Nancy Lyons
Nancy Lyons
Nancy Lyons is an Emmy-winning speaker, author, and irreverent truth-teller who’s spent over two decades shaking up the status quo of work, leadership, life and culture. Most recently recognized as one of GO Magazine’s “100 Women We Love” (Class of 2025), she doesn’t just talk about building better workplaces - she’s lived it, led it, and helped others do it too.
As a co-founder of Clockwork and Tempo, two pioneering digital consultancies, and the best-selling author of Work Like a Boss, Nancy brings real-world experience and straight-up practical wisdom to the stage. Her talks are equal parts pep talk and gut punch - built to challenge how we lead, collaborate, and show up for ourselves and each other. She’s not interested in “best practices.” She’s here to help you unlearn old behaviors, own your power, and lead with radical accountability and a deeply human-centered mindset.
Nancy’s spoken at the White House Summit on Working Families and keynoted for brands and organizations across industries - from Fortune 500s to large conferences to state and local governments to grassroots groups - always with one goal: wake people up to their influence and inspire them to use it for good.
She’s been named a Most Admired CEO, a Minnesota Business Hall of Fame inductee, and one of the 101 Most Influential People in Work and Career. But what she values most is when someone says, “It felt like you were talking directly to me.”
Nancy Lyons doesn’t fit into neat boxes. She breaks them. And she dares others to do the same - with empathy, humor, and unrelenting honesty.
- Emmy Winner
- Author of Work Like a Boss
- Named one of GO Magazine’s 100 Women We Love – 2025
- Ground-breaking Entrepreneur & Inclusion Advocate
Most Requested Programs
Work Like a Boss
Workplaces want motivated employees who take initiative. People want to care about work and contribute to a bigger purpose. Rolling out engagement programs or adding new professional development tracks won’t help. The answer is developing work cultures and personal mindsets that embrace change, accountability, and risk.
In this talk, I inspire people and teams to change their perspectives on work/life. With humor, humility, and a lot of energy, I reframe hierarchy and power, and focus our attention on the mindsets needed for future-forward workplaces and bigger, more fulfilling lives.
Cultivating a human-centered work culture
We can’t expect people to leave their personal lives or feelings at the door when they come to work, so why we do expect them to? Instead, a work culture should welcome and connect life and work, personal and professional. A culture centered around people — and whole selves — has to be created deliberately and enacted across every level of an organization.
In this conversation, I explore how teams, companies, and employees can cultivate a workplace that is holistically supportive and that feels good.
Work Like You Run The Place
Intrapreneurs are invaluable to business today: they enable innovation, grow bottom lines, and introduce new perspectives to established companies. But more than anything, they bring an energy that benefits workplaces. They think independently, take initiative, exhibit ownership, accept their role as leaders, and make decisions.
In this session, I speak to the core attributes of entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs and discuss how, and why, to bring these characteristics into your daily work.
Culture Eats AI For Breakfast
AI isn’t just a technology challenge - it’s a culture challenge. This talk explores how trust, transparency, and human-centered values shape whether AI helps your organization thrive or tears it apart. Nancy Lyons cuts through the hype to focus on what leaders must do now: prepare their people, not just their platforms.
Testimonials
"In what’s been a particularly challenging time for leaders, Nancy’s message was relevant, encouraging, and filled with hope.“ - Andrea Walsh, CEO, HealthPartners
“Nancy stole the show. Participants raved about her, noting how she struck just the right balance of real, practical insight and making them all feel like success was within their reach. Nancy’s direct and humorous delivery not only re-energized the crowd, it left them wanting more!” - Tracy Burns, CEO, Northeast Human Resources Association
“I’ve loved Nancy’s three visits to our stage! Few people translate purposeful work into words the way Nancy does. She gets the connection between work and what is going on in the world – whether that’s the big world of global challenges and follies or something smaller and more intimate that goes on within the space of our living rooms and lives. Oh… did I mention that she’ll also may you laugh and think – deeply!” - Bud Bernstein, Maine HR Convention and Strategic HR New England
“If you want proof of worthy content, 180 design conference attendees listened to Nancy dissect “fear in the workplace” from Work Like a Boss with rapt attention for 90 minutes...without a slide presentation. The woman commands her topic!” - AIGA (the professional association for design) Planning Committee
You know to settle in and be ready to laugh and learn when Nancy Lyons takes the conference stage. Not only does she provide solid, useful information to her audience, she engages with energy and wit that make listening to a keynote fun and inspiring. She has provided tons of insight and inspiration at the Digital PM Summit to a point where I can’t imagine NOT having her there. - Brett Harned, Producer, Digital Project Management Summit