Wellbeing isn’t a perk. It’s a leadership
Imperative.
Laura equips leaders to move beyond perks and programs—embedding wellbeing into the way they lead and sparking culture change that lasts.
Clients
“Laura’s work advanced our company culture by two years.”
Crockett Dale
CEO, Healthstat
Keynote Topics
Fix the Water
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And the billions spent on programs designed to fix these aren't working. The problem isn't the people. It's the water.
Enter Fix the Water framework — a new way of understanding why culture, not individual behavior, drives performance. Drawing on two decades of work with 500+ organizations and 50,000+ leaders — and a personal story of living in a Ghanaian village where wellbeing was simply woven into daily life — she names the forces that are shaping the water against human flourishing and makes the case that changing it is both possible and urgent.
Audiences leave knowing exactly which role they play in changing the water — and with three specific practices they can start using the next day: Study the Currents, Shape the Water, and Start the Ripple.
Audiences Will Walk Away With:
A new mental model — the water, not the fish — that shows why culture, not individual behavior, is the real driver of wellbeing and performance.
A clear understanding of the structural conditions driving burnout, disengagement, and poor performance.
Three named practices for redesigning the workplace to support a thriving workforce: Study the Currents, Shape the Water, and Start the Ripple.
Clarity on which of four specific roles applies to them — Trendsetter, Permission Giver, Activator, or Self-Starter.
Proof that changing the conditions changes everything — drawn from real-world case studies.
How Organizations Build Cultures Where People - And Performance - Thrive
The Manager Effect
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They have more impact on employee wellbeing and mental health than therapists or doctors. And yet most organizations treat the manager as a middle layer to be managed — underinvesting in their development and overlooking their potential as the most powerful lever they have.
In this keynote, Laura Putnam makes the case that the manager isn't just part of the system. For their team, they are the system. She opens by making the stakes personal — not just for organizations, but for the people on every team and the families depending on them. Drawing on twenty years of work with 500+ organizations and 50,000+ leaders, she introduces her proprietary Multiplier Method — Do, Speak, Create — backed by third-party research cited by the Mayo Clinic.
As a result of this talk: Managers discover how much they matter — and exactly how to act on it. Senior leaders discover how much they've been leaving on the table. And everyone in the room leaves with a new understanding: wellbeing isn't an HR initiative. It's foundational to how every manager needs to lead.
Tangible Takeaways:
A reframe: the manager isn't part of the system — for their team, they are the system.
A visceral understanding of what's at stake — not just for organizations, but for the people on every team and the families depending on them.
The Multiplier Method: three specific, immediately applicable practices for every manager — Do, Speak, Create — with outcomes cited by the Mayo Clinic.
A new understanding of wellbeing as a strategic advantage and a leadership imperative.
A clear business case for why investing in managers is the highest-leverage decision an organization can make.
Why the Person in the Middle Changes Everything
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Because the data they collect isn't designed to see it. Meanwhile, the people most likely to participate in wellbeing programs are already the people best positioned to thrive. The people who need support most are the ones the data will never show — because they're not in the numbers. Absence is invisible.
In this keynote, Laura Putnam introduces the concept of Wellness Privilege — the unearned advantages that make wellbeing easier for some employees than others. Through stories drawn from every level of the workforce—she shows what it looks like when the gap between what's offered and what's accessible becomes impossible to ignore.
Audiences leave with the 50 Ways You Might Have Wellness Privilege at Work assessment — a tool to make the invisible visible — and a three-part activation framework: Assess, Align, Advocate.
What Audiences Walk Away With:
A new concept — Wellness Privilege — that exposes what most organizations have been systematically missing in their wellbeing and performance strategies.
The diagnostic question that changes everything: Who is our culture actually working for — and who is it leaving behind?
A clear understanding of the gap between what's offered and what's accessible — and why participation data hides it.
A three-part activation framework — Assess, Align, Advocate — with specific actions for individuals, managers, and organizational leaders.
The 50 Ways You Might Have Wellness Privilege at Work assessment — a tool to make the invisible visible.
The Hidden Performance Gap Most Organizations Never See
Wellness Privilege
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But it has been systematically engineered out of modern work. In this experiential keynote, Laura Putnam reframes movement as a cognitive performance strategy — not a wellness habit. Within the first ten minutes, audiences move, feel the shift themselves, and experience firsthand how movement impacts focus, creativity, decision-making, and connection.
The problem isn't that people lack discipline. The problem is that we've designed work for efficiency — and in doing so, we've inadvertently engineered out the very thing that makes people more efficient, not less.
The talk opens and closes with a story that reframes what movement means — and what we lose when it's taken away.
Drawing on science, storytelling, and live audience experience, Laura introduces three organizational levers — Design, Organize, Manage — and shows leaders how to build movement back into the workday in ways that improve energy, thinking, and performance — without a program, a budget, or a mandate.
What Audiences Walk Away With:
An awakening to how being in motion is foundational to what it means to be human — and how we've built a world of work that is fundamentally mismatched with how we're biologically designed.
A counterintuitive insight: natural activity throughout the day matters more than a single workout.
The case for movement as a cognitive performance strategy — and the sedentary workplace as a design flaw worth fixing.
Direct experiences of how getting up and moving changes focus, energy, creativity, and connection — felt in real time.
Three organizational levers — Design, Organize, Manage — with practical, immediately applicable ways to build motion into the workday, especially on the team level.
The Missing Ingredient in Modern Performance
Born to Move, Told to Sit
For Meeting
Professionals
5 Reasons to
Book Laura
No one energizes a crowd and gets them interacting with one another like Laura.
1.
Laura goes the extra mile, tailoring her talks and collaborating with event organizers to meet the unique needs of every audience.
2.
Her insights are memorable, repeatable and actionable - empowering attendees long after the keynote ends.
3.
Audience gets a rethink on a topic that everyone is talking about (wellness).
4.
Laura makes friends everywhere she goes. Through relatable stories and approachable humor, she quickly connects with attendees.
5.
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