Speaker Spotlight
Women Get 44% More Requests to Take On Unpaid, Non-Promotable Work. Doing It Is Also What Gets Them Labelled Unstrategic.
Kelli Thompson — Author of Closing the Confidence Gap · Stevie Award Winner, Women in Business Coach of the Year · TEDx Editor’s Pick · Omaha, NE
That statistic is the sharpest thing in Kelli Thompson’s material, and it names a trap rather than a feeling. Women receive substantially more requests to volunteer for work that does not lead anywhere, and taking it on is precisely what gets them described as tactical rather than strategic when promotion decisions get made.
That is not a confidence problem. It is a structural one, and the reason she is worth booking is that she treats it that way while still giving individuals something to do on Monday.
She holds an MBA, spent more than ten years in senior leadership in financial services and technology, and has coached thousands of leaders since.
The Line That Separates Her From the Category
Most confidence keynotes leave a room feeling briefly better and structurally unchanged. Kelli’s central claim is more useful and more honest.
That reframing does real work. It stops the audience waiting to feel ready, which is the actual mechanism keeping people quiet in meetings, and it removes the implication that doubt is a personal failing to be fixed before acting.
It also connects directly to the research. Our analysis of the Lean In and McKinsey ambition gap found that the gap between women and men wanting promotion disappears entirely among women who report equal sponsorship and access to stretch assignments. Ambition is an output of support, not a personality trait. Kelli’s work sits on the individual side of that same equation: what to do while the organization catches up.
Four Keynotes, and How to Pick
Leading with Clarity & Confidence is her most requested and the broadest fit for a women’s conference or leadership programme. Closing the Confidence Gap is the book keynote, and it goes harder at the systemic side, including gendered expectations and likability bias.
Advance From Achiever to Leader is the one I would flag for most organizations. It addresses the promotion nobody prepares people for, when a high performer is moved from doing to leading and keeps doing, because doing is what earned them the promotion. Her L.E.S.S. framework is built around delegation and boundaries rather than more output.
Influence Up is the practical advocacy session on speaking to senior audiences when time is short, and the counterintuitive point that clarity comes from subtracting rather than adding.
Two signals worth noting. Union Pacific’s events team rated her a top speaker among everyone they hired in 2025. The Management Women Conference brought her back as a two-time keynote speaker. And a VP of HR at Elizabeth Arden singled out something planners care about more than they admit: she actually listened during the pre-conference prep and understood the industry, which is a common failure point.
Book Kelli Thompson
Available for keynotes and workshops on confidence, women’s advancement, leadership transition, advocacy and self-leadership.