MARK MOHAMMADPOUR, FINANCIAL SERVICES KEYNOTE SPEAKER AND TEAM FACILITATOR
Lead Healthy, Confident, and Connected Financial Services Teams.
Mark works with credit unions, banks, and financial associations on relatable, practical, and actionable approaches to ensuring teams are there for their members and customers.
Trusted by banks, credit unions, and industry professional associations.
“When you put a speaker in front of a room of credit union CEOs of all sizes, you're facing a crowd of busy leaders who have heard it all and guard their time fiercely. Mark understood this and genuinely connected with the audience. Mark didn't deliver theory, but rather practical tools our leaders could put to work the next day. If you want your CEOs and executives to leave energized and equipped to lead healthier, confident, and connected teams, Mark would be a fantastic choice.”
— Scott Prior, President/CEO, Connection Credit Union
About Mark
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A former communications executive who led teams and strategy for global brands like Adobe, Microsoft, and Samsung, Mark lost 150 pounds and has kept it off for more than a decade. Mark combines Fortune 50 leadership experience with certified health coaching expertise.
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Mark has worked with banks, credit unions, and financial services associations and understands the industry's constant pressures. His sessions are built around concrete frameworks that financial services leaders can integrate into the real cadence of their work: during team huddles, in one-on-ones, and across organizational transitions.
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His Keynote Conversations blend full attendee engagement, actionable insights, and current research. Today, his most requested topics, Leading with Empathy, The Buoyant Leader, and Lead a Culture of Well-being, are built around one conviction: healthy employees are your greatest competitive advantage.
Who We Help
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The Goal: Delivering “High-Touch" service in a digital-first world.
The Result: Lower turnover in high-value roles and better Net Promoter Scores.
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The Goal: Preserving the “Member-First” mission through staff members prioritizing their well-being.
The Result: Stronger community trust and a culture that attracts top talent.
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The Goal: Delivering future-proof leadership tools for the industry.
The Result: Increased member engagement and high-impact “Main Stage” and “Post-Stage” programming.
What We Address
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Advisors and leaders whose “always on” culture is quietly sabotaging their results.
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A member- or client-facing team that can’t deliver empathy they don’t have for themselves.
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Senior leaders who think well-being is a perk, not a performance lever.
“Mark delivered an outstanding and impactful presentation that helped our team reframe financial well-being as an essential act of self-care. What truly set him apart was his ability to translate my broad and big ideas into meaningful action. As a credit union team, his message didn't just support our employees' personal financial health; it also helped us think differently about how we communicate and connect with our members.”
— Mindi Greenland, SVP of Government Affairs & Member Impact, Georgia United Credit Union
How to work with Mark:
Keynote Conversation
Start here. An interactive session built around your people and your industry. 45 to 90 minutes, steeped in data, insights, humor, and engagement. Your audience walks out with something they can use the same day.
Team Facilitation & Offsites
Go deeper. Mark sits with your team and names what's been going unsaid. No personality colors. No letter types. No trust falls. Half-day, full-day, or multi-day. You leave with a written plan: decisions, owners, dates.
Three-Point Impact™
Make it stick. Mark’s signature program. Includes one keynote, a facilitated team session, and follow-up coaching on priority topics. This is a long-term investment that builds healthy, confident, and connected teams.
Keynote Conversation topics
Mark's Leadership Keynote Conversations
The Buoyant Leader
Turns pressure into the thing your steadiest leaders are known for.
Financial leaders carry their clients' futures and their team's performance at the same time. Under that pressure most leaders push harder. The ones with the most credibility do the opposite, and their team feels it. Your leaders work through a real high-pressure moment together and practice staying clear enough to make the right call.
Why now: 77% of workers reported work-related stress in the past month, and 57% reported effects tied to burnout. (American Psychological Association)
Your leaders walk out able to:
- Stay steady with a routine that holds up on a bad market day
- Read stress as a signal and use it to make a sharper call
- Use calm as an advantage, so their team can feel it and follow
Pairs with Leading with Clarity and Calm: Live scenarios and group coaching for your managers and directors, so the frameworks get practiced before the next volatile stretch rather than heard once and filed.
Lead With Empathy
Turns empathy into a performance skill leaders can use under pressure.
Empathy with members and customers is table stakes. The real advantage is built inside the team, between leaders and advisors. Your leaders practice it live, in the moments where it is hardest: the underperformer, the frustrated client, the colleague who has stopped speaking up in the huddle. They leave with moves they can use in the next conversation, not a definition.
Why now: Employees with highly empathic senior leaders report being innovative 61% of the time, compared with 13% under less empathic leaders, and 76% report being engaged, versus 32%. (Catalyst)
Your leaders walk out able to:
- Use perspective-taking to connect across rank, role, and product line
- Build the internal trust that every external client relationship rests on
- Apply specific moves in the very next difficult conversation
Pairs with The Empathy in Action workshop: Paired conversations and real workplace scenarios, where leaders practice hearing the thing underneath what was said.
Lead a Healthy Culture of Well-being
Makes well-being how your team works, not a perk you offer.
The institutions winning on loyalty don't have the best rates. They have the healthiest internal cultures, because in this industry trust travels from the inside out. Your leaders examine their everyday habits, from how a huddle runs to how a performance check-in lands, and decide together, in the room, which one to change first.
Why now: 52% of employees say their employer doesn't support their well-being in meaningful ways, and 69% of executives admit they have no way to measure it. (Deloitte)
Your leaders walk out able to:
- Treat well-being as a balance sheet issue, not an HR line item
- See how small leadership choices build or drain a team
- Run huddles, onboarding, and check-ins so they build energy
Pairs with The Team Culture OS workshop: Your leadership team walks through its own huddles, onboarding, and performance check-ins, decides which one to change first, and agrees on how they will talk about energy and workload from then on.
REWORK: The Future-Ready Leader
Rebuilds the leadership playbook for a modern workplace.
Financial leaders are squeezed between fintech disruption, regulatory weight, and clients who shop on rate. The leadership habits of the last decade are working against the people using them. Your leaders rebuild their approach around energy and clarity, then test the new moves together before taking them back to their teams.
Why now: Global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, the second straight annual decline and the lowest level since 2020. Manager engagement has dropped nine points since 2022. (Gallup)
Your leaders walk out able to:
- Lead around capacity, not control
- Protect the team's energy as the way to protect the book of business
- Build the motivation a team creates together instead of waiting for it
Pairs with The REWORK Sprint workshop: Leaders map where their energy actually goes, pair up with someone outside their own branch or department, and leave with a 30-day plan they run together.
Work in Sunlight
Reconnects your people to the work and to each other.
Most people choose this work to help families build futures. Somewhere between compliance cycles and production pressure that can fade, and it costs institutions their best people one quiet exit at a time. We name where belonging is slipping and build the habits that rebuild it, right there in the room.
Why now: Employees with a strong sense of belonging show 56% higher job performance and 50% lower turnover risk. (BetterUp)
Your leaders walk out able to:
- Measure performance by energy, clarity, and connection
- Value advisors as people, not just producers
- Run a shared, team-built plan for staying connected
Pairs with The Sunlight workshop: Small daily habits, regular peer check-ins, and a connection map the team builds together, so belonging survives the quarters between all-staff meetings.
The four facilitation topics teams ask for most.
Offsite themes
For teams seeking clarity and purpose
Gets everyone pointed at the same thing, in writing, before anyone leaves the room.
When you're merging departments, onboarding new leadership, or pivoting strategy, an offsite is the fastest way to align the compass. Mark designs the session to cut through the confusion instead of talking around it.
Why now: Across 124 organizations, only 28% of the executives and middle managers responsible for executing strategy could name three of their company's strategic priorities. (MIT Sloan Management Review)
- Before: A short team pulse and a conversation with you about what success looks like in the first 90 days.
- The offsite: Working sessions on mission, vision, and values that end in a written Team Charter.
- After: A 30/60/90-day plan and a follow-up guide, so clarity turns into consistency.
What the team walks away with:
- A shared purpose everyone can say out loud.
- Clear norms for how decisions get made and communicated.
- A foundation for a culture of well-being and accountability.
Pairs with the Lead a Healthy Culture of Well-being keynote and The Team Culture OS workshop. The keynote makes the case that culture is built through everyday decisions rather than programs. The offsite writes your team's version down. The workshop keeps it running after you leave the room.
For teams building confidence
Builds the nerve to say the thing in the room where it gets decided.
Your people are good at the work. They're less sure of themselves in the room where it gets decided. This offsite builds the confidence to speak up, be heard, and be trusted, under pressure and in front of leadership.
Why now: 61% of employees say they regularly watch colleagues stay silent rather than share a differing opinion, and 45% name psychological safety and trust as their single biggest concern at work. (Radical Candor, 2026 workplace report)
- Before: Each person picks a real upcoming conversation they're nervous about: a board update, a budget ask, a hard piece of feedback.
- The offsite: Hands-on work on influence, storytelling, and presence, ending with a live practice round in front of the group.
- After: A 90-day follow-through plan with checkpoints, so the confidence sticks.
What the team walks away with:
- Practical tools for influencing at the executive level.
- More clarity and more calm when the stakes are high.
- A team that speaks up before the hallway conversation.
Pairs with the The Buoyant Leader keynote and Leading with Clarity and Calm workshop. Confidence rests on calm. The keynote gives the room the idea and the language for it. The offsite gives them the reps, in front of people whose opinion they care about.
For executive teams and boards
Gets the hard decision made instead of postponed again.
High-stakes environments require high-stakes conversations. Mark provides the neutral structure that keeps dominant personalities from hijacking the agenda, so the hard decisions actually get made.
Why now: In a survey of more than 1,200 managers, 61% said at least half the time they spend making decisions is wasted. The strongest predictor of fast, high-quality decisions was the presence of real debate. (McKinsey & Company)
- Before: An anonymous team survey to surface where communication is strong and where it's stuck.
- The offsite: Structured work on the real disagreements, ending in a written operating agreement for how this team decides.
- After: A leadership health check at 30 and 60 days to track whether it's holding.
What the team walks away with:
- Faster decisions, because the real disagreement finally gets said out loud.
- Shared expectations and healthy boundaries.
- Stronger trust, transparency, and performance.
Pairs with the Lead With Empathy keynote and The Empathy in Action Lab workshop. Hard decisions need people who can hear the thing underneath what was said, especially when they disagree. That is the exact skill the keynote introduces and the lab drills.
For teams rebuilding after a hard year
Repairs the trust the last year quietly cost you.
A reorg. A round of layoffs. A leader who left. High turnover that never quite stopped. When a team has been through it, the work keeps going, but the trust doesn't. This offsite is about the health in healthy teams are wealthy teams: psychological safety, well-being, and repairing what got fractured.
Why now: Across 146 companies that conducted layoffs, employee confidence in the organization fell nearly 17 points, and engagement took 12 to 24 months to return to where it had been. (Harvard Business Review)
- Before: An anonymous pulse on how people are actually doing, plus a private conversation with you about what's been hardest.
- The offsite: Honest conversation about what the team has been carrying, guided so it stays safe and productive, ending in agreements on workload, boundaries, and how this team looks after each other.
- After: A well-being check-in at 30 and 60 days, so the agreements hold instead of fading.
What the team walks away with:
- Permission to say what's been hard, and a team that can hear it.
- Shared boundaries around workload and availability.
- A team that trusts each other again, and a leader they trust to keep it that way.
Pairs with the Work in Sunlight keynote and The Sunlight Series workshop. The keynote reconnects people to the work and to each other in a way that feels safe because everyone is in it together. The offsite repairs what got fractured. The series keeps belonging alive through the months that follow.
Any theme below can run as a half-day, full-day, or multi-day offsite. Mark builds the agenda around what your team actually needs.
“Mark’s programming is doable: small steps, carefully choreographed, make it easy for clients to integrate his teaching into their structure.”
— Sara Jackson, Director, Internal Communications, Park National Bank
Contact Mark about your event.
Email Mark at mark@chasingthesunpdx.com, call him at 360.609.1077, or fill out the form below.
Mark will respond to you within one business day.
Frequently asked questions:
How can banks and credit unions reduce operational risk through workplace culture?
An exhausted culture is an operational risk. Mark helps banks and credit unions build leadership habits that lower burnout-related errors, improve compliance, and hold onto mid-level managers. Replacing a branch manager costs far more than keeping one, and turnover at that level is where most of the risk lives.
What is the impact of employee burnout on compliance and reporting?
When teams are short-staffed or worn down, shortcuts and reporting errors go up. The Three-Point Impact addresses this by making sure leaders have the room and the support to hold standards steady, including during the quarters when everything is moving at once.
How can banks keep client relationships strong as more of the work goes digital?
As routine banking moves to an app, the conversations that remain are the harder ones. Mark trains financial teams for those moments, so staff can handle a complex or emotional conversation with confidence. That matters most in a market where every bank offers much the same products.
Do you facilitate leadership offsites for banks and credit unions?
Yes. Alongside keynotes, Mark facilitates leadership offsites and board sessions for banks, credit unions, and insurance carriers. The work often centers on communication between branches and headquarters, or aligning a leadership team after a merger or a change at the top.
How much does a financial services keynote cost?
The fee depends on the format, the length of the session, travel, and whether you add a follow-up workshop or coaching. Email mark@chasingthesunpdx.com with your date, location, and audience size, and you will have a number back within one business day.
