award-winning leader in the area of Employee Engagement as recognized by Inspiring Workplaces, is a LinkedIn Learning course partner, 3-time best-selling author, TEDX speaker, and the host of the popular, <em>Leadership with Heart </em>podcast.</p>
Leadership development and workplace culture expert; TEDx speaker; Forbes contributor
<ul><li><strong>The Self-Leadership Imperative</strong></li><li>Turning Personal Growth into Collective Impact</li><li>Self-leadership is the foundation of resilient, high-impact influence. It's what allows people to navigate uncertainty, bounce forward from setbacks, and model the kind of adaptability their teams need now more than ever. In this transformative keynote based on her book, Heather R Younger empowers leaders to trade perfectionism for progress, fear for flexibility, and burnout for balance — without sacrificing performance. She’ll share actionable strategies to help leaders harness resilience as a competitive edge and unlock their full potential in the face of constant change. </li><li><strong>The Unshakable Team</strong></li><li>Navigate high-stress situations, rebuild trust after setbacks, and sustain performance without burnout Today’s teams are operating under sustained pressure. Only 27% of managers feel enthusiastic about their work, more than 40% of employees report significant stress, and just one in five feels fully engaged. Leaders are facing constant change, higher expectations, faster decision cycles, and fewer buffers to absorb the impact. </li><li>The most effective teams don’t rely on heroic effort or constant hustle. They build shared systems that allow them to navigate pressure, recover quickly from setbacks, and maintain focus even when uncertainty is high. This keynote, based on her forthcoming book The Unshakable Team, Heather R. Younger draws on more than 20 years of leadership experience guiding teams through mergers, acquisitions, reorganizations, layoffs, and major technology shifts.</li><li><strong>The Case for Caring Leadership</strong></li><li>Build high-trust teams, boost engagement and retention, and drive performance</li><li>“Care at work” is often dismissed as soft or optional. But in a workplace defined by AI acceleration, change fatigue, and increasing leadership pressure, the absence of care creates disengagement, turnover, and fractured teams. Caring leadership isn’t a perk, it’s a business strategy. Leaders who intentionally build trust create teams that communicate better, execute faster, and stay engaged, even across remote and hybrid environments.</li><li>Based on her bestselling book <em>The Art of Caring Leadership, </em>Heather R. Younger shares insights from 40,000+ employee comments to reveal what care actually looks like at scale: measurable, operational, and leader-owned. She introduces the Nine Daily Behaviors of Caring Leadership®, a practical framework that helps leaders strengthen culture, improve employee experience, and reduce preventable turnover, without lowering standards.</li></ul>