Testimonials
As Natalie describes in her important new book, creativity requires holding both wonder and rigor in productive tension. She shared this and other actionable wisdom recently with our team at SYPartners. Natalie dismantles the idea that creativity is the domain of the few, and shows how everyone can take the creativity leap.
JESSICA ORKIN, CEO, SYPARTNERS
Natalie is a dynamic speaker and design strategist. She provided great examples and insights on bolstering creativity to my colleagues at Fjord/Accenture, during our Diverse Voices in Design virtual talk. The event received great feedback. Additionally, many of my colleagues left inspired and were excited to apply The Creativity Leap principles to their toolkit.
BRANDON BALL, BUSINESS DESIGNER AT FJORD
Natalie’s workshop gave our team an energetic and creative boost as we navigate these messy moments in time. Ninety minutes flew by! People were deeply engaged, curious and imaginative. It accomplished our near term goal and sets us up perfectly for reimagining possible futures. Department leads are already asking for more as they evaluate their specific plans and ensure that we remain a “Future Ready” company.
MATTHEW VANDER LAAN, HEAD OF CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS, MONOSOL, A KURARAY DIVISION
Natalie’s keynote on Adaptation and Disruption could not be more timely for Best Buy as we continue to evolve and iterate in the ever changing macro business environment. Her presentation was very well attended – including our CEO Corie Barry. …Most importantly the feedback we have received post keynote has been tremendous on leveraging your message of adaption and creativity. I have no doubt we will see individuals think about their work with a much more customer obsessed mindset. What an awesome start to TechCon 2020!
SCOTT VUONG, DIRECTOR OF SPEND EFFICIENCY, BESTBUY
Natalie’s hands-on, design thinking workshop with our team led to key insights that we will plan to incorporate in our program design in the future.
DANIELLE COHN, VICE PRESIDENT, STARTUP ENGAGEMENT + LIFT LABS, COMCAST NBC UNIVERSAL
Recently, Steelcase and Corporate Interiors had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Nixon on a webinar where she discussed the key themes from the research she conducted for her upcoming book, The Creativity Leap. Not only was Dr. Nixon able to engage over 40 people for an hour but she was able to relate to the audience with great storytelling and images that made us all feel as if we too had the ability to be super-creatives. She’s obviously passionate about her research and what drives human behavior and inspired us all to deeply understand ourselves and how we can all thrive in times of uncertainty and change.
KEITH MCMILLON, REGIONAL EDUCATION LEADER, STEELCASE
It’s one thing to share good ideas, it’s another to help people put them into action. Just as I hoped, Natalie delivered a powerful combo in this workshop by sharing her own experience as a creative entrepreneur, then combining it with her experience as an educator and facilitator to help our members put those lessons into action right away!
ALEX HILLMAN, FOUNDER, INDY HALL
Natalie spoke to a select group of our most valued business partners and employees at our annual meeting, and she hit an absolute home run. Centered on change and what is required in a fast paced, high growth environment to adapt and thrive, Natalie was on point and impactful. As a speaker, Natalie is warm, engaging, thoughtful and funny all while having absolute command of the audience based on her background and experience in both academia and the corporate world. Virtually every attendee declared Natalie “the best hour of the entire conference!
MIKE FOUTS, VP, CITRIX
The Arts and Business Council for Greater Philadelphia was honored to feature Natalie as faculty for our Creative Exchange course. Natalie’s online Zoom workshop was transformative for our cohort- engaging, well facilitated, and relevant. She brings a high-level of content expertise with credibility and an impactful teaching style for our professionals. Her session was a highlight of the program.
ALYSSA ATZEFF, PROGRAMS MANAGER, CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE BUSINESSES, ARTS & BUSINESS COUNCIL OF GREATER PHILADELPHIA
As expected, Dr. Nixon’s presentation was one of the best at the university this year. A very thought provoking and inspiring kick-off to the Jefferson Creativity Core Curriculum.
DR. MATT DANE BAKER, SENIOR VICE PROVOST FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS, THOMAS JEFFERSON UNIVERSITY
As a new organization, Natalie has helped our board and staff forge a sense of togetherness and shared identity. She has expertly facilitated conversations with thought-provoking questions and ideas, and she has helped us craft a game plan and timeline for our priorities over the coming year.
MOLLY DE AGUIAR, PRESIDENT, INDEPENDENCE PUBLIC MEDIA FOUNDATION
Natalie Nixon brings a unique blend of scientific, evidence-based insight with practical, put-into-use-today advice on leadership and the future of work. Our audience highly rated her keynote which kicked off our 27th annual venture capital conference with energy and a well-woven story of creativity, design and innovation as applied to the 4th industrial revolution. I highly recommend Natalie as a keynote speaker for an audience of any size. She will WOW!
DEAN MILLER, PRESIDENT AND CEO, PACT (Philadelphia Alliance of Capital & Technologies)
Natalie is a wonderful scholar-practitioner; she is able to connect the dots between theory and practice. Her remarkable, diverse background allows her to be a unique contributor to the new global, interdisciplinary world that is rapidly emerging.”
ROSALYN MCPHERSON, PRESIDENT, THE ROZ GROUP
We are always looking for a rockstar keynote speaker to inspire and inform…Dr. Natalie Nixon had us all on the edge of our seats for her entire presentation! …My attendees absolutely loved her work across a multidisciplinary set of insights and anecdotes…punctuated with references to both her research and to hyper-relevant themes.
It was inspiring, but not cliche.
It was fun, but not trite.
It was academic, but not condescending.
It was informative, but not a lecture.
NIGEL PRENTICE, GLOBAL HEAD OF ACCESSIBILITY, IBM DESIGN
The framework that Natalie and the design thinking process helped us create has now been embraced across our entire organization.
By the end of the session ALL participants grew from it; indicating it was the best session in which they had participated in a very long time. Natalie elevated my team’s ability to understand and solve for growth in a more creative and innovative way. She astutely guided a cross-functional senior team to think about the inputs to a challenge in a more iterative manner – and to embrace the ‘process’ of discovering new opportunities & solving for effective solutions.
It was the best investment made in pushing us forward so that we are collectively future-ready to deliver solutions grounded in creativity; ones that drive growth and add value in numerous ways.
ESTHER FRANKLIN, EVP, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF STRATEGY & CULTURAL FLUENCY SPARK FOUNDRY | PUBLICIS
Natalie’s Creative Leap Strategy helped our audience of marketers see the importance of creativity of all stripes, and how improvisation, inquiry and intuition will guide their businesses and work forward. Natalie is a skilled storyteller and presenter, and great partner in the process. Thank you, Natalie!
JENNA SILVER, VP, AD SALES MARKETING, UNIVISION COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
Natalie is consistently one of my graduate class’s most well-received guest lecturers. More a facilitated studio lab than a ‘lecture’, her time with our students pushes their thinking in ways that are both rigorous and practical. Her sessions serve as an effective bridge between modules.
KATHERINA ROSQUETA, FOUNDING EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AT THE CENTER FOR HIGH IMPACT PHILANTHROPY, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Natalie is a superb facilitator! She is a great listener and helps your group to land on new insights at the end of a workshop.
GRACE KILLELEA, PRESIDENT, HALF THE SKY
Natalie led a fantastic session with my consumer insights, sensory, and analytics teams! We focused on storytelling with data, using unique tools to simplify complex data for various audiences. In advance of the session, she took the time to build customized, relevant activities with me… and during the session she passionately brought to life new ways of thinking that could easily be applied. She was a pleasure to work with, AND I received a ton of great feedback from the team after the session.
Success is when in the days immediately following, more than a few team members came to me excitedly to show new ways that they were packaging data and influencing their teams!
RISA SCHWARTZ, CONSUMER INSIGHTS, SENSORY, AND ANALYTICS LEAD AT TYSON FOODS
A design strategist and hybrid thinker, Natalie is a phenomenal leader in foresight, strategy and applied creativity. Her brilliant mind, experience, and energy is engaging and authentic. From the Women Executives workshop at the Great Ideas Conference in 2017, to the Xperience Design Project in 2019, Natalie was an incredible addition to the ASAE faculty team. My favorite lessons? The yin and yang of her WonderRigor™ framework to leverage inquiry, intuition and improvisation as a driver for creativity and innovation. That, and her astute observations about the future of work — that “soft skills are hard core”. Anyone looking for cultural transformation, leadership development, team collaboration and growth would be smart to give her a call.
RHONDA PAYNE, CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER AT ASAE (THE CENTER FOR ASSOCIATION LEADERSHIP)
Natalie’s talk on creativity helped the VectorWorks team to understand the very meaning of creativity: how to connect things to our software business that aren’t normally related. It also helped us to understand the role of intuition on the decision making process as well as the role of improvisation that enables one to engage with a situation as it actually unfolds.
BIPLAB SARKAR, CEO OF VECTORWORKS
Dr. Nixon has the astute understanding of a sophisticated academic and the practitioner’s awareness of what organizations and businesses need. The combination uniquely creates sustainable value for a myriad of stakeholders.
DR. STEVE SPINELLI, PRESIDENT OF BABSON COLLEGE
Natalie, Thank you SO much! What a great webinar! We can’t wait to work with you again in the future.
MARY BEAL, SENIOR DIRECTOR, NALP (NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR LAW PLACEMENT)
Natalie is brilliant, confident, creative and empathic- a combination of traits that allowed those of us who were unsure of how to navigate our project to relax, and feel excited about the process. Natalie inspires, motivates, encourages, and holds people accountable. I would never hesitate to engage with her again.
MARIANDL HUFFORD, HEAD OF SCHOOL AT MIAMI COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL
Natalie is a fabulous, engaging and informative keynote speaker for all groups, especially executive and leadership audiences. We have worked together for several years and audience feedback is excellent for her approaches to innovation, creativity, change management and the future of work. We highly recommend Natalie as a keynote speaker and/or consultant for any organization needing improvements in these areas.
KEN STERLING, HEAD OF GROWTH AT BIGSPEAK
Natalie helped our team arrive at a high volume of new insights that we can immediately begin to apply. We all left with a creative confidence. Her approach explores what makes people tick, first, and then delivers a methodology that allows teams to collaboratively ebb and flow through ideas to get to amazing results. It’s both inspiring and helps our business on a tactical level!”
ALIX MILLS, BLOOMBERG MARKETING, GLOBAL HEAD OF EVENTS
We were fortunate to have Dr. Natalie Nixon share insights in the WonderRigor™ and design thinking methodology. The presentation evolved into a robust brainstorming session with all of our innovators participating. Pennovation’s cross section of biotech, robotics, data analytics and software startups found the session so meaningful. We pivoted our monthly member luncheon sessions to a more substantive, interactive gathering that encourages feedback and offers more dynamic takeaways. Not only did Dr. Niixon’s WonderRigor™ framework help us increase engagement in our monthly meetings, it prompted our startups to more proactively offer suggestions for tailored learning outcomes to support their entrepreneurial growth. We can’t thank her enough and look forward to having her back soon.
CARTER MCLURE, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF PENNOVATION
Natalie offered an analytical perceptive, grounded in qualitative research, that facilitated targeted market positioning for our Center for the Future of Work. Further, her interdisciplinary thought leadership, creative analysis, and strategic foresight introduced new industry partnerships and collaboration opportunities. We look forward to future engagements.”
JASON WINGARD, PHD. DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF PROFESSIONAL STUDIES, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Natalie is a phenomenal speaker who brought keen insights about the practices of innovation, creativity and strategy to our community. Her practical guidance, combined with her aspirational perspective and detailed research, made concepts relatable to our audience which included executives, mid-level managers, students and entrepreneurs.”
CLAUDIA REUTER, MANAGING DIRECTOR, STANLEY + TECHSTARS ACCELERATOR
With VaynerMedia, Natalie was faced with a tough task: to come into a fast-moving communications agency and inspire department leads across Strategy and Creative. She not only inspired but provoked a new way of thinking with her insightful WonderRigor framework that our teams will use as part of their tool box going forward. Her ability to quickly understand our organization ensured the session was relevant and relentlessly practical; we’re excited to keep our relationship with Natalie very much alive for future opportunities to collaborate.”
MALACHI W. RANDOLPH – CHIEF OF STAFF, INSIGHTS & STRATEGY, VAYNERMEDIA
Figure 8 Thinking is a stellar team who brought commitment, compassion, and courage to our partnership. Their landscape analysis on the wealth disparity in the United States was superb. Figure 8 Thinking brought excellent qualitative research, scenario planning and analysis to the project and exceeded our expectations with suggested experiments to test their recommendations.
