The Leadership Lectures feature world-class, accomplished and influential leaders with expertise ranging from business and philanthropy to public service and academic research. Through the Lectures, we hope to inspire thought-provoking dialogue within the community by providing access to the expertise, advice and best practices of some of the world’s foremost leadership minds. As such, the attendance to the lectures are free and open to the public.
Accommodations
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The Leadership Lectures
Hope Is the Strategy: Transforming Workplace Wellbeing Through Leadership That Sustains
In today's workplace, we've been conditioned to believe that relentless productivity and constant performance are the prices of success. But what if hope—not hustle—is the strategy we've been missing?
Drawing from her groundbreaking new book Hope Is the Strategy and her work as Deloitte's first Chief Wellbeing Officer, Jen Fisher reveals how hope functions as a strategic imperative. Through personal narratives of burnout and cancer recovery, combined with evidence-based insights, she demonstrates how leaders can harness hope as a catalyst for transformation.
This lecture challenges the belief that strong leadership means having all answers and driving productivity at any cost. Fisher introduces wellbeing intelligence—an approach that reimagines workplace systems to align with human capacity rather than deplete it. Attendees will discover how to move from performance that exhausts to performance that energizes.
Fisher shares practical frameworks for creating pathways to better futures and building hope as a collective organizational capability. Attendees will learn to recognize high-functioning dysfunction, develop strategies for sustainable transformation, and understand why wellbeing isn't the opposite of performance—it's the foundation.
This isn't about work-life balance or individual resilience. This is about reimagining work as a force for human flourishing, where hope becomes the strategy that transforms how we lead and thrive together.
Presenter
- Jen Fisher
Jen Fisher is a global authority on workplace wellbeing, author of the bestselling author of Work Better Together and Hope Is the Strategy, and founder and CEO of The Wellbeing Team. As Deloitte US's first Chief Wellbeing Officer, she pioneered a human-centered approach to work that gained national recognition and reshaped how organizations view wellbeing.
From personal experience with burnout and cancer to her role as a trailblazer in wellbeing intelligence and co-creator of WellQ360, Jen has dedicated her career to helping leaders build cultures where people thrive—physically, mentally, and emotionally. Her work challenges outdated systems and champions a vision of work that sustains rather than depletes.
Jen hosts The WorkWell Podcast, is a TEDx speaker, and presents at events like Workhuman, SXSW, Milken Global Conference, and Happiness Camp. She has taught at Harvard and UCLA, served as editor-at-large for Thrive Global, and contributed to Fortune, CNN, and Harvard Business Review.
At the heart of Jen's work is the conviction that hope is a strategic imperative. She helps leaders harness hope as a catalyst for cultural transformation, guiding them to reimagine work as a force for human flourishing. With personal insight and deep expertise, Jen empowers organizations to make wellbeing a strategic priority—not an afterthought.
She lives in Miami with her husband, Albert, and their dog, Fiona.
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