Six keynote speakers representing a diversity of business backgrounds will share perspectives with HARDI members in December during the next edition of the trade group’s annual conference.
HARDI’s 2022 meeting is scheduled for December 3-6 at the Marriott Marquis in Houston. The keynotes — Matthew Pollard, Laura Huang, Anirban Basu, Billy Beane, Carl Gould, and Dion Flynn — come from professional sports, academia, entertainment, business strategy and consulting, and the world of entrepreneurship.
Zachary Perge, HARDI’s vice president of distribution strategies, said conference organizers sought speakers who could reach HARDI members, on topics vital to their businesses, from a variety of angles, and who could best address the conference’s four main themes: personal advancement, organizational development, business growth, and external impacts.
“We chose speakers that we felt had a really good pulse on tackling those issues,” Perge said.
Matthew Pollard
Pollard is a best-selling author and business coach who marked several major business successes at the age of 30. He founded his own consulting firm, Rapid Growth Coach, in 2008. Pollard will speak at the opening breakfast on Sunday, December 4, plus host a breakout session on rapid growth later that morning.
Laura Huang
Huang is an associate professor at the Harvard Business School and the author of “Edge: Turning Adversity into Advantage.” She has done research on interpersonal relationships, implicit bias in the workplace and in entrepreneurship, and decision-making in organizations, which will be the topic of her lunchtime talk on December 4.
Anirban Basu
Basu is an economic consultant and the founder of the Sage Policy Group, a consulting business. He will be the breakfast speaker on Monday, December 5 and will look at the factors currently shaping business outcomes, including inflation, rising interest rates, a labor shortage, and the war in Ukraine.
Billy Beane
Beane is the executive vice president of baseball operations for the Oakland Athletics, whose analytical approach to building a winning team was documented in the book “Moneyball” and the movie of the same name, which starred Brad Pitt as Beane. He will be the December 5 lunchtime speaker, with a presentation entitled “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.”
Carl Gould
Gould built three multimillion-dollar businesses by age 40 and is the founder of 7 Stage Advisors, a business coaching and consulting firm. He will speak at breakfast on Tuesday, December 6, on “The Language of Success,” plus give a presentation on hypergrowth later that morning.
Dion Flynn
Flynn is an actor, comedian, and teacher who is probably best known for his impressions of Barack Obama. With leadership advisor Jeanne M. Stafford, he created The Improvisor’s Mindset, a program that, according to his website, harnesses “comedy and laughter to connect to the story line of your soul.” Flynn will be the closing speaker at lunchtime on December 6.
