Newark keynote speaker for healthcare, corporate, and association events.
Chris Sund is a keynote speaker, Maxwell Leadership Certified Coach, and sitting executive who leads national healthcare staffing organizations. He speaks on workforce motivation, leadership, retention, and human potential for New Jersey associations, health systems, headquarters employers, universities, and organizations across Essex County.
Response within one business day.
Being located in a community is not the same as hiring from it.
Newark holds an extraordinary concentration of major institutions, and the gap between where those jobs sit and who gets them is a hiring question rather than a talent question.
Prudential has been headquartered here since 1875. PSEG runs the state’s utility from downtown. Panasonic bases its North American headquarters near Penn Station, Audible builds product in the city as part of Amazon and has become one of Newark’s fastest growing private employers, and Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield is based here as well. Rutgers Newark and NJIT anchor the university district, University Hospital and RWJBarnabas serve the city clinically, Newark Public Schools is among the largest districts in the state, and the Port of New York and New Jersey moves more containers than any port on the East Coast.
Those are excellent jobs, sitting blocks from neighborhoods whose residents have historically not held many of them. That is worth being precise about, because the usual explanation, that the local pipeline is not ready, is mostly a story employers tell themselves.
The more common mechanism is quieter. A four-year degree requirement gets attached to a role that has never actually needed one, often because it was copied from an old posting. That single line removes a large share of local applicants before any human reads a word about what they can do. The requirement is not measuring capability. It is measuring who had the opportunity to accumulate a credential, which is a different thing entirely.
So the work is unglamorous and specific. Audit what a job genuinely requires against what the posting demands. Hire for demonstrated capability and let people prove it. Build actual on-ramps, apprenticeships and internal advancement, rather than waiting for finished candidates to arrive. And treat a promising internal person as a pipeline rather than an exception.
This is the practical version of the argument Chris makes everywhere, which is that people are routinely capable of far more than the systems around them assume. In a city like this, the systems doing the assuming are hiring filters.
Chris runs national healthcare staffing organizations and has keynoted state association conferences in eleven states, including LeadingAge Illinois and health care associations in Iowa, Montana, South Dakota, and Colorado.
Operator, Not Consultant
President and COO of national healthcare staffing organizations, setting hiring requirements himself.
Hiring and Human Potential
Material on the difference between what a job requires and what a posting demands.
Corporate, Clinical, and Campus Rooms
Works for a headquarters all-hands, a hospital leadership day, or a university and association meeting.
Groups Chris speaks for.
Newark concentrates corporate headquarters, health systems, universities, and the region’s port and airport operations.
- Prudential Financial and PGIM, headquartered in Newark since 1875, for corporate all-hands and leadership summits
- University Hospital and RWJBarnabas Health facilities including Newark Beth Israel, for nurse leadership and all-staff events
- PSEG, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Panasonic North America, headquartered in the city
- Audible and IDT, among Newark’s growing technology employers
- Rutgers University Newark and NJIT, for campus and staff programming
- Newark Public Schools, the City of Newark, and Essex County, among the largest public employers in the state
- Port, airport, and NJ Transit operations, along with New Jersey statewide associations meeting in Newark
Newark employers screening out capable people.
Healthcare is where Chris operates, and it attaches credentials to roles more than almost any industry.
Corporate Headquarters
Employers with excellent jobs and postings written for a candidate pool they say they cannot find.
Healthcare
Systems with real credential requirements for clinical roles and copied ones for many others.
Port, Airport, and Logistics
Operations that can develop people internally faster than they can recruit them.
Higher Education and Public Sector
Institutions whose classification rules quietly define who is eligible to rise.
Newark and Essex County venues.
- The New Jersey Performing Arts Center and downtown hotel facilities for statewide association meetings
- Corporate headquarters downtown for all-hands and leadership summits
- University Hospital and RWJBarnabas campuses for nurse leadership and all-staff days
- Rutgers Newark and NJIT for campus and staff programming
- Port, airport, and transit facilities for operations and shift-based sessions
- Jersey City, Elizabeth, East Orange, and communities across northern New Jersey
Newark events Chris speaks at.
Hospital and Health System Events
Leadership days, nurse recognition events, and all-staff meetings.
Recruiting and Talent Acquisition
Sessions on requirements that filter out capability before anyone reads an application.
Human Potential and Development
Sessions built on the idea that people exceed what the systems around them assume.
Corporate and Headquarters All-Hands
Company meetings, kickoffs, and leadership summits across the region’s employers.
Association Conferences
Statewide association annual meetings and general sessions, the format Chris works in most often.
Emerging and New Leaders
Development for people advancing internally without a conventional background.
Keynote topics for your Newark event.
Every session is customized for the audience, the format, and what you are actually trying to change.
See what conference organizers and HR leaders have said after booking Chris.
Booking a keynote speaker in Newark
Has Chris spoken to corporate and health system audiences?
Does Chris travel to Newark?
Some of our roles genuinely require credentials. Does this ignore that?
Is this a diversity keynote?
Can the session reach multiple sites and shifts?
What does a Newark keynote cost?
Can Chris speak virtually to a New Jersey audience?
Keynote speaking across the New York metro.
Each city page covers the local employers, the venues Chris speaks in, and the specific workforce pressure leaders there are working on.
Bring Chris to your Newark event.
Send your date, location, and audience. You will get availability and a quote back within one business day.
info@chrissund.com · 402-212-5771 · New Jersey speaking · All locations
You Are Capable of More.
Leadership, culture, and peak-performance insights from Chris — only when there’s something genuinely worth sending. No fluff, unsubscribe anytime.