The Speaker

Most events have a speaker. Not all of them have a moment.

There's a difference between someone who shows up with a deck and someone who shows up with a point of view — someone who can read a room, earn a laugh, and use that laugh to open a door the audience didn't know was there.

One leaves people with notes. The other leaves people thinking differently about themselves.

Will Thomas is a keynote speaker, standup comedian, and the creator of Sunday Setup — a weekly newsletter that turns strange real-world stories into sharp workplace insight. He brings that same approach to the stage: unexpected entry points, disarming humor, and ideas that stick because they arrived sideways.

His talk, Dirty Carats, is built around one of the most quietly powerful truths about resilience: you don't build it by preparing for hard things. You discover it by surviving them. Will uses two true stories — a woman who spent three weeks digging for her own engagement ring diamond in an Arkansas mine, and his own account of driving 1,200 miles a month to finish a college degree he'd nearly abandoned — to help audiences claim the proof of what they're already capable of. The message isn't prescriptive. It respects the audience enough to let them decide what changes.

He also speaks on career disruption. The Corpocalypse is a keynote and virtual workshop for audiences navigating layoffs, restructuring, and the quiet suspicion that the market has already made up its mind about them. It names what most talks skip — the identity loss, the algorithmic invisibility, the real structural forces at work — and gives people one concrete move they can make immediately. It's honest before it's motivational. And it lands.

If you want your attendees energized, challenged, and still talking about the session at dinner — Will Thomas is your guy.