Introduction

Making people think is enormously fun and rewarding to me. A speaking engagement is one of the best ways to do that, so I speak often at conferences, unconferences, symposia, and other events. I give talks, emcee, moderate, facilitate workshops, conduct corporate trainings, and run simulations or games.

I cover a variety of topics, including social innovation, social entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship, behavior change, personal development, productivity, emotional intelligence, happiness, creativity/innovation, and self-actualization.

My goal is to be as energizing, pragmatic, and fresh as possible. I like to end with a call to action, and if you’ll let me I’ll do the follow up research to see if I was effective.

I’ve hosted over 150 events myself, so I’m very familiar with operational-level planning. I’m happy to help you structure the event, with the participant’s experience in mind.

For full bio and headshot, see Speaker’s Bio.

Please email me if you’d like to work together.

Short Bio

James is a social entrepreneur focused on scalable behavior change interventions. He is currently working on two social enterprises: Self Spark, a life accelerator that helps people achieve life goals through science-based events, and Polymath Foundation, a university and incubator for 10,000 young Leonardo da Vincis. For more see www.jamesnorris.org.

Sample Talks

• 10+ Years of Personal Growth in 20 Minutes: a talk summarizing the most salient lessons from over a decade of consciously studying and experimenting with personal growth.

• Behavior Change 101: an introductory talk on the basic mechanics of behavior change and how to maximize your effectiveness at changing yourself and the people around you.

• Conversation About Self-Actualization: a short conversation about what self-actualization is and how we all have different but unspoken perspectives on what constitutes our ideal lives.

• Design Thinking Experienced: a one- or two-day intensive, hands-on workshop covering the basic process of design thinking and how to incorporate it into the classroom or workplace.

• Emotional Intelligence in School and Work: a fun, experiential workshop on rapidly building emotional intelligence (EQ) skills for school and work contexts.

• Lifehacking: Concrete Strategies & Tactics for Personal Awesomeness: a practical talk on some of the most efficient and effective ways of  “hacking your life” to achieve more and maximize your growth.

• Releasing Personal Growth: a talk describing how to use mindfulness and self-compassion to release disempowering self-criticism and facilitate personal growth.

• Self-Quantification Fun: a primer on unique ways to practice self-quantification for self-discovery and personal growth.

For videos and a list of some of the previous talks I’ve given, see Talks.

Sample Emceeing

• HelpLearnAsia: HelpLearn.Asia is an innovative, hands-on workshop circuit perfect for small and medium-sized enterprises, startups, marketers and anyone who wants to become proficient in online marketing best practices, integrated platform strategies and relevant tools.
• Rotary Youth Social Enterpreneurship Challenge: The Rotary Youth Social Entrepreneurship Challenge (RYSEC) is the ground-breaking annual competition for aspiring social entrepreneurs in Singapore, founded with the purpose of launching social enterprise start-ups into self-sustainability.

Reviews

My average rating is about a 4.4 out of 5, and I generally am considered one of the the top three speakers at most events. My LinkedIn profile shows my recommendations and endorsements.

Here are a few comments I’ve gotten:

• “Wow, that’s really thinking outside the box.”
• “I really liked your talk. It had substance, unlike the others I went to. 9 out of 10.”
• “Thank you for inspiring me (and everyone else in the room) with your talk. I really enjoyed it!”
• “Might sound weird but that talk opened a new world to me. Helped me deal with a bad relationship I was in at the time. And now I’m having a generally awesome social life again.”
• “That was as good as a Harry Potter book.”