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Heather McGowan
Top-Ranked Futurist & 2x Best-Selling Author
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Future-of-work strategist Heather E. McGowan helps leaders prepare their people and organizations for the Augmented Era – where the greatest competitive advantage comes from optimizing human performance. McGowan is a sense maker, a dot connector, a deep thinker, and a pattern matcher who sees things others miss. Heather gives people the courage and insight that illuminates their path forward. She’s transforming mindsets and entire organizations around the globe with her message about how the next phase of work will focus on continuous learning, rather than simply learning once to work. Pulitzer Prize-winning NYT columnist Thomas Friedman frequently quotes Heather in his books and columns and describes her as “the oasis” regarding insights into the future of work. In 2020, Forbes recognized Heather as one of the top 50 female futurists in the world. Heather’s sessions help employees and leaders alike prepare for and adapt to jobs that do not yet exist.
McGowan has provided keynote addresses for audiences from start-ups to government organizations to universities to publicly traded Fortune 100 companies, including AMP Financial, SAP, Abbvie, Biogen, Fidelity, FIS, Mastercard, AT&T, Financial Times, Siemens, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Kaiser Permanente, JPMorgan Chase, Lockheed Martin, MassMutual, MetLife, Best Buy, Raytheon, The US Army, Accor Hotels, Paramount, Chevron, AARP, Zendesk, Tableau, de Beers, Professional Beauty Association, and The World Bank among hundreds of others. Heather addresses audiences in person from small summits for C-suite executives to large events in the tens of thousands. Her virtual talks have reached hundreds of thousands.
Often quoted in the media, notably in the New York Times, McGowan served on the advisory board for Sparks & Honey, a New York-based culture-focused agency looking to the future for brands. McGowan’s academic work has included roles at Rhode Island School of Design, and Jefferson University, where she was the strategic architect of the first undergraduate college focused exclusively on innovation. From 2019-2022 Heather was appointed as a faculty member of the Swinburne University Centre for the New Workforce in Melbourne, Australia. In 2022, McGowan was awarded an honorary doctorate from Pennsylvania College of Art and Design in addition to earning her MBA from Babson College and her BFA in Industrial Design from Rhode Island School of Design.
McGowan is the co-editor and author of the book Disrupt Together: How Teams Consistently Innovate and a Forbes contributor. McGowan’s first book on the future of work, published in 2020: The Adaptation Advantage: Let Go, Learn Fast, and Thrive in the Future of Work, reached number three in Soundview. McGowan’s most recent book The Empathy Advantage: Leading the Empowered Workforce published in March 2023 is a finalist for the Next Big Idea Book Club and identified as a top ten business book to read in 2023 by Business Chief.
The Adaptation Advantage: The Future of Work is Learning
- FOCUS: While machines excel at providing answers, humans must become masters at asking the right questions.
- APPROACH: AI will both automate and augment our work – success lies in understanding and leveraging both opportunities
- BEHAVIOR: We long believed professional success was based on good grades and high marks, new evidence suggests some key behaviors are more important than test scores.
- MINDSET: We have focused on fixed skills and set occupational identity at a time when we need individuals to be adaptable in both their ability to learn and unlearn and to expand their self-perception as they, inevitably, change roles.
- GOALS: Rather than seeing education as finite, treat it as a lifelong journey of narrowing the ever-evolving skills gap.
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