Kathy Varol
- Purpose Strategy Expert
- Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) & ESG Consultant
- Created the Global Purpose (CSR) Strategy for adidas
In Person-Fee 🛈
Fee Range
$15,000 - $20,000
Virtual Fee:
$10,000 - $15,000
Travels From
Oregon
Kathy Varol on How Purpose Makes Brands Remarkable
Kathy Varol Speaker Biography
Kathy Varol is an expert at driving profit with purpose. Kathy created the Global Purpose (corporate social responsibility) strategy for adidas, a 22 billion dollar global company. Now Kathy helps her clients use purpose to stand out in a competitive environment, attract the best talent, gain consumer loyalty, and fully harness the innovative brainpower of their employees (innovation that keeps them miles ahead of the competition). She shares her deep knowledge and “how-to” with clients, so they can skip the hard lessons and go straight to strategies that work.
Kathy has 20 years of experience across brand marketing, strategy, and impact, working at established brands like adidas, MillerCoors, and Microsoft.
Through her experience, Kathy has developed a repeatable 4-step process to become a purpose-led brand: The Brand Purpose Model. When businesses embed purpose into the heart of their strategy, they don’t just disrupt their industry. They also bring humanity into the workplace, shape the future, and impact the world.
Kathy’s wealth of hands-on experience creating purposeful change includes crafting the Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) strategy for adidas. Through this experience, Kathy has learned the unintentional barriers that get in the way of a thriving culture, as well as how to foster a culture of inclusion, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
At adidas, Kathy also created a holistic sustainability strategy and developed social equality platforms. These initiatives included creating an army of loyal brand advocates by inviting consumers to join a movement to end plastic waste, increasing access to sport for girls around the globe, developing new products, and initiating bold corporate actions to stand against inequality.
Kathy is an expert at establishing a purpose that galvanizes the entire company in the same direction, developing strategic partnerships through aligned missions, and crafting purpose strategies that create the most valuable form of marketing (word of mouth).
Kathy left adidas to help other companies on their journey to become purpose-led. She brings her wealth of expertise to move companies beyond outdated Corporate Social Responsibility approaches and into the new era of business integrated conscious capitalism.
Drive Profit With Purpose. Become Remarkable. Accelerate Growth.
How do you stand out in an increasingly competitive marketplace? How do you attract top talent? How do you increase profitability?
You do something remarkable. Purpose makes brands remarkable.
​As consumers, we're putting our dollars toward companies with aligned values. 85% of millennials in the United States would switch brands for a good cause, and 50% of growth in consumer goods went to sustainability-marketed products between 2013 and 2018.
As employees, we’re looking for meaning in our careers, and the best talent is choosing to work for organizations that feed their hearts as well as their bank accounts. 92% of millennials believe that working for an environmentally and socially responsible company is important.
In the modern world, companies without a purpose beyond profit will be left behind. You can either be a pioneering force for good in your industry, or the disrupted.
Kathy built the global purpose strategy for adidas, a 22 billion dollar company, encompassing everything adidas does to positively impact people and planet. Through trial and error, Kathy has learned what works, and what doesn't.
Through her work, a model emerged.
A way to successfully use purpose to drive profit.
In the Drive Profit with Purpose keynote, Kathy will reveal her 4-step Brand Purpose Model to engage your organization, inspire innovation, and win the hearts of your consumers.
You Will Learn:
7 common mistakes in creating a purpose-led organization
Why a corporate social responsibility department won't get you the impact - or the credit - you want
How to get the best talent knocking on your door and have the most engaged employees
Why doing good is the magic bullet to get the most powerful form of advertising (for free!)
This Keynote Is Perfect For Leaders And Companies:
Competing in a crowded market
Creating differentiation through marketing, ingredients, and/or process
Struggling with a talent shortage, high turnover, and/or high employee disengagement
Looking to accelerate growth and increase ROI (in a sustainable way)​
Ready to unlock the innovative brain power of their employees
Lead The Future Of Your Industry By Mastering ESG
At its core, ESG (environmental, social, governance) is about fixing what’s broken in business, fueling efficiency, equality, and integrity. And guess what? It’s a goldmine for resilience and profitability.
An effective ESG strategy future-proofs the business strategy.
From 2011 to 2018, the proportion of S&P 500 companies reporting on their sustainability efforts, corporate social responsibility activities, and ESG performance increased from just under 20% to 86%.
ESG has become an expected way of operating, and you don't want to get left behind.
Kathy helps businesses create an effective ESG strategy that moves beyond a feel-good exercise and drives real change across the metrics that matter to their business. In this keynote, through captivating stories and real-world business examples, Kathy will reveal a step-by-step process that will help your company set the ESG gold standard for your industry.
You Will learn:
Kathy’s 4-step process that will take your company from zero to an ESG strategy that leads the future of your industry
Why an effective ESG strategy can help your company become a trusted leader in your industry
How to determine which ESG topics (and metrics) are the right ones for your business
How to establish a symbiotic relationship between your ESG strategy and a business-integrated purpose
The secret to achieving seemingly impossible ESG moonshots
This Keynote Is Perfect For Leaders And Companies:
Just starting their ESG journey
Who feel overwhelmed by the vast catch-all ESG can stand for
Need help identifying and focusing on the ESG topics that matter to their company
Who want to be a leader and set the gold-standard in their industry
Unlock Exponential Results by Nurturing Purpose, People and Culture
Data clearly shows that businesses that nurture their purpose, people, and culture unlock exponential results: engaged employees, loyal consumers, increased innovation, and accelerated growth.
In this keynote, through captivating business stories, Kathy will share why shifting the focus from your output (revenue) to your inputs (purpose, people, and culture) will drive better results. Kathy will also share concrete strategies you use right away to nurture each of these business inputs.
You Will learn:
The toxic beliefs that have infected workplace cultures (and how to shift them)
How the world’s most loved companies use purpose to cultivate enviable consumer loyalty (and how you can too)
The secret sauce to creating a world-class culture
How to enable your employees to truly shine (and innovate!)
The one force more powerful to your profitability than any business model
This Keynote Is Perfect For Leaders And Companies:
Competing in an increasingly crowded market and struggling to stand out
Experiencing high turnover, and/or high employee disengagement
Struggling to foster collaboration across company silos and departments
Running into groupthink and “yes men” cultural conformity
Skyrocket Innovation By Harnessing The Superpower Of Diversity
Diversity is one of the most vital qualities for organizations that want to lead their industries.
Research shows that diversity can promote problem-solving and innovation. Culturally and ethnically diverse companies are more likely to outperform their competitors by 33%; highly diverse teams are 13 times more likely to have engaged employees; and companies with above-average diversity have 19% higher innovation revenues.
Unfortunately, most businesses unintentionally create barriers to collaboration and stifle the innovation potential they have waiting to be unleashed across their workforce. They incentivize groupthink, and constrain the power of diversity - the superpower of their workforce.
In this keynote, Kathy will reveal how business leaders can harness the superpower of their diverse workforce to skyrocket innovation.
You Will Learn:
How adidas leveraged the entire North American team to innovate a turnaround for their running business
The most common unintentional barriers to collaboration and creativity (and how you can remove them)
Unconventional and innovative ways to get diversity in the room
How to promote sharing of unique viewpoints and avoid groupthink
Why the trickiest problems are often solved by outsiders to the field
This Keynote Is Perfect For Leaders And Companies:
Struggling to foster collaboration across company silos and departments
Running into groupthink and “yes men” cultural conformity
Using the old playbook year after year, and no longer getting the same ROI
Know they could do more to cultivate a culture where their talented and diverse employees can shine.
The Sustainability Revolution: A Business Imperative Accelerating Innovation
Sustainability isn’t merely a trend—it's a revolution reshaping industries.
No longer a “nice to have,” sustainability has become a key indicator for companies' long-term success. This keynote will elevate your understanding of sustainability, explain its significance for your business's success, highlight the forces accelerating sustainability across industries, and share how sustainability isn't just about saving the planet; it's about saving and making money.
During this keynote, Kathy will share three accelerating areas of sustainable innovation that can create value, enhance your reputation, reduce risk, and boost your financial performance. Kathy will bring these three areas of innovation to life with real-world examples of companies across industries that are setting the gold standard for sustainability.
If you're ready to lead rather than follow in the evolving business landscape, this keynote provides the roadmap to a future where profitability and sustainability go hand in hand.
You will learn:
Why sustainability is an emerging force determining market dominance
How forward-thinking companies are turning eco-conscious initiatives into lucrative opportunities
How sustainability is being used as a catalyst for innovation
Insight into circular economies (what it means and why it’s important)
The benefit of integrating sustainability into business strategy
This keynote is perfect for leaders and companies who:
Seek to harness the transformative power of sustainability for both innovation and growth
Understand sustainability isn't just a choice; it's a necessity
Want to stay relevant and competitive for the next 20 years
Are excited to create a future that’s better for the next generation
January 24, 2022
Kathy Varol was a hit at our cityCURRENT signature speaker series event in Memphis on January 21, 2022! She was a pleasure to work with and made it so easy on the planning side, and then delivered an inspiring and valuable keynote centered on the power of purpose and being a purpose-led brand. She left our audience with some important takeaways, a 4-step process they can implement with CARE, and a mindset shift around how to better focus corporate efforts to shape the future and impact the world. We have received great feedback from our attendees, who really enjoyed Kathy's presentation, and have already started to implement some of her ideas and recommendations. So, our event with Kathy Varol was definitely a big success!
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