An expert at leveraging personal disruption to grow, Whitney is one of the top ten business thinkers in the world as named by Thinkers50.
Whitney Johnson
CEO, Co-Founder
Whitney Johnson is the CEO of Disruption Advisors, a tech-enabled talent development company. She was named a 2021 Top #10 Business Thinker by Thinkers50, and is a globally recognized thought-leader, keynote speaker, executive coach, and consultant.
A LinkedIn Top Voice since 2019 with 1.8 million followers, Whitney is the WSJ, USA Today and Amazon bestselling author of Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company (Harvard Business Press, 2022).
On her popular podcast Disrupt Yourself, ranked in the top .5% of listenership of all podcasts, she has interviewed world-renowned thinkers, including Brené Brown, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and General Stanley McChrystal.
Her major mentors and influences include renowned coach Marshall Goldsmith, the legendary human potential pioneer Bob Proctor, and the late Clayton Christensen, author of the seminal book The Innovator’s Dilemma, with whom she co-founded the Disruptive Innovation Fund.
Whitney shares her passion for personal disruption, helping individuals transform their lives, careers, teams, and companies, through her keynote addresses, lectures at Harvard Business School’s Corporate Learning, and her LinkedIn Learning course Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship which has been viewed more than 1 million times. And, through her award-winning books How to Build an A Team, Disrupt Yourself, and Dare, Dream, Do, as well as her frequent article contributions to the Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review.
A former award-winning Wall Street equity analyst, Whitney understands how companies work, how investors think, and how the best coaches coach, all of which she brings to her work.
She is married, has two children and lives in Lexington, VA where she and her family grow strawberries, blackberries and raspberries and enjoy making jam.
Keynotes
Audiences are left informed and inspired on how to step back from who they are, to slingshot into who they want to be.
“The audience was blown away. They loved Whitney’s genuineness, which shined through every word. They took to heart Whitney’s reflections and observations. An absolute homerun.”
Martin Lindstrom, NY Times
Bring in Whitney to inspire
Change & growth
Disrupt Yourself Podcast
With Whitney Johnson
Listen in as Whitney talks with her guests about disruption and growth.
“Disrupt Yourself with Whitney Johnson is one of the most important podcasts I listen to each week. It is entertaining and informative and most importantly, it is a key moment in my week to think outside myself about a topic that I might not have considered.”
Thank you, Whitney! And thank you for agreeing to speak at JA's Global Leadership Conference and being such a good friend to the organization. Your weekly email updates are quoted by JA staff more often than you might believe!
"We can’t thank you enough for such an incredible Leadership Masters session! Thanks again for crushing it for us this week. Participants are enthusiastic about their learning experience and sharing that enthusiasm with their managers.”
"I'm such a fan of Whitney’s work; her innovation/personal learning principles are so inspiring. I found Disrupt Yourself (the book and podcast) at just the right time in my career as I was contemplating jumping to a new S-Curve of learning. Whitney’s ideas and lessons were incredibly helpful to me. Whitney’s latest book, Smart Growth: Grow Yourself to Grow Your People to Grow Your Organization provides a valuable framework for those on a personal S-Curve of learning – which is all of us! We had such a great conversation about the book, and Whitney’s personal S-Curve jump. "
"It was a super useful session Whitney, actually we are using now the book in our Learning & Development agenda and the session helped us a lot to understand better! For sure we will continue to be in contact! And if you ever are in London let me know , would love to meet you in person! Have a great week! Best Regards"
What a fantastic session. You have provided so much value to our members. They now have a framework to help them better stay in the "gain" rather than go into the "gap" about where they are on the S curve. You were excellent at weaving in what you know about Ben's work and I loved the emphasis on tiny behaviors that will lead to the dopamine that keeps them going. We can't wait to weave your work into our coaching in Platinum. You were charismatic, fun, easy to connect to, and very good at adding in examples that were highly relatable. Thank you! We are excited to share this with AMP GOLD this week.
Hi Whitney, I just finished the book and posted a 5 star review on Amazon. I loved it. Truly inspiring and timely for me personally in the struggle to hire and build a company. And it was just so fun to read. You weave together stories better than anyone else I’ve ever read. It’s really a gift.
"It’s been fun to use the S curve to make sense of my current endeavor. I’m hovering between Collector and Accelerator in my process of figuring out how to direct a new center. Those chapters in particular have provided some validation and food for thought. I’ve also been thinking about how my various activities in that role fit in different parts of the S-curve. There are things I’m doing now that are direct outgrowths of my many years of teaching OB and ethics. And there are other things that I’m still completely bewildered about (though fewer all the time).
Hey Whitney, I was there indeed! I felt it was very insightful. The idea of decomposing things into different “maturity levels” and then evaluating where you’re standing and which might be your next steps is food for thought. And then to think that you may repeat this process in multiple aspects of one's life is just mind-blowing. It seems like such a straightforward way for self-development. Thanks for your talk!!
"Disrupt Yourself is the right book for this time of uncertainty. Whitney extrapolates so much wisdom from the concept of the S curve of learning, by providing a practical framework that lights the way for anyone facing change: job loss, global pandemic or voluntary transition. The effect is to offer a choice: stay stuck and stop growing or GROW! By JUMPING to a new S curve. Her clarity and confidence are contagious."
Just wanted to thank you for a clear, practical and well delivered presentation during Brand Minds, earlier this June in Bucharest. You were a great surprise to me given I haven't interacted before with your content and it was my favorite moment from the event because I could immediately use the in my team. Thanks again and I'm looking forward to following your activity.
Thank you Whitney - For your podcasts and reflective newsletters. You have interviewed so many wonderful guests. It is their wisdom and insights that they have about the human condition that draws on my curiosity and wonder every time. Marcus Buckingham, Simon Sinek, Emma Seppala, Anne Chow and the many others that you have interviewed. They are such fantastic people. And then there is yourself. The work you do is, I think not a job but a calling or vocation. There is a creative science behind your work and it does have empirical evidence, however, just as important the work you do has a dimension that cannot be measured because it draws on what we and who we are or at least calls us to be more than we think we are. The great religious or spiritual traditions have prophetic voices, these community voices or mainly individual voices call to that divine spark within each of us, that spark is precious and it is a gift. That is your vocation.
Thank you, Whitney! And thank you for agreeing to speak at JA's Global Leadership Conference and being such a good friend to the organization. Your weekly email updates are quoted by JA staff more often than you might believe!
"We can’t thank you enough for such an incredible Leadership Masters session! Thanks again for crushing it for us this week. Participants are enthusiastic about their learning experience and sharing that enthusiasm with their managers.”
