Tara Furiani, Not the HR Lady
CEO, Host, Keynote Speaker & Executive Leadership Coach • Not the HR Lady
Austin, Texas, United States •
More than $10,000
About
Because your audience does not need another keynote full of recycled leadership advice, inspirational wallpaper and three things they could have Googled during lunch. Tara Furiani brings more than 20 years of executive leadership experience to the stage, including 13 years as a Chief People Officer leading people, culture and talent inside complex, high-growth organizations. She has hired, fired, rebuilt executive teams, managed crises, coached leaders, navigated massive organizational change and sat in the rooms where the decisions everyone talks about afterward were actually made. That matters. Because Tara doesn't speak about leadership from the sidelines. She speaks from experience doing the work when the stakes, politics, personalities and consequences were real. Her keynotes combine sharp storytelling, organizational psychology, workplace research and practical leadership strategy... without turning the room into a graduate seminar. She's funny because work is occasionally ridiculous, direct because executives don't need another euphemism, and deeply human because leadership ultimately affects actual people. Tara is also the creator and host of Not the HR Lady, author, executive coach and leadership strategist whose work and expertise have been featured by outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, BBC, Business Insider, Newsweek and others. But credentials aren't the reason to put her on your stage. The reason is what happens after she leaves it. People question assumptions. Leaders recognize behaviors they've been excusing. Teams finally have language for conversations they've been avoiding. And audiences walk away with ideas they can actually use not a notebook full of quotes they'll never look at again. Tara's work is particularly powerful for organizations wrestling with leadership accountability, workplace culture, executive effectiveness, organizational change, women and leadership, the future of work, talent, influence and the uncomfortable gap between what companies say they value and what their decisions prove they value. If you want safe, predictable and forgettable, there are plenty of speakers available. If you want your audience thinking about the conversation three months later, Tara should be on your stage.
Speaking Topics
Signature Programs (3)
Organizations love to diagnose people. Employees are disengaged. Managers need more training. People resist change. Younger workers lack resilience. Communication is terrible. Nobody wants accountability. Sometimes that is true. But very often, the “people problem” is actually a leadership problem, systems problem, incentive problem, decision problem, or clarity problem wearing an employee-shaped costume. In this provocative but practical keynote, Tara Furiani draws on more than two decades inside executive leadership to examine why organizations repeatedly try to fix employees while leaving the conditions creating the problem untouched. She challenges leaders to look upstream: at what gets rewarded, what gets tolerated, what gets measured, where accountability disappears, how power actually works, and whether employees are being asked to compensate for decisions leadership refuses to make. This is not an anti-management talk. It is a better-management talk. Attendees leave with a sharper way to diagnose workplace problems before launching another engagement initiative, training program, restructuring effort... or buying more office snacks. Every presentation is customized to the organization and audience. Attendees also receive Tara's proprietary Periscope Leadership Profile before the event, allowing the keynote to incorporate the behavioral patterns, leadership tendencies, and communication dynamics of the actual people in the room.
Key Takeaways
- Distinguish an employee performance issue from a leadership, structural, or organizational issue.
- Identify the incentives, tolerated behaviors, and leadership decisions quietly shaping workplace culture.
- Stop using training, engagement initiatives, or perks to solve problems that require actual management decisions.
- Build clearer accountability without creating fear, bureaucracy, or performative leadership.
- Use their own Periscope results to understand how their leadership behavior may unintentionally reinforce the problems they are trying to solve.
Audience
Executives, senior leaders, people managers, HR and People leaders, business owners, emerging leaders, leadership teams, and organizations navigating growth, change, culture, accountability, or performance challenges.
Format
Duration
45-90 Minutes
Delivery
The workplace changed faster than many of the people running it. AI is changing jobs. Employees expect more autonomy. Careers are less linear. Hybrid work permanently changed how visibility works. Managers are stretched. Information moves instantly. Five generations may now be working inside the same organization. And yet many companies are still managing people using assumptions built for a workplace that no longer exists. More meetings. More approvals. More policies. More surveillance. More activity mistaken for productivity. In Work Changed. Leadership Didn’t., Tara Furiani examines the leadership habits organizations have carried into a completely different era of work—and what needs to replace them. This keynote is about neither abandoning accountability nor catering to every employee preference. It is about becoming far more precise about outcomes, trust, communication, decision-making, performance, technology, and the actual role of a modern leader. Tara combines executive experience, organizational psychology, humor, behavioral insight, and uncomfortable workplace truths to help leaders rethink how they operate before the workplace moves even further ahead of them. Every keynote is customized around the organization, event theme, and audience. Participants complete Tara's proprietary Periscope Leadership Profile in advance, giving each attendee personal behavioral insights while allowing Tara to shape portions of the keynote around the leadership patterns represented in the room.
Key Takeaways
- Recognize leadership practices that were built for yesterday's workplace but are still driving today's decisions.
- Shift from managing visibility and activity to managing expectations, outcomes, and accountability.
- Understand where AI and automation should replace unnecessary work—and where human judgment becomes more valuable.
- Build trust without abandoning standards or performance.
- Communicate and lead across different working styles, generations, roles, and expectations.
- Use their Periscope results to identify the leadership habits they may need to strengthen, abandon, or redesign.
Audience
Executives, managers, HR and People leaders, transformation leaders, business owners, technology leaders, emerging leaders, and organizations navigating AI, hybrid work, generational change, growth, restructuring, or workforce transformation.
Format
Duration
45-90 Minutes
Delivery
Every leader is building something. A reputation. A team. A culture. A standard for what people believe is acceptable. A workplace where people either tell the truth—or learn very quickly not to. And most of it is not being built during the big leadership moments. It is being built in ordinary decisions: who gets promoted, who gets protected, what gets ignored, how conflict gets handled, what happens when somebody fails, who gets heard, whether accountability applies equally, and what leaders do when doing the right thing becomes inconvenient. In What Are You Building?, Tara Furiani challenges leaders to stop thinking about leadership as a collection of competencies and start examining the environment their behavior creates. Drawing from more than twenty years in executive leadership, Tara explores credibility, influence, accountability, culture, trust, decision-making, and the enormous gap that can exist between what leaders say they value and what employees experience. It is funny, personal, challenging, and ultimately optimistic: leadership is not something people either possess or lack. It is something they are building every day. Every keynote is created specifically for the event and its audience. Before the event, attendees complete Tara's proprietary Periscope Leadership Profile, providing each participant with personal behavioral insight while helping Tara connect the keynote directly to the leadership tendencies represented in the room.
Key Takeaways
- Recognize the everyday leadership decisions that have disproportionate influence on culture and trust.
- Understand why employees judge organizational values by what leaders reward, tolerate, and protect.
- Examine the difference between intention, reputation, and actual leadership impact.
- Build greater credibility through consistency, accountability, clarity, and decision-making.
- Identify the leadership environment they are currently creating—and intentionally decide what they want to build next.
- Connect their Periscope results to their individual leadership impact, influence, communication style, and growth opportunities.
Audience
Executives, established and emerging leaders, managers, high-potential employees, entrepreneurs, business owners, leadership teams, and organizations focused on culture, performance, trust, influence, succession, or leadership development.
Format
Duration
45-120 Minutes
Delivery
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