Sara Ross

Leadership has always been demanding, but in today’s reality—where AI is accelerating change, complexity compounds, expectations rise as energy falls—leadership feels like a pressure cooker of competing demands. These circumstances aren’t temporary, they are trademarks of todays workplace, so the question isn’t how to overcome them, it’s how to sustainably thrive within them?

Drawing on more than 15 years of hands-on work developing and advising leaders, and a multi-year study on workplace vitality resulting in her bestselling book, ‘Dear Work, Something Has to Change,’ Sara Ross introduces LeadFULL™—a science-backed leadership approach to vitality-fueling excellence. Instead of teaching leaders how to stretch themselves thinner with more coping strategies,
LeadFULL™ shifts the focus from managing effort to managing state—because capacity, not endurance, is the new currency of sustainable high-performance.

This keynote focuses on the ‘Lasting’ pillar of the LeadFULL model. When leaders focus inward and learn to operate from their Vitality State, high performance isn’t just sustainable; it becomes an energizing force that makes work engaging, relationships enriching, and life fulfilling, creating a ripple effect of thriving across teams and throughout organizations for lasting impact.

This Keynote is Best for Executives, People Leaders and Fast Growth Organizations:

• Find that despite their best intentions, hard work and impressive skillsets, are caught in an exhausting cycle of reactivity and diminishing returns.
• Strive for new heights in their careers but feel caught in sacrifice-based trade-offs with an increasing impact on 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:

• Understand why the foundation of sustainable high performance starts from within—learn how shifting to the Vitality Operating state expands capacity to meet rising complexity with energy, resilience, and confidence.
• Stop firefighting and start amplifying vitality through their teams with three simple empowerment questions to extend ownership of problem-solving, deepen empathy, and multiply capability.
• Recognize the common misconceptions that cause approaches to energy management, work-life balance, and workplace well-being programs to undermine the very things they aim to enhance—and understand what actually works.
• Shift out of ‘right time’ thinking and apply the 20% Principle™ to integrate energy-generating practices real time to reignite a sense of aliveness, rest without guilt, and enjoy the life they are working so hard to create.

We all want to put the last few years behind us. Unfortunately, with stress spiking, energy dropping, and challenges around quiet quitting, hybrid work, retention, and recruitment lingering, we can’t ignore the toll things have had on people and organizations.

We all want to put the last few years behind us. Unfortunately, with stress spiking, energy dropping, and challenges around quiet quitting, hybrid work, retention, and recruitment lingering, we can’t ignore the toll things have had on people and organizations.

Sara Ross, the founder and chief vitality officer at BrainAmped, believes that addressing these challenges and navigating the changing world of work requires starting with a new question. Instead of asking how to help leaders feel less tired, stretched, and stressed, Sara transforms the traditional approach by asking how we can help leaders and their people feel more ALIVE – more energized, capable, and purposeful.

In this keynote, based on the research and principles shared in her bestselling book, “Dear Work, something has to change,” Sara will show that the solution begins by helping audiences boost their Work Vitality Factor by focusing on four core ideas:

• Beliefs can be the biggest barriers. Sara will identify three common misconceptions audiences hold regarding success, stress, and rest that keep them and their teams stuck in the survival zone and how to shift them into vitality ignitors.
• Surviving the day is not a strategy. Audiences will learn a mindset to work better with stress and how to use it to fuel the energy needed to pursue bold, meaningful goals, invest in important relationships, and live a full, energized life.
• Standing out shouldn’t mean burning out. Sara will challenge audiences to break the cycle of over-working and under-living by incorporating three simple yet empowering questions that amplify vitality and performance across an organization—particularly in hybrid environments.
• Boosting vitality requires intentionality. Audiences will learn how to practice more strategic self-care at work and outside of it while creating environments that allow others to do the same.

What would you do if you could not fail?” This is a good, thought-provoking question, but unfortunately, it is inherently flawed. If you are going to take on bold goals, get outside of your comfort zone, try new things, and build new skills – it will be hard and you will fail along the way.

Instead, “What would you do if you knew that even if you failed, you’d be okay?” This is what it means to have the confidence to get knocked down and the resilience to get back up; stronger, faster, and healthier each time.

While researching for her upcoming book, “Dear Work, something has to change” Sara Ross found that in a time of record-setting stress, uncertainty, and change, those most successful didn’t fail less often. Instead, they learned better. It’s the connection between confidence and resilience that free’s people to consistently stretch their potential to innovate, adapt, and thrive – even in the most stressful times.

Too many people miss out on opportunities in work and life because they lack the confidence to try. It might be taking on a new role, adjusting to changing client expectations and competitive market landscapes, or simply seeking feedback. All because they fear that they aren’t equipped to handle the obstacles that come with each.

In this session, Sara will change that by taking the audience through a practical four-step method to strengthen their confidence – resilience loop by:

• Explaining the brain science of emotions under stress and sharing a strategy to address the three thieves of confidence: perfection, comparison, and the fear of judgment.

• Addressing common misconceptions about what confidence and resilience are and how each is built and maintained.

• Identifying where mindset shifts will help change the narrative of the story people tell themselves when it’s keeping them stuck, scared, discouraged, and overwhelmed.

• Building a “resilience resume” to highlight strengths and experiences to draw from when faced with obstacles and channel both into positive, momentum-creating action.

Taking on anything challenging—even when meaningful and exciting—will involve stress, discomfort, and struggle. In a world defined by uncertainty, the most powerful way to raise the bar and get to the next level is to boost the collective potential of how people work together. That starts by helping leaders and their people build awareness of their behavior, learn to embrace the emotions that come with challenges, and strengthen the skills of empathy to thrive collectively together, whether in-person or virtually.

Sara Ross, Chief Vitality Officer of the leadership research firm, BrainAmped, studies the influence of emotional intelligence, vitality-generating energy, and organizational culture on leadership, performance, and teamwork. Combining these areas and looking at them through the lens of brain science, Sara uses humor and storytelling to ensure people have action able strategies they feel empowered to start using the moment they leave their seats. Specifically, Sara will share the following in her keynote:

• It’s less about what you know and more about how you lead; learn the key behaviors that differentiate the best from the rest for creating stand-out leadership, performance, and teamwork.
• Knowing what to do and doing what you know are not the same; establish an in-the- moment emotional management strategy to strengthen personal accountability, make better decisions, and respond more skillfully—even in the most challenging circumstances.
• Trust is both a science and a skill; uncover the brain science of trust and how to use it to create more collaborative, innovative, and diverse cultures.
• To demonstrate empathy, you need to first develop it; learn an approach to extend empathy, especially in difficult conversations that get to the heart of the matter while strengthening relationships and driving results.
• Caring for people is not the same as carrying people; embody a mindset to shift leadership fatigue into leadership vitality.