Karen Eber: Storytelling Keynote Speaker, Author & TED Speaker

Career Highlights

TED Talk: How your brain responds to stories
2.25M+ Views

The Perfect Story: How to Tell Stories that Inform, Influence, and Inspire
4x Business Book Award winner
4 language translations

Five Factory Settings of the Brain
framework creator

Founder of Eber Leadership Group, CEO & Chief Storyteller
Former Head of Culture & Chief Learning Officer, GE · Former Head of Leadership Development, Deloitte

Speaks and Consults on
Storytelling · Storytelling with data · Leadership communication · Organizational culture · Leading through change

Select Clients
Microsoft · Citi · GE · Johnson & Johnson · Kraft Heinz · PwC

Featured in
Fast Company, Forbes, CNBC, Inc, Quartz, Insider, and NPR · 4-time Association for Talent Development Award winner

Roles and Industries

Executives · People managers · Individual contributors · Technical experts · Client-facing teams

Technology · Healthcare · Financial services · Manufacturing · Consumer products · Professional services · Government · Education

Where It All Started

I discovered the power of storytelling as a child when I shared a story about my different-colored eyes. It taught me how stories can shift energy and create connections, even in the most artificial settings. Stories are a tool I’ve used throughout my career to understand others and connect people to ideas. Storytelling isn’t just what I do; it’s how I’ve built leaders and shaped culture.

I’m a bit of a ‘corporate anthropologist,’ leveraging psychology to create healthy workplaces. With 20+ years experience on both sides of the desk, as a corporate executive and consultant, I understand the challenges and patterns companies face, and how to turn them into meaningful outcomes.

Eber Leadership Group

I founded Eber Leadership Group with the goal to help leaders communicate in ways that turn complexity into clarity so people can understand what matters, trust the direction, and take meaningful action in environments that are constantly changing.

Eber Leadership Group’s mission: helping companies build leaders, teams, and cultures that communicate with clarity, lead through change, and turn understanding into action, grounded in storytelling.

Approach

I am known for telling leaders what they need to hear, especially when it is hard to hear. Clients describe the experience of working with me as, "Clarity to see the path forward, even in thunderstorms."

Storytelling is my core expertise. It shapes how people process information, decide, and act, and that's why it runs through leadership, culture, change, and communication. Communication is the thread that connects all of it: most breakdowns come from messages built around what the speaker wants to say instead of what the audience needs.

That mismatch is what the Five Factory Settings of the Brain is built to address. It’s the science behind that process, and I introduced it in my book, The Perfect Story. I pair that with my four-part story structure: context, conflict, outcome, and takeaway. The two helps people develop any story rather than force fitting into one type. I use both in my keynotes, workshops, and advising to help leaders design communication that starts with the audience, not the speaker.

My team and I bring that same thinking to developing curious leaders, healthy teams, and trusting cultures, aligning business, culture, and talent strategies so they reinforce each other instead of competing.

Expertise

I am a four-time Association for Talent Development (ATD) award winner, an author, and a keynote speaker who has educated and inspired over three million people globally. My TED Talk, How your brain responds to stories, continues to inspire millions.

I've delivered storytelling keynotes and workshops across the Fortune 500 and at major industry conferences, including MDRT and the RSA Conference, spanning industries from financial services and technology to healthcare and manufacturing.

My book, The Perfect Story: How to Tell Stories that Inform, Influence, and Inspire, teaches leaders how to tell engaging stories and has become a go-to resource for those who want a practical, repeatable system rather than one-off tips. It has won an Axiom Business Book Award, an International Book Award, and two Goody Business Book Awards, was named a Next Big Ideas Club "must read," and has been translated for Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand.

Before founding Eber Leadership Group, I held roles as a Head of Culture and Chief Learning Officer at GE and a Head of Leadership Development at Deloitte, giving me a Fortune 500 executive's perspective on why storytelling and clear communication actually change outcomes inside large organizations.