Diana Kander

Diana Kander is an energetic, engaging speaker who makes her audience really think. (and laugh!) When I looked around the room, I noticed attendees were not only listening but also taking notes and very eager to ask questions. From discussing blind spots to “killing zombies” (believe me, this is worth hearing), her presentation was the perfect blend of education and entertainment, and I would not hesitate to recommend her for anyone looking to create a memorable event." Patty Ames, Association of Developmental Disabilities Providers (ADDP)

Diana continues to be one of our top three ranked speakers for the conference. She did a fantastic job and our leadership cohort is looking forward to engaging with her in the coming months.

NIAA

Diana, Diana, Diana, What a treat you are in every respect. The way you show up in the world, on the stage and in simple every day interactions is enviable and delightful (and with a BMI to die for). I’ve wanted to get you back since the first time we met and as the gods would have it, having you as part of my closing chapter was more than perfect. So, as I understand it, all this work on my plank can now be abandoned and I need to pivot to handstands? LOL. You are the embodiment of continuous improvement. Really, all the TQM Manuals need to be revised to include your picture as the epitome of CI. All that to say, you were terrific, just what the doctor ordered, the cat’s meow and that’s only the start of my top ten ways to describe your impact. Thanks so much for coming, and for being a stellar example of how to improve yourself and your organization. With much affection and high regard, John

California Work Association

Hi Diana, I want to add to this conversation my note of gratitude and respect. You are a perfect leader to discuss entrepreneurial spirit and development of innovation and curiosity. So proud to have you as part of our line up and your remarks set the perfect tone for the conference. There were so many practical lessons to take away. Thanks again and look forward to working again together in the future. If there is anything CWA can do to help you, please let us know.

Executive Director, California Workforce Association

Diana was our opening keynote for our annual Youth Conference. She held our audience captivated as the discussed what goes through a business persons mind when deciding to make decisions… Particularly when making hiring decisions.

California Workforce Association

Our group spans multiple generations, including collegians, and Diana did an excellent job of tailoring her presentation for our age-diverse group. Her messaging of being a problem-solver to be a successful entrepreneur and solving migraines–not just headaches–was delivered with real-world examples as well as humor. The interactivity of the session was welcomed, and she commanded constant attention with a ballroom full of 150 people during all parts of her exercises. She delivered a strong take-home message of making small bets to move personal or professional projects forward and how to test your ideas.

University of Missouri Alumni Association

As we received conference survey results back from attendees, many of them wrote that the most valuable session at the conference was simply “Diana”. One prospective member mentioned that if Diana is the type of keynote speaker we provide, then this is an organization they wanted to be a part of.

Professional Insurance Marketing Association (PIMA)

It was truly our pleasure having Diana Kander with us.  Our organization received her message so positively.  I hear references to Diana’s keynote every other day in my interactions with my PRiMe Group colleagues.  She really made a mark with our organization, and her thought leadership is making an impact and reverberating across our broader organization.

Vanessa Lee, The Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Thank you! I also have to tell you that your book has been a big hit! I am working the Peer Insights booth and our reviews were through the roof yesterday after your Keynote, we went through several cases of books in less than an hour and people are still asking for your book! I am a meeting planner so I have seen lots of Keynote speakers and very few have had an impact as much as yours has on this group. Keep up the good work and keep improving yourself, whatever you are doing is working!

Gartner

Diana was by far the most engaging presenter. She kept the audience’s attention for two solid hours, and I believe everyone could have listened to her for much longer. While her information pertained [and was customized] to our group specifically, I think her concepts could be adapted to all areas of our organization. She revved everyone up nicely — which is very hard to do with our group first thing in the morning.

Missouri Small Business & Technology Development Center

Diana was not only engaging but her sense of humor, quick wit and honesty resonated very well with our audience. I think our attendees left our event after hearing Diana thinking about how they can do thing differently both in their personal and professional lives.

Lee County/Horizon Foundation

Diana’s talk was amazing. It was one of the most talked about presentations at our two day event – both over social media and in person at the event itself. She was funny, engaging, thought provoking and truly able to connect with the audience – and it definitely showed. The gushing praise we received from our attendees was overwhelming.

Big Omaha

Our program, Lean Startup Machine, trains entrepreneurs how to develop their ideas into scalable companies. We were lucky to have Diana serve as a keynote for one of our programs to help attendees understand the importance of finding problems worth solving. We can’t take Diana with us to every program we run, but we now use this video every time I teach. Diana’s message is concise and easy to understand. I’ve used it in training programs all over the world. From just a 5 minute video I have had teams reciting the key takeaways throughout the entire workshop and even as I continue to coach them afterwards.

Lean Startup Machine

Diana was a dynamic speaker, and I took a lot away from her presentation. She was very energetic and thought provoking.

Missouri Small Business & Technology Development Center

Diana’s keynote address set the perfect tone for our annual chamber conference. Articulate, poignant, thought-provoking and fun, Diana’s remarks hit the target we were looking for… after discussing with her the goals of the conference and her presentation she delivered right on the mark!

The Mid-America LGBT Chamber of Commerce

Diana Kander was the right choice made by our board of directors for this year’s keynote presenter. From her broad range of business expertise and experience her presentation was original, insightful and timely. We passionately recommend Diana as a speaker to any organization looking for a fresh approach to age-old business challenges.

The Mid-America LGBT Chamber of Commerce

Diana’s keen insight and masterful ability to convey hard-earned experiences to an audience in only a few short minutes is extraordinary. Hearing her speak is a truly eye-opening experience and should be required for every entrepreneur or anyone has considered being an entrepreneur.

Research & Development: SPIN66 Innovation Summit

The Partnership was extremely happy with Diana Kander’s presentation at our annual breakfast. We received a significant number of positive comments from a cross section of the community; economic development investors, elected officials and entrepreneurs. Diana’s presentation was thought provoking and left attendees with an understanding of how they can become involved and assist growing startup companies in our community. Diana was very engaging, entertaining and gave timely advice. Obviously Diana is an expert in the field.

Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development

I attended your presentation today and am very enthused and encouraged by your ideas. Your talk was very thought provoking and you are a gifted presenter and I really enjoyed your content/material and found multiple items that I could begin applying immediately that can improve my daily work. I was very intrigued with your concepts and approach!

Hallmark Cards, Inc

Diana was an absolute ROCK STAR!!  Her message was spot on, very well received and the group loved her.  Thank you for recommending her to join our event.  She certainly helped make our inaugural Women’s event a success!

Thomas L. Bello, Executive Vice President, MCA of Metropolitan Washington

 

I had the opportunity to hear Diana Kander speak yesterday. Wow, she had such a great message and I enjoyed her session the most. I’ve already started reading her book, The Curiosity Muscle, and it’s so hard to put down. It’s absolutely relevant in today’s business world. I’d highly recommend her, and her book — stop zombie projects, establish failure metrics and never stop being curious about your customers!

Affiliated Distributors

Diana – THANK YOU – you were incredible. Please keep doing what your doing and you will help millions of people in your life!

Affiliated Distributors

Diana does a superior job of speaking to a wide variety of audiences. She engaged students, faculty and business owners all with ease. And, Diana’s message isn’t all roses – she challenges her audiences to think differently, act strategically, and create critical conversations among founders, businesses and collaborators. The dialog she spurred continues to shape our thinking today.

Millikin University – Tabor School of Business

I just finished reading “All in Startup.” What a remarkable book. Over the past many years, I have found that publishers have flooded instructors and by extension classrooms with linear text material that treat entrepreneurship as if it were a cake recipe; and the education establishment has followed by expecting entrepreneurship curriculum to meet the expectations of accreditation agencies at the expense of student learning. Your book provides entrepreneurial insight within page-turning story telling.

Texas A&M University

The session with Diana was fantastic yesterday. She was definitely a “fan favorite” based on the feedback I’ve received from attendees! We loved her energy and ideas and stories…thank you for helping us get her in front of our staff!

Elevations Credit Union

Diana did an outstanding job. I know she really resonated with our CEO audience. Exceeded expectations. We’ll definitely keep her top of mind for future CUNA events.

Vice President, CUNA Councils

During Diana's two-year engagement with H&R Block as the Entrepreneur-In-Residence, Diana helped us identify the organizational challenges slowing down innovation and mentored both myself and our product owners to develop habits that significantly increased our speed of innovation and our understanding of how to create value for customers. Diana's influence impacted everything from how we listened to customers, how we thought about pilots and experimentation, how we found opportunities for innovation, how we minimized bias in the innovation process, and the power of constraints to create better products.

Former Chief Innovation Officer – H&R Block

Thanks again for taking the time to get to know our clients and delivering valuable content tailored to our group. I know a couple of them are interested in potentially contracting you in the future. That’s the largest compliment you can receive!

Tammy Benson, Event Planner of RBC

As a keynote speaker to a room full of successful business leaders, Diana Kander made a strong case for the strategic value of incorporating curiosity into the decision-making process. In addition, she gave practical advice on the types of questions that may ultimately help reduce expenses and open new revenue streams – in ways business leaders may not have imagined before. If you need someone to engage and motivate experienced audiences who have high expectations – she would be a great fit.

President of RBC Clearing & Custody

Diana had wonderful presentations both days. The presentations were high energy and truly engaged our group. Since the presentations, I have been in meetings where I’ve heard the terms hubris, cupcake projects and blind spots thrown around which tells me her speech really resonated.

Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City

It was really great to have Diana here. Although we didn’t survey formally, the anecdotal feedback was very positive. Mike’s boss, the CEO, told Mike after the meeting that Diana was the best speaker that the credit union had ever brought in. I know Mike was very pleased and he’s heard from many people in the company how much they enjoyed Diana’s message. It was the perfect tone and Diana’s energy was well received. The combination of humor and stories made her message very approachable, and our employees left feeling inspired.

UW Credit Union

Hi Diana – thanks again for the great session last month. We actually just had our Q4 leadership summit yesterday and were able to apply your approach of having several provocateurs poke holes in our strategies and ask the tougher questions – worked out great.

Lead Bank

We were lucky to have Diana join us as a keynote speaker for our organization’s 20th Anniversary Celebration. Diana delivered an on-point message about entrepreneurship and innovation which was a perfect complement to our program and was one of the highlights for our more than 400 attendees. Not only was Diana’s talk anchored in data and evidence, she also included plenty of relevant personal anecdotes as well as a dose of humor. She also helped us structure a reaction panel for her talk which made every one of her points come through that much stronger for our audience. We were extremely satisfied with every aspect of Diana’s engagement and look forward to continuing to work with her in the near future.

Grupo Guayacan, Inc

I knew that Diana’s presentation was going to be good because I’ve seen her present before, a few years ago at a Barefoot Proximity event in Cincinnati. We were looking for a speaker who would motivate the group, give them some practical tools and insights, that they could adopt when back in their day-to-day jobs. Diana didn’t disappoint. Her presentation was great. I loved the two stories of failure, her failure at trying to be a comedian, and Jeff Bezos as the wealthiest failure in the world. She has great energy, and on a day when Minneapolis was the coldest major city in the world, she filled the room with light and warmth.

Hormel Foods Corporation

I have seen this presentation before back in February, which is why I wanted to bring Diana back so she could deliver the same talk to our Global team. The feedback I received from everyone has been extraordinary. Diana gets our cultural beliefs, understands what needs to be done specially in our industry, and has made everyone excited about this next quarter and remaining year! Even the folks who heard her in February are still motivated and using the action plan Diana set in place during her accountability exercise where we outlined our goals and listed our action steps. Of all my years in hiring outside speakers, I’ve never seen anyone be more effective and have as much continued momentum as Diana. Diana was also so fun and generous with her expertise and time with our team members — she is welcome back any time to come talk to our team here at Hormel & Hormel International! Thank you, thank you, thank you Diana!

Hormel Foods International

On behalf of the conference planning committee, we’d like to thank you again for your excellent presentation – it was very well received by the whole audience!

• Diana's presentation definitely made me think about and look at how we problem solve and how we need to go into greater detail in creating the best solution.
• Diana Kander's keynote was brilliant. I think we'll be doing a lot of "Zombie Hunting."
• Speakers were great! Loved the tactics provided by Diana Kander.

Advocate Aurora Health

Shortly before the pandemic, Diana spoke to our organization. I think one of the profound things she encouraged us to do was eradicate the zombies. We very quickly adopted many of her practices to address old ways of doing things and used her methodology to bring new ideas to life. Her concepts and tools allowed our health system to stay ahead of the pandemic and have one of the best responses in the nation. I would strongly recommend Diana for any keynote or leadership engagement you are thinking about.

Vice President, Cox Health

Diana continues to shine as one of the best speakers we have had the pleasure of hosting at the University of Michigan’s Distinguished Innovators Speakers Series. We regularly see the likes of the CEOs of Ford, Skype, and more, and Diana was an outstanding addition to this lineup. She has an incredibly special way of connecting with students, and has truly done it all. She talks the talk and walks the walk, and brings it all together with her direct, energetic speaking style that had our 400+ student audience at the edge of their seats. She was very much relatable and an absolute thrill for us, and she is a must-host!

MPowered Entrepreneurship

Diana spoke at one of our recent Leaders Conferences. We received many positive comments about her message and engaging speaking style. I would highly recommend Diana to any organization who wants a speaker who has lived the life of an entrepreneur and can communicate in a relevant and humorous way what it takes to start a business and be successful.

 Assurity Life Insurance Company

Diana’s skills at listening to her customer’s needs and collaborating on the content, allowed her to deliver a keynote presentation that resonated with our salesforce and aligned with our corporate goals. She understood how to tailor her message, engage her audience in the learning, and then challenge the participants to make behavioral changes after the event. We were extremely happy to have Diana highlight our sales summit.

United Electric Supply

Diana is a world class speaker. She quickly engages and maintains engaged any audience throughout her presentation, even those whose product is their time like us! Diana’s presentation ignited some important discussions that must be had in our firm. For instance, what must we do to differentiate ourselves from other firms and not be another face in the crowd relaying the same message as everyone? Also, many of the partners at the firm started realizing that listening to honest unfiltered feedback is a key to success. We have started discussing ways of listening to clients, actual and former, opinion on our services. In addition, a key takeaway from the presentation that we started implementing immediately in our firm committees was the “after action review” concept. Law firms need to incorporate safe spaces where for instance an associate may openly speak about a topic without apprehension of being judged by a partner.

Ferraiuoli LLC

Hi Diana – I wanted to say thank you for participating in the Sales kickoff meeting this week. Your ideas and thought provoking comments seemed to resonate with almost every one of our sales people. Your keynote was very timely as we approach the need for selling differently and engaging our customers differently.

Rockwell Automation

I wanted to let you know how impactful your virtual session “Where Do Great Ideas Come From?” was for me. Your message was clear, concise, and relatable, not just from a comprehension perspective, but from an actionable one. I’ve always considered myself a “problem solver”, but this immediately pointed out that I might not always be solving the best problem, and that considering a handful of additional options would significantly improve the quality of ideas. This has changed the way I view “problems” and has really provided a new framework for handling all issues. Thank you for your work and contribution!

Danielle Lesser Levine, Senior Analyst Legal Generalist, teva

You've challenged us to ask bigger questions; reframing questions that yield disproportionately bigger results and career growth. The zombie hunting is also catching on very fast. The feedback for your session has been overwhelmingly positive and it warms my heart everytime someone reaches out to ask for your name or share a part of your keynote that resonated with them. Here's a direct quote from a Red Hatter: "I learned from the opening keynote speaker that solving problems does not always mean adding something, it could be taking something away. Being mindful of the additive bias."

Red Hat Career Center

Diana Kander’s All in Startup and the training that she provided my product management team contains the principles that can make a significant impact on our organization’s business results. My team really enjoyed the hands on interaction with Diana and the mentoring that she provided. The level of engagement from Diana made it really meaningful and much more personal. Most importantly the training has provided a roadmap for transforming our business into a more entrepreneurial company.

Perceptive Software/Lexmark