Keynote speaker · Executive advisor
I help leaders build trust, strengthen managers, and turn strategy into action — on stage and alongside your executive team.
People. Purpose. Performance.
Leadership forged inside
01Speaking
Real leadership experience. Candid conversation. Practical moves your audience can put to work the next day.
Selected stages & hosts
Featured talk · TEDxBaltimore
A challenge to the assumption that diversity is good by default — and a look at how fear and rigid mental categories can trap well-meaning people and institutions. Provocative by design, practical by intent.
More talks
A Path Toward DiversityJohns Hopkins Latino Health ConferenceJohns Hopkins Centro SOL All talks & teaching →Culture isn’t a poster or a survey score. It’s the roles, decisions, incentives, and everyday habits that determine whether strategy happens.
Audiences leave with a simple lens for diagnosing their own culture and practical moves leaders can make right away.
Lessons from leading employees through Baltimore’s 2015 unrest and redesigning a global matrix — how to keep trust while everything moves.
Audiences leave with a playbook for communicating, listening, and deciding when the stakes are high.
Building on my TEDx talk: why good intentions rarely change outcomes, and how trust, belonging, and clear accountability do.
Audiences leave with language and habits that build trust across differences — and measures that show it’s working.
An engineer’s view of the people side of AI, informed by workforce analytics and supporting responsible Copilot adoption: how leaders build capability, trust, and clear accountability as work changes.
Audiences leave with a people-first framework for adopting AI responsibly.
Signature workshop
An interactive simulation that shows how bias quietly shapes decisions.
Teams make real choices under ambiguity, time pressure, and priming — then see how individual biases surfaced in the outcome. A memorable, hands-on session for leadership teams, hiring and promotion committees, and boards, paired with practical habits for fairer, better decisions.
Bring Deciding Factor to your teamFormats
Audiences
Planning an event? Share the date, audience, and goal, and we’ll check availability and fit.
Check availability02What people say
“One of James’s strengths is his ability to connect people, culture, and strategy in a practical way.”
Keynote · January 2026
“Your message exceeded expectations and created space for thoughtful reflection and dialogue.”
National Audubon Society · Let’s Talk keynote · Participant survey
found the content easy to understand
would recommend Let’s Talk to a colleague
felt confident applying what they learned
“Excellent content, excellent discussion, the pre-planning was terrific, I learned a ton.”
“I really enjoyed your presentation and perspective on diversity and inclusion in [the] HR Leaders community.”
“James brings a wealth of experience advancing diversity and inclusion in both higher education settings and at Fortune 500 companies.”
Recognized by
03Advisory · Palagn Enhancement Strategies
Culture becomes real through the decisions leaders make. Through Palagn Enhancement Strategies, I work with CEOs, boards, and leadership teams to diagnose what is getting in the way and build a practical path forward.
Diagnose
Know what your people are actually telling you.
Employee listening, culture assessment, and engagement analytics. Leave with a clear diagnosis, focused priorities, and an action plan with owners.
Advise
A trusted sounding board on the people side of strategy.
A confidential working partnership on organization design, succession, workforce risk, and change. Clarify the choices, pressure-test the plan, and align the people who must deliver it.
Develop
Build the managers your strategy depends on.
Executive offsites, manager development, and facilitated working sessions. Build shared expectations, practice difficult conversations, and turn commitments into everyday leadership habits.
Modernize
Make the technology work for your people.
Identify useful applications, assess readiness, and equip managers to lead adoption. Draw on workforce analytics and experience supporting responsible Copilot adoption to connect technology, human judgment, and a practical change plan.
The Nature Conservancy
Cincinnati Children’s
DaVita
Johns Hopkins Medicine
Who I work with
Led within Johns Hopkins Medicine, Cincinnati Children’s, DaVita, and Lancaster General Health — including language access and culturally competent care.
Vice Chancellor at Vanderbilt; Interim Vice Provost at Johns Hopkins University.
Executive Leadership Team at The Nature Conservancy — about 6,000 people in 80+ countries and territories.
A decade at Dell, from engineering to global workforce strategy; leadership roles at DaVita.
Every engagement starts with a conversation about what you’re working toward.
Start a conversation04How I work
Whether it’s a keynote, a workshop, or an advisory engagement, the work follows the same three disciplines.
Look beyond the isolated problem. Understand how structure, incentives, technology, and leadership behavior shape the employee experience — and use the data to prove it.
Listen before prescribing. Give people a voice in the decisions that affect them, and make accountability clear at every level.
Turn strategy into clear roles, capable managers, useful measures, and everyday practices an organization can sustain after I leave.
05From the inside
Experience earned inside complex institutions. Selected results from the teams and functions I helped lead.
6,000
Served on The Nature Conservancy’s Executive Leadership Team, supporting roughly 6,000 employees across 80+ countries and territories.
$50M
Served on the enterprise team that delivered approximately $50 million in sustainable operating savings at a major pediatric health system.
500+
Created the Executive Development CEO Roundtable at Cincinnati Children’s, which reached more than 500 leaders.
$5.5M+
Built a customer-experience quality laboratory at Dell that generated more than $5.5 million in quarterly savings.
06Field notes
Culture
Look at who gets promoted, what gets measured, and how decisions are made. Those everyday choices reveal the culture and show leaders where to act.
AI & work
Before the next rollout, ask: can managers explain why, do employees have a voice in how, and who is accountable for what happens next?
Listening
Listening becomes credible through follow-through: a visible decision, a clear owner, and a report back to the people who spoke up.
Bring these ideas into your next leadership conversation.
07The person behind the work
I began my career as an engineer. The questions that held my attention were always about people.
How do we make work better? What helps a leader earn trust? How do institutions create opportunity and deliver on their promises?
Those questions took me from Dell’s engineering and global operations to executive leadership teams at Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt University, and The Nature Conservancy. At The Nature Conservancy, I served as Global Head, Global Culture & Engagement. Since 2007 I’ve also advised leaders through my firm, Palagn Enhancement Strategies.
Today I bring all of it to the stage and to the leadership teams I advise — with an engineer’s respect for evidence and a deep respect for the people doing the work.
Outside work: family, running, cooking, the outdoors, and preserving the stories that connect one generation to the next.
A personal project · A living legacy
What we inherit. What we carry. What we leave behind.
A book and multimedia family-history project exploring memory, belonging, and the lives that make our own possible — bringing together oral history, photographs, records, and the work of preserving Black family history.
Explore The Pages Before Us ↗08For event planners
Quick answers on fees, travel, formats, and logistics — plus an introduction your host can read word for word.
Download the speaker one-sheet ↓Fees reflect the format, preparation, and travel. Share your date, audience, goals, and budget range to receive a proposal tailored to your event.
James is based in Nashville, Tennessee, and is available for in-person and virtual engagements. Include your location and dates in your inquiry so travel and availability can be planned together.
Yes. Preparation starts with a conversation about your audience, your challenges, and the change you want to make possible. Sector-relevant examples and practical takeaways connect the session to the work your people do.
Keynotes typically run 45–60 minutes, with optional Q&A. Executive and board briefings, half- or full-day workshops, fireside chats, panels, and moderation are also available — in person or virtual — and shaped around your agenda.
For an in-person keynote, plan for clear audio, a screen for slides, and a technical check before the audience arrives. Microphone, room layout, accessibility, and virtual arrangements are coordinated with your event team.
Include your recording plans when you inquire. Internal viewing, public distribution, and reuse are agreed as part of the engagement so your team knows exactly what is covered.
Start with a confidential conversation about the decision, challenge, or transition in front of you. Define a focused scope, clear outcomes, and the people involved — from a culture diagnostic or executive offsite to ongoing support for a CEO, leadership team, or board.
Introduction for your emcee
Our next speaker has spent more than 25 years inside some of the country’s most complex institutions — from Dell, where he began as an engineer, to executive leadership teams at Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt University, and The Nature Conservancy. A TEDx speaker, named three times to Becker’s Hospital Review national leadership lists, and the founder of Palagn Enhancement Strategies, he helps leaders build cultures that perform — with an engineer’s respect for evidence and a deep respect for people. Please welcome James E. Page, Jr.
Let’s connect
Tell me about your event, your organization, or the conversation that needs to happen.
Media & event kit
