When a speaker publishes a book, it’s evidence of depth. They’ve spent months or years thinking through a problem, testing ideas, interviewing experts, refining their point of view. That research becomes new material, new stories, new frameworks your audience can actually use. You’re not hiring someone who’s been repeating the same talk for five years. You’re hiring someone who’s built on their thinking.
This fall and winter, six speakers we work with are releasing books that’ll shift what they can bring to your event. These aren’t cosmetic updates. They’re substantive shifts in thinking, research, and perspective. Here’s what’s coming, and why it matters for your organization.
Why Published Books Matter When Selecting a Keynote Speaker
When you’re choosing a speaker, you’re betting on expertise. You’re saying: this person knows something my team needs to hear. A new book is your strongest signal that they’ve done the work to prove it.
Books take time. They require research, reporting, interviews, thinking through counterarguments, testing ideas with audiences. A speaker who publishes is making a statement about the depth of their expertise. They’re putting it in writing. That stakes the claim higher than a speech alone.
For your event, a keynote speaker with a newly published book brings:
New material. They’ve spent months developing examples, stories, frameworks specific to what the book explores. That content’s fresh, research-backed, and audience-tested.
Currency and credibility. A new book signals they’re actively working on the problem. They’re not repeating old talks. Their expertise’s current and evolving.
Credibility grounded in work, not opinion. Research. Reporting. Real cases. Real data. Frameworks tested in the field.
Multiple angles and flexible delivery. A published book gives you options. The speaker can keynote on the book’s main theme, run a deeper workshop, or pull specific chapters that match your audience’s needs and event format.
The Speakers: Published Authority Across Industries
1. Bob Woodward: Legendary Pulitzer Prize-Winning Investigative Journalist & Bestselling Author
Bob Woodward has spent 50 years doing what few journalists can do: getting inside the rooms where decisions happen. His reporting with Carl Bernstein on Watergate set the standard for investigative journalism that still holds today. As Associate Editor of The Washington Post, he’s reported on every American president from Nixon to Trump, won Pulitzer Prizes, and written 24 bestselling books—16 of them reaching No. 1 on the New York Times list.
New book: Secrets: A Reporter’s Memoir (Sep 22, 2026)
Secrets is Woodward’s most personal work—the story behind the stories of how he built sources, approached the most consequential reporting of his career, and learned what it takes to cover the White House, the Supreme Court, CIA operations, the Pentagon. He pulls back the curtain on his method: the discipline, the skepticism, the relentless fact-checking that separates reporting from storytelling.
For your audience, Woodward brings unmatched credibility and a framework for how information’s gathered, verified, and contextualized. He’s lived through American political history. He’s questioned presidents. He’s broken stories that changed the nation. This new memoir combines expertise with fresh insights into leadership, decision-making under pressure, and the discipline required to do consequential work.
Learn more about Bob Woodward →
2. John “GUCCI” Foley: Blue Angels Lead Solo Pilot & Top-Ten Most In-Demand Keynote Speaker
John Foley has operated in environments where a single mistake is fatal. As a Blue Angels lead solo pilot, he’s flown in formation with other fighter jets at extreme speeds, where trust and precision aren’t luxuries—they’re survival. His career has been a masterclass in high-performance culture.
What makes Foley different as a keynote speaker is that he doesn’t traffic in inspiration. He teaches the mechanics of how to build a mindset that works under pressure. He shows you the systems the Blue Angels use to stay sharp. He gives you frameworks you can apply in a conference room or on a sales floor.
New book: Glad To Be Here: How Your Mindset Ignites Elite Performance (Aug 3, 2027)
In Glad To Be Here, Foley takes the lessons from flying combat aircraft and builds them into a practical mindset playbook. The title itself is a lesson: elite performers shift from “I have to be here” to “I’m glad to be here.” That mental shift changes everything—how you show up, what you notice, what you’re capable of.
The book’s built on stories. Flying MiG escorts into Moscow at the end of the Cold War. Needing to improve 300 percent in his first three months to keep up with the Blue Angels team. On an icy cliff in France, thousands of feet above the ground with a storm rolling in. These aren’t motivational filler. They’re the crucible where these lessons were forged.
For organizations focused on peak performance, team alignment, or moving people from fear to capability, Foley brings both the credibility (his actual experience) and the frameworks (tested under conditions more extreme than most businesses will ever face). The new book gives him fresh material on mindset, culture, and how to build teams that perform when it matters.
Learn more about John “GUCCI” Foley →
3. Erica Dhawan: Leading Authority on 21st-Century Teamwork & Thinkers50 Top 50 Management Thinker
Erica Dhawan is ranked among the top 50 management thinkers in the world by Thinkers50. Her research focuses on how teams actually work in a distributed, digital world. She’s studied organizations where collaboration happens across time zones, where trust’s built through a screen, where the old rules of team-building don’t apply.
Her first two books established her as the go-to expert on how modern teams think, collaborate, and innovate. She’s grounded in research. Her insights come from interviewing hundreds of leaders and observing how real teams operate, not from theory.
New book: Use Your Brain: Think Deeper in a World on Autopilot (Jan 12, 2027)
Use Your Brain tackles a problem that’s only gotten worse: we’re outsourcing our thinking. We default to algorithms, to habit, to what we’ve always done. Dhawan’s book is a practical guide to reclaiming your judgment. How to catch yourself on autopilot before you act. How to interrogate an answer that looks finished. How to separate signal from noise when everything’s urgent. How to own a decision instead of laundering it through a machine.
This is urgent material for any organization dealing with information overload, decision fatigue, or the feeling that your team’s reacting instead of thinking. Dhawan brings research-backed frameworks that work in real meetings, real decisions, real pressure. The new book shows her latest thinking on what it takes to think clearly when clarity’s hardest to come by.
Learn more about Erica Dhawan →
4. Kwame Onwuachi: James Beard Award-Winning Chef & Author
Kwame Onwuachi’s career is a study in reinvention and excellence. Born on Long Island and raised across New York, Nigeria, and Louisiana, he watched his mother cook in their modest Bronx apartment—that spark became a career. He trained at the Culinary Institute of America, worked his way up through some of the best restaurants in the world, and opened five restaurants before turning 30.
His restaurant Tatiana, which opened at Lincoln Center, has been named the No. 1 Restaurant in New York City by the New York Times for two years in a row. He’s a James Beard Award winner. He’s been featured on Time’s 100 Next list. He’s a voice for inclusion in the kitchen and an advocate for food insecurity and food waste reduction.
New book: All Hours: Crazy Good Food for Whatever, Whenever: A Cookbook (Sep 22, 2026)
This isn’t a restaurant cookbook. It’s a home cookbook from a chef who understands that great food doesn’t require complexity or hours in the kitchen. Onwuachi’s recipes work for breakfast, lunch, midnight snacks, dinner parties, weeknight scrambles. They’re designed for the way people actually cook and eat.
But the real value for your event is what Onwuachi brings as a leader. He’s a Black chef who’s navigated an industry that’s historically excluded him. He’s built something real. He’s written about it. He advocates for change from a position of credibility. (That’s not theory. That’s lived experience talking.) If your event’s focused on leadership, culture change, or building inclusive teams, Onwuachi’s expertise comes from lived experience, not theory. The new cookbook gives him fresh angles to discuss how excellence is built and sustained.
Learn more about Kwame Onwuachi →
5. Joan Lunden: Broadcast Journalism Icon & Advocate for Women’s Health and Leadership
Joan Lunden spent nearly two decades as the longest-running female host on early morning television, a trusted voice in American homes every morning. Then she reinvented herself entirely, becoming an advocate for women’s health, breast cancer survivors, and seniors navigating aging on their own terms. She testified before Congress and wrote books about resilience, survival, and what it means to build a life that matters.
She’s not a celebrity who talks about her experience. She’s a journalist who reported on it. That distinction matters. She brings the rigor of her journalism background to every topic she tackles—which makes her credible whether she’s talking about health advocacy, resilience, reinvention, or how to lead through change.
New book: Joan: Life Beyond the Script (Mar 3, 2026)
This is Lunden’s memoir, and it’s fearless. She pulls back the curtain on the defining moments that shaped her life: breaking barriers on national television, reshaping motherhood on her own terms, navigating breast cancer diagnosis and becoming an advocate, aging in a culture that doesn’t know what to do with aging women—all while raising seven children, including two sets of twins.
For organizations focused on leadership, resilience, or women in the workplace, Lunden brings both the credibility of her career and the humility of her lived experience. She doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. She talks about how she found her way through challenges that most leaders’ll face at some point. The new book gives her fresh material on reinvention, purpose, and what it looks like to build a life beyond the script others write for you.
Learn more about Joan Lunden →
6. Jennifer B. Wallace: Award-Winning Journalist & Author on Organizational Culture
Jennifer Wallace is a journalist who followed a story where most people would’ve looked away. She noticed rising rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide. She looked for the root cause. Most people blame social media, the pace of modern life, polarizing politics. Wallace went deeper. She found something else: an erosion of what she calls “mattering”—the feeling that we are valued by others and have an opportunity to add value in return.
She broke open the conversation with a Wall Street Journal article that resonated with parents, leaders, and organizations struggling to understand why their teams are struggling. She founded the Mattering Movement. She’s written books about it. She appears on national television discussing the implications. She’s grounded in research, not opinion.
New book: Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose (Jan 27, 2026)
Wallace makes the case that mattering—the feeling of being valued and having the opportunity to add value—is as basic to our well-being as food and water. And yet, in today’s world, that fundamental need’s going unmet, with serious consequences for mental health, engagement, and organizational culture.
This is urgent material for any leader dealing with employee burnout, retention challenges, or the question of how to build a culture where people actually want to show up. Wallace brings both the journalistic credibility of having researched the problem and the moral clarity of understanding why it matters. Her new book gives her frameworks and data to show organizations exactly what’s missing and how to fix it.
Learn more about Jennifer B. Wallace →
Why This Moment Matters for Your Event Planning
Fall and winter are when organizations book their big events—leadership conferences, kickoffs, summits, offsites. The speakers you choose set the tone for how your team thinks about the year ahead.
These six speakers bring something beyond expertise. They bring evidence that they’re actively thinking, researching, and evolving. Their new books are proof. Their new material’s real.
When you book a speaker who’s just published, you’re signaling something to your audience: we don’t bring people who repeat old talks. We bring people who’re doing the work. Who’re testing ideas. Who’re writing them down. Who’ve thought about this deeply enough to stake their reputation on it.
Explore Speakers with Published Expertise
We work with these speakers and many others who’re actively publishing, researching, and evolving their expertise. New books mean new angles, new stories, new frameworks, new ways to move your organization forward.
