Signature Keynotes

These aren’t your typical leadership keynotes. They’re real, rebellious, and unforgettable.
Shelley Brown delivers high-energy, human-centered experiences that challenge outdated leadership norms and spark real, lasting change.

Rebel Leadership

Lead Like You Mean It

In a world that rewards performance over presence and perfection over truth, Rebel Leadership is a call back to what actually works: humanity. In this high-impact, all-audience keynote, Shelley Brown invites leaders at every level to break free from outdated norms, burnout culture, and leadership-by-approval. Through raw storytelling, humor, and truth-telling, Shelley shows how leading like you mean it, with clarity, emotional intelligence, and courage isn’t just rebellion. It’s strategy. And it builds legacies that last.

Key Takeaways:

  • How traditional leadership norms are breaking people and what to do instead

  • Why performance-based leadership exhausts trust, energy, and innovation

  • The power of emotional presence and how it transforms culture

  • What it really means to lead like you — not like the system taught you to

Walk Away Ready To:

  • Identify and release outdated leadership patterns that no longer serve

  • Lead with real-time clarity, emotional intelligence, and self-trust

  • Set boundaries that protect your energy and expand your impact

  • Build cultures of belonging without burning out

Perfect for:
All leaders, people managers, and organizations ready to ditch performance-based leadership and build human-centered cultures that last.

Breaking the Hard Rules

Redefining Strength in Women’s Leadership

For too long, women have been told they need to be tougher, harder, louder to lead. But following someone else’s rules doesn’t create a legacy, it reinforces the systems we were never meant to thrive in.

In this transformative keynote, Shelley Brown challenges the “bada$$ trap” and the false choice between authenticity and authority. Through powerful storytelling and lived experience, she helps women leaders reclaim their full leadership presence, soft and strong, vulnerable and powerful without apology.

This keynote is not just a redefinition of leadership. It’s a rebellion in service of legacy. Because when one woman leads from wholeness, it sends a ripple that gives others permission to do the same. It’s how we change what leadership looks and feels like—for this generation and the next.

Key Takeaways:

  • How the “toughness trap” limits authentic leadership and reinforces burnout

  • The cultural and organizational cost of performative leadership

  • Why emotional intelligence, empathy, and presence are essential to modern power

  • A new model of leadership strength rooted in clarity, connection, and truth

Walk Away Ready To:

  • Replace burnout patterns with presence, purpose, and long-term impact

  • Lead with emotional intelligence as a strategic advantage

  • Navigate gendered expectations without compromising identity or vision

  • Model a new leadership legacy that empowers others to lead as their full selves

Perfect for:
Women in leadership, ERGs, and organizations committed to evolving what power looks like, investing in sustainable success, and building a future where leadership is defined by truth—not tradition.

The Belonging Equation

What if the secret to leading others... is belonging to yourself first?

In this high-energy, interactive keynote, Shelley Brown introduces her powerful W.E.I.R.D. model for belonging — Welcoming, Engaging, Integrating, Risk-taking, and Delivering. Through storytelling, humor, and real-world leadership insight, she flips the script on performance and connection. Because it turns out, the real edge isn’t in fitting in, it’s in showing up as you actually are.

Key Takeaways:

  • Why true belonging, not blending in, fuels trust, creativity, and retention

  • The hidden cost of self-editing at work

  • How to create safety and connection without faking it

  • The role of leaders in modeling realness, not perfection

You’ll walk away ready to:

  • Lead with authenticity and clarity

  • Create environments where people want to show up and contribute

  • Use the W.E.I.R.D. framework to build culture through human connection

  • Shift from culture fit to culture expansion, starting with yourself

Perfect for:
People leaders and teams ready to ditch the mask, ditch the checklist, and build a workplace that feels real.

Step Into Exceptional Leadership

Finding Your Fit

Forget the one-size-fits-all leadership advice. Great leadership is not about being the loudest voice or checking the right boxes, it is about finding your fit. In this energizing and practical session, Shelley introduces the Lasting Leadership Triangle: Fit, Form, and Function. Using real-world examples and grounded storytelling, she helps leaders lead in ways that are sustainable, clear, and true to who they are while still delivering for the business.

Key Takeaways:

  • The cost of leadership misalignment on people and performance

  • Why authentic fit drives retention, resilience, and trust

  • The three dimensions of lasting leadership: Fit, Form, and Function

  • How sustainable leadership starts with honoring your own design

Walk Away Ready To:

  • Identify your unique leadership style and how it impacts others

  • Balance vulnerability and structure to build trust and loyalty

  • Align personal values with organizational goals

  • Lead in a way that supports others — without losing yourself

Perfect for:
Managers, rising leaders, and leadership teams seeking a real-world, human-centered framework for effective and sustainable leadership.