ERICA ISHIDA
KEYNOTE SPEAKER | EXECUTIVE COACH | CEO, YELLOW CEDAR GROUP
As machines grow more intelligent, leaders must grow more wise.
Erica speaks to executives and senior leaders about what leadership is for now that intelligence is no longer scarce.
Not another keynote about AI technology
Erica's talks are content-rich, built around interactive moments, and designed so that leaders leave with something they can use the next morning. Every one is grounded in highly-researched bodies of work and twenty-five years of leading and developing leaders through transformation.
What participants leave with
Shared language for talking about change and leadership inside the organization
Real-time awareness of their own energy, focus, and response, as it happens rather than in retrospect
The research behind it, so the ideas hold up in a board room
SIGNATURE KEYNOTES
Leading with Wisdom
Human-centered leadership in the age of AI
FOR:
CEOs, executives, and founders leading transformation. Best for senior audiences and leadership teams.
Artificial intelligence has given the world limitless intelligence. For the first time in the history of management, being the person with the best answer is not an advantage. What AI cannot give is wisdom: the capacity to hold a question that has no answer yet, to make meaning, to cultivate trust, and to bear the weight of a choice.
This keynote shows senior leaders what leading from wisdom requires: a shift in the energy they bring, the mindset they operate from, and the behaviors their teams can see. Each layer makes the next one possible. Behavior change without the foundation underneath is performance, and performance does not survive pressure.
Outcome: Leaders leave with a clear picture of what the human leader is for now, a way to notice which mindset is running their decisions in real time, and one specific shift in their own leadership to work visibly over the next ninety days.
The Power of Choice
Leading change in the age of AI
FOR:
Leaders at every level guiding people through continuous change. Works for a full organization, a leadership team, or a partner retreat.
Every leader is in the middle of a change. Most are in the middle of several, and most are still carrying a story about change that was never true: that it is a project, with a beginning and an end, something to brace for and wait out.
This keynote makes one argument: when more is outside our control than ever, our real power lives in three choices that are always ours. Where we put our energy. What we choose to focus on. Whether we respond or react. Emotions are contagious, and sustained fear shuts down the very capacities change depends on. A leader's emotional choice is not a soft skill. It is the change strategy.
Grounded in the science of emotional contagion, the neuroscience of threat and safety, and Richard Boyatzis's Intentional Change Theory.
Outcome: Leaders leave knowing exactly where their power lives during change, with real-time awareness of their own energy and response, the science to explain why their state shapes what their team can do, and three choices to make in the week ahead.
MORE TOPICS
Survivor vs. Creator
The two mindsets every leader moves between, how survival mode quietly runs the show in high-achievers, and what becomes possible when you choose creation instead.
The Potential Era
The eras of work, how leaders need to adapt, and what the new conditions of leadership ask of us.
Healthy by Design
What a healthy organization looks like when it is designed for the AI era from the point of conception, not repaired later. For founders, investors, and leaders launching new ventures.
ABOUT ERICA
Erica Ishida works alongside senior leaders in the middle of consequential change, as coach, counsel, and strategic thought partner to executives in professional services, financial services, and high-growth companies.
She has held the seats she now advises: Chief of Staff, COO, President, and CEO, across multiple industries and every stage of company. She has made the decisions her audiences are making, with the same incomplete information and the same consequences attached.
Erica is founder and CEO of Yellow Cedar Group and the creator of two bodies of work, The Power of Choice and Leading from Wisdom, used with Fortune 500 executives, professional services firms, and leadership programs. She has spent twenty-five years developing leaders through transformation.
She holds a Master of Science in Positive Organization Development and Change from Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management, where she serves as part-time faculty, and is a certified executive coach.
BOOK ERICA
Bring Erica to your event, offsite, or leadership team meeting
Erica is available to speak at your upcoming event.
Contact for rates and more information.
