Speaker Spotlight
Your Wellness Program Is Marketed Like a Benefits Memo. His Question Is What Would Happen If It Were Marketed Like Nike.
Brad de Comarmond — Founder of Empower · Corporate Men’s Health Strategist · Keynote Speaker on Workplace Wellness · Austin, Texas
Every HR team knows the number that does not move. The wellness program is built, the benefits are good, the communications go out, and men are still the group least likely to use any of it.
Brad de Comarmond’s work starts from the observation that this is not really a health problem. It is an engagement problem, and specifically a marketing one. Benefits get communicated the way compliance gets communicated, while every consumer brand on earth has spent decades learning how to actually move men to act.
He founded Empower, a workplace performance initiative focused on men’s health and engagement, and works with organizations and people leaders on the piece of employee wellbeing that most programs quietly write off.
The Argument a Benefits Team Can Act On
The reason this session works for HR and benefits audiences rather than only wellbeing ones is that it is specific about mechanics. Brad breaks down the principles consumer brands use constantly and benefits communications almost never do: identity-based language, social proof, urgency, repeated touch points, messenger credibility, pain points that match what the audience actually feels, and real stakes.
Then he applies each one to why the current messaging misses men. That gives a benefits team something to change on Monday, which is a different deliverable from a session that tells a room men are struggling and leaves it there.
His broader keynote makes the business case alongside it: men face rising rates of burnout, loneliness and disengagement while being the least likely to touch preventive care or mental health support, and the cost of that gap lands on the organization whether or not anyone is measuring it.
Why He Can Say It Without the Room Closing Up
Men’s health is a topic that can go wrong on a stage in two directions. Too clinical and nobody listens. Too confrontational and the men in the room disengage entirely, which is the exact behavior the session is supposed to address.
Brad works from his own experience rather than from statistics alone. Born in South Africa and raised in Tampa, he went through a significant physical transformation in early adulthood that led to a modeling career with Ford, Elite, Wilhelmina and NEXT. In his early thirties he was diagnosed with low testosterone, which gave him a direct view of how much physical health shapes a man’s confidence and performance at work. During pandemic isolation, finding brotherhood through men’s groups became the turning point that got him back to steady ground.
He is candid about all of it, and that candor is the mechanism. It gives the men in the audience permission to recognize themselves in something before they are asked to do anything about it.
What Organizers Say
His strongest references come from people who run events for HR professionals, which is the audience he is built for.
The president of DisruptHR Houston said he was impressed enough by Brad’s energy and engagement to make him the opening speaker, and that the message is timely for the current business environment. DisruptHR Las Vegas reported strong feedback across their office and offered to speak to anyone considering him. An HR event organizer in Denver described the combination that matters here, which is authenticity plus practical wellness solutions rather than one without the other.
The most telling one comes from the benefits side. A consultant at Alliant said she started introducing Brad to her clients and colleagues because she sees men like her husband facing these challenges while being left out of the conversation entirely. That is the gap the whole practice is aimed at.
Three Ways to Program Him
Stronger Men, Stronger Teams is the main keynote, covering the state of men’s health, why conventional wellness strategies miss men, and what to do differently. It suits HR conferences, benefits summits, leadership meetings and all-staff wellbeing programming.
If Nike Ran Your Wellness Program is the tactical session on engagement and messaging, and the best fit for a benefits or internal communications audience.
Putting Men Back Into MENtal Health is the mental health session, working on shame, isolation, emotional suppression and quiet burnout, and on the culture and messaging that men are more likely to trust and use. It fits Mental Health Awareness Month and Movember programming particularly well.
Full descriptions are on his speaker profile.
Book Brad de Comarmond
Available for keynotes on men’s health, workplace wellness, mental health, benefits engagement and employee wellbeing, for HR, benefits, leadership and all-staff audiences.