KEYNOTE SPEAKING
Willpower builds skill. Relationships build capacity.
Kellie Cummings, MAPP
Keynote Speaker on trust, courage, and team performance from the researcher behind Anchor Relationships® and over two decades of award-winning communication strategy.
Trusted By
IABC World Conference (2x) | Johns Hopkins University | Comcast Corporation
25+ years in corporate leadership and strategic communication | 7 awards for leadership and strategic communications, including the Platinum MarCom Award | Published in The Washington Post, HuffPost, Reuters, American Banker, and TriplePundit, among others.
Keynote Topics
How relationships expand our capacity to thrive.
Kellie’s research and writing remind us that leadership is fundamentally relational. Through her research-backed Anchor Relationships®️ framework, she offers a new way of understanding how intentionally cultivated relationships become a source of growth, courage, and ethical decision-making.
1
The myth of inner strength
Cultivate greater capacity through connection, not willpower.
American leadership mythology runs on the solitary hero who digs deep and finds courage within. The research points elsewhere. Twenty high-stakes leaders interviewed at the University of Pennsylvania, among them officials from the National Security Council and the CIA, credited the same source of steadiness in their hardest decisions: relationships with people who held them to their own values.
Your audience will leave with:
Why Angela Duckworth says that “Grit is forged through relationships.”
Why silence under pressure signals a missing relationship, not a missing virtue.
How to identify which workplace relationships will hold when a decision matters.
Ideal for: Leadership development programs, executive retreats, ethics and compliance conferences, organizations navigating restructuring or significant change.
2
Can your team thrive under pressure?
Build relationships that power your team’s performance.
Under pressure, team members lean on the relationships that feel best. Those are not always the ones that strengthen us. Someone can be good company and still leave you no more capable than before, and the difference surfaces only when something is at stake. And capacity is often built before pressure arrives.
Your audience will leave with:
Why AI adoption strains relationships before performance shows it.
How AI erodes candor, and what to do about it.
How to read a team’s relational strengths as assets to build on, not deficits to repair.
Ideal for: Intact team offsites, leadership team retreats, HR and talent development conferences, organizations adopting AI at scale.
3
Building hope and trust in trying times
How to get it right when leadership communication matters most.
Gallup polled employees worldwide on what they want most from their leaders. Hope came first at 56%, trust second at 33%. Both rise and fall with how leaders communicate, and never more than in uncertain times. This keynote shows leaders how to communicate hope and sustain trust when they can't promise how things will turn out.
Your audience will leave with:
Why chronic stress suppresses trust, and how consistent communication restores it.
How to uphold credibility when full transparency isn't possible.
The "when, not what" principle: people need to know when they'll hear from you next.
Ideal for: Leadership offsites, all-hands meetings during change, annual conferences, communication and HR leadership gatherings.
Bring the science of human connection to your stage.
How audiences respond to Kellie’s talks and presentations.
“Can someone please bring a glass and a spoon or a bell to Hyatt B. Kellie Cummings is generating LOTS of great discussion and Comms people are hard to interrupt.”
— Jonathan Champ, SCMP, IABC Global Conference
“I attended your excellent workshop. The interactive session was full of practical takeaways, yet the concepts continue to percolate as I'm back in the office. A valuable combination.”
— Heather M., SCMP, IABC Global Conference
“I rewatched the video today, adding to my notes from the live event. I can't imagine a more timely talk given in such a clear and concise way. Thank you!”
— Shari Henry, Presentation Attendee
“An impressive mix of clarity and depth. The content is easy to grasp yet deeply meaningful, with great real-world examples.”
— Participant, New Zealand Positive Psychology Association
“That was the best presentation I've ever attended. Great stuff to think about clearly presented. Thank you! I'm glad I attended.”
— Maria Salinas, Presentation Attendee
“Really made me reflect personally and professionally. This will be useful for me in many capacities at work!”
— Participant, New Zealand Positive Psychology Association
TESTIMONIALS
How audiences respond to Kellie’s talks and presentations.
“Can someone please bring a glass and a spoon or a bell to Hyatt B. Kellie Cummings is generating LOTS of great discussion and Comms people are hard to interrupt.”
— Jonathan Champ, SCMP, IABC Global Conference
“I attended your excellent workshop. The interactive session was full of practical takeaways, yet the concepts continue to percolate as I'm back in the office. A valuable combination.”
— Heather M., SCMP, IABC Global Conference
“I rewatched the video today, adding to my notes from the live event. I can't imagine a more timely talk given in such a clear and concise way. Thank you!”
— Shari Henry, Presentation Attendee
“An impressive mix of clarity and depth. The content is easy to grasp yet deeply meaningful, with great real-world examples.”
— Participant, New Zealand Positive Psychology Association
“That was the best presentation I've ever attended. Great stuff to think about clearly presented. Thank you! I'm glad I attended.”
— Maria Salinas, Presentation Attendee
“Really made me reflect personally and professionally. This will be useful for me in many capacities at work!”
— Participant, New Zealand Positive Psychology Association
About Kellie
Kellie Cummings, MAPP is an entrepreneur, communication strategist, researcher, and lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. She has won seven awards for leadership and strategic communications.
Kellie is the creator of Anchor Relationships®, a research-backed framework developed at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Louisville's Center for Positive Leadership. Her writings have appeared in The Washington Post, HuffPost, Reuters Sustainable Business, and the Association for Talent Development.
She holds a Master's in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Trinity Washington University.
