Sekou Andrews
“The defacto poet laureate of corporate America”
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- Creator of Poetic Voice, a cutting-edge category of speaking that inspires highly diverse audiences – from tech to sales to healthcare – with innovative approaches to event themes
- The “secret weapon” of global organizations, leading conferences and luminaries such as Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, and Larry King, seeking to deliver their messages in unexpectedly powerful ways
- Forbes magazine has named him “the defacto poet laureate of corporate America”
- An award-winning recording artist, entrepreneur, and two-time national poetry slam champion, who has been featured on ABC World News, Good Morning America, MSNBC, HBO, BET, Showtime, and MTV
- His Stage Might speaker trainings and keynotes are in demand with C-level leaders seeking to learn his rockstar secrets to become more dynamic speakers
*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.
Imagine harnessing the power of an engaging opening video, an electric closing performance, and an insightful main stage keynote all in one dynamic presentation. For over 15 years Sekou Andrews has been helping the world’s largest organizations deliver relevant information with riveting inspiration through an innovative, unconventional category of speaking called “Poetic Voice.”
It is no surprise that Forbes Magazine has called Sekou “the de facto poet laureate of corporate America.” His “wow-factor” is in high demand with the world’s most successful organizations, including Google, Viacom, Toyota, Nike, Cisco, Linkedin, Global Green, Paypal, ASAE, The Gap, General Mills, TEDx, YPO, Capital One, L’Oreal, Autodesk, ACLU, Intuit, and the NBA to name but a few. Sekou has also emerged as an inspiring voice for health and wellness, routinely evoking tears, cheers, and standing ovations at events for clients such as Johnson & Johnson, United Healthcare, Mayo Clinic, Blue Shield, TEDMED, Roche, Genentech, and the American Nurses Association.
Many of Sekou’s clients share a similar journey with his work. It begins with the words “Why would we want poetry at our leadership meeting?” and ends with the words “highest rating opening of our event, ever” and “only speaker invited back.” Sekou’s talks on disruption are in such demand because they literally embody disruption on stage, charging audiences to disrupt themselves to access their individual innovation. His keynotes on dynamic communication and storytelling show leaders how to deliver dense data through beautifully human presentations. From bold thinking and success, to healthcare and tech, Sekou’s speeches are rich with actionable insight that help attendees connect more deeply with their communities, become more influential leaders, and unlock greater possibilities.
A schoolteacher turned actor, recording artist, two-time national poetry slam champion, entrepreneur, and award-winning poetic voice, Sekou is a multi-talented entertainer with over 2 decades of experience rocking diverse audiences. His work has been featured on ABC World News, MSNBC, HBO, Good Morning America, Showtime, MTV and BET. He has given private performances for such prominent individuals as Oprah Winfrey, Maya Angelou, Quincy Jones, Larry King, Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King & family and President Obama. He has also shared the stage with such heavyweights as Stevie Wonder, Jay-Z, Carlos Santana, Kendrick Lamar, Maroon 5, Jill Scott, and the Pasadena Pops Orchestra. As a recording artist, his last album, “Poetic License,” made him the most awarded artist in the nation’s largest independent music organization.
Sekou has now returned to the classroom, teaching his rockstar secrets to public speakers through his highly effective Stage Might™ speaker training system, that helps executives, influencers and leaders become more dynamic communicators by applying the techniques of master performers to business stages.
With all of the innovation and inspiration that is poetic voice, Sekou Andrews is accomplishing the seemingly impossible – bringing spoken word to the world’s largest stages, while redefining the notion of what a speaker is… and what a poet can be.
Length: 20-45 min
“Innovation is the difference between ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ and ‘Why didn’t I think LIKE that?’” As businesses scurry in pursuit of “big I” Innovation – exponential technologies, cultures of innovation, and the like – Sekou teaches leaders to see through the “little i’s” of an innovator, byinnovating from within. Offering incredibly fresh perspectives
on embracing failure, bold thinking and anticipating disruption, Sekou also shares his own story about the risks and rewards of disrupting the speaking industry with a cutting-edge style of communication. This insightful and inspiring talk often surprises leaders with how much it discomforts, delights, and transforms them on a business and personal level. No doubt why it is Sekou’s most requested keynote across industries – from tech and healthcare, to finance and human resources.
Length: 5-15 min
Have you heard of the new dance? It’s not the Macarena or the Wobble. Not the Whip or the Nae Nae. It’s the 3D – The Digital Disruption Dance. The Technology Tango. The Cyber Salsa. And all the cool kids are doing it. So all of the competitive companies must learn it. Your choreographer, Sekou Andrews, delivers a roller-coaster keynote unlike anything you’ve experienced. It not only speaks to the impact of disruption on businesses… it embodies it! Just when your audience thinks they know where the talk is going, it turns on a dime, while offering valuable insight from the voices of consumers, millenials, and digital natives who explain how you should approach them when asking for a dance. Sekou’s clever, quickpaced choreography takes you on a journey from cacophony to clarity, as he inspires you to learn disruption’s rhythms and catch its groove so that you can not only keep up… you can take lead!
Length: 45-60 min
Of the top 3 things people fear most – spiders, public speaking and death – only two can kill you… (especially death). Not only will stage fright NOT kill you, when you convert it to stage MIGHT it will make YOU the killer. You will kill the speech, crush the pitch, and rock the presentation by learning how to PERFORM your speech like a rockstar. The fun and interactive keynote is perfect for leaders, entrepreneurs, executives, and anyone else who wants to become a more dynamic communicator but doesn’t know how to unlock that power. Stage Might is a training system that teaches the powerful techniques of songwriters, comedians, actors and improv artists and applies them to business communication. Sekou Andrews will help your audience take off their speaker hats, put on their performer hats, and learn from OUTside of their industry in order to stand out withIN their industry.
Length: 20-35 min
There is something burning within you. It is the most passionate, powerful, and profitable version of yourself. It is the light you have to guide others through their darkness. It’s your purpose on this planet that is one spark away from being fulfilled. Sekou Andrews, the world’s leading poetic voice, will share his personal journey of innovation, inspiration and perseverance that will ignite your audience into a bonfire of purpose, passion, profit, and personal growth. This keynote is a great opener or closer to any event you want to set aflame. Sekou will hit the stage with a throat soaked in creative kerosene, a voice coated in inflammable stories and strategies, and a pocketful of insightful matches. Prepare for your audience to get lit!
Length: 30-60 minutes
“Being self-made means being help-made, from helpmates who help make your self-made success each day.” If you know what it’s like to be an Executive Director / IP Protector / past-due-invoice collector; or a parent of 3 getting your degree while working full time; or any type of proverbial “Jack/Jill-of-all-trades… then this speech celebrates you. Every entrepreneur, business owner or successful businessperson knows too well, the dichotomy of feeling alone while building your dream while being surrounded by the people who have helped you build it. So this speech helps you become a leader that grows from, and celebrates, everyone whose fingerprints are found on your success.
Length: 30-60 minutes
“As an influencer, it is your success with stories that will tell your story of success.” Storytelling is transforming how innovative companies market themselves, engage customers and reinvent their businesses. Sekou has helped diverse divisions – from sales and marketing, to fund-raising and tech – understand how to use strategic storytelling to reach consumers, employees and leadership on a human level. Pulling key material from his “Insist On Story” corporate training, this speech is rich with actionable insight delivered through Sekou’s creative, experiential style of storytelling.
Length: 30-60 minutes
“Your vision is only as powerful as your voice.” Sekou has built a successful speaking career having never been trained as a speaker. It is his training as a performer that makes him stand out as rockstar in the speaking world. So this fun and interactive keynote reminds leaders that sometimes you must learn from outside of your industry to stand out within your industry. Stage Might is Sekou’s highly effective training system that teaches rockstar secrets to public speakers, influencers and leaders by applying the proven techniques of performers (songwriters, comedians, actors, dancers, improv artists) to business communications.
Length: 20 – 60 min
“Your creativity holds the power to cure your own gravity.” Big ideas and bold thinking are not traits exclusive to pioneering leaders. They have been lying dormant within each of us since childhood, waiting to be reignited. This speech is the spark that rekindles your access to the imagination and creativity required to stir the waters and make waves in your industry. Inspired by hilarious grade school theories on how waves are made, Sekou delivers a highly inspiring and informative keynote on why leaders must challenge convention to make transformational change. Sharing pivotal moments and insights from barrierbreaking companies and individuals, Sekou shows leaders how to spark the big ideas that make a big splash.
Length: 20-60 minutes
“Failure is pre-success.” Sekou takes an unconventional and unflinching approach to the topic of success, by spending most of this presentation on failure. Not just the popular business concepts like “failing forward”, but the uncomfortable, vulnerable, human side of failure. In true poetic voice form, this speech is simultaneously inspiring, educational, and incredibly moving as Sekou reminds audiences that within community, shared stories, and the power of perspective, lie the lessons of how to fail effectively in order to succeed perpetually. They say “When one door closes, another opens. But until then…it’s hell in the hallway!” This inspirational talk helps propel those in the hallway to their next success.
Length: 20-45 minutes
“What if we repurpose our work differently today? Put some purpose in our profit, some MLK in our Labor Day?” Do you know the “purpose currency” of your employees or your community? Sekou challenges your audience to explore and engage the meaning beyond money that helps people profit in purpose. By the end of this playful presentation, Sekou will have played patty cake with the audience, initiated duck duck goose, and invited them to join in naked twister, as engaging reminders that connection is necessary, money is personal, and to humanize your business,
“you have to undress … take your acronyms, degrees, and titles / strip them from your chest.”
Length 20-60 minutes
“We don’t know how to spell ‘end’ or ‘say when’ or do anything else but win… Win… WIN!!!” If you want to celebrate, or want to create, a culture of winners, hustlers, and go-getters in your community, then ‘Success Junkie’ will rock your audience. Set in the world of a support group for success addicts, this rousing, edgy and hilarious speech will celebrate your ambition, improve your self-care, and inspire your excellence. Rich with strategic insight on storytelling, shifting perspective, and the winner’s mind set, Sekou teaches you how to own your story so that you rewrite your ending and create the kind of success that is unending.
Length: 20-45 minutes
“True wealth is not defined by whether I can pay for it, but whether I can pay it forward.” This speech, in various forms, has been shared with diverse audiences – from TEDx Wallstreet, to Conscious Capitalism, to the GAP. Its edgy message dances at the crossroads between the discomfort needed to compel change, and the inspiration needed to ignite possibility. Beginning with the discomforting declaration “This year, it’s about the money!”, Sekou embarks upon a 5-step journey of redefining wealth – moving from the most self-serving definitions to the most holistic. Remind your attendees to invest in themselves and their communities, and “make dollars that make change.”
Length: 20-45 minutes
“What if Business came to us for Human lessons? What would we teach it?” As TED Talks, consumer centrism and storytelling trend in business, industries are getting in touch with their humanity now more than ever. With over 15 years of speaking and consulting for global organizations on how to humanize messaging and galvanize communities, Sekou shares his diverse practices and concepts that help leaders with this charge. Spoiler alert: It begins with you having the audacity to ask… “What if there is a better way?” This speech teems with the kind of strategy and
emotion that leaves even the stodgiest of audiences simultaneously swelling with valuable insight… and tears.
*Longer versions of this speech combine content from “Currency of Purpose”, “New Money”, and “The Audacity of What If”.
Length: 20-45 minutes
“The future of payments is no longer just pay to play, it is PLAY to pay.” Leaders in the Payments industry who may be buried in the strategies and technological disruptions driving their future, must also remember to pause and bask in how that future will look. Lucky for them, the world’s leading poetic voice has time-traveled back to the past to give
them a first-hand look at how they will revolutionize payments. Sekou’s futuristic character reminds the audience that their conquering of block chains, biometrics, and security breakthroughs came only when business leaders, tech innovators, policy makers and entrepreneurs learned to collaborate and play together. Based on his years of research
with leading banks, credit card companies, payment processors, FinTech brands, credit unions, and other financial organizations, combined with his unique ability to transform tech information into delightful inspiration, this fun, quirky presentation is a perfect opener for commerce-related events.
Length 20-45 minutes
“Today, the poet who rewrites the rules of speaking, joins the stage / to celebrate those reinventing the future of meetings in impressive ways.” The event speaker and the event producer are two sides of the same awesome coin – both partnering to harness the information and inspiration that makes meeting moments more moving and memorable. So who better to celebrate your work in creating amazing event experiences, than the poetic voice who makes amazing experiences out of every event topic he touches? With over 15 years of helping producers amplify messaging, electrify engagement… and look great to clients, few presenters can give voice to your industry like Sekou can. This speech will make your audience feel celebrated, inspired and charged to never underestimate the impact they have on this world by bringing communities together.
Length 30-45 minutes
“We don’t sit back and take the future. We show up, sleeves rolled up, to make the future.” Trying to get ahead of the future can cause leaders great anxiety as they face disruptive technologies in their industries. How will 3-D printing transform my farming business? How will AI impact my cyber security? How will digital biology affect my hospital… or my health plan… or my soul? The more technology blows our minds, the more it can terrify our hearts. Which is why this inspirational, interactive keynote has proven to be an essential moment of emotional refuge at events about the future. Spanning topics from exponential tech to neuroplasticity to empathy, Sekou reminds audiences that the future will only be as heartbreaking or heartwarming as we are; that our best future lies in our innovation, our ability to humanize business and, most importantly, in each other. Harnessing our connections in the present is what will blow the future’s mind, stir the future’s soul, and get right to the heart of the future.
Length: 20-40 minutes
“I told her, ‘Baby I don’t do small talk, I do big listen.’” If you’ve ever wondered how Sekou manages to leave audiences weeping from deep emotional connections to highly technical content, this speech is a perfect example. He takes the customer lifecycle and masterfully compares it to the life cycle of a relationship, from end to end. It’s simple, beautiful, and highly relatable to any audience on a human level. It reminds CX audiences of the power they have to transform someone’s experience. To truly embody the feeling of disruption, the speech begins in a delightfully disruptive way that let the audience know from the start: “This will be an engaging and unusual keynote experience like no other.”
Length: 20-60 minutes
“You are more than enough to get through this, and you’ve got a scrapbook full of ‘I-can’t-do-its’ to prove it.” This talk is like giving your audience their own “halftime-at-the-Superbowl-Al-Pacino-lockerroom speech!” Sekou shares inspirational insight and personal development jewels to help transcend challenging seasons. By the time you’re done laughing your stress off while reigniting your passion and confidence, you’ll want to share these infectiously
creative take-aways with others to remind them to “LIVE WHAT YOU LOVE,” be the “LITTLE EXTRA CUP,” and “ALWAYS VACUUM WITH A SMILE.” Based on “The Awesome Anthem” – Sekou’s popular video featuring Quincy Jones, Tim Ferris, Norman Lear, and many others – this speech is perfect for business conferences, year-end celebrations, and entertainment events.
Length: 20-45 minutes
“Every trembling bone in my body is comforted each time she adds a bit of “treat” to my treatment… with care that covers the enrichment of my life, not merely the postponement of my death.” What if you could remind your audience of the moment they fell in love with healthcare? What if you could reignite the passion in providers – caregivers, executives and housekeeping alike – to connect with patients on a human, heartfelt level? What if you could take your entire healthcare community on a laughter and tear-filled journey that renews their vows to provide the best quality care. If you could do that – write a love poem to healthcare that makes your audience fall back in love with it – this keynote is how it would sound.
Length: 20-45 min
Providing quality healthcare is a beautiful topic. Patient safety and medical error … not so much. So Sekou transforms this important but challenging issue into a rollercoaster ride of laughter and tears that holds every team member accountable for keeping patients safe. The fact that this speech consistently leaves audiences carrying Sekou’s pinky promise pledge back to their facilities, pinning it on their walls, and sharing it with their team is proof of how poetic voice can turn what some consider the un-sexiest of topics into powerful anthems.
Length: 20-40 minutes
“Your net wealth is not the best test for selfworth / The true measure of wealth is the score of your Net Health” It’s not that we don’t know what to do to be healthy, we just don’t always behave. So how do you change behavior in your community, your company or your personal life to cash in on the wealth that life offers? This speech uses a beautiful, brilliantly simple metaphor to compare the ways we calculate our wealth to the ways we can calculate our health, in
order to increase productivity, extend mortality, and heighten vitality. No wonder it has been presented at Fortune 50 companies and leading health conferences, as well as used in graduate school curriculums to explore behavior change in an engaging and edutaining way.
Length: 15-25 minutes
“My grandmother was murdered… by a broken heart.” Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. Having lost many of his family members to it, Sekou knows this as well as anyone. So in this incredibly moving presentation, Sekou makes a plea to the cardiac community to join forces and find the missing beat that left his grandmother, uncles, aunts… and his father victim to the serial killer called heart disease. It celebrates the work of the healthcare providers, charges them to collaborate and innovate, and inspires them to new possibilities. Rich with emotional stories, industry data, and fun audience participation, this heartfelt and hilarious speech is a powerful addition
to any conference or fundraiser that wants to bring a “wow factor” to the stage.
Length: 20-30 minutes
“By the time we’re done rebranding cancer, the threat of the “Big C” will be as benign as a cavity.” Pharma breakthroughs, personalized medicine, crowd sourced data, environmental health, preventive mobile tech … oh my! As healthcare soldiers battle against cancer on every front, this speech re-grounds them in the possibility and purpose behind their important work. With poignant moments of beauty, science and humor, Sekou steps into the future to take your audience on the semi-fictional, 5-stage journey that ultimately leads to cure. He explores bold concepts like “re-branding cancer”, “meaningful matter”, and the power within the cancer community, all while celebrating and
inspiring them with a hope-filled vision of the future. Just as there is likely no one who has gone personally untouched by this disease, there is no audience that has gone unmoved by this speech. It is the perfect closing experience for the day, or the event.
Length: 20-30 minutes
“We are losing the fight against the most vicious enemy healthcare has ever known … zombies.” Sekou bodly takes on prevention, workplace productivity, and preventive care with another unexpected yet surprisingly effective metaphor
for a speech. Playing the character of a top general in the war against “workplace zombies”, he takes you through the fictional (or is it?) story of how the Sick Day Virus was spread, chronic disease was cured and human productivity was restored through prevention, technology, and purpose driven self-care. You will never think of zombies, paid-time-off, or healthcare the same way again!
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