Dr. Marcus Collins
Professor | Award-Winning Marketer | Cultural Translator | Best-Selling Author
Brandi Heather
Best-selling Author | Award-winning Educator | Internationally Recognized Expert on the Science of Play at Work
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About This Speaker
Brandi Heather is the CEO and Founder of Playful Intelligence™, best-selling author of Return To Play, entrepreneur, and internationally recognized keynote speaker. For more than 25 years, she has worked at the intersection of human behaviour, leadership, education, and wellbeing. She helps organizations understand what happens when pressure shuts down the very capabilities they need most: creativity, connection, courage, and adaptability.
Brandi’s work centres on one question: What allows people to access their best thinking when the stakes are high? Her answer challenges everything we’ve been taught about performance, professionalism, and wellbeing.
Known for bold, interactive, and deeply human keynotes, Brandi creates experiences where audiences don’t just learn about play; they see and feel its impact in real time. She shows organizations how embracing their Playful Intelligence® can unlock better decision-making, stronger connections, and lasting adaptability.
Brandi has delivered keynotes across four continents. She presented Leaders Play First to the Board of Directors and Senior Management of ForAfrika, one of Africa’s largest NGOs. She also spoke before the International Paralympic Committee in South Korea on the importance of play in the Paralympic movement.
One project stands out above the rest. Invited by the grandmother Elders and Lived Experience Council of Clan Mothers Healing Village in Winnipeg, Brandi co-designed a first-of-its-kind trauma healing program. It integrates therapeutic play, traditional Indigenous sport, and land-based movement. Together, they built an eight-module curriculum for Indigenous women, girls, trans, and 2-spirited people affected by sexual exploitation and trafficking.
Brandi holds advanced certification in Therapeutic Play.
Play is not a distraction from work. It is how we do our best work.
Brandi's booking fee range is $10,000 - $15,000
Contact an agent to get Brandi's availability and ratesSpeaking Topics: Brandi Heather
You Can’t Play in a Show Home: Building a Worklife You Can Live In 
In this electrifying, science-backed keynote, Brandi Heather reactivates the part of your audience that stress and survival mode have shut down. With live interaction, heartfelt humor, and powerful insights from neuroscience and real-world experience, she helps teams rediscover the human operating system that keeps people engaged, adaptable, and connected.
When stress runs the show, people disconnect—from each other, from new ideas, and from themselves. Playful Intelligence™ is the reset button. It reactivates the part of us that’s built for connection, curiosity, and courageous thinking AND living.
Key Takeaways:
Health and Wellbeing: Discover how releasing the “show home” mindset and embracing play can reduce stress, support mental wellness, and improve overall health, allowing us to approach our lives with renewed energy and resilience.
Empowerment Through Authenticity: Learn how embracing your innate playful nature helps you share your authentic strengths, ideas and talents.
Innovation and Connection: Gain practical strategies to integrate play into your professional life, fueling creativity, courage, and meaningful connections that foster long-term satisfaction and fulfillment.
When stress runs the show, people disconnect—from each other, from new ideas, and from themselves. Playful Intelligence™ is the reset button. It reactivates the part of us that’s built for connection, curiosity, and courageous thinking AND living.
Key Takeaways:
Health and Wellbeing: Discover how releasing the “show home” mindset and embracing play can reduce stress, support mental wellness, and improve overall health, allowing us to approach our lives with renewed energy and resilience.
Empowerment Through Authenticity: Learn how embracing your innate playful nature helps you share your authentic strengths, ideas and talents.
Innovation and Connection: Gain practical strategies to integrate play into your professional life, fueling creativity, courage, and meaningful connections that foster long-term satisfaction and fulfillment.
Leaders Play First: Unlock Your Playful Intelligence for Business & Leadership Success
In this interactive keynote, leaders discover how to harness their Playful Intelligence™ to stay sharp under pressure, thrive without burning out, and build a team culture that gets results.
Playful Intelligence™ is the missing link between high performance and well-being. It’s the human operating system behind every great idea, innovative team, and workplace people want to be part of - come find out how to use it.
When leaders play first, resilience becomes repeatable.
Key Takeaways:
• Recognize how Playful Intelligence™ helps unlock creativity, adaptability, and connection under pressure
• Learn science-backed reset tools to combat burnout and decision fatigue
• Experience how playful thinking can lead to faster, bolder, and more human-centered problem-solving
• Leave with practical, evidence-based tools to share with their teams and organizations.
Playful Intelligence™ is the missing link between high performance and well-being. It’s the human operating system behind every great idea, innovative team, and workplace people want to be part of - come find out how to use it.
When leaders play first, resilience becomes repeatable.
Key Takeaways:
• Recognize how Playful Intelligence™ helps unlock creativity, adaptability, and connection under pressure
• Learn science-backed reset tools to combat burnout and decision fatigue
• Experience how playful thinking can lead to faster, bolder, and more human-centered problem-solving
• Leave with practical, evidence-based tools to share with their teams and organizations.
Healing Our Caring Systems: How Playful Intelligence Builds Adaptability, Courage, and Connect
You were born with Playful Intelligence™ - your biological drive to play that makes you adaptable, creative, and connected to others. But for many caring professionals, it gets put on pause while trying to be everything to everyone and hold it all together perfectly under pressure. And even the strongest systems wear down when the people inside them are running on empty.
So, here’s the question: Who’s taking care of the people who take care of people?
Brandi brings neuroscience, lived experience, and practical tools to help regulate the nervous system, support mental wellness, and rebuild capacity in people who have learned to survive by just “pushing through”.
Your Playful Intelligence™ helps quiet the overwhelm, sharpen your focus, and bring back the part of you that feels most alive - not by doing more, but by reactivating what’s already inside you.
Your playful self didn’t disappear. It got quiet - buried under responsibility, fear, and trying to hold everything together. Let’s go find it. It is time to press play.
Key Takeaways:
• Three burnout-prevention strategies (that don’t add to their workload).
• How shared self-care strengthens teams and prevents stress from spreading.
• Why play isn’t the opposite of professionalism—it’s how we thrive in uncertainty.
So, here’s the question: Who’s taking care of the people who take care of people?
Brandi brings neuroscience, lived experience, and practical tools to help regulate the nervous system, support mental wellness, and rebuild capacity in people who have learned to survive by just “pushing through”.
Your Playful Intelligence™ helps quiet the overwhelm, sharpen your focus, and bring back the part of you that feels most alive - not by doing more, but by reactivating what’s already inside you.
Your playful self didn’t disappear. It got quiet - buried under responsibility, fear, and trying to hold everything together. Let’s go find it. It is time to press play.
Key Takeaways:
• Three burnout-prevention strategies (that don’t add to their workload).
• How shared self-care strengthens teams and prevents stress from spreading.
• Why play isn’t the opposite of professionalism—it’s how we thrive in uncertainty.
Get Powered By Playful Intelligence: The Human Operating System for Motivation, Innovation, and Collaboration
Pressure doesn’t always bring out the best in us — it often shuts down the very systems we need to think clearly, take risks, and work together. Playful Intelligence™ is the switch that turns them back on.
In this fast-paced, interactive keynote, Brandi Heather shows how play isn’t the opposite of work — it’s the underused driver of creativity, trust, and performance. You’ll explore the science of how our brains respond under stress, practice tools to shift from protection to possibility, and see how small moments of play can spark big results.
Key Takeaways:
• A science-based framework for keeping motivation high when pressure is higher
• Simple tools to unlock fresh ideas and solve problems in new ways
• Strategies to build trust and collaboration that last beyond the keynote
In this fast-paced, interactive keynote, Brandi Heather shows how play isn’t the opposite of work — it’s the underused driver of creativity, trust, and performance. You’ll explore the science of how our brains respond under stress, practice tools to shift from protection to possibility, and see how small moments of play can spark big results.
Key Takeaways:
• A science-based framework for keeping motivation high when pressure is higher
• Simple tools to unlock fresh ideas and solve problems in new ways
• Strategies to build trust and collaboration that last beyond the keynote
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