Keynote Speakers

Opening Keynote  |  Monday Luncheon Keynote  |  Closing Keynote

Monday, March 31 Opening Keynote Speaker

Tucker Bryant

Poet and Innovation Keynote Speaker

The Poet’s Keys: a Guide to Unlocking Innovation
Monday, March 31  |  8:30 am  |  #BaldrigeQuest

Tucker Bryant is an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, and nationally renowned poet. After nurturing his craft at Stanford University, Tucker went on to become a lead Product Marketing Manager at Google where he discovered the potential of the creative tools poets have relied on for millennia to drive innovative leadership in the corporate world. 

After a decade in Silicon Valley, Tucker left Google to challenge leaders to unlock creativity, collaboration and competitive advantage using The Poet's Keys™. His performances, which have garnered millions of views online, have been featured at TEDx, The New York Times, and dozens of other organizations across the globe. He has had the privilege of sharing on stages alongside Mark Cuban, Bill Belichick, Gary Vaynerchuk, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, and Mel Robbins as well as governors and executives from scores of Fortune 500 companies.

What Tucker Bryant learned during a decade spent between Stanford and Google surprised him: even people on the cutting edge of innovation often struggle to take risks. The truth is that we all want to step out of our comfort zones, but we also have comforts so deep-seated that we aren’t aware they even exist. And our instinct to protect that unconscious comfort suffocates our creativity, disengages us from our work, and stunts our ability to lead.
 

Monday, March 31 Luncheon Keynote Speaker

José Pires

Global Excellence & Innovation – Founder & CEO

Go for Extraordinary: Unleashing the Power of Great Enduring Leaders and Organizations
Monday, March 31  |  12:45 pm  |  #BaldrigeQuest

José Pires serves as Excellence & Innovation (E&I) executive leader and advisor for companies ranging from startups to Fortune 50, overseeing the global identification, prioritization, and execution of high-value improvements and innovations for the companies, business partners, and customers in multiple markets.

Pires has held Excellence & Innovation leadership positions in leading global companies in the electronics (Sony), semiconductor (Cymer-ASML), food/retail (Nestlé), energy/water/telecommunications infrastructure (Black & Veatch), and oil & gas/energy/retail (Andeavor-Marathon Petroleum) industries.

Throughout his career, Pires developed and refined E&I as an award-winning program to accelerate innovation, collaborative leadership development, strategy execution, and value creation globally. Pires is an advisory board leader and global TED keynote speaker for organizations and conferences on innovation, business, operational and process excellence, collaborative leadership development, strategy execution, culture, business and digital transformation, exponential technologies, and growth acceleration.

He is an executive Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt who holds a Bachelor in Engineering Physics from the University of Kansas and a Master in Business Administration focused in Investment Banking and Entrepreneurship from the University of San Diego.