Susan Packard

Susan Packard has been on the ground floor and helped to build powerful media brands like HBO, CNBC, and HGTV. She was the second employee at HGTV, its co-founder, and its former chief operating officer. HGTV became Scripps Networks Interactive when we created new brands and platforms. She helped build these businesses to a market value of over $15 billion.

Packard left the corporate media world to become a writer, mentor, and a leadership speaker. She has an established platform as an author today. Her first book, "New Rules of the Game: 10 Strategies for Women in the Workplace," was published in in 2015 and her second book "Fully Human: Three Steps to Grow Your Emotional Fitness in Work, Leadership and Life" was published in 2019. Both of these books explore how practices of good emotional health can help us to create better lives and careers. In "New Rules" she touched on grit, resilience and team trust. In "Fully Human," she wrote about emotional fitness, a practice she teaches today to leaders, which was at the core of their success at HGTV. Packard gave a Tedx talk about emotional fitness at UCLA. In 2020, she was named one of the top 40 women keynote speakers by RealLeaders, and continues to be an active speaker at organizations and universities like Stanford Business School, Carnegie Mellon and University of Alabama.

Packard was the first woman elected to serve on the board of directors of Churchill Downs, Inc., the owner and manager of the Kentucky Derby. She has done many things in her career others might consider “brave,” but the most courageous thing she’s ever done was to ask for help for an on-going substance use disorder. In 2019, she gave a Commencement address at Michigan State University, her alma mater, and shared with the 5,000 graduates and their families some of my addiction and recovery journey. There she was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor in Humanities.

She was so moved by the sober college students she met at MSU’s Collegiate Recovery Center that she decided to write a third book, called "The Little Book of College Sobriety: Living Happy, Healthy, and Free." This book also focuses on good emotional health for those in recovery and their families.

Packard has practiced a form of meditation called Centering Prayer for over ten years, and now teach this wisdom practice at various venues, and incorporates it when she facilitates leadership and mindfulness retreats. She’s also done podcasts, where she teaches meditation practice together with the audience.