Speaker Spotlight
Oxford Rejected Him as an Exchange Student at 20. A Decade Later He Gave the Closing Keynote to Their Executive MBA and Told Them So.
Peter Murphy Lewis — Former CNN Foreign Affairs Correspondent · Director of the Docuseries People Worth Caring About · Founder of Four Companies · Goddard, KS
The room laughed and gave him a standing ovation. It is a good story, and it is also a fair summary of how he works: the unexpected angle, told honestly, landing harder than the polished version would have.
He worked more than a hundred different jobs as a television host, from pest control to beekeeping to K-pop backup dancing, turning each into a story about the person doing it.
Then he took job 101. He became a certified nursing assistant in long-term care, and that became the docuseries People Worth Caring About.
He Has Quietly Become a Long-Term Care Specialist
Look at who books him and the pattern is unmistakable. The Ohio Health Care Association, twice. The Nebraska Health Care Association. The Alaska Hospital and Healthcare Association. LeadingAge Virginia.
That is not a speaker who occasionally does healthcare. That is a speaker healthcare associations have adopted, and the reason is in the Ohio testimonial: attendees appreciated his genuine connection to long-term care and the authenticity of real-life experience. He did the job before he talked about it.
That matters commercially right now. Our analysis of first-year nurse turnover found nearly a third of RN departures come from people in their first year, and that the levers are cultural rather than financial. Recruitment into caregiving roles is a perception problem as much as a pay problem, and reframing how the work is seen is precisely what his docuseries was built to do.
He is a strong fit for state healthcare association annual conferences, long-term care and senior living events, and any workforce with a recruitment image problem, including skilled trades, manufacturing, and waste and recycling.
Five Talks, Two Very Different Registers
The storytelling keynotes are the emotional ones. Human Not Hollywood uses unpolished footage from the docuseries to show how honest stories shift public perception of undervalued work. 100 Jobs, One Truth is the funnier version, built from the jobs and the pivot into caregiving.
Then there are three sharper business sessions. What AI Really Thinks About You treats AI as a mirror of public reputation and covers how to become citable by it, which is an unusually current angle. Making Better Decisions When Fear Says Not Yet argues that people run from fear faster than they run toward goals, and puts a number on the organizational cost of delay. Build Them Before You Lose Them is his talent development framework, drawn from training over 200 young professionals across ten-plus countries and from his book Interns to A-Players.
Two practical notes. He is fluent in Spanish and hosted television in Chile, so bilingual and Latin America events are genuinely in range rather than a stretch. And he is listed as an emcee, which suits someone who spent a decade hosting live television.
Book Peter Murphy Lewis
Available for keynotes and emcee work on storytelling, workforce perception, leadership, decision making and talent development, in English or Spanish.