18 Leadership Keynote Speakers in Atlanta to Know

Last updated: August 2026

Introduction

This directory gathers 18 real, currently working leadership keynote speakers based in or serving Atlanta, so an event planner, HR leader or association programme chair can find a genuine leadership specialist without wading through a generic celebrity-speaker roster.

Atlanta's mix of Fortune 500 headquarters, major hospitality brands, growing leadership-development firms and one of the country's oldest community leadership programmes gives the city an unusually deep bench of people who speak seriously about leadership, not just performance about it.

Finding them is harder than it should be. Search a term like leadership speaker Atlanta and most results come from national speaker bureaus, where a genuine leadership specialist sits beside comedians, athletes and celebrities under the same banner, with little to separate a rehearsed one-line bio from real, sourced current work.

As of August 2026, this list narrows that search to people whose current role, organisation and public work are confirmed on a current, first-party source, not just a bureau's marketing page.

Every person here is currently based in Atlanta or leads an organisation headquartered there, and every entry is built from that person's own site, company page or another current, independent source, not from a bureau bio alone. Several names that older bureau pages and press mentions still describe as Atlanta based were checked and left out of this list once a current primary source showed they had since relocated or could not be independently confirmed.

The names below are presented alphabetically by surname, for easy navigation, not in any order of importance. Eighteen is an honest number rather than a round one. Many more Atlanta speakers work in and around leadership, and a fuller directory remains genuine future work.

Why Leadership Keynote Speakers in Atlanta Matter

A leadership keynote works best when the speaker's day-to-day expertise, not just their stage presence, matches the audience's real challenge. That match is easier to make when the speaker's current role and organisation are clearly documented, not just implied by a polished highlight reel or an out-of-date bureau bio.

Atlanta gives leadership speakers an unusually wide base of real experience to draw on. Fortune 500 headquarters sit alongside major hospitality brands, a dense advertising and agency scene, and a long-running community leadership institution in Leadership Atlanta, now in its sixth decade of developing local leaders across business, government and nonprofit sectors.

That range shows up directly in this list. A hotel executive who helped Ritz-Carlton twice win the country's top quality award speaks on service culture. An advertising executive who became the youngest partner in his firm's century-long history speaks on leading younger employees. A former combat pilot speaks on leadership under pressure.

For an event organiser, that range is the point. A leadership keynote chosen for genuine topic fit, rather than name recognition alone, gives an audience language for the exact challenge it is facing, whether that is change, culture, safety or resilience. This list makes that kind of fit easier to find in one place.

1. Vernice Armour

Founder, VAI Consulting and Training

Vernice "FlyGirl" Armour founded VAI Consulting and Training in Atlanta, where she works as a leadership speaker and executive coach. Her site introduces her as a Leadership Firestarter building bold, unapologetic leaders for organisations navigating change. She is based in Atlanta and speaks nationally on leadership under pressure.

Armour became America's first Black female combat pilot, flying two tours in Iraq as a Marine before building her Atlanta speaking practice. In 2025 she was inducted into the Council of Peers Award for Excellence, professional speaking's hall of fame.

2. Kim Bearden

Co-founder and Executive Director, Ron Clark Academy

Kim Bearden is co-founder and Executive Director of the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta, a widely visited school known for innovative teaching methods. She is also a language arts teacher there, giving her leadership keynotes on culture and climate a foundation in daily classroom practice rather than theory alone.

More than 145,000 educators from around the world have visited Bearden's classroom and attended her workshops. That reach makes her one of the most consistently sought school-culture voices speaking from an Atlanta base.

3. Michael Bonner

Teacher, Ron Clark Academy, and CEO, Bonnerville

Michael Bonner teaches at the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta and leads Bonnerville, a business built around the value of self-care. His keynotes on leadership and effectiveness draw on the same energetic classroom style that has made him one of the school's most visible educators.

Bonner's classroom work has been featured by The Ellen DeGeneres Show, NBC Nightly News and Time for Kids. That national media attention has followed him from the Ron Clark Academy stage onto corporate and education keynote stages.

4. Valorie Burton

President and CEO, The Coaching and Positive Psychology (CaPP) Institute

Valorie Burton is President and CEO of the Coaching and Positive Psychology Institute and currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia. Her keynotes combine resilience and positive psychology research with practical leadership advice for corporate, association and healthcare audiences across the country.

Burton holds a master's degree in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and launched the CaPP Institute in 2009 to train coaches in the same resilience methods she now brings to leadership stages. She is also a member of the National Speakers Association.

5. Angela Buttimer

Co-founder, Buttimer Consulting

Angela Buttimer is co-founder of Buttimer Consulting, based at the firm's office on Buford Highway in Atlanta, where she delivers leadership keynotes alongside executive coaching and counselling services. The firm markets itself directly as Atlanta based keynote speakers, and Angela has spoken at a TEDx event.

Buttimer Consulting's leadership clients include Piedmont Healthcare, Kimberly-Clark, Alston and Bird, and Cox Enterprises. That client list spans healthcare, law, real estate and media, a reflection of how broadly Atlanta organisations use the firm's leadership development work.

6. Dennis Buttimer

Co-founder, Buttimer Consulting

Dennis Buttimer is co-founder of Buttimer Consulting, based at the firm's office on Buford Highway in Atlanta, where he co-delivers the firm's leadership keynotes and executive coaching programmes alongside Angela Buttimer. The practice is built around resilience, communication and team dynamics for seasoned and emerging leaders.

A testimonial from an InterContinental Hotels Group executive describes the Buttimers' programme as combining motivating and pragmatic ideas, a description that reflects Dennis's focus on tools leaders can put to use immediately in their teams rather than only inspiration for the day of the event.

7. Mark Cole

CEO, Maxwell Leadership

Mark Cole is CEO of Maxwell Leadership and lives in Atlanta with his family. He leads all five Maxwell organisations together, including the John Maxwell Company, EQUIP and the John Maxwell Leadership Foundation, giving his keynotes a broad view of leadership development at scale.

Before joining Maxwell full time, Cole launched his own consulting firm, The IRON League, in 2008 to advise high-achieving organisations. That operating experience now sits behind the leadership content he brings to stages from his Atlanta base.

8. Candace Doby

Founder and CEO, The Can-Do Company

Candace Doby is founder and CEO of The Can-Do Company in Atlanta, where her keynotes focus on courageous communication and leadership. She is also President-Elect of the National Speakers Association's Georgia chapter, connecting her directly to Atlanta's professional speaking community and its standards for working speakers.

Doby's Courage-Ready Model has been used with organisations including Amazon, Duracell, Chipotle, Mars and the United States Navy. That client range gives her leadership work on speaking up and taking risks a genuinely cross-sector test, and she has also delivered a TEDx talk on the same theme.

9. Jeff Espenship

Founder and CEO, Target Leadership

Jeff "Odie" Espenship is founder of Target Leadership in Atlanta, a company built by former military fighter pilots delivering safety-focused leadership keynotes. His own path ran from the United States Air Force through a career as a Delta Air Lines captain flying the Airbus A350.

Espenship founded Target Leadership after a 2005 accident involving a vintage T-6 Texan trainer took the life of his older brother. That loss shaped a leadership message centred on personal accountability and impeccable safety culture, delivered in the workplace safety and leadership keynotes he leads today.

10. Molly Fletcher

CEO, The Molly Fletcher Company

Molly Fletcher is CEO of The Molly Fletcher Company in Atlanta, where she delivers leadership and peak-performance keynotes to corporate audiences. Her company's own materials place her current base in Atlanta, Georgia, and her work now centres on training Fortune 500 leadership teams and hosting her own podcast.

Fletcher built her speaking practice after a career as one of the first female sports agents, representing professional athletes and coaches. That negotiation and high-pressure experience now anchors her leadership content on decision-making, resilience and performance under pressure.

11. Michelle Glover

CEO, Journey Unlimited

Michelle Glover is CEO of Journey Unlimited in Atlanta, where her coaching and speaking work centres on aligning purpose to profession for corporate leaders. She is listed in the Atlanta Black Chambers directory and profiled by Voyage ATL Magazine from her downtown Atlanta base.

Glover chairs the Women's League on the Atlanta Black Chambers Executive Committee and hosts the Creating Your Unlimited Journey podcast, where leaders discuss their own paths to purpose-aligned work. Both roles keep her speaking practice closely tied to Atlanta's business community.

12. Soumaya Khalifa

Founder, Islamic Speakers Bureau of Atlanta, and President, Khalifa Consulting

Soumaya Khalifa leads Khalifa Consulting and the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Atlanta, where her keynotes and training focus on intercultural communication and leadership development. She moved to Atlanta in 1988 and has served on the boards of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta and the Carter Center.

Before founding her consultancy, Khalifa built company-wide Women and Minority Leadership Development Forums during 13 years as a human resources leader at Georgia-Pacific. That corporate leadership-development background now underpins her keynotes for Fortune 100 audiences.

13. Horst Schulze

Founder, Capella Hotel Group

Horst Schulze is founder of Capella Hotel Group and lives in Atlanta, where his keynotes on service culture and leadership draw on decades at the top of the hospitality industry. He previously served as President and Chief Operating Officer of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.

Under Schulze's leadership, Ritz-Carlton became the first service-based company to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, and it won the award twice. That standard for service excellence remains the throughline of his leadership keynotes today.

14. Dan Thurmon

Founder and President, Motivation Works

Dan Thurmon is founder of Motivation Works in Atlanta, where his keynotes on change leadership and transformation combine physical performance with practical frameworks. Speaker-bureau listings place him in Atlanta, Georgia, and his professional profile describes him as a change leadership speaker and coach.

Thurmon has authored two books, Success in Action and Off Balance on Purpose, and has spoken for clients including Coca-Cola, Delta and Johnson and Johnson. His stage work often combines juggling and circus-style stunts with his change-management content.

15. Chris Tuff

EVP, Executive Director of Partnerships and Growth, 22squared

Chris Tuff is EVP of Partnerships and Growth at 22squared, an Atlanta advertising agency, where he became the youngest partner in the firm's 100-year history. His keynotes on leadership and workplace culture draw directly on that experience leading younger employees inside a legacy agency.

Tuff wrote the bestselling book The Millennial Whisperer on managing and motivating younger employees, drawing on how he turned a team of Millennials at 22squared from a cost centre into a major profit centre. He continues to speak on leadership, connection and workplace culture from that same Atlanta base.

16. Pat Upshaw-Monteith

President and CEO, Leadership Atlanta

Pat Upshaw-Monteith is President and CEO of Leadership Atlanta, a role she has held since 2005 after joining the organisation in 1992 and previously serving 13 years as Associate General Manager of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Her programme leadership focuses on developing leaders across metro Atlanta's business, government and nonprofit sectors.

Leadership Atlanta is one of the oldest sustained community leadership programs in the nation, celebrating more than 53 years of developing leaders. Upshaw-Monteith's own tenure now spans more than three decades of that history, based at the organisation's office on Peachtree Street.

17. Daphne Valcin

CEO and Founder, Valcin Strategic Solutions

Daphne Valcin is CEO and Founder of Valcin Strategic Solutions in Atlanta, where her executive coaching and keynote work focuses on advancing rising leaders, particularly women and people of colour. Her company's own site identifies its base as Atlanta, Georgia.

Valcin is a Master Certified Coach through the International Coach Federation whose clients have represented Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies, including UnitedHealthcare, Chase, Lockheed Martin and UPS. She also holds certifications in DiSC, EQ-i 2.0 and Energy Leadership assessments used in her leadership programmes.

18. Cassandra Worthy

Founder and CEO, Change Enthusiasm Global

Cassandra Worthy is founder and CEO of Change Enthusiasm Global in Atlanta, where her keynotes help leaders navigate constant and ambiguous organisational change. Speaker-bureau and professional profiles both place her current base in Atlanta, Georgia, and describe her as a top global keynote speaker on change.

Worthy developed the Change Enthusiasm framework and has built a client list including Procter and Gamble, Allstate, Jones Lang LaSalle and WeWork. That framework gives leaders a specific, repeatable language for turning workplace disruption into forward motion rather than resistance.

What These Leaders Show Us About Leadership Speaking in Atlanta

Across these eighteen profiles, a few patterns are genuinely visible rather than assumed.

The first is that leadership speaking in Atlanta grows out of real operating experience, not a speaking career built from scratch. Horst Schulze ran a global hotel operation before he ever stepped onto a keynote stage. Chris Tuff still holds an executive role at the advertising agency where he built his reputation. Pat Upshaw-Monteith has led the same organisation for two decades. The credibility comes first, and the stage follows.

The second is that Atlanta's leadership-speaking community sits close to its education sector. Two of the eighteen, Kim Bearden and Michael Bonner, both teach or have taught at the Ron Clark Academy, a school built specifically to model and teach leadership and engagement to visiting educators. Their keynotes carry that classroom-tested quality into corporate rooms.

The third is that personal loss and difficulty shape more than one of these practices. Jeff Espenship built Target Leadership after his brother's death in an aviation accident. Vernice Armour built her leadership brand from a career that included combat deployment. These are not manufactured origin stories. They are the reason the work exists.

The fourth is a genuine mix of formats and specialisms, from Soumaya Khalifa's intercultural leadership consulting to Mark Cole's oversight of a global leadership-training enterprise. Atlanta's leadership-speaking scene is not one type of voice repeated with different slides. It is a genuinely varied set of practices, each grounded in its own current, sourced work.

None of this amounts to a single formula for what makes a good Atlanta leadership speaker. It does suggest that lived operating experience, current organisational grounding and a clear specialism are recurring realities behind the speakers on this list.

How to Use This List

This list is designed to be used practically rather than just read once.

If you are planning a leadership summit, corporate conference or association event in or near Atlanta, use this list to shortlist speakers whose current work genuinely matches your topic, then verify availability and fees directly with the speaker or their agency. Nothing here should be treated as a booking guarantee.

If you already have a shortlist from a speaker bureau, use this list as a cross-check. Confirm that a speaker's bureau bio still matches their own current site before you book, the way this list confirmed Atlanta as a genuinely current base for every person named here rather than assuming a bureau listing is accurate by default.

If you lead a team inside one of these speakers' own organisations, or you work alongside them in Atlanta's business community, this list is a starting point for understanding how their public leadership work connects to their day-to-day role.

Whatever your reason for being here, the most reliable next step is always the same: go to the speaker's own site or organisation page directly. This list points you there, and that primary source will always be more current than any directory, including this one.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many leadership keynote speakers are based in Atlanta?

Many more than the 18 covered here. Atlanta has a large and growing community of leadership speakers, coaches and consultants. This list covers 18 people whose current Atlanta base and leadership focus could be confirmed on a current, independent source, presented as a starting directory rather than a full count.

Is this list a competition between these speakers?

No. This is a directory, not a competition. The eighteen names are presented alphabetically by surname for easy navigation, and no claim is made about speaking fees or overall quality. Choosing a speaker is a fit decision that depends on your specific event and audience.

Can a speaker's location or role change after this list is published?

Yes. Speakers relocate, found new companies and change roles, sometimes with little public notice. For anything formal, such as booking or contracting, always confirm current details directly with the speaker or their agency rather than relying on any online list, including this one.

How current is this list?

As of August 2026. Speaker rosters, company locations and roles can change from one year to the next, so treat any directory, including this one, as a snapshot in time rather than a permanent record you can rely on indefinitely.

What is the difference between a motivational speaker and a leadership keynote speaker?

A motivational speaker aims mainly to energise a room. A leadership keynote speaker focuses specifically on how people lead teams, manage change or build culture, usually drawing on real organisational or operating experience. This list focuses on the second group.

Does this list include speakers who only travel to Atlanta rather than living there?

No. Every person on this list is based in Atlanta or leads an organisation headquartered there, confirmed on a current, independent source. Speakers who only occasionally travel to Atlanta for events were not included in this particular directory.

Conclusion

Eighteen people currently lead the kind of leadership-focused speaking practice that Atlanta's mix of corporate headquarters, hospitality brands and community leadership institutions makes possible. Each name in this list reflects what that person's own site or organisation currently states about their role, as of August 2026.

That is a genuinely useful starting point, whether you are planning a leadership event, trying to understand Atlanta's leadership-development community, or simply looking to put a name to work you have already come across. It is not a complete picture. Atlanta has many more people doing serious leadership work than the eighteen covered here, and building out a fuller directory remains real, worthwhile future work.

What this list does offer is accuracy over size. Every person named here holds the role their own current source states, not what an old bureau bio or an out-of-date article might claim. In a field where speakers change companies, relocate and rebrand their practices often, that distinction matters more than the size of the list.

If you noticed a gap, a speaker you expected to see who is not here, that gap says nothing about them. It simply means this particular pass has not reached them yet. The next step, for any speaker not yet covered, is the same one this list used throughout: go to their own site directly.

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If you lead a team in Atlanta, or anywhere else, and you are working through a leadership transition, a culture challenge, or you would simply value a facilitated session that gets your team talking honestly, I run Working Genius workshops and leadership keynotes for schools, corporates and nonprofits. If that would be useful for your organisation, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Brisbane-based leadership consultant, keynote speaker and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, and the author of Step Up or Step Out. He works with schools, corporates and nonprofits around the world. To enquire about a keynote, workshop or facilitated leadership session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.