{"id":22642,"date":"2022-05-11T08:08:31","date_gmt":"2022-05-11T12:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/?p=22642"},"modified":"2024-12-23T15:57:44","modified_gmt":"2024-12-23T20:57:44","slug":"interview-with-laura-putnam-founder-and-ceo-of-motion-infusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.allamericanspeakers.com\/blog\/interview-with-laura-putnam-founder-and-ceo-of-motion-infusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Laura Putnam, Founder of Motion Infusion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We\u2019ve all heard that we should be moving more and sitting less, but how do you translate that movement\u00a0into action and improve the health of the communities and spaces around us? Keynote speaker Laura Putnam<\/a> knows the answer to these questions, and she\u2019s generously shared some of\u00a0them with me in this recent interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Motion Infusion is a go-to well-being provider that combines movement, well-being and learning to transform organizations, teams and individuals. As CEO and founder, Laura has worked with leaders in over 200 organizations across the nation and around the world to spark company-wide movements of well-being. Her book Workplace Wellness that Works<\/em> articulates these real-world experiences, born out of evidence-based practices, into a user-friendly framework,<\/em> one that has been adopted by leading organizations, such as Quicken Loans, Schindler Elevator Corporation, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota, and the Association of Washington Cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laura\u2019s work has been featured on MSNBC, ABC, FOX News, New York Times, Today Show, USA Today, US News & World Report and Entrepreneur. She serves on leading advisory boards, including the Google Vitality Lab and Everside Strategic Advisory Council, and she has received the American Heart Association’s 2020 Impact Award, as well as the National Wellness Institute\u2019s Circle of Leadership Award.

Jennifer Best: Thank you so much for chatting with me today. Would you tell us a little about yourself and how you got started in the field and as a speaker?

Laura Putnam:<\/strong> When asked about my career path, I tell people that I\u2019m a former urban public high school teacher, competitive gymnast and professional dancer, international community organizer, turned movement-builder in the world of wellness.<\/p>\n\n\n

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My quest to find my career niche has literally spanned the globe. From living and working as a community organizer in West Africa to researching pediatric measles in Mexico City, and from dancing professionally in New York City to teaching history in underserved Bay Area public high schools, the central theme of my career has always been about improving communities through movement. Through Motion Infusion, the company that I launched in 2008, I successfully pulled together all of these different threads to craft a meaningful career for myself, and at the same time, have a meaningful impact on the world around me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Motion Infusion<\/a> stems from the \u201cBorn to Move, Told to Sit\u201d dilemma that I have grappled with throughout my entire career. Movement has been my salvation and modus operandi throughout my life. As a competitive gymnast, starting as a young child and continuing into college (I was a scholarship member of the Stanford Women\u2019s Gymnastics Team), I grew up \u201cin motion.\u201d That is, until I entered the workforce. One of the first realities that hit me when I began working was just how much the modern-day job keeps us in our seats and robs us of our need to move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been through my own efforts to navigate this struggle (and help others, as well), that I have found my path. Today, my life\u2019s work, as CEO and founder of Motion Infusion, and my role as an author, speaker, workshop facilitator, and consultant, is about unraveling this mismatch between what we\u2019re born to do and what we\u2019re allowed to do in modern-day society. My mojo comes from finding creative ways to help every individual, every team and every organization overcome societal roadblocks to infuse more motion and well-being into everything they do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JB: What topics do you speak on and why are they important to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

LP:<\/strong> I speak about well-being, particularly from an \u201coutside-in\u201d perspective. This includes a range of topics such as getting workplace wellness to work, creating cultures of well-being by helping every individual to become their best self by adopting a healthy lifestyle. My topics also address ways to stem the rise in employee burnout by activating managers as key drivers of well-being at work, helping employees unravel the \u201cborn to move, told to sit\u201d paradox. One of my most requested topics is around the cross-section of equity and wellness and is about uncovering and addressing the insidious effects of \u201cwellness privilege,\u201d whereby some of us are given greater access to well-being than others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of these topics, in one way or another, boil down to the vexing gap between knowing and doing. That is, when it comes to improving our health and well-being, people already know<\/em> what to do. For starters, eat better, move more, don\u2019t smoke. Who doesn\u2019t know that? You\u2019d be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn\u2019t. And, yet, less than 3% of Americans do these three \u201csimple\u201d things. Why?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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With all of the money, resources, and general obsession with wellness (it\u2019s now the fastest growing industry, there are over 37,000 fitness apps!), we\u2019re not getting any healthier. In fact, we\u2019re getting less<\/em> well. Even before the pandemic hit, life expectancy went down<\/em> for the first time in over 100 years. You only need to pick up any newspaper to know that rates of diabetes, obesity, stress, burnout, even suicide, are skyrocketing out of control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are the factors that drive me to share my message. What I know, through practice and through intensive research, is that the dime-a-dozen delivery of wellness tips is not enough. If we really want to make a difference, we need to unearth the root causes and then do a better job of addressing these. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

JB: What kinds of audiences do you usually speak to? Who do you think resonates the most with your message?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

LP:<\/strong> There are four key audiences that I speak to: senior leaders, managers, human resources and wellness professionals, and individuals. I love connecting with each of these groups, but I would say that my message particularly resonates with my fellow boots-on-the-ground HR and wellness professionals. These are the people who are \u201cin the trenches,\u201d like me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I work with this group, I see visible signs of relief when I share simple, but often overlooked, strategies to more effectively get workplace wellness to work. These include things like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n