Dev Patnaik

For over thirty years, Dev Patnaik has been a trusted advisor and close confidant to CEOs and senior leaders at some of the world’s most admired companies, including Starbucks, Target, Nike, Universal Music, and Virgin. 

These relationships have given him courtside seats to leadership at the highest level. He’s been in the room when the bold bets got made, and when the hard truths had to be faced. He has a rare perspective on what distinguishes leaders who shape the future from those who merely survive it. He’s seen what’s worked, and what hasn’t. And he wants you to learn from both.

As an adjunct professor at Stanford University, Dev has brought those experiences into the classroom, teaching the next generation of business, education, and design students how to connect the work they do to their greater humanity.

In 2009, Dev wrote Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, a book that helped launch a movement toward more human-centered business. Malcolm Gladwell put it succinctly when he said the book was “just what we need for the lean years ahead.”

As CEO of Jump Associates, the strategy firm for future-focused leaders, Dev works with executives who are navigating inflection points: when the old playbook no longer fits and the next decade demands a new one. 

In his quest to equip the next generation of leaders, Dev writes Future Focused, the must-read weekly letter for heads of strategy and innovation. Each essay distills the patterns he sees across industries — from technology to retail to media — into practical insight on how to stay ahead of the perception lag that holds most organizations back.

Dev’s ideas have appeared in Business Week, Forbes, and the Harvard Business Review. In 2016, Fast Company named Dev to their list of The Most Creative People in Business, alongside the likes of Sam Altman, Brené Brown, and Richard Plepler. 

With Michelle Loret de Mola, he co-hosts The Jump Podcast, where he talks with pioneering leaders about how they navigate uncertainty, make meaning, and keep their organizations aligned with what really matters. His teaching, writing, and advising all share a single aim: to help people lead with greater vision, empathy, and courage in times of rapid change.

Dev’s keynotes blend vivid storytelling with hard-won lessons from inside boardrooms and classrooms alike. Audiences come away with a clearer sense of how to look further ahead, act more boldly, and build the kind of culture that can thrive amid disruption.

Dev Patnaik doesn’t just study the future — he wants to help you shape it.