Every talk starts with your audience.
JoAnn accepts a limited number of speaking invitations each year. Her signature talks stand on their own, but can be tailored as deeply as you'd like — to your industry and the questions your people are actually sitting with.
Three talks, one through-line.
Frameworks built to travel across industries — from 50 years of Microsoft breakthroughs, 25 years of building, and the future of digital infrastructure. The through-line: innovation is a people problem before it is a technology problem.
Start With Who: Find the People Before the Ideas
Organizations consistently misjudge the people side of innovation — just as AI turns more employees into creators. Decoding 50 years of Microsoft breakthroughs, JoAnn and her co-author found that successful teams match people to each phase of innovation, and that one commonly overlooked role predicts success more than any other. The people who fill it are rarely the ones you'd expect.
Behavior Is the Barrier: Closing the Knowing-Doing Gap
The strategy is sound, the teams are aligned, the technology works — and still nothing changes. The gap between knowing what to do and doing it is why AI initiatives stall the way digital transformations did before them. JoAnn covers the trust dynamics, behavioral patterns, and practical daily moves that get organizations from planning to execution.
Aim for Positive: The Regenerative Advantage
Efficiency is necessary but not sufficient; the edge belongs to those who create surplus. JoAnn draws on the Datacenter of the Future program, which reframed critical infrastructure from a liability into an asset. She shows how regenerative design improves stakeholder relationships, opens new markets, and generates value efficiency can't see — and hands attendees the reframing questions to find it in their own ecosystems.
The keynote opens the question. These formats put it to work.
Non-profits and educational institutions receive reduced fees — ask.
Forty-five minutes on stage, fifteen for audience Q&A. Includes a discovery call with your team, a talk shaped to your audience and theme, moderated Q&A or fireside format, and day-of availability for a VIP reception, book signing, or press.
The same talk and preparation, delivered live from her studio, with a full tech rehearsal and moderated Q&A. Livestreaming an in-person keynote to your remote audience is included.
Add an executive roundtable, extended fireside, or leadership working session to the keynote day. The keynote names the problem; the session starts solving it.
A facilitated deep-dive for up to 40 leaders, built on one of her frameworks. Participants leave with work started, not just notes taken.
Keynote plus workshop, or a full facilitated day designed around your team's real initiative. Scoped together after a discovery call.
Panels, fireside chats, and moderated conversations, scoped individually.
…I saw firsthand how effective she is at communicating complex problems clearly, casting a vision for teams to rally around…
All talk and workshop inquiries go through BigSpeak.
Contact Daria Wagganer at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau for availability, formats, and fees. JoAnn travels from Seattle.