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Tim Sanders

Tim Sanders, New York Times Bestselling Author, Top-Rated Keynote Speaker, Business Leader, and Practitioner who live to inspire and help leaders worldwide.

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“Hearing Tim Sanders speak is a game-changer for your business. He taught us about the value of building diverse teams and how important it is to build strong internal and external relationships long before these relationships are needed.”

Craig Galati, President

Society for Marketing Professional Services

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Why you should book Tim Sanders for your next event

Gain strategic insights from Tim Sanders that empower your team to excel in marketing, sales, leadership, and organizational culture.
Tim's expertise helps you conquer talent gaps and develop your workforce into a high-performance team.
Tim has been a driving force in change management, contributing to the quality revolution and success in the cellular phone industry.

Unlock business success with Tim Sanders, VP of Customer Insights at Upwork. Tim's innovative approach empowers organizations to conquer talent gaps, excel in marketing, sales, and leadership, and transform organizational culture. As a New York Times bestseller author, Tim's wisdom is in high demand globally. He's been at the forefront of innovation throughout his career, driving change and transformation. Let Tim's unconventional strategies elevate your leadership, human connections, and overall business performance.

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Keynotes

Keynote by Tim Sanders: This Business Of AI: How to Convert the Hype into Business Growth

Join us for an enlightening session with Tim Sanders, an authority on driving business growth through Artificial Intelligence. In a landscape inundated with technology enthusiasts, Tim stands out as a pragmatic expert, dedicated to translating AI's potential into tangible returns on investment.

With a global reputation for guiding executives through the complexities of AI strategy, Tim's insights are invaluable for any organization seeking to leverage exponential growth to create value. As an executive fellow at Harvard Business School's Digital Data Design Institute, he spearheads insight development, aimed at democratizing AI for business leaders worldwide.

Tim's approach is not just about adopting AI for the sake of innovation; it's about strategically reframing business challenges as "prediction problems" to ensure maximum return on AI investments. Through engaging dialogue and real-world case studies, he will demystify AI for you and empower you to put it to work in your business.

Drawing from his extensive experience, Tim also sheds light on the often-overlooked pitfalls of AI implementation and shares actionable strategies to mitigate risks and optimize investments. By collaborating closely with meeting stakeholders, Tim tailors his remarks to address specific business challenges and event objectives, leaving attendees equipped with practical insights to drive transformative change within their organizations.

Key Learning Objectives:

Gain a strategic framework for ensuring Return on AI by reframing business challenges as prediction problems.

Explore the booming landscape of GenAI and identify high impact use cases for delivering ROI.

Navigate the hidden costs of AI implementation and learn how to avoid common pitfalls.

Discover proven strategies to de-risk AI programs, enabling more “swings at the plate.”

Reveal how managers and leaders can measure the value of AI investments.

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Keynote by Tim Sanders: The Grand Redesign

If you want to increase your company's velocity and competitiveness, embark on The Grand Redesign. This new leadership approach leverages design thinking to improve how the work is delivered and plans are met.

Tim Sanders, New York Times bestselling author and Upwork executive, offers a stunning collection of insights, statistics and customer stories that illustrate how leaders can tackle today's biggest challenges.

Deliver a key value proposition to talent: Flexibility. This is emerging as a key to driving productivity, innovation and employee retention. This is done by employing the right design questions that will help leaders craft the perfect hybrid solution for their teams.

Solve the top dependency for their most critical projects and programs: Someone with the skills to complete the work on time. This is done by designing the project canvas to ‘taskify’ and skill-source requirements early in the process, leveraging on-demand talent with an eye of building an elastic workforce.

Lead talent based on outcomes, not attendance or effort. This is the most critical leadership skill because it enables true scale in any working environment. This is done by developing the ability to assign, resource and coach talents to deliver measurable results, regardless of role.

The last three years have been filled with change from Covid to digital disruption to the economy. Historically, times of great change are the best times to redesign key components of your culture – starting with “how we work now.”

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Keynote by Tim Sanders: Innovating Faster - Why Collaboration Changes Everything

Leaders in every industry prioritize innovation but are frustrated with how long it takes to bring breakthroughs to market. According to bestselling author and consultant Tim Sanders, the best way to speed up the innovation process is to promote a culture of collaboration across your organization and externally with partners, customers and competimates.

Over his career, Tim has studied leaders that practice what he terms ‘disruptive collaboration,’ a problem-solving style that leverages surprising alliances along the fault-lines of a company or its market. He’ll reveal how the biggest leaps and turnarounds in history came from collisions of thought, not safe work in our silos of excellence. Tim’s eye-opening keynote will deliver actionable insights and tools that will accelerate the rate of innovation, drive agility and quickly produce breakthrough business outcomes.

Learning Objectives:

Why Companies That Practice Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration Outperform Rivals

How to Leverage the Power of Multiple Perspectives to Solve Problems 3X Faster

How to Bring Multiple Stakeholder Needs From “Me-to-We” in a Collaborative Project

Why Innovation Requires a Focus on Building a Collaborative Web of Relationships

How to Connect the Silos, One Collaboration Project at a Time

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Keynote by Tim Sanders: The Art of Leading Remote Talent

You’ve likely worked with remote talent before, be they freelancers or full-time employees who have a flexible work arrangement with your company. But today, many of your talents are working remotely from home due to the Covid-19 crisis. More than ever, you need a solid skillset when it comes to managing those who you won’t see face to face in your offices.

That’s why Upwork Vice President of Customer Insights, Tim Sanders, has produced a 45-minute virtual session to give you the best practices in leading remote talents of all types. He’s scoured academic and industrial research as well as interviewed enterprise leaders experienced in remote talent management to create this insightful and actionable program.

The session will reveal helpful and surprising best practices in remote communications focused on platforms, cadences, nuance, and service level agreements on responsiveness.

You’ll also learn how to remotely manage:

Positive Mental Outlook (the key to engagement).

Engagement (the key to productivity).

Collaboration (the key to innovation and problem solving).

Long after your employees return to on-premise work, you’ll be able to put this session to use as you manage remote workers and/or independent contractors. It is the key to developing an agile workforce that can drive key initiatives from business growth to digital transformation.

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Keynote by Tim Sanders: Getting Ahead of Burnout

Many of your best people are on the verge of suffering professional burnout. They’ve stepped up the number of working hours, partially due to the new work-from-home environment, but mostly because they need to get more done with less.

Researchers declare that burnout is a threat to companies in 2021—the pandemic’s new world of work is showing collateral damage including turnover, loss of productivity and a lack of creative energy.

The good news is that burnout can be prevented and alleviated in the early stages through designed workstreams and personally managed through the development of boundaries and wellness habits.

In this presentation, Tim provides insights on what it takes to restore work-life integration in 2021. He’ll share the latest research as well as best practices from companies and wellness advisors.

You’ll learn how to:

Spot the early warning signs of burnout in individuals and groups.

Design workstreams to ensure load-management of key talents.

Leverage resources such as the work marketplace to offload tactical burdens.

Coach others to reduce stress and recharge energies while they work from home.

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Customer Reviews

Craig Galati, President Society for Marketing Professional Services

Tim was absolutely great. Everyone loved hearing him. I, myself had the pleasure of working with him one on one and he was so personable and easy going. He was a perfect match for our conference.

Candice Woodson NACAS

What made Tim stand out amongst the sea of keynote speakers was his sincere interest in customizing his presentation to offer value to our audience. He went above and beyond to get to know our industry and ensure his keynote and the supporting resources he provided contributed to our mission of helping our attendees improve and grow their businesses.

Liz Walz Marine Retailers Association of the Americas

You hit the target dead on. The subject and presentation was exactly what we wanted. I had one Board member relay that they appreciated how it was at their level and useful, not just pie in the sky feel good messaging.

Elizabeth LaBouyer California Ambulatory Surgery Association

Tim’s speech energized and inspired our company. I was impressed with how quickly Tim understood our culture, strategy and challenges. He developed a speech that was both insightful and impactful. Many of our employees said Tim was one of the best speakers they have heard.

Larry English Centric Consulting

Attendees had nothing but praises for your session.

Cookie Dorsey Texas Credit Union League

I can’t speak more highly of Tim Sanders. He is not only a superb and engaging speaker, but he is also such a great person. He provides relevant research, antidotes, humor and heart. He loves what he does and it shows. At our recent customer/prospect conference, our audience raved about him!

Grace Lee Senior Events Manager, Jobvite

If you want to take your sales conference to the next level, do what I did: Bring Tim Sanders in as your keynote speaker.

Eric Gilpin Upwork

At the reception immediately following our event I saw firsthand the value Tim’s message offers as I witnessed several team members from different departments collaborating on innovative ideas we could use to improve our business offerings to our clients…this was an afternoon that was well worthwhile and I would highly recommend it to others!

Mike Santarone CEO, The Stellar Group

The audience really enjoyed Tim's take on generational talent and the different leadership styles needed to build trust. They also liked his tips on how to make themselves better recruiters for their open roles and the Cox Media brand. His audience was eager for his perspective that morning.

Merrie Beth Salazar Cox Media

It went great! Tim is wonderful to work with and our audience LOVED him!!! They couldn’t stop raving about him and his presentation.

Katie Schultz ACTIVE Network

It was magical how you connected with the audience. The feedback was that you really inspired them and touched them in a way that is more intimate than usual at a business function helping us to build some great relationships.

Kate Taylor Microsoft

You were beyond fantastic. In one hour you propelled this group years ahead in our quest to instill the notions which you expound.

Rick Kimball Senior VP, Colliers International

Tim Sanders is a great follow-on for clients who have booked me previously. Where I speak around innovation mindsets, Tim compliments this message with the idea of innovation through collaboration. He's great on stage, great to work with and does an incredible amount of customization for each client. I highly recommend him!

Josh Linkner Global Keynote Speaker

I love the research that went into Tim’s webinar on remote talent management – from simple reminders to insights that are contrary to public opinion.

Joy Lim Senior Director, Digital Fluency and On Demand Talent

Tim Sanders

Elevate Your Business with Strategic Wisdom

Upwork’s Vice President of Client Strategy, Fellow @ D3 Institute at Harvard Business School and NY Times Best Selling Author.

Tim leads client strategy at Upwork where he helps businesses implement better ways of working through the adoption of on demand talent solutions. He has more than 25 years of experience working with companies on innovation and change management. In 2024, he was appointed Executive Fellow at the Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard Business School. In that role, his focus is on delivering insights on the “
Return on AI
” for business leaders.

Tim began his career as an early-stage member of Mark Cuban's broadcast.com and, once acquired, he became the Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo!. He is also the author of five books, including the New York Times bestseller, Love is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends.