Deborah Perry Piscione – Long Form Bio

We know that great leaders are defined by the extraordinary people that they lead.  What makes Deborah Perry Piscione so special is that she has uncovered the DNA from the inspired cultures of the most innovative companies in the world.  It is no surprise that organizations that build systems to grow the passions of their talented workforce are more productive, more innovative, more loyal, and consistently move faster than competitors.    Provocative and wonderfully entertaining, Deborah’s presentations are a prerequisite for leaders looking to shake the status quo. 

Through her years of research and hands-on work with many of Silicon Valley’s pioneer companies, she has found the keys to building organizations into innovation machines and preparing leaders for the future.  She is the architect of Improvisational Innovation, a bottom’s up innovation process, where anyone in any corner of the company can bring forth new ideas in a trusted environment and be rewarded for it.  Adopted at Qualcomm, Tata Group, Nike, McKinsey & Co, among many other leading global companies, Deborah’s process has created a minimum of 10x ROI in new products and services for the company, and greatly assist in talent development as employees explore their passions.

Deborah’s discoveries are highlighted by her series of critically acclaimed books:

  1. Employment is Dead:  How Web3 Technologies will Radically Change our Relationship with Work (to be published Fall 2024, Harvard Business Review Press)
  2. The People Equation: Why Innovation Is People, Not Products 
  3. Secrets of Silicon Valley: What Everyone Else Can Learn from the Innovation Capital of the World
  4. The Risk Factor: Why Every Company Needs Big Bets, Bold Characters and the Occasional Spectacular Failure

 All of these books and the research in them stems from the differences between old-school power and new-school leadership, which Deborah understands well thru first-hand experience. Having worked as an insider at the

 White House and Capitol Hill, and then moving into the center of Silicon Valley, Deborah was struck by the vast differences in power and leadership between the two coasts.  She became fascinated by the collaborative cultures of innovation that dominate the Silicon Valley region, especially the voracious appetite for growing value from ideas.

This spurred her to launch five successful companies, including Sterling Capital (a venture capital fund focusing on the future of work). Another, Alley to the Valley, has grown into the most influential program for connecting powerful business women. 

It is this unique experience and understanding that has made her one of the most sought-after business speakers today.  With companies and industries looking for every new customer, every new idea, every advantage they can find, Deborah specializes in helping organizations do this by understand their under-realized assets — their talent workforce — that they already have under their nose, and build systems that unlock their full potential.  Both her keynotes and her innovation boot-camps for Fortune 500 leaders are fully customized for your very specific needs.  

Deborah is a LinkedIn Learning author (“Executing on Innovation” and “Risk-taking for Leaders”), a Stanford University Case Study (Graduate School of Business) “Deborah Perry Piscione:  Finding Opportunity in Silicon Valley” and a former television commentator with CNN, MSNBC and Fox News.

Her speaking clients include Google, McKinsey & Co., TED Talks, Cadence Design, London School of Economics, Microsoft, McDonalds, NetApp, Princeton University, KPMG, Innotown, Qualcomm, Society for Human Resource Management, Stanford University, Accenture, Texas Economic Development Council, Singularity University, among many others.

Ultimately, Deborah is the perfect speaker if you are searching for an undeniably compelling presentation exploring how to adapt to the demands of an increasingly fast-paced, agile and unforgiving world.