Keynotes
AgendaKeynote Sessions
All times shown are Central Time.
NFDA does not endorse and is not responsible for views expressed by the speakers.
Opening Session
Shawn Kanungo
Shawn Kanungo
Strategy in a World of Disruption
Monday, October 26
Shawn Kanungo – Disruption Strategist, Bestselling Author
The business world has fundamentally changed forever. The growth and adoption of new technologies is at a dizzying pace. Customer and employee expectations have been pushed forward 10 years due to the pandemic. We are now looking for organizations to be fearless in a changing world. These drivers are forcing everyone to reimagine their entire organizations. How do we survive? How do we disrupt ourselves before someone else does? How do we deliver better experiences to our clients, customers and teams? Today, we need to be bold, brave and experimental. In this awe-inspiring talk, Kanungo provides an optimistic roadmap for the future. He explores how we can take unexpected approaches to innovation to remain competitive and relevant.
Sponsored by NGL
Shawn Kanungo – Disruption Strategist, Bestselling Author
The business world has fundamentally changed forever. The growth and adoption of new technologies is at a dizzying pace. Customer and employee expectations have been pushed forward 10 years due to the pandemic. We are now looking for organizations to be fearless in a changing world. These drivers are forcing everyone to reimagine their entire organizations. How do we survive? How do we disrupt ourselves before someone else does? How do we deliver better experiences to our clients, customers and teams? Today, we need to be bold, brave and experimental. In this awe-inspiring talk, Kanungo provides an optimistic roadmap for the future. He explores how we can take unexpected approaches to innovation to remain competitive and relevant.
Sponsored by NGL
Monday, October 26
Shawn Kanungo – Disruption Strategist, Bestselling Author
The business world has fundamentally changed forever. The growth and adoption of new technologies is at a dizzying pace. Customer and employee expectations have been pushed forward 10 years due to the pandemic. We are now looking for organizations to be fearless in a changing world. These drivers are forcing everyone to reimagine their entire organizations. How do we survive? How do we disrupt ourselves before someone else does? How do we deliver better experiences to our clients, customers and teams? Today, we need to be bold, brave and experimental. In this awe-inspiring talk, Kanungo provides an optimistic roadmap for the future. He explores how we can take unexpected approaches to innovation to remain competitive and relevant.
Sponsored by NGL
Shawn Kanungo – Disruption Strategist, Bestselling Author
The business world has fundamentally changed forever. The growth and adoption of new technologies is at a dizzying pace. Customer and employee expectations have been pushed forward 10 years due to the pandemic. We are now looking for organizations to be fearless in a changing world. These drivers are forcing everyone to reimagine their entire organizations. How do we survive? How do we disrupt ourselves before someone else does? How do we deliver better experiences to our clients, customers and teams? Today, we need to be bold, brave and experimental. In this awe-inspiring talk, Kanungo provides an optimistic roadmap for the future. He explores how we can take unexpected approaches to innovation to remain competitive and relevant.
Sponsored by NGL
Closing Session
John Kenney
John Kenney
28,000 Days: What Death Teaches Us About Truly Living
Wednesday, October 28
John Kenney – New York Times Bestselling Author
Death is the great mystery, the great universal. And yet we don’t talk about it much. It’s this cognitive dissonance, this accident way down the road we know is coming but do little to prepare for – for our loved ones and certainly for ourselves. Virgina Woolf said, “Someone has to die in order to make life important.” Why don’t we heed that?
We are, most of us, on a kind of auto-pilot most days. The average life expectancy in the United States is roughly 78 years. That’s about 28,000 days. How many do we remember?
There is an unseen world in all of this. That of funeral directors, who daily understand in a visceral way what death is. There is a painful beauty to the work, to the caring of the death, to the concern of the living in their grief.
I’ve been writing about death — and life — for the past four years. First in my novel I See You’ve Called In Dead about an obituary writer who accidentally publishes his own obituary and ends up going to the wakes and funerals of strangers, and then in a book I’m working on now about my mother’s obituary and her sudden death at age 49. (I’m a laugh riot at parties…)
I’ve learned almost nothing. Except the impossible beauty that lies in every moment, if only we take the time to see it.
Sponsored by Carriage
John Kenney – New York Times Bestselling Author
Death is the great mystery, the great universal. And yet we don’t talk about it much. It’s this cognitive dissonance, this accident way down the road we know is coming but do little to prepare for – for our loved ones and certainly for ourselves. Virgina Woolf said, “Someone has to die in order to make life important.” Why don’t we heed that?
We are, most of us, on a kind of auto-pilot most days. The average life expectancy in the United States is roughly 78 years. That’s about 28,000 days. How many do we remember?
There is an unseen world in all of this. That of funeral directors, who daily understand in a visceral way what death is. There is a painful beauty to the work, to the caring of the death, to the concern of the living in their grief.
I’ve been writing about death — and life — for the past four years. First in my novel I See You’ve Called In Dead about an obituary writer who accidentally publishes his own obituary and ends up going to the wakes and funerals of strangers, and then in a book I’m working on now about my mother’s obituary and her sudden death at age 49. (I’m a laugh riot at parties…)
I’ve learned almost nothing. Except the impossible beauty that lies in every moment, if only we take the time to see it.
Sponsored by Carriage
Wednesday, October 28
John Kenney – New York Times Bestselling Author
Death is the great mystery, the great universal. And yet we don’t talk about it much. It’s this cognitive dissonance, this accident way down the road we know is coming but do little to prepare for – for our loved ones and certainly for ourselves. Virgina Woolf said, “Someone has to die in order to make life important.” Why don’t we heed that?
We are, most of us, on a kind of auto-pilot most days. The average life expectancy in the United States is roughly 78 years. That’s about 28,000 days. How many do we remember?
There is an unseen world in all of this. That of funeral directors, who daily understand in a visceral way what death is. There is a painful beauty to the work, to the caring of the death, to the concern of the living in their grief.
I’ve been writing about death — and life — for the past four years. First in my novel I See You’ve Called In Dead about an obituary writer who accidentally publishes his own obituary and ends up going to the wakes and funerals of strangers, and then in a book I’m working on now about my mother’s obituary and her sudden death at age 49. (I’m a laugh riot at parties…)
I’ve learned almost nothing. Except the impossible beauty that lies in every moment, if only we take the time to see it.
Sponsored by Carriage
John Kenney – New York Times Bestselling Author
Death is the great mystery, the great universal. And yet we don’t talk about it much. It’s this cognitive dissonance, this accident way down the road we know is coming but do little to prepare for – for our loved ones and certainly for ourselves. Virgina Woolf said, “Someone has to die in order to make life important.” Why don’t we heed that?
We are, most of us, on a kind of auto-pilot most days. The average life expectancy in the United States is roughly 78 years. That’s about 28,000 days. How many do we remember?
There is an unseen world in all of this. That of funeral directors, who daily understand in a visceral way what death is. There is a painful beauty to the work, to the caring of the death, to the concern of the living in their grief.
I’ve been writing about death — and life — for the past four years. First in my novel I See You’ve Called In Dead about an obituary writer who accidentally publishes his own obituary and ends up going to the wakes and funerals of strangers, and then in a book I’m working on now about my mother’s obituary and her sudden death at age 49. (I’m a laugh riot at parties…)
I’ve learned almost nothing. Except the impossible beauty that lies in every moment, if only we take the time to see it.
Sponsored by Carriage
