Polly LaBarre
Polly LaBarre

As a member of the original team of Fast Company magazine, Polly played a central role in the remarkable success of a magazine that changed the way leaders at all levels think about working and winning-and earned a passionate following around the world. She also contributed to the strategic development and content design of a range of Fast Company events.

She co-hosted the magazine's signature Real Time conferences-agenda-setting gatherings where executives and entrepreneurs met to debate and shape the future-and helped to create a high-level roundtable series, "Fast Talk," which she moderated around the globe. She also designed and hosted Fast Company's first women's leadership event, Woman to Woman: Setting the Agenda for Business.

She makes frequent appearances on television, including ABC's Good Morning America, NBC's Today, CNBC (most recently as a featured expert on the five-part "The Business of Innovation" series) Polly is the co-author of the award-winning book Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win, which was a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek bestseller.

Published in over 20 territories, Mavericks was a “Business Book of the Year” for the Financial Times, the Miami Herald, and The Economist. Calling the book “a pivotal work in the tradition of In Search of Excellence and Good to Great“. In addition CNN, CNBC, and GMA all created series around the book. Currently, Polly is the editorial director of the MIX (Management Innovation eXchange), a pioneering open innovation project dedicated to reinventing management for the 21st century. The site aims to leverage the collaborative power of Web 2.0 to accelerate the development of Management 2.0, gathers celebrated thought leaders, in-the-trenches innovators, and maverick entrepreneurs from around the world to share breakthrough practices and advance important ideas about the future of organizations, work, and strategy.

A sought-after speaker, moderator, and interviewer, Polly has delivered hundreds of keynote addresses around the world and developed and hosted numerous events. Her writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including Fast Company, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Fortune.com, the McKinsey Quarterly, and The Huffington Post.

Keynote Speaker Programs

  • The human edge: designing work to create a cultural advantage
  • Designed to flourish: develop people, defeat disruption
  • Roll with change: recipes for reinvention & resilience
  • Leading in the new work order