Keith Keating
HE / HIM / HIS
Dr. Keith Keating is a keynote speaker, workforce futurist, and author who believes there is no limit on what people can become. As Chief Learning & Development Officer at BDO Canada, and a Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, his work sits at the intersection of human potential, organizational learning, and the future of work. His message is simple and urgent: learning changes lives. He has lived it.
There is no limit to human potential.
Popular Talks
Evolve. Or Else.
The organizations that thrive in the next decade will not be the ones that adapted fastest. They will be the ones that never stopped learning. This keynote challenges leaders to move beyond reactive change management and build organizations capable of continuous, intentional transformation. Drawing on 25 years of workforce experience and original research, Dr. Keating delivers a call to action that is urgent, grounded, and impossible to ignore.
Break the Box
Every organization runs on boxes. Job titles. Performance ratings. Career tracks. Org charts. They start as descriptions and become ceilings, quietly capping what people believe is possible for themselves and for the organization.
The problem is not the boxes themselves. The problem is that most leaders stopped noticing them.
This session introduces Dr. Keating’s four-part framework: See It, Question It, Break It, Build Beyond It. It gives leaders the tools to identify the invisible constraints shaping their decisions, dismantle the assumptions that have calcified into policy, and build something better in their place. This is not a one-time exercise. It is a new way of operating.
Ideal for leaders who are done optimizing the status quo and ready to build what comes next.
Workshops
Design Thinking – From Theory to Application
Rapid change, increased complexity, and constant disruption in today’s market require a multidisciplinary approach that cultivates thinking outside of the box. Developing new ways of thinking are required to design better solutions, services, and experiences to solve business problems. Design thinking, a bold systematized and non-linear discipline within the human-centric design family, reframes the underlying challenges in a human-centric way, helping to avoid the traps of conceptual silos and bias by bringing the voice of users into the experience.
Using practical examples and stories, this session will provide participants with a solid foundational understanding of design thinking and ideas for ways it can be applied within organizations.
“Dr. Keating’s keynote quickly became the most talked-about session of the event and ultimately, the single most raved-about keynote ever at DevLearn. He created an unforgettable start that set the tone for everything that followed.”
– Lenore Higgins, Senior Event Director, CloserStill Media (DevLearn 2025)
“With his credibility and tactical ways to make us more strategic, I can’t tell you how excited I am and inspired by Dr. Keating’s keynote.”
– Kristy Callahan, Head of Learning, GE HealthCare
“Phenomenal. Dr. Keating had amazing experiences that he anchored to within case studies and left us with actionable insights I can’t wait to implement.”
– Courtney Michener Miller, Head of Commercial Excellence, AstraZeneca
“Keith’s expertise and passion were truly inspiring, and this program has set a new standard for how we position L&D as a strategic partner within our firm.”
– Allyson E. Roote, Vice President, The Bonadio Group
“Dr. Keating is the leading of the industry and our go-to thought leader for the Future of Work. His message is compelling, relevant, and powerful.”
– Keith Ondra, Global Learning Leader, General Motors
- LGBTQ-owned Business
- Traveling from Canada
Dr. Keith Keating is the Chief Learning & Development Officer at BDO Canada, a globally recognized keynote speaker, workforce futurist, and author focused on the future of work, leadership, and the evolving role of learning in business.
With more than 25 years of global experience spanning organizations including McKinsey & Company, HSBC, and General Motors, Keith has built a reputation for challenging conventional thinking in Learning & Development and helping organizations rethink how they create value through people.
Keith is the author of two award-winning books. The Trusted Learning Advisor (Kogan Page, 2023) challenges practitioners to evolve beyond order taking and become indispensable to the business. Hidden Value: How to Reveal the Impact of Organizational Learning (JetLaunch, 2025) gives leaders a practical framework to prove and amplify the value of learning in language executives understand.
At the center of Keith’s work is a simple belief:
Learning changes lives.
As someone who went from high school dropout to earning a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, Keith understands the power of learning firsthand. He also serves as a Lecturer in the Chief Learning Officer doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania, and holds an MBA from the City University of New York and a certificate from MIT Sloan School of Management.
An openly gay leader and longtime advocate for LGBTQ+ and DE&I initiatives, Keith brings his full self to every engagement. He has volunteered coaching people reentering the workforce following incarceration and domestic abuse, and sees that work as inseparable from his broader mission to encourage, enable, and empower others through lifelong learning.
His work has earned the Brandon Hall Gold Award for Learning Leader of the Year, the ATD Speaker of the Year distinction, the Goody Award, the International Business Book Award, and a place on the CLO Learning Elite.
Let’s collaborate to ensure a transformative experience.