Natalie's talk with our team expanded the aperture of how creativity can be amplified and what we can do to enhance the creativity we foster with our professional staff. She provided tangible action steps Ansira can take to ensure we are bringing the best and most creative ideas to serve our clients.
Natalie Nixon
Creativity Strategist, President of Figure 8 Thinking LLC
Featured Topics
Fee Range
$25,000Travels From
Philadelphia, PA
Natalie Nixon
Biography
Dr. Natalie Nixon is "the creativity whisperer to the C-Suite". As a creativity strategist and the CEO of Figure 8 Thinking she helps companies catalyze creativity’s ROI for more inspired business results. She helps people reimagine what’s possible, essential and transformative by applying wonder and rigor. Dr. Nixon is a highly sought after global keynote speaker, valued for her accessible expertise on innovation, productivity and sustainable success.
Dr. Nixon was selected for Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2024; Real Leaders' "Top 50 Keynote Speakers in the World for 2022" list; and has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company and INC. She is also the recipient of NAWBO’s (National Association of Women Business Owners’) 2024 “Architecture of Innovation” award. Dr. Nixon is the author of the award-winning The Creativity Leap - an honoree in the creativity category of Fast Company's 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards. Her forthcoming book Move. Think. Rest: Redefining Productivity and Our Relationship with Time will be released on September 2, 2025. Her firm, Figure 8 Thinking, was named among the top 20 women-led innovation firms in 2021 by Core 77. Clients have included Microsoft, Salesforce, Comcast, Citrix, Morrison & Foerster, Living Cities, VaynerMedia and Bloomberg.
A hybrid thinker, Dr. Nixon consistently applies her background in cultural anthropology, fashion, design thinking and dance. She worked in the fashion industry for a division of The Limited Brands in global sourcing, living in Sri Lanka & Portugal. Dr. Nixon was also a professor for 16 years and the founding director of a strategic design executive MBA program at Thomas Jefferson University. She is an early-stage investor at two social impact ventures, valued for her ability to work at the intersection of commercial value and stakeholder equity.
Dr. Nixon is a trustee of the Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt Design Museum; and a former trustee of Vassar College and Leadership+Design. She has lived in Germany, Brazil, Portugal, Israel, and Sri Lanka and is proficient in Portuguese and Spanish. She is certified as a Foresight Practitioner by the Institute for the Future. She received her BA (honors) from Vassar College, and her PhD from the University of Westminster in London.
When she's not dancing up a storm in hip-hop class, Dr. Nixon is fine-tuning her salsa, foxtrot and tango on the ballroom floor. She lives in her hometown of Philadelphia with her husband, John Nixon, and is the proud stepmother of Sydney.
Natalie Nixon
Featured Keynote Programs
The New I in AI
Imagination, Inquiry and Intuition
Worried about how you’ll find your edge in AI? At its BEST, AI enhances human qualities at work. Natalie Nixon, a renowned creativity strategist, advocates for leveraging curiosity, imagination, and intuition to navigate this evolving landscape. Her keynote offers practical insights to redesign work and thrive in the changing paradigm.
L.E.A.P
Boosting Productivity and Navigating Uncertainty
When ambiguity arises, you can either flee, pause, or charge ahead blindly. Natalie Nixon, a creativity strategist, presents the L.E.A.P MethodTM, a straightforward approach to confront uncertainty. By Leveraging, Envisioning, Asking, and Prototyping, attendees gain clarity and actionable strategies to move forward. Remember, progress only happens in one direction: forward!
Adapt and Disrupt
Build Creativity's Business ROI In the Imagination Era
In the age of AI dominance, creativity is not optional—it's essential. Natalie Nixon, a creativity expert, reveals how imagination drives business success. Learn from pioneering leaders, adopt dynamic methods, and unleash creativity to secure your organization's strategic edge. Embrace innovation, wield imagination, and thrive in disruption.
AI Is Your Co-Creator
Just as we have IQ and EQ, we also have a CQ- or a creativity quotient. This talk explores the links between creativity and leadership and how leaders with a high CQ behave, interact with stakeholders, and co-create a strategic vision.
Natalie Nixon
Featured Books
Navigating Spaces - Tools for Discover
by Natalie Nixon
The Creativity Leap
by Natalie Nixon
"Natalie Nixon's new book provides a fresh primer on how to cultivate creativity in the workplace."
--Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable Too many people associate creativity solely with the arts, even though to be an incredible scientist, engineer, or entrepreneur requires immense creativity. And it's the key to developing breakthrough products and services. Natalie Nixon, a creativity strategist with a background in cultural anthropology, fashion, and service design, says that in the fourth industrial revolution a creativity leap is needed to bridge the gap that exists between the churn of work and the highly sought-after prize called innovation. Nixon says that since humans are hardwired to be creative, it is a competency anyone can develop. She shows that it balances wonder (awe, audacity, and curiosity) with rigor (discipline, skill-building, and attention to detail), and that inquiry, improvisation, and intuition are the key practices that increase those capacities. Drawing on interviews with fifty-six people from diverse backgrounds--farming, law, plumbing, architecture, perfumery, medicine, education, technology, and more--she offers illuminating examples of how creativity manifests in every kind of work. Combining creativity tools and techniques with real-world stories of innovative people and businesses, this book is a provocation, an inspiration, and an invitation to unleash the innate creativity that lies within each of us. It offers a more dynamic and integrative way to adapt and innovate, one that allows us the freedom to access our full human selves.
--Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable Too many people associate creativity solely with the arts, even though to be an incredible scientist, engineer, or entrepreneur requires immense creativity. And it's the key to developing breakthrough products and services. Natalie Nixon, a creativity strategist with a background in cultural anthropology, fashion, and service design, says that in the fourth industrial revolution a creativity leap is needed to bridge the gap that exists between the churn of work and the highly sought-after prize called innovation. Nixon says that since humans are hardwired to be creative, it is a competency anyone can develop. She shows that it balances wonder (awe, audacity, and curiosity) with rigor (discipline, skill-building, and attention to detail), and that inquiry, improvisation, and intuition are the key practices that increase those capacities. Drawing on interviews with fifty-six people from diverse backgrounds--farming, law, plumbing, architecture, perfumery, medicine, education, technology, and more--she offers illuminating examples of how creativity manifests in every kind of work. Combining creativity tools and techniques with real-world stories of innovative people and businesses, this book is a provocation, an inspiration, and an invitation to unleash the innate creativity that lies within each of us. It offers a more dynamic and integrative way to adapt and innovate, one that allows us the freedom to access our full human selves.
Natalie Nixon
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