Speaking Engagements
NMV founding partners Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek regularly deliver high-energy, inspiring, and thought-provoking keynotes, speeches, talks, and webinars that challenge their audiences to create lives and work of purpose, service, and significance—to turn ordinary lives into extraordinary ones and to pursue personal and professional excellence. Each lesson is grounded in hard-won experiences and real-world examples. To contact us about potential speaking engagements, please click here. Our speaking topics include (but are not limited to) the following:
- “Life Entrepreneurship: Creating an Extraordinary Life”: Today, growing numbers of people are applying the principles of entrepreneurship to life itself. They are increasingly rejecting past approaches to stable careers and lives constructed around safety, security, and status. Rather they are building their lives around purpose, connection, and impact using a distinctively entrepreneurial mindset. We tend to think of entrepreneurship in the business sector or non-profit sector (“social entrepreneurs”), but today a new phenomenon is gaining traction: life entrepreneurship. Here we provide a framework for integrating life, work, and purpose, including vivid examples and moving vignettes drawn from interviews with the founding visionaries behind diverse enterprises such as Starbucks, Chipotle, Cranium, Share Our Strength, RealNetworks, Clif Bar, and Bright Horizons Family Solutions (as well as a rancher, yoga instructor, baker, minister, four-star general, and more)
in addition to our own entrepreneurial experiences. Topics include:
- Harnessing personal leadership potential by embracing the entrepreneurial mindset
- Building a strong personal foundation
- The importance of having a vision of “the good life”
- The power of courage, risk, and failure
- The importance of renewal in our lives and work
Other speaking topics include:
- Why we must lead ourselves first to be successful
- Helping youth and emerging leaders live on purpose
- Addressing the “purpose void” in our schools, colleges, and other institutions
- Creating an extraordinary career path
- Choosing the right career path for you
- Avoiding common career path mistakes
- Creating communities where youth and emerging leaders can thrive and contribute
- Secrets of successful entrepreneurs and leaders worldwide
- Leading and thriving in complex and challenging times
- Work/life balance and avoiding burnout
See sample video clips of Christopher Gergen speaking:

Gergen and Vanourek provide a great road map for anyone who is looking to find success and fulfillment doing what they are passionate about.
—Steve Ells, Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, Chipotle Mexican Grill