Dr. Jody Carrington
Renowned Psychologist | Human Connection Expert | Bestselling Author
Brandi Heather
CEO of Playful Intelligence® | Bestselling Author | Entrepreneur | Internationally Recognized Expert on the Science of Play at Work
Book this speaker
Book Brandi Heather, Fresh Perspectives Speaker
About This Speaker
Brandi Heather opens your conference with a shared experience people carry with them throughout the event.
After two decades as an award-winning college professor in Health Sciences, Brandi founded Playful Intelligence®, bringing together more than three decades of teaching, business leadership, and lived experience into a practical framework now used by organizations around the world.
Through her Playful Intelligence® framework, Brandi taps into our biological drive to play as a catalyst for something rare: a shift in how people connect, communicate, and imagine what is possible – and it happens right before your eyes.
Brandi gives attendees an immediate language for connection that carries far beyond the keynote into hallway conversations, meals, networking events, and breakout sessions.
Her keynotes blend the science of play with masterful storytelling, humour, and audience participation, creating moments where people don’t just hear about resilience, creativity, and connection – they experience them. Her work challenges the belief that professionalism requires leaving play at the door, demonstrating how Playful Intelligence® strengthens decision-making, resilience, innovation, and human connection under pressure.
A bestselling author of Return To Play and a two-time nominee for the RBC Women of Influence Award, Brandi has worked with organizations across four continents, including Sysco Canada, LifeLabs, Entrepreneurs’ Organization, Hyatt Regency, Service Canada, ForAfrika, and the International Paralympic Committee.
Play isn’t a break from work. It’s how you do your best work.
Press PLAY.
Speaker Fee: $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:
1. 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.
2. Empowerment Through Authenticity: Learn how embracing your innate playful nature helps you share your authentic strengths, ideas and talents.
3. 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:
1. 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.
2. Empowerment Through Authenticity: Learn how embracing your innate playful nature helps you share your authentic strengths, ideas and talents.
3. 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
The Paradox of Play: Bringing Your Greatest Business Partner Back to Work
Most organizations have quietly fired their most valuable employee. The one quietly powering creativity, resilience, innovation, and performance all along. Their name is Play.
Somewhere along the way, we were taught that great work requires discipline and control, while Play happens when the work is done. That productivity and curiosity compete — that hard work and joy were never meant to share a room. But biology tells a different story.
The ability to hold two opposing realities at the same time — and still move forward — is a skill. And Playful Intelligence® is how you build it.
Through stories that make the room laugh, lean in, and rethink the way we work, Brandi introduces the most unexpected business strategy in the room: that learning to play and work together is exactly what trains us to navigate crisis and growth, what we already know and what's coming next.
Great teams don't need to choose between efficiency and creativity, performance and well-being, or work and play. They leave room for both.
Key Takeaways:
• A new understanding of why their most capable people go quiet under pressure — and what restores them
• Playful Intelligence® as a practical framework for building cultures where people stay, contribute, and bring their best thinking
• The shared language and live experience to lead through change, uncertainty, and high-pressure moments more effectively
This keynote is designed for organizations navigating high-pressure, high-change environments who want evidence-based tools to boost creativity, strengthen collaboration, and sustain performance under stress.
Somewhere along the way, we were taught that great work requires discipline and control, while Play happens when the work is done. That productivity and curiosity compete — that hard work and joy were never meant to share a room. But biology tells a different story.
The ability to hold two opposing realities at the same time — and still move forward — is a skill. And Playful Intelligence® is how you build it.
Through stories that make the room laugh, lean in, and rethink the way we work, Brandi introduces the most unexpected business strategy in the room: that learning to play and work together is exactly what trains us to navigate crisis and growth, what we already know and what's coming next.
Great teams don't need to choose between efficiency and creativity, performance and well-being, or work and play. They leave room for both.
Key Takeaways:
• A new understanding of why their most capable people go quiet under pressure — and what restores them
• Playful Intelligence® as a practical framework for building cultures where people stay, contribute, and bring their best thinking
• The shared language and live experience to lead through change, uncertainty, and high-pressure moments more effectively
This keynote is designed for organizations navigating high-pressure, high-change environments who want evidence-based tools to boost creativity, strengthen collaboration, and sustain performance under stress.
Related speakers
Adam Kreek
Olympic Gold Medalist | Engineer-Turned Executive Coach | Trusted High-Performance Strategist
Hannah Beach
#1 Globe & Mail Bestselling Author | Expert in Leading Kids to Resilience in a Dopamine-Chasing Culture | Award-winning Educator
Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe
Resiliency Scholar | Multi-Award Winning Author
Need help choosing your next event speaker?
Talk with one of our experts.