2023 Shelton Leadership Forum Speakers

About Our Speakers

Adam Markel, bestselling author, keynote speaker and resilience researcher, guides individuals and
organizations to tap the power of resilience to master the challenges of constant change.
With 18 years as a trial attorney building a multi-million dollar enterprise and 10 years as the CEO of a
leading personal development and business training company, Adam has much to share about
resilience, culture and change. Yet, some of his most enduring lessons came from his years as an
ocean first responder – a life and death environment where Adam learned the importance of
cultivating high performance capacity and impeccable teamwork.

In his latest bestselling book, Change Proof, Adam shows how those principles of resilience are
equally relevant today for any business that wants to move beyond managing change to actively
embracing it and using times of uncertainty, crisis, and chaos to create opportunities and stimulate individual and team growth.

As one of Huffington Post’s top speakers to see and the #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Pivot, Adam’s messages have inspired tens of thousands worldwide. His keynotes, corporate workshops, and business mentoring integrate practical business strategies, personal development
insights and a unique delivery style to create a high-energy and impactful learning environment. Adam is currently the CEO of the More Love Media Group, a TEDx speaker and influencer, and host of The Change Proof Podcast, facilitating insightful discussions with business leaders and social
innovators and sharing strategies to fully embrace an uncertain world and build Change Proof organizations.

Adam is continuously inspired by his wife of more than 30 years and their 4 amazing children.

For more information, visit www.AdamMarkel.com.

Dr. Taryn Marie Stejskal (pronounced Stay-skull) is the Founder and Chief Resilience Officer (CRO) of Resilience Leadership Institute (RLI), she is recognized #1 international expert on resilience, mental health, and wellbeing in both leadership and life. Her mission is to positively impact the lives of 1 billion people, by enhancing hope, healing, and health as well as increased consciousness and enhanced leadership through the practices of resilience. She also serves as the Chief Wellness Officer for Lifewrite, a platform leveraging the latest in AI technology dedicated to enhancing mental health and wellbeing through by harnessing the power of our human expression through writing. Global Gurus has recognized her as a Top 30 Thinker in Leadership, she is a Marshall Goldsmith Top 100 Coach Globally (MG100), and she was a finalist for the Tony Hsieh Award focused on people who are leading progressive and innovative change in the area of human capital. Her work has been featured by Fox and NBC News, Bloomberg Business, Thrive Global, and Forbes. Her TEDx talk entitled “How Resilience Breaks Us Out of Our Vulnerability Cage” has been viewed over 1 million times! LA Progressive magazine calls her “the go-to person” and “a secret weapon” for CEOs and executive leadership teams who want to find their edge as well as rise above the competition. Her bestselling book entitled The Five Practices of Highly Resilient People: Why some flourish when others fold debuted at #3 in the world on Barnes & Noble and topped the book charts at #1 for Personal Growth and Self-Help & Relationships.

By conducting two decades of original research on resilience, Dr. Taryn Marie developed the empirically based framework, The Five Practices of Highly Resilient People and believes that resilience is the key to individual, teams, and organizational growth and acceleration across the

globe. Prior to founding RLI, she served as the Head of Executive Leadership Development & Talent Strategy at Nike, as well as Head of Global Leadership Development at Cigna.

Dr. Taryn Marie earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan, along with master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Maryland, College Park, and completed pre- and postdoctoral fellowships in neuropsychology at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center. She is the host of the top 5% acclaimed podcast Flourish or Fold: Stories of Resilience, where well-known people tell their lesser well-known story of facing challenge to remind us that adversity is a necessary ingredient in life.

She is honored to serve as a sought-after trusted advisor and board member to amplify resilience, engagement, and talent strategy. Her two sons, Samson and Sawyer are always teaching her about resilience!