Kathy Varol
- Purpose Strategy Expert
- Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) & ESG Consultant
- Created the Global Purpose (CSR) Strategy for adidas
In Person-Fee 🛈
Fee Range
$15,000 - $20,000
Virtual Fee:
$10,000 - $15,000
Travels From
Oregon
Kathy Varol Speaker Biography
Kathy Varol is an expert at driving profit with purpose. Kathy created the Global Purpose (corporate social responsibility) strategy for adidas, a 22 billion dollar global company. Now Kathy helps her clients use purpose to stand out in a competitive environment, attract the best talent, gain consumer loyalty, and fully harness the innovative brainpower of their employees (innovation that keeps them miles ahead of the competition). She shares her deep knowledge and “how-to” with clients, so they can skip the hard lessons and go straight to strategies that work.
Kathy has 20 years of experience across brand marketing, strategy, and impact, working at established brands like adidas, MillerCoors, and Microsoft.
Through her experience, Kathy has developed a repeatable 4-step process to become a purpose-led brand: The Brand Purpose Model. When businesses embed purpose into the heart of their strategy, they don’t just disrupt their industry. They also bring humanity into the workplace, shape the future, and impact the world.
Kathy’s wealth of hands-on experience creating purposeful change includes crafting the Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) strategy for adidas. Through this experience, Kathy has learned the unintentional barriers that get in the way of a thriving culture, as well as how to foster a culture of inclusion, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
At adidas, Kathy also created a holistic sustainability strategy and developed social equality platforms. These initiatives included creating an army of loyal brand advocates by inviting consumers to join a movement to end plastic waste, increasing access to sport for girls around the globe, developing new products, and initiating bold corporate actions to stand against inequality.
Kathy is an expert at establishing a purpose that galvanizes the entire company in the same direction, developing strategic partnerships through aligned missions, and crafting purpose strategies that create the most valuable form of marketing (word of mouth).
Kathy left adidas to help other companies on their journey to become purpose-led. She brings her wealth of expertise to move companies beyond outdated Corporate Social Responsibility approaches and into the new era of business integrated conscious capitalism.
DRIVE PROFIT WITH PURPOSE. BECOME REMARKABLE. ACCELERATE GROWTH.
How do you stand out in an increasingly competitive marketplace? How do you attract top talent? How do you increase profitability?
You do something remarkable. Purpose makes brands remarkable.
As consumers, we’re putting our dollars toward companies with aligned values. 85% of millennials in the United States would switch brands for a good cause, and 50% of growth in consumer goods went to sustainability marketed products between 2013 and 2018.
As employees, we’re looking for meaning in our careers, and the best talent is choosing to work for organizations that feed their heart as well as their bank account. 92% of millennials believe that working for an environmentally and socially responsible company is important.
In the modern world, companies without a purpose beyond profit will be left behind. You can either be a pioneering force for good in your industry, or the disrupted.
In the Drive Profit with Purpose keynote, Kathy will reveal her 4-step Brand Purpose Model to engage your organization, inspire innovation, and win the hearts of your consumers.
You Will Learn:
– 7 common mistakes in creating a purpose-led organization
– Why a corporate social responsibility department won’t get you the impact – or the credit – you want
– How to get the best talent knocking on your door and have the most engaged employees
– Why doing good is the magic bullet to get the most powerful form of advertising (for free!)
This Keynote Is Perfect For Leaders And Companies:
– Competing in a crowded market
– Creating differentiation through marketing, ingredients, and/or process
– Struggling with a talent shortage, high turnover, and/or high employee disengagement Looking to accelerate growth and increase ROI (in a sustainable way)?
– Ready to unlock the innovative brainpower of their employees
CULTIVATING AN INNOVATIVE CULTURE BY HARNESSING COGNITIVE DIVERSITY
Cognitive diversity is the inclusion of people who have a different worldview and who can offer unique perspectives. This is one of the most vital qualities for organizations that want to lead their industries.
Research shows that cognitive diversity can promote problem-solving and innovation. Culturally and ethnically diverse companies are more likely to outperform their competitors by 33%; highly diverse teams are 13 times more likely to have engaged employees, and companies with above-average diversity have 19% higher innovation revenues.
Most businesses unintentionally create barriers to collaboration and stifle the innovation potential they have waiting to be unleashed across their workforce. They incentivize groupthink and constrain the power of cognitive diversity – the superpower of their workforce.
In this keynote, Kathy will reveal how business leaders can cultivate an innovative culture that harnesses cognitive diversity.
You Will Learn:
– How adidas leveraged the entire North American team to innovate a turnaround for their running business
– The most common unintentional barriers to collaboration and creativity (and how you can remove them)
– The two reasons why most modern workplaces stifle cognitive diversity and undermine creativity
– How to promote sharing of unique viewpoints and avoid groupthink
– Why the trickiest problems are often solved by outsiders to the field
This Keynote Is Perfect For Leaders And Companies:
– Struggling to foster collaboration across company silos and departments
– Running into groupthink and “yes men” cultural conformity
– Using the old playbook year after year, and no longer getting the same ROI
– Know they could do more to cultivate a culture where their talented and diverse employees can shine
UNLOCK EXPONENTIAL RESULTS BY NURTURING PURPOSE, PEOPLE AND CULTURE
Businesses that nurture their purpose, people, and culture unlock exponential results: engaged employees, loyal consumers, increased innovation, and accelerated growth.
This keynote combines elements from Kathy’s two most popular keynotes – Drive Profit with Purpose and Cultivating an Innovative Culture. Through captivating business stories, Kathy will share how to nurture the business inputs that matter most (purpose, people, culture) to achieve exponential business results year after year.
You Will Learn:
How to tap into purpose as the jet fuel to propel you beyond your current trajectory
How the world’s most loved companies use purpose to cultivate enviable consumer loyalty (and how you can too)
Ways to innovate your talent pipeline and increase diversity
The secret to creating a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement
This Keynote Is Perfect For Leaders And Companies:
– That have been focused on the outputs – hitting those quarterly numbers – but are struggling to get there consistently
– That keep doing the same thing, but the playbook is no longer working
– Competing in an increasingly crowded market and struggling to stand out
– Experiencing high turnover, and/or high employee disengagement
– Struggling to foster collaboration across company silos and departments
– Running into groupthink and “yes men” cultural conformity
January 24, 2022
Kathy Varol was a hit at our cityCURRENT signature speaker series event in Memphis on January 21, 2022! She was a pleasure to work with and made it so easy on the planning side, and then delivered an inspiring and valuable keynote centered on the power of purpose and being a purpose-led brand. She left our audience with some important takeaways, a 4-step process they can implement with CARE, and a mindset shift around how to better focus corporate efforts to shape the future and impact the world. We have received great feedback from our attendees, who really enjoyed Kathy's presentation, and have already started to implement some of her ideas and recommendations. So, our event with Kathy Varol was definitely a big success!
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