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Zach Mercurio
Researcher & Leadership Development Facilitator
Zach Mercurio
Researcher & Leadership Development Facilitator
Biography
Zach Mercurio, Ph. D., is a researcher, leadership development facilitator, and speaker who specializes in purposeful leadership, mattering at work, meaningful work, and positive organizational psychology.
He’s the author of The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025) and The Invisible Leader: Transform Your Life, Work, and Organization with the Power of Authentic Purpose.
Zach advises leaders in organizations worldwide on practices for building cultures that promote well-being, motivation, and performance. Some of his clients include the U.S. Army, USA Wrestling, Delta Airlines, Marriott International, The Government of Canada, and The National Park Service. He also serves as one of author Simon Sinek’s “Optimist Instructors.”
Zach holds a Ph.D. in organizational learning, performance, and change from Colorado State University, where he serves as a senior fellow in the Center for Meaning and Purpose and as an Instructor in the Organizational Learning, Performance, and Change program. His research on meaningful work has been recognized by the Association for Talent Development, the Academy of Management, and the Academy of Human Resource Development.
Zach’s thinking on leadership and meaningful work has been featured in The Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Psychology Today, ABC News, The Denver Post, and Thrive Global.
He lives in Fort Collins, CO, with his wife, two sons, and two adopted dogs.
Speaker Videos
Leadership, Mattering, and Purpose Keynote Speaker | Zach Mercurio | Highlights
Speech Topics
The Power of Mattering: How to Create a Culture of Significance
What if you could incite motivation, improve well-being, and address the disengagement and disconnection crises in your next interaction? You can—by meeting people’s most fundamental need: to matter.
Based on the captivating science of mattering and hands-on work with hundreds of organizations, you’ll discover why the most effective leaders prioritize showing people their significance and learn the essential skills to ensure they feel truly seen, heard, valued, and needed.
In this interactive keynote experience that’s been featured by author Simon Sinek, included in The Harvard Business Review, and presented to clients such as the U.S. Army, you will learn:
- How feeling valued and adding value predicts sustainable motivation, well-being, and performance
- The art of optimizing daily interactions so that people feel truly seen, heard, valued, and needed
- How to master the art of meaningful check-ins, giving meaningful gratitude, illuminating potential, designing tasks that matter, and showing people how they’re indispensable to a bigger purpose
- How to maintain the belief that you matter
The Power & Practice of Purposeful Leadership: Lead with Purpose
Research finds that people who work with or for a Purposeful Leader are more resilient and higher-performing. Why? When people are connected to purpose, they are four times more likely to be engaged, are more motivated, learn faster and are more fulfilled.
Yet, while 79 percent of leaders rightly think that staying aligned with a central, human-centered reason for being (purpose) is critical to success, just 34 percent say that they enact purpose regularly when making decisions and in their everyday practices when working with their teams.
In this mind-shifting program that redefines leadership, I provide clarity about what purpose is, show how purpose scientifically works to compel people and organizations, and introduce the key research-backed practices of Purposeful Leadership to cultivate fulfilled and resilient lives, teams and organizations.
The Power and Practice of Purposeful Leadership program has been presented to thousands of people around the world including Fortune 500 executives, front-line workers, healthcare providers, education administrators, governments, entrepreneurs and students.
IN THIS KEYNOTE EXPERIENCE, YOU’LL LEARN…
- What purpose is and how it works
- How to develop a contribuition-first mindset and leadership approach
- How to discover and state your leadership purpose
- How to activate purpose and cultivate a culture where everyone sees how they matter
Activate Purpose in Work: How to Experience Everyday Fulfillment
Eighty-three percent of people in diverse occupations identify that finding meaning in work is a daily top priority, and more than 50 percent of people across numerous occupations and industries indicate they would take a lower paying job for more meaning.
At the same time, compelling research finds that people can actively craft their work as meaningful and connected to a bigger purpose – even in routine tasks.
In the Activate Purpose in Work session, I empower and compel people at the individual, team and leadership level to begin crafting all work as meaningful for themselves and others to feel more fulfilled, engaged and to increase performance.
Activate Purpose in Work is ideal for all-organization meetings and events and is applicable and empowering for any employee type from frontline worker to executive.
IN THIS PROGRAM, YOU’LL LEARN…
- The science and practice of building purpose into everyday work
- The research on the key factors to experiencing meaningfulness in work
- How to connect your job or function with the larger organizational purpose or mission
- How to discover your own purpose and connect it to the organization’s purpose
- Techniques to craft everyday work as meaningful for yourself and your team
- How to respond and handle difficult situations by connecting to purpose
Beyond Engagement: How to Design a Meaningful Employee Experience
Many initiatives to improve employee engagement fail because they tend to overlook the predictors of engagement – the strongest of which is the experience of meaningfulness. With employee engagement rates remaining strikingly low for nearly a decade, I provide a new way to think about engagement by focusing on cultivating a culture of meaning.
People experience meaningfulness when they (1) feel they are significant, (2) can see how their work fits into a bigger whole, (3) are able to fully utilize their strengths and skills, (4) develop meaningful relationships that add value to their whole lives, and (5) are able to participate in a fearless organizational culture.
In Design a Meaningful Employee Experience, I provide key research-backed strategies for intentionally designing and maintaining an employee experience that elicits a sense of meaningfulness to drive motivation and fulfillment, which can result in retention and low turnover.
The Design a Meaningful Employee Experience is ideal for both organizational and team leaders who are the architects of the core processes that impact the daily life of people in the workplace.
IN THIS PROGRAM, YOU’LL LEARN…
- The researched factors that predict the experience of meaningfulness in work
- How meaningfulness influences motivation, engagement and fulfillment
- How to create an environment of mattering
- How to design jobs and tasks to maximize fulfillment and motivation
- How to cultivate employees’ strengths
- How to develop a psychologically safe culture that fosters authentic relationships
- How to enact a holistic approach to employee development
College with Purpose
When students have a firm sense of their purpose, research finds they:
- Graduate faster
- Learn more
- Are more likely to reflect on and consider their impact on peers
Through keynotes and workshops for students in various capacities and roles, Zach takes students on an inspiring and exciting journey toward reflecting on, discovering and enacting their own personal purpose (their unique contribution) through their college experience.
Using his own inspiring (and sometimes funny and confusing) personal story of finding purpose after college, mind-shifting research on the benefits of purpose, and compelling stories of the power of living college life with purpose, he’ll show students how they can radically transform their academics, organizations, campus engagement, community service and campus communities by living and leading with purpose. Zach has been most requested for new student orientation, student leader training, leadership retreats, conferences and college orientations.