Storytelling Keynote Speakers
Keynote speakers who teach storytelling as a business skill and master tellers whose stories move rooms, curated for marketing summits, sales meetings, and leadership events.
Storytelling is the rare keynote topic that works twice: as a business skill your teams can learn and as an experience a great teller delivers from the stage. This roster covers both. Kindra Hall teaches the frameworks behind storytelling that sells. Magic Johnson and Alex Honnold bring lives that need no embellishment. Scott Harrison shows how a story built charity: water into a movement, and Jay Leno simply owns a room. Whether you are programming a marketing summit that needs tactical narrative craft, a sales meeting that needs stories buyers actually remember, or a leadership event that needs a room genuinely moved, the decision comes down to what your audience should walk out with: a skill, a spark, or both. Rave Speakers helps you match the storyteller to the room.
Business Storytelling Craft
Frameworks and coaching from Kindra Hall, David Novak, and Mariana Atencio that make storytelling a trainable skill for sales, marketing, and leaders.
Kindra Hall
Bestselling author of Stories That Stick and The Art of Storytelling in Business. She hands marketing and sales teams a concrete framework for finding, crafting, and telling the stories that move buyers, employees, and investors to act. The definitive craft teacher on this page.
Mariana Atencio
Peabody Award-winning journalist and author of Perfectly You whose TEDx talk on authenticity has drawn tens of millions of views. She teaches audiences to find and tell true stories that build trust, a direct skill transfer for brands and leaders facing a skeptical market.
Stacey Hanke
Author of Influence Redefined, she trains executives to communicate with credibility every day, not just on stage. For sales meetings and leadership events that want storytelling drilled into daily behavior: message, delivery, and presence that survive contact with real audiences.
Debra Jasper
CEO of Mindset Digital and a nationally recognized communications expert. She shows teams how to tell stories that land on small screens and short attention spans: emails, pitches, and posts that cut through. A tactical pick for marketing summits and digital-first sales kickoffs.
Anna David
New York Times bestselling author who built a career turning personal experience into published narrative. She shows professionals how to shape their own stories in service of goals, reinvention, and connection, useful for teams learning to package expertise into stories people remember.
David Novak
Former chairman and CEO of Yum! Brands, #1 NYT bestselling author, and host of the How Leaders Lead podcast. He built one of the world's largest restaurant companies on recognition culture and teaches leaders to carry strategy through story. Heavyweight credibility for leadership events.
Lives That Are the Story
Firsthand accounts from Magic Johnson, Alex Honnold, and John O'Leary, speakers whose lives are the story and whose telling moves rooms.
Magic Johnson
NBA Hall of Famer and billionaire businessman whose second act built theaters, franchises, and investment funds in underserved communities. Few stories carry a room like his: championships, an HIV diagnosis that changed a global conversation, and a business empire. A marquee closer for major events.
Alex Honnold
The only person to free solo El Capitan, subject of the Oscar-winning film Free Solo. His firsthand account of preparation, fear management, and execution under absolute stakes is a story audiences already know, told by the one person alive who actually lived it.
Mike Massimino
Former NASA astronaut who helped repair the Hubble Space Telescope, Columbia University professor, and bestselling author of Spaceman. His mission stories mix genuine stakes with disarming humor, a masterclass in how a great teller turns technical work into narrative any room can feel.
John O’Leary
Survived burns over his entire body at age nine and grew up to become a bestselling author and one of the most requested inspirational storytellers in America. His telling of that story, and of the people who saved him, reliably moves rooms from laughter to tears to standing ovations.
Allison Massari
Artist and entrepreneur who survived two life-threatening car accidents, including a fiery crash that left her with severe burns. Allison Massari's session is the story itself, delivered with a painter's eye for detail, and audiences leave with a working framework for compassion and perseverance under real adversity.
Molly Bloom
Entrepreneur and bestselling author whose memoir became the Aaron Sorkin film Molly's Game. She ran the world's most exclusive high-stakes poker game, lost everything, and rebuilt. A story about ambition, risk, and integrity that sales and leadership audiences lean into from the first line.
John Foley
Former lead solo pilot of the Blue Angels who turns the squadron's debrief culture and split-second trust into a high-energy keynote. The flying stories carry the room, and the Glad To Be Here framework gives sales and leadership teams something concrete to run the next morning.
Ben Nemtin
New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of The Buried Life, the MTV series about crossing off a list of 100 dreams. Ben Nemtin's story of five friends asking what they wanted to do before they die gives audiences permission, and a plan, to act on their own lists.
Brand and Movement Narrative
Scott Harrison, Mick Ebeling, and Robert Fogarty on building brands and movements where the story itself raises money and rallies people.
Scott Harrison
Founder and CEO of charity: water and bestselling author of Thirst. He turned a nightclub promoter's redemption arc into one of the most effective brand narratives in philanthropy, raising hundreds of millions of dollars. The definitive case study in storytelling that moves people to give.
Mick Ebeling
Founder of Not Impossible Labs and two-time SXSW Innovator of the Year. He tells the stories behind 3D-printed prosthetics for Sudanese war victims and technology that lets the paralyzed create art, proof that a committed narrative can rally engineers, brands, and money around the impossible.
Robert Fogarty
Founder of Dear World, the portrait project born in New Orleans that puts people's defining stories in marker on their skin. His interactive keynotes turn the audience into the storytellers, a format that gives conferences a shared experience and a wall of portraits to prove it happened.
Mallory Brown
Documentary filmmaker and human connection expert who has run live crowdfunding campaigns across dozens of countries, filming strangers' stories and funding their needs in real time. She shows marketing and culture teams how empathy-first storytelling converts audiences from spectators into participants.
Kenton Lee
Global humanitarian and creator of The Shoe That Grows, an adjustable shoe distributed to children living in poverty worldwide. His origin story, one observation on a dusty road in Kenya, is a clean, repeatable lesson in how a small idea becomes a global brand narrative.
Story as Performance
Jay Leno, Jimmy Yeary, and Kyle Scheele deliver story as entertainment, with comedy, song, and stunts that can headline a general session.
Jay Leno
Comedy legend and host of The Tonight Show for more than two decades. Thousands of monologues make him one of the most reliable closers in live entertainment, and his car-collector everyman persona plays across any corporate crowd. Book him when the event needs a headline act.
Jimmy Yeary
Award-winning Nashville songwriter behind chart-topping country hits, including the CMA Song of the Year I Drive Your Truck. He performs the songs live and unpacks how a three-minute story gets written, a keynote that doubles as entertainment for galas and general sessions.
Kyle Scheele
Speaker and self-described believer in crazy ideas whose viral stunts, including a cardboard Viking funeral for his twenties, have earned millions of views. He delivers comedy-club energy with a real message about creativity and giving teams permission to try the absurd thing.
Explore All Storytelling Speakers
Cheech Marin
The range on this page is deliberate. Craft teachers like Kindra Hall, Stacey Hanke, and Debra Jasper turn storytelling into a trainable business skill with frameworks teams can use the next morning. Speakers like John O'Leary, Molly Bloom, and Mike Massimino are the story, told firsthand by the person who lived it. Movement builders like Scott Harrison, Mick Ebeling, and Robert Fogarty show how narrative raises money and rallies brands, while performers like Jay Leno and Jimmy Yeary prove a story can headline the whole evening.
These speakers fit opening and closing keynotes, sales kickoffs, marketing summits, all-hands meetings, leadership offsites, and industry congresses. Booking through Rave Speakers gives you one point of contact for availability, fees, travel, and program fit, plus honest guidance on which storyteller matches your audience and objectives.
Call (310) 614-8653 or email [email protected] to check availability and fees.
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