Sara Ross
An international keynote speaker, the founder and Chief Vitality Officer at BrainAmped—a leadership research firm—as well as the author of the book, Dear Work: something has to change. All of Sara’s keynotes are based in science and research.
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In an AI-accelerated world of increasing complexity, where over 61% of leaders feel unprepared to navigate it, 62% are disengaged, and nearly half the workforce running on empty, organizations like Microsoft, Bayer, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo, the American Medical Association and the US Navy call on Sara Ross and her LeadFULL™ approach—where human-centered leadership meets vitality-fueled energy—to help them address their most pressing challenges.
Grounded in research but geared for real life, Sara works at the intersection of organizational culture, emotional intelligence, and energy management. Her pioneering multi-year study on workplace vitality and sustainable high performance formed the foundation of her bestselling book, ‘Dear Work, Something Has to Change.’ Known for her trademark energy, empowering style and thought-provoking insights, Sara Ross embodies her title of Chief Vitality Officer. Her conviction to reigniting a sense of aliveness in a world seemingly designed to smother it out has earned her recognition as a 2023 Women of Influence by SUCCESS magazine and named to the Global Gurus Top 30 worldwide motivational speakers list for 2025.
*Fee ranges are presented as a guideline only. Speaker fees are subject to change without notice. For an exact quote, please contact your Speaker Exchange Agency representative.
In an era where 73% of organizations are bracing for major technology-driven disruption, 61% of leaders feel unprepared to navigate growing complexity, 62% report being disengaged, and nearly half the workforce is running on empty—these aren’t just statistics. They’re warning signs. Warning signs that our current approach to leadership is leaving behind untapped collective potential, depleted talent, and a version of high performance that may be achievable in sprints—but not sustainable over time.
As the Founder and Chief Vitality Officer at BrainAMPED, a leadership research firm, Sara Ross believes there’s a better way: the LeadFULL™ way—a human-centered, vitality-fueling approach to leadership that helps both people and performance thrive.
Named a 2023 Woman of Influence by SUCCESS Magazine and recently recognized among the Top 30 Speakers by Global Gurus for 2025, Sara brings nearly two decades of experience working at the intersection of organizational culture, emotional intelligence, and energy management.
Her pioneering multi-year study on workplace vitality and sustainable high performance formed the foundation of her bestselling book, ‘Dear Work, Something Has to Change’ establishing her as a fresh, thought-provoking voice tackling the epidemic of stress and burnout—redefining success to include well-being not as a bonus, but as the engine of sustainable high performance.
Grounded in research but geared for real life, Sara has become a go-to expert for organizations ranging from Microsoft, Deloitte, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo, and T-Mobile to members of the U.S. Navy, judges, surgeons, air traffic controllers, and space engineers. Her diverse experience also includes working with leading healthcare systems, government agencies, global associations, universities, professional sports teams, and guest lecturing in the executive leadership program at Smith College. This broad perspective is why Sara is trusted by some of the most senior, technically sophisticated, and skeptical audiences.
Regardless of the audience, you can count on Sara to challenge status quo thinking and embody her role as Chief Vitality Officer. With her trademark high energy, cutting-edge science, and humorus and relatable storytelling, Sara both inspires and provides a clear, actionable blueprint for helping both people and performance flourish.
Before founding BrainAmped, Sara spent over a decade immersed in the neuroscience of emotional intelligence and performance at a global organizational training company, where she served as Vice President and Global Head of Leadership Development. As Head of Faculty, she and her team led the development and delivery of award-winning leadership programs, assessments, coaching, and accreditation offerings designed to help leaders across the globe be at their best—even in the most complex, high-pressure moments.
Sara holds a Master of Science (MSc.) and multiple certifications including Executive Coaching and Language & Behavioral Profiling. Outside of work, she’s a coffee-loving, meditation rookie whose husband describes her career as “professional eavesdropping and people-watching.” She insists she’s simply a devoted street scientist on a mission to better understand people and why they do what they do!
Leadership has always been demanding, but today, it feels like an unsustainable pressure cooker of complexity and competing demands where no additional effort and expertise ever seems enough. These circumstances aren’t temporary, they are trademarks of today’s workplace. The question isn’t how to overcome them; it’s how to expand our capacity to sustainably thrive within them.
Drawing on nearly two decades studying the science of human behavior, advising leaders, and conducting a multi-year study of workplace vitality captured in her bestselling book ‘Dear Work, Something Has to Change’—Sara Ross believes the answer is found in LeadFULLTM—her science-backed leadership approach that combines excellence and energy.
Focusing on the Self-Leadership pillar of LeadFULL™ this keynote, grounded in research but geared for real life, will demonstrate the transformational power of learning to operate from the Vitality State. From here, high performance becomes enduring and relationships more enriching, creating a ripple effect of thriving across teams and organizations, while deepening vibrancy in all dimensions of life.
This Keynote is Best for People Who:
- Are Executives, People Leaders and Emerging Leaders (The ‘Dear Work’ keynote is the equivalent keynote customized for a general audience).
- Find that despite their best intentions, hard work and impressive skillsets, are caught in an exhausting scarcity cycle of reactivity, unchecked urgency, and diminishing returns.
- Strive for new heights in their careers without negatively impacting their health, happiness, or relationships.
- Are looking for insights to create sustainable high performing cultures and practical strategies to prioritize well-being for themselves and their team without compromising performance.
- Feel disconnected from the spark that once motivated them and want to bring more purpose, passion and meaningful impact back into their work and lives.
Audiences Will Leave Able to Use the LeadFULL Approach to:
- Break the Drive-Til-You-Drop Cycle — Shift to the Vitality State to expand their capacity, meeting rising complexity with resilience, confidence, and sustainable high performance.
- Transform Firefighting into Energy Amplification — Master three simple empowerment questions that extends ownership of problem-solving, deepens empathy, and multiplies capability across their team while expanding capacity within themselves.
- Bypass Common Energy Management Pitfalls — Discover why traditional approaches to work-life balance and workplace wellbeing often undermine the very things they aim to enhance—and learn what actually works.
- Become Your Own Chief Vitality Officer — Apply the 20% Principle to integrate energy-generating practices in real-time, reigniting their sense of aliveness, resting without guilt, and enjoying the life they’re working so hard to create.
*This inspiring and interactive keynote can be customized for different themes as well as expanded into a breakout session and up to a half day workshop
In today’s rapidly changing workplace where organizations are fiercely competing to leverage AI’s potential while attracting, engaging and retaining top talent, a powerful truth stands clear: an organization’s greatest untapped competitive advantage is human potential. While new technologies and evolving policies continue to transform how and where we work, the ability of leaders to unify talents and transforms them into collective excellence by bringing the best of themselves and the best out in others remains the true differentiator between organizations that merely function and those that truly excel.
Lead FULL™—a vitality-fueling approach to human-centered leadership developed by Sara Ross—provides the blueprint for just that.
Grounded in the Lead Others dimension of the LeadFULL™ model, this keynote is built on data from over 10,000 survey responses to what brings the best out in others. In it, Sara focuses on three interconnected transformative human-centered leadership insights—accountability, empathy, and empowerment. In a world of complexity Sara provides clarity transforming how leaders approach their roles with instantly applicable tools to drive vitality-fueling success that benefits everyone—from team members to customers and beyond.
This Keynote is Best for People Who:
- Are Executives, People Leaders, and can be customized to focus on connection and leveraging AI for Cross-Functional Teams, Sales and Service.
- Face compounding pressures—AI transformations, organizational shifts, rising customer demands, and critical talent challenges.
- Excel technically but recognize the need for deeper levels of emotional intelligence to generate next level results through and alongside others.
- Aim to transform siloed, exhausted or disengaged colleagues and teams into high performing collaborative powerhouses—in-person and virtually.
- Seek practical strategies to elevate their leadership impact and overcome the invisible barriers holding them and their teams back.
Audiences Will Leave Able to Use the LeadFULL Approach to:
- Lead by Example — Apply a personal accountability framework that deepens self-awareness, harnesses energy, and activates curiosity for deeper engagement and impact.
- Redefine Empathy as an Excellence Multiplier — Discover how true empathy isn’t lowering expectations—it’s identifying what unlocks or blocks excellence, enabling better collaboration across teams and deeper connections between people.
- Forge High-Trust, Empowering Environments — Apply behavioral science-based insights to create spaces where people feel cared for, connected, and challenged to innovate boldly, speak openly, and courageously stretch their skills, their comfort levels, and their perspectives in today’s digitally evolving world
- Architect a Vitality-Fueled Culture — Harness your leadership influence to build an environment where people remain energized, engaged, and equipped to sustain peak performance in today’s relentless “always-on” world.
*This keynote can be customized for different themes as well as expanded into a breakout session or longer interactive workshop
In today’s dynamic world, there are two human operating states from which we can approach change: the Scarcity State, where we’re reactive, stressed out, frustrated and change-fatigued, or the Vitality State, where we’re strategic, energized, resilient and future-ready. With research suggesting the average organization has undergone five enterprise changes in the past three years—and 73% expecting more ahead—leading change from the Vitality State isn’t just an option, it’s a competitive advantage.
Drawing on fifteen years of experience researching, coaching and advising leaders and their organizations through change efforts, Sara shares how operating from the Vitality State transforms resilience from a reactive tactic called upon in moments of crisis—to a proactive practice strengthened daily. From here, stress can be converted to a strength that reveals purpose, uncertainty can be a gateway to innovation, and resistance can be shifted into a catalyst for energizing, momentum-creating growth. This is how to stay future-ready in a changing world.
This Keynote is Best for People Who:
- Are made up of Mixed Audiences, Conference Associations, Sales & Service Teams.
- Work in industries facing significant disruption or organizational transformations and see/feel signs of stress and anxiety, change fatigue or disengagement and want to navigate change in healthier, energizing ways.
- Recognize the need to proactively strengthen future-readiness, particularly around AI integration.
- Want to better understand how to embrace change, how to influence buy-in, and overcome resistance.
- Question whether operating from the Vitality-Fueling state means ignoring real challenges, forcing artificial positivity, or lowering the bar of success (it’s quite the opposite).
Audiences Will Leave Able to:
- Master the Resilience Framework — Navigate change from the Vitality Operating State by working with their brain’s negativity bias to activate a growth-oriented possibility mindset.
- Become Genuinely Future-Ready — Apply three behavioral science insights to transform stress into meaning-fueled strength, boost uncertainty tolerance, and harness energy to unlock hidden opportunities.
- Transform Emotional Challenges into Catalysts — Channel the full spectrum of change emotions—including fear and resistance—into powerful drivers of connection, collaboration, and enhanced performance.
- Dismantle FAUX Resilience Beliefs — Replace toxic positivity, isolation, and exhaustion with FULL Resilience rooted in realistic optimism, community support, and sustainable well-being.
*This keynote can be customized for different audiences as well as expanded into a breakout session or longer interactive workshop
It all started with a letter. What began as a personal reflection on the consuming nature of work quickly evolved into a research-backed mission to find a better way to work. That letter became the foundation of Sara Ross’s bestselling book, Dear Work, Something Has to Change.
If you’ve ever found yourself pursuing bold goals but running on fumes, feeling stuck between choosing success or well-being, or frustrated that work-life balance strategies just aren’t cutting it, you’re not alone. In a world where exhaustion is often accepted as the price of excellence, Sara Ross has the data to prove otherwise.
In a multi-year study exploring our relationship with work through the lens of organizational culture, personal energy management and performance science, Sara found that people who thrive with vitality in demanding environments aren’t less ambitious or committed, but they do hold fundamentally different beliefs about success, stress, and rest. This keynote delivers mindset shifts and science-backed strategies to help people bring their best, most vitality-fueled selves forward and transform workplace cultures trapped in burnout cycles.
This Keynote is Best for People Who:
- Mixed Audiences, Conference Associations, Sales & Service Teams.
- Work in fast-paced, high-demand environments and seeing signs of burnout and disengagement in themselves or those around them.
- Feel disconnected from the spark that once drove them and want to bring more purpose, passion and meaningful impact to the work they do.
- Find the ‘always on’ work culture has left them struggling to fully disconnect (physically and mentally) and rest in a way that is truly rejuvenating.
Audiences Will Leave Able to:
- Break Free from the Excellence-Exhaustion Trap — Learn to recognize when they are operating from the Scarcity versus Vitality State and master simple shifts to break the burnout cycle, boost happiness and bring their best forward.
- Decode Your Brain’s Hidden Saboteurs — Uncover the two deceptive negotiations the brain uses to lure high performers into energy-depleting “success traps,” and how to neutralize them turning sustainable excellence into an achievable reality.
- Harness Stress as a Superpower — Transform how they engage with stress, removing it where possible and converting it to a source of meaning, motivation and momentum where helpful.
- Revolutionize Your Self-Care Strategy — Implement the science of strategic renewal to disconnect meaningfully from work, embrace guilt-free rest, and reignite authentic vitality across every dimension of your life.
*This keynote can be customized for different audiences as well as expanded into a breakout session or longer interactive workshop
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