Salt Lake City keynote speaker for healthcare, association, and corporate 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 Utah associations, health systems, state agencies, universities, and employers across the Wasatch Front.
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You are not losing people to your competitors. You are losing them to a different industry entirely.
Most cities in this country have a shrinking or flat labor pool, and their employers fight each other over it. Salt Lake has the opposite problem, and it is the more interesting one.
Utah’s population growth is among the highest in the nation, and the Wasatch Front keeps adding employers. Silicon Slopes now runs down the I-15 corridor from Salt Lake through Lehi, American Fork, and Provo with more than five thousand technology companies and the highest concentration of tech jobs per capita anywhere outside California. Adobe, Qualtrics, Ancestry, Domo, and Goldman Sachs all run significant operations here.
So when a strong operations lead leaves a Salt Lake hospital, a state agency, or a university department, they frequently are not going to another hospital, agency, or university. They are going to a software company thirty minutes down the freeway that pays more, offers equity, and told them their skills transfer. Project management transfers. Analytics transfers. People leadership transfers. Customer-facing work transfers. The tech corridor is not competing with your peers for your people, it is recruiting straight out of your talent pool for capabilities you spent years developing.
That reframes what retention has to accomplish here. You cannot beat the offer, and pretending otherwise wastes everyone’s time. What you can do is be honest about the thing the other offer cannot match, which is whether the work means something. Intermountain Health, headquartered here with a workforce above sixty thousand across the region, and the University of Utah, employing something around thirty thousand including the health system, are full of people who chose this work for a reason. Most of them have not been reminded of that reason in a long time, and reminding them is not a slogan exercise. It is the only durable advantage a mission-driven employer has against a compensation-driven one.
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, still making the hiring and retention calls he speaks about.
Mission Against Money
Core material is about why people stay in demanding work when easier and better paying options exist, which is the Wasatch Front question.
Large-Room Formats
Comfortable in convention general sessions as well as a hospital all-staff day or a corporate kickoff.
Groups Chris speaks for.
Salt Lake City is Utah’s capital, its healthcare headquarters, and a major convention destination, which puts an unusually wide mix of audiences in one metro.
- Intermountain Health, headquartered in Salt Lake City with more than sixty thousand employees, 33 hospitals and hundreds of clinics across the Intermountain West, and the state’s largest employer
- University of Utah and University of Utah Health, the state’s second largest employer with roughly thirty thousand people between the academic institution and the health system
- State of Utah agencies and departments, concentrated in the capital, for in-service and leadership development days
- Utah statewide associations in hospital, long-term care, municipal, and education sectors, which hold annual meetings and advocacy days in Salt Lake
- Silicon Slopes employers including Adobe, Qualtrics, Ancestry, Domo, and Goldman Sachs Utah, for corporate all-hands, kickoffs, and leadership summits
- Salt Lake City School District, Salt Lake Community College, and Wasatch Front districts
- National and regional conferences using the Salt Palace and the city’s convention infrastructure
Salt Lake employers competing on the same ground.
Healthcare is where Chris operates, but the pull of the tech corridor reaches every mission-driven employer on the Wasatch Front.
State and Local Government
Agencies on fixed pay scales watching capable mid-career people take private sector offers they cannot match.
Higher Education
Universities and colleges where administrative and technical staff are directly recruitable by Silicon Slopes firms.
Technology and Finance
The corridor itself, where rapid growth creates its own retention problem as people move between companies every eighteen months.
Construction and Trades
Structurally strong given Utah’s growth, with skilled crews that are the constraint on how fast anything gets built.
Salt Lake City and Wasatch Front venues.
- The Salt Palace Convention Center and downtown hotel space for national and statewide association meetings
- The Utah State Capitol and surrounding state office buildings for agency in-service and leadership sessions
- Intermountain and University of Utah Health campuses for staff, nurse leadership, and all-staff days
- University of Utah and Salt Lake Community College for campus and staff programming
- Lehi, American Fork, Draper, and the I-15 corridor for corporate events
- Park City and the resort venues used for executive retreats and leadership summits
Salt Lake City events Chris speaks at.
Hospital and Health System Events
Leadership days, nurse recognition events, and all-staff meetings across the region’s largest systems.
Association Conferences
National and statewide association annual meetings and general sessions, the format Chris works in most often.
Corporate and Sales Kickoffs
All-hands gatherings, sales kickoffs, and leadership summits for Wasatch Front employers.
Nurse Leadership
Charge nurse and nurse manager development for the layer that decides whether clinical staff stay.
Long-Term and Senior Care
Skilled nursing, assisted living, and continuing care conferences and in-service days.
HR and SHRM Chapter Events
Human resources conferences and chapter meetings on retaining talent against cross-industry recruiting.
Keynote topics for your Salt Lake City 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 Salt Lake City
Has Chris spoken in Utah before?
Does Chris travel to Salt Lake City?
We keep losing good people to tech companies. Can a keynote do anything about that?
Can Chris speak to a large convention general session?
Can the session work for a corporate audience rather than a healthcare one?
What does a Salt Lake City keynote cost?
Can Chris speak virtually to a Utah audience?
Bring Chris to your Salt Lake City 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 · Utah speaking · All locations