Karen Eber
Culture Keynote Speaker
Every organization has a culture. The question is whether it's the one leaders intended to build.
Keynote Overview
What Story Does Your Culture Tell?
Every organization has a culture. The question is whether it's the one you intended to create.
Culture isn't built through mission statements, values posters, or annual meetings. It’s the operating system of your organization. It's shaped through the stories people tell, the behaviors leaders model, the decisions they make, and the experiences employees have every day. People don't experience culture as a set of values. They experience it as a collection of stories.
In this engaging keynote, Karen Eber explores how culture is formed, why it spreads the way it does, and the critical role leaders play in shaping it. Drawing on neuroscience, organizational psychology, and her experience leading culture and leadership development at General Electric, she shares why people remember behaviors more than slogans, how stories become the unofficial rules of an organization, and what leaders can do to intentionally build cultures where people thrive.
Participants discover how everyday moments become the stories employees repeat. These stories about meetings, feedback conversations, recognition, decision making all influence trust, collaboration, innovation, accountability, and ultimately, organizational performance.
Whether your organization is strengthening its culture, navigating growth, integrating after a merger, or leading through change, this keynote provides leaders with practical strategies to shape the culture they want others to experience
This keynote helps audiences to:
Recognize how everyday leadership behaviors shape organizational culture.
Understand how stories spread values, norms, and expectations throughout an organization.
Identify the gap between the culture leaders intend and the culture employees experience.
Build trust by creating consistent experiences that reinforce organizational values.
Use storytelling to strengthen alignment, engagement, and a shared sense of purpose.
Make everyday leadership decisions that intentionally shape a stronger culture
Whether you're leading a team, pitching an idea, selling a product, communicating data, or navigating a difficult conversation, this keynote gives you the tools to tell stories that truly connect and drive results.
Format: 45–60 minutes | Any audience size | In-person or virtual
stylus Who is This Keynote For?
This keynote is designed for organizations that want to shape a healthy culture or recognize that the culture on paper doesn't match the culture people feel.
Karen frequently speaks to:
CHROs, CLOs, and People/Culture leadership teams
Executive leadership teams and boards
Leadership development, L&D, and talent teams
HR conferences and associations
Organizations post-merger or post-reorganization
Fast-growing companies scaling culture beyond the founding team
Government agencies and nonprofits redefining culture and values
show_chart Why Organizations Hire This Keynote:
Organizations bring Karen in when they want leaders to understand that culture is built through each story, interaction, and decision.
They bring Karen in to:
Close the gap between the culture leaders intend and the culture employees experience
Shift thinking from culture as an initiative to daily experiences.
Help leaders see how everyday behaviors, not values posters, become “the way we do things here”
Give managers language and tools to shape culture in daily moments
Build trust and alignment during a merger, reorganization, or leadership transition
Strengthen culture as the organization scales past the founding team
Turn a culture or values refresh into something people actually feel, not just read
What Makes Karen Eber’s Culture Keynotes Different?
Many organizations invest months defining their culture. They rewrite their values, launch campaigns and initiatives, create posters, produce videos and refresh their employer brand.
Yet employees often describe a very different culture than leaders intended.
Because culture isn't the story a company tells about itself. It's the one employees experience every day.
Culture isn't owned by HR.
It's created by every manager and leader every day.
Karen gives leaders practical tools they can immediately use during meetings, change initiatives, recognition, onboarding, hiring, feedback conversations, and everyday communication to strengthen culture.
She isn’t a consultant or academic who studies culture from the outside. She’s built and ran culture in some of the world’s most respected brands.
She led culture inside global organizations
As Head of Culture and Chief Learning Officer at General Electric, and Head of Leadership Development at Deloitte, Karen helped shape how tens of thousands of employees experienced leadership, feedback, recognition, and change.
Like her audiences, she's been in the room where culture decisions are made. She understands the challenges leaders face because she's lived them, not just researched them.
Culture is storytelling at scale.
Karen is best known for her research-backed Five Factory Settings framework from her award-winning book, The Perfect Story, which explains how the brain processes information, memory, and emotion.
This keynote applies that same neuroscience to organizational culture. Employees don't remember every policy or presentation. They remember experiences and retell the stories about what leaders reward, tolerate, explain, and ignore. Those stories become culture.
Rather than treating culture as a set of values, Karen helps leaders understand the science behind how culture forms, spreads, and changes.
She makes culture practical
Culture often feels like an abstract concept measured through surveys, engagement scores, and values statements.
Karen helps leaders see the everyday moments where culture is actually built: meetings, recognition, feedback, hiring, difficult conversations, and change.
Audiences leave with practical tools they can immediately apply to strengthen trust, alignment, and the employee experience.
Want more on Karen's background and how she works with organizations? Visit the About page or the Speaking FAQ.
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See Karen Speak
Why culture isn’t an initiative.
Every organization has a mission statement. Very few organizations have a culture that matches it.
That's because culture isn't communicated top-down through slides and posters. It’s also not an initiative that has an end. Culture is ongoing and the operating system of your organization.
It’s transmitted person to person, through the stories employees tell each other about what actually happens here. It’s demonstrated through what gets rewarded, ignored, promoted, and ultimately why.
Those stories, repeated enough times, become the unwritten rules new employees learn faster than any onboarding deck.
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Why Culture Matters More in the Age of AI
Artificial intelligence can automate tasks, summarize information, and increase efficiency.
It can't create trust.
It can't build psychological safety.
It can't determine whether employees feel heard, valued, or connected to a shared purpose.
As technology transforms how work gets done, organizational culture becomes an even greater competitive advantage. The organizations that thrive won't simply adopt AI faster. They'll create cultures where people can adapt, collaborate, and innovate together.
That's why leaders must become more intentional about the stories they tell, the behaviors they reinforce, and the experiences they create every day.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Culture Keynote
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It's a keynote by Karen Eber, former Head of Culture and Chief Learning Officer at General Electric. She shows how organizational culture actually forms through the everyday stories employees tell about leadership behavior, not through mission statements or values posters. It gives leaders a practical way to close the gap between the culture they intend and the culture employees experience.
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Conference organizers, CHROs, and executive teams hire Karen when their organization is navigating a culture moment: rapid growth, a merger or reorganization, a leadership transition, or a values refresh that hasn't translated into how employees actually experience the workplace.
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Most culture speakers approach the topic as consultants or researchers.
Karen led culture from the inside as a Fortune 100 Head of Culture and Chief Learning Officer. She combines her lived experience with the neuroscience of storytelling to help people understand what to do and why. She shares the Five Factory Settings of the Brain framework for how people make decisions. This is the same research behind her bestselling book, The Perfect Story, and her top-viewed TED Talk.
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Yes. Karen tailors examples, stories, and takeaways to each organization's industry, size, and specific culture challenges through pre-event conversations with organizers.
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It works as a standalone keynote for a conference or all-hands meeting. Organizations that want to go deeper often pair it with Karen's Culture Transformation consulting work or a related workshop.
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Any size — from a leadership team of a few dozen people to a main-stage conference audience of several thousand. It's typically delivered in 45–60 minutes and can be adapted for keynote or breakout formats.
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Yes. It can be delivered in-person or virtually, with content adapted to keep remote and hybrid audiences engaged.
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Karen writes regularly about culture, storytelling, and leadership on her blog, including deeper research and frameworks on how culture forms and spreads.
Have additional questions? Planning a keynote often comes with questions about topics, customization, workshops, travel, audience size, fees, and what to expect. Visit the Frequently Asked Questions page for answers to many of the questions organizers ask before booking Karen.
Book Karen Today
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"Karen infuses you with confidence while making storytelling approachable and relatable."
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"This clicked more than other storytelling experiences: excellent information, tools, and techniques."
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"Exceptional speaker with storytelling techniques that resonated across all levels."
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"The presentation on storytelling was truly captivating and resonated deeply with our audience."
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"So many a-has on what makes a great story and how they influence purchasing decisions."
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"This was the best storytelling experience: clear structure, tools, and insights!"
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A delight to work with from start to finish!
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"Phenomenal interactive session that felt intimate despite a large group."
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"Hugely impactful presentation that understood our messaging and business."
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"Keynote was the "talk of the town" with people discussing incorporating the strategies."
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"Karen's presentation was a highlight of our conference."
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"One of the highest-rated sessions ever!"
