Speaker Spotlight
Most Wellbeing Sessions Treat Burnout After It Arrives. Her Argument Is That By Then You Have Already Lost the Team.
Jessica Weiss — Author of Happiness Works: The Science of Thriving at Work · 2x TEDx Speaker · Booked by American Express, Mayo Clinic, JPMorgan Chase and Pfizer · New York, NY
The standard corporate response to burnout is remedial. More PTO, longer breaks, a wellbeing week. Jessica Weiss’s position is that this is treatment applied after the damage, and that prevention is a different and more achievable project.
Her framing is that happiness is not the reward for a healthy culture. It is the mechanism that produces one, and it can be built deliberately rather than hoped for.
That claim is backed by positive psychology research rather than assertion, which is what separates her from the softer end of this category.
Why Prevention Is the Right Frame This Year
Our analysis of burnout by seniority found something that supports her argument directly. Burnout levels held roughly steady year over year. What changed sharply was burnout’s effect on engagement, which rose from 34 percent to 52 percent.
People are not necessarily more exhausted than last year. They are less willing to keep spending themselves while exhausted. That is a tipping-point problem, and tipping points are addressed before they tip.
The same research found associates report burnout-driven disengagement at 62 percent against 38 percent in the C-suite, which is worth holding in mind when deciding who her session is actually for.
Four Sessions, and the One Planners Underrate
Three of her keynotes sit in the happiness and wellbeing lane: the heart of high-performing teams, the happiness equation for attracting and retaining talent, and the burnout antidote.
The fourth is the sleeper. Psychological Safety Mastered is a considerably more technical session on trust: why we trust, how to build trustworthiness, how to spot a trust breakdown early, and how to repair one. It draws on Four Seasons, Ford and Pixar, and includes the Glitch Report system for turning mistakes into improvements rather than blame.
For a leadership team that would find a happiness keynote too soft, that is the same speaker delivering a harder-edged hour. Worth asking about specifically.
Her Mayo Clinic and Nurses Week work also makes her a real option for healthcare audiences, where the retention problem we covered in first-year nurse turnover is largely cultural.
That last detail is worth noting on its own. Attending the sessions before yours and folding them into the keynote is one of the clearest signals of a speaker who prepares rather than performs.
Book Jessica Weiss
Available for keynotes on workplace happiness, burnout prevention, psychological safety, trust and high-performing teams.