PROFILE
Dr. Margie Warrell brings sharp insights and a global lens to inspire bolder thinking and braver action for stronger outcomes.
With her sixth book The Courage Gap set to release in January 2025, Margie gets to the heart of what holds people back, distilling research into actionable advice to bridge the know/do gap between what people do and what they’re capable of doing.
A leading expert on courageous leadership, Margie’s insights stem from her diverse life experiences spanning her childhood in rural Australia to living in Asia, Europe, Papua New Guinea, and the USA, where she resides. Margie’s dynamic presence and deep insights have led her to speaking in over 25 countries and inspired thousands of audiences to embolden braver leadership and equip teams with practical skills to bring their bravest selves to work. Leading organizations such as NASA, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Mars, Deloitte, and Morgan Stanley, have engaged Margie to foster courageous cultures that drive innovation, embrace change, and unleash human potential.
Margie serves on boards focused on education and female empowerment, including the Women’s Democracy Network and Forbes School of Business & Technology, and has been recognized as a Top 200 Leadership Voice and Women’s Economic Forum Honoree. She also advises US Congressional Chiefs and women who aspire to lead change in emerging democracies. Her expertise in leadership, women, and workplace issues is regularly sought by media including CNN, Bloomberg, TODAY, and The Wall Street Journal. She also writes for Forbes.
Throughout her life, Margie has consistently chosen courage over comfort, including summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro with her husband and their four teenage children and, most recently, running her first marathon.
SPEAKING TOPICS
The Courage Gap
A sought-after speaker on leadership, mindset, and resilience, Margie’s powerful new keynote weaves compelling storytelling with cutting-edge insight to engage, educate, and empower action to close the ‘courage gap’ in your organization.
Key learning includes how to:
- Rethink Risk: Discern smart from foolish risk taking amid complexity and uncertainty
- Identify Fear Traps: Counter cognitive biases that hinder learning, stifle innovation, and block crucial conversation
- Fail Right: Leverage a play-to-win mindset to embrace intelligent failure, accelerate learning and find the treasure when you trip
- Lead With Courage: Reframe discomfort and use fear as a catalyst for growth
- Cultivate Courage: Create a culture that supports ‘loyal dissent’ and unites purpose around a bold vision for future
Everyone needs courage, making this a ‘must-hear’ message for all audiences.
Lead with Courage
No organization can outperform its leaders over time. It’s why the #1 threat is never external but the fear that drives smart employees to play it too safe. Leaders who invite candor and encourage innovation without demonstrating vulnerability, normalizing dissent, and derisking ‘smart failure’ will fall short every time. Margie will embolden your leaders to lead from the inside out, building a ‘culture of courage’ that unlocks collective creativity and discretionary effort across your enterprise.
Learning objectives and audience outcomes:
- Research into a ‘courage mindset’ and why it’s a force multiplier of talent
- Harness ’emotional contagion’ to galvanize employees behind a bold vision with a big “Why”
- What we get wrong about risk that makes us more vulnerable
- Three ways to foster loyal dissent and harness constructive conflict
- How to lead from self-certainty to make more effective decisions amid the unknowns
- Identify the invisible ‘timidity tax’ of excess caution in your team/business
- Accelerate learning and incubate innovation by scaling a play-to-win mindset
This program is ideal for leaders at all levels, from emerging to those at the top.
Falling Upward
No one is immune to life’s hardships and heartaches, yet some people handle them better and emerge better off. This powerful keynote blends research in psychology, well-being, and spiritual traditions to reframe how you view and process your biggest problems, expanding your bandwidth to handle them better and transform them into catalysts for growth.
Weaving personal stories – including losing a brother to mental illness and supporting another to adjust to life with paraplegia – Margie brings evidence backed strategies to expand your audiences capacity for life, find the opportunities for growth, and grow into the highest that our toughest challenges always hold.
This program will teach you how to:
- Mine the lessons failure holds to improve the future
- Short-circuit stressful thinking, turning the psychology of fear into the physiology of courage
- Four pillars to activate post-traumatic growth and can-do optimism
- Lead from ‘self-certainty’ to thrive through change
- Build micro-habits to turn stressors into cues for courage
- Rescript the stories to get unstuck and bounce forward stronger
This program is for broad audiences, from faith groups to business groups.
Brave Women Rising
When women are empowered to bring the full quota of their feminine leadership strengths to the table, it improves the decisions being made. Yet, despite progress, the gender gap persists. Drawing on her doctoral research in women’s leadership and decades of experience empowering women from diverse backgrounds, Margie weaves relatable and entertaining personal stories as a ball-dropping working mother raising four children amid multiple global relocations. This session provides actionable strategies to help women get off their own backs and make the difference their difference makes.
Learning objectives and audience outcomes:
- Reset the relationship with power to ‘take charge while taking care’
- Why courage precedes confidence and how to’ behave your way to believing’
- Counter self-doubt and turn ‘imposterhood’ into a catalyst for growth
- Navigate feminine double-binds to manage the backlash effect
- Speak with authority to win followers and ignite action
- Amplify the voice of other women, lifting as you climb
Can be customized for all women’s groups plus mixed audiences, championing men to lift women!
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