Speaking

Keynotes, executive education, and guest lectures.

Available for keynotes, executive education, and guest lectures. Topics span AI strategy, decision architecture, the economics of AI infrastructure, healthcare technology, and entrepreneurship at scale. Built from forty years of consulting and operating in healthcare technology businesses, two founder exits, and an active research program at the Daniels College of Business. Each talk is built around a specific argument, not delivered from a generic deck.

What I speak about

Nine topics, organized by audience. The first six are aimed at executives, boards, founders, and industry conferences. The last three address university leadership, faculty, and academic audiences from an outside business perspective. Each is grounded in current research and applied practice and tailored to the event.

For Executives, Boards, Founders, and Industry Audiences

Owners, CEOs, Executive Teams, Association and Industry Conferences

Empowered Teams that Improve Performance

How empowered cross-functional teams, given a structured method and the authority to act, surface and resolve the issues that hold an organization back, and in doing so lift profitability and overall performance. Drawn from forty years of employee-driven performance improvement and the Cycle of Success Institute's Tiger Team model, adapted from NASA, that builds the capability inside the organization rather than delivering findings to it.

Anchored in: Cycle of Success Institute coaching

Boards, Venture Investors, Accelerators, Founders, Executive Education

What Predicts Startup Success at Scale

An empirical briefing on what predicts early-stage startup success and post-IPO transformative outcomes. Drawn from a longitudinal venture database of more than four million firms. Specific findings on which market-facing functions accelerate venture progress, when they should be established, and how founder prior success moderates the effect.

Anchored in: AMA Summer Conference and WEIA Annual Conference Proceedings (2026)

Executives, Boards, Conference Keynotes

High Stakes Decisions

Why high-stakes AI decisions require a different architecture than the platforms most enterprises are deploying. The 737 MAX, Equifax, and 2008 mortgage crisis as architectural failures, and what the alternative looks like.

Anchored in: The High Stakes Decision (April 2026)

Executives, CTOs, AI Leaders, Compliance Officers

PARS and the Accountable Reasoning Stack

The Petersen Accountable Reasoning Stack: a five-layer reasoning architecture for accountable AI in high-stakes operational decisions. How to produce visible reasoning, auditable state, operator steerability, and trust signals at every layer. Includes the High Stakes Reasoning Gate as an executive approval artifact.

Anchored in: High Stakes Reasoning (May 2026)

CEOs, Boards, Investors, Industry Audiences

The Economics of Discovery

How three compounding cost curves (local compute, model intelligence, inference) have rewritten who can do serious research, decision-making, and consulting work. Implications for higher education, scholarly infrastructure, entrepreneurship, and the future of professional services.

Anchored in: The Expansion of Discovery (April 2026)

Executives, Entrepreneurs, Mixed Professional Audiences

Building Across Three Industrial Revolutions

Decades of building decision systems across the late Second Industrial Revolution, through the Third, and into the Fourth. What stays constant, what changes, and what the pattern recognition tells us about where to invest attention now.

For University Leadership and Academic Audiences

Provosts, Deans, Curriculum Committees, Policy Bodies

The AI Transition in Higher Education

An outside business perspective on the AI transition in higher education, drawn from forty years employing the kinds of graduates universities are training and from active research at the Daniels College of Business. What graduates need to know about AI, which roles are emerging across management, business, and technical tiers, and how universities should rethink curriculum, faculty development, and academic integrity in an AI-augmented world.

Anchored in: Preparing Colorado Graduates and New AI Roles in the Workforce (2026)

Doctoral Faculty, Methodologists, Academic Audiences

Beyond the Average

Four architectures of causation in business research, and why the methods we are trained to reach for first may be answering a different question than the one we asked. Methodological argument with empirical illustrations.

Anchored in: Beyond the Average (April 2026)

Faculty, Instructional Designers, Academic Leadership

AI as Mirror

Drawn from forty years training adult learners in competency-based curriculum design, and from current doctoral teaching practice. How generative AI exposes and amplifies the student motivation divide, and what assignment design has to look like in a world where effort is no longer the rate-limiting factor. Practical framework for faculty redesigning courses for the AI era.

Anchored in: The Lazy Student and the Motivated Mind (2026)

Engagement formats

Each topic adapts to multiple formats. The right format depends on the audience, the time available, and the depth the event needs.

Conference Keynote

Forty-five to sixty minute keynote address. Built around a specific argument with concrete examples and a clear takeaway. Suited to industry conferences, executive forums, and association events.

Executive Workshop

Half-day or full-day workshop format for executive teams or leadership groups. Combines argument with applied work: discussion, case analysis, decision-architecture mapping for the participants' own organizations.

Panel and Moderated Discussion

Panel participation, moderated conversation, or fireside chat format. Suited to events where the value is the exchange rather than a single voice.

Guest Lecture

Sixty to ninety minute guest lecture for university courses, executive education programs, or doctoral seminars. Tailored to the syllabus and the level of the audience.

Speaking history and current engagements

Industry Speaking and Executive Audiences

  • Vizient Performance Improvement Conferences.
    Keynote addresses and conference organization on healthcare business intelligence, analytics-driven decision making, and clinical operations. Reached more than 50,000 healthcare executives and analysts via interactive satellite broadcasts and live programming.
  • Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).
    Invited and competitively selected presentations on healthcare information systems, business intelligence, electronic health records, and analytics-driven decision making.
  • Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA).
    Invited presentations on healthcare financial performance, revenue cycle performance, business intelligence, and analytics applied to financial decision making.
  • Accenture.
    Trained more than 1,000 healthcare consultants, partners, and audit staff on “Medical Records and DRGs: Applications for Financial Management, Auditing, Financial Reporting, Compliance, and Healthcare Information Systems under DRGs.” Also trained more than 1,000 healthcare consultants and auditors on the healthcare profit improvement guidelines and methodology developed at the firm.

Recent Academic Conference Proceedings, 2026

  • “Signaling Market Readiness: Early-Stage Startup Behavior and Venture Funding Progression.”
    WEIA Annual Conference, July 2026.
  • “Organizing for Growth: How Market-Facing Department Formation Drives Early Startup Success.”
    AMA Summer Conference, 2026.

Panel Appearances

  • Panel 3: Navigating Information: AI, Digital Media and Misinformation.
    Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression: Faculty Perspectives. University of Denver, May 20, 2026. Co-panelists: Lynn Clark (University of Denver), Scott Krzych (Colorado College), Juli Parish (University of Denver).

Guest Lectures

  • Guest lectureships at Arizona State University and Drexel University.

References and a detailed list of past engagements are available on request for serious booking inquiries.

How to book

Available for keynotes, executive workshops, guest lectures, and panel discussions at conferences, executive forums, association events, and university programs. Travel from Steamboat Springs, Colorado, with virtual delivery available where appropriate.

Schedule a call or send a short note with the event name, date, audience, and format. Boards, executive search firms, and conference programmers who see fit beyond the speaking engagement are welcome to reach out the same way.

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For media inquiries.

Press, podcast, and media inquiries are welcome. The fastest path is the contact form below with topic set to media. I respond to media inquiries within a few business days where there is editorial fit.

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