Keynotes to DRIVE EXCELLENCE, engagement, and resilience.

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Stronger Together: How Gratitude and Connection Accelerate Success

In a time when teams are stretched thin, rebuilding fast, and adapting to rapid change, the true competitive edge isn’t just strategy or speed, it’s human connection. In this powerful and interactive keynote, Chris Schembra invites your audience to slow down, look up, and rediscover each other. Through heartfelt stories, practical science, and real-time exercises, Chris introduces the P.A.S.T.A. Framework—a five-step method to pause, ask better questions, savor what’s working, shift what’s not, take bold collaborative action, and appreciate the journey. PASTA is a human leadership framework that turns presence, curiosity, action, and gratitude into earned connection — especially when the pressure is on.

Whether you’re climbing back from a tough year, entering a new chapter, or simply trying to strengthen bonds across roles and regions, this experience will meet your team where they are—and give them tools they’ll use immediately.

By the end, your people won’t just be inspired—they’ll be connected, committed, and ready to rise.

KEY TAKEAWAYS: 

  • Learn the five-step P.A.S.T.A. Framework to foster stronger collaboration and emotional intelligence

  • Build deeper trust across teams through purposeful conversation

  • Spark a culture of gratitude that fuels motivation and momentum

  • Leave with a personal micro-commitment to apply the learning in real time

  • Feel reconnected, re-energized, and ready to lead the next chapter—together

Earned Connection in the Wisdom Era: Why the Future of Leadership Isn’t Faster, It’s Wiser

We are entering a Wisdom Era, yet we are drowning in knowledge.

Our organizations are optimized for speed, convenience, and frictionless interaction. But in removing friction, we’ve quietly removed the conditions required for trust, resilience, and meaning. In this keynote, audiences are introduced to Earned Connection, a new leadership paradigm for the age of AI. Through story, research, and practical frameworks, leaders learn why trust isn’t built by going faster together, but by staying present when it would be easier to disengage.

This keynote reframes leadership not as control or performance, but as the courage to be intentionally inconvenient in pursuit of what truly lasts.

KEY TAKEAWAYS: 

  • Why Speed Is Undermining Trust: Leaders discover how optimizing for convenience unintentionally erodes ownership, judgment, and human connection.

  • Trust Is Not the Starting Point, It’s the Outcome: Audiences learn why trust is forged through navigating friction together, not by avoiding discomfort.

  • The Three Pillars of Earned Connection: Presence, Coherence, and Intimacy, and how each is built through specific forms of friction.

  • PASTA: The Behavioral Engine of Wise Leadership: A simple, repeatable model leaders can apply immediately to turn tension into trust and learning.

  • Why Wisdom Is the Ultimate Competitive Advantage: In an AI-driven world, human presence, judgment, and coherence become the true differentiators.

  • “Chris Schembra's keynote at the Chase senior leadership conference was a transformative experience, weaving empathy, vulnerability, and gratitude seamlessly into our corporate culture. His ability to foster genuine connections left our executive team inspired and equipped with invaluable tools for fostering deeper relationships both within the workplace and beyond.”

    -Lisa Besserman, Head of Innovation, JP Morgan Chase

  • “Chris has a unique gift in connecting with others to help us be our best selves at work! His thoughtful and authentic focus on gratitude in engaging ways fostered camaraderie amongst the Citi team during our Gratitude Experience, building true connections and a meaningful shared experience.”

    —Morgan McKenney, Chief Operating Officer, Citi

  • "On the battlefield I've seen the effect that energy and enthusiasm plays as a force multiplier. Chris brings a level of passion that permeates his audience and positively affects the morale of everyone he comes in contact with."

    —Colonel David Sutherland (Bronze Star and Purple Heart Award, US Army)

  • “Chris is a fiercely committed person to what he believes in, the Power of Human Connection through his keynotes and experiences. He is a person who brings the good out in others and his positive energy is contagious from the stage!"

    —Michael Roberts, Former President and COO, McDonald’s Corporation

  • "A completely new way to connect with our customers, prospects, and teams, but more importantly - a way for them all to connect with one-another! Chris Schembra is the inventor of this type of human connection construct, and never before has this been deployed in the world of Enterprise Software / Cloud."

    —Tony Safoian, President, CEO at SADA Systems

  • "Many of our employees said this was the best 90 minutes they'd ever spent at Dell. I connected with someone that I had not before. It got deep and personal quick. We haven’t been able to connect like that, and people are really going through some things right now. The world is on fire right now and you're here to help them put out those fires."

    —Erik Day, SVP Small Business Dell Technologies

  • “Chris, you radiated authenticity. A unique trait I hope to grow and develop myself. I took away so many nuggets of wisdom pertaining to our field, but with that out-of-the-box perspective. Something I feel that everyone needs and can benefit from, but rarely receive. One of our biggest goals from the keynote address and you pulled it off!”

    — Alyson Stoffer, Co-Chair, North Carolina Philanthropy Conference

  • “Chris Schembra kicked things off and led us through a keynote focused on gratitude. The room hung on every word (not an overstatement) as he offered up tactical strategies for enhancing our emotional well-being and how to build community, and connection within our everyday work.”

    -Laura Hilton, Head of Talent, Bain Capital Ventures

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Chris Schembra is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, keynote speaker, and leading expert on the power of gratitude and human connection.

Creator of the 7:47 Gratitude Experience™, Chris has helped thousands of leaders and teams at organizations like Google, Microsoft, IBM, Dell, and the U.S. Navy foster belonging, resilience, and peak performance through scientifically-backed frameworks. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, USA Today, Good Morning America, and more.