MARK MOHAMMADPOUR, HR INTERACTIVE KEYNOTE SPEAKER AND TEAM FACILITATOR
You Build The Culture For Everyone Else. Mark Helps You Build It For HR.
Mark helps People leaders say the things that keep their own teams from burning out while they hold everyone else together.
Trusted by global HR leaders:
“What truly set Mark apart was his ability to translate my broad and big ideas into meaningful action. Mark was an absolute pleasure to work with: professional, responsive, and genuinely invested in our success.”
— Mindi Greenland, CUDE, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, Georgia United 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 HR directors, CPOs, and SHRM members who are often the most overextended people in the organization, the ones expected to be the architects of culture while simultaneously managing the fallout when culture breaks down.
He understands the specific challenges HR leaders face: making the ROI case for people-first investment to a skeptical CFO, building culture in organizations that don’t always make it easy, and caring for a workforce while running on empty themselves. His sessions give HR teams the frameworks, language, and business-case data they need to lead with confidence — and lead their teams with sustainability.
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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 belief: healthy employees are your greatest competitive advantage.
Who We Help
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The Goal: Preventing “Caregiver Burnout” within the HR department.
The Result: A resilient HR team that leads by example, reducing company-wide turnover.
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The Goal: Protecting the Employee Value Proposition and ensuring executive alignment.
The Result: Lower recruitment costs and a high-performance culture that attracts top talent.
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The Goal: Delivering valuable professional development.
The Result: Increased member loyalty and high-impact conference programming.
What We Address
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HR leaders whose job is to care for everyone else, with no one caring for them.
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Chapter conferences that struggle to feel fresh year over year.
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HR is a profession that deserves to be spoken to with specificity, not generic leadership fluff.
“He thoughtfully wove in the theme of our gathering along with our core values, tying everything together in a way that truly resonated with our team. His keynote was both motivational and relevant, delivered with energy and authenticity that kept everyone fully engaged.”
— Sue Schubert, Director of Human Resources, Oregon Catholic Press
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
Lead a Healthy Culture of Well-being
Makes well-being how your team works, not a perk you offer.
You can't build what you aren't living. The People team has to be the first culture that is healthy, for the rest of the organization to follow. Your People leaders examine their own everyday habits, how they run meetings, onboard, and give feedback inside HR, 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:
- Model the culture they are asking the rest of the enterprise to adopt
- See how small leadership choices build or drain a team
- Run meetings, onboarding, and feedback so they build energy
Pairs with The Team Culture OS workshop: Your People team walks through its own meetings, onboarding, and feedback habits, decides which one to change first, and agrees on how they will talk about workload from then on. The culture work starts where you sit.
The Buoyant Leader
Turns pressure into the thing your steadiest leaders are known for.
HR leaders are the organization's emotional infrastructure, often managing layoffs and crises at the same time. Under that load most push harder. The most effective ones have stopped trying to carry it all alone, and their team feels it. Your People 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 through a restructure week
- Read stress as a signal and use it to make a sharper call
- Use calm as their most powerful tool for credibility
Pairs with Leading with Clarity and Calm: Live scenarios and group coaching for your People leaders, so the frameworks get practiced before the next round of change rather than heard once and filed.
Lead With Empathy
Turns empathy into a performance skill leaders can use under pressure.
HR leaders are the architects of an empathetic culture. Practicing that empathy with the business leaders they support is where relationships either deepen or stall. Your People leaders practice it live, in the moments where it is hardest: the skeptical CFO, the manager who will not engage, the colleague on their own team who has stopped speaking up.
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:
- Understand the pressure business leaders carry, and be trusted more for it
- Build the influence that gets HR heard at the executive table
- Apply specific moves in the very next difficult conversation
Pairs with The Empathy in Action workshop: Paired conversations and real scenarios from your own business partnerships, where HR business partners practice hearing the thing underneath what was said.
REWORK: The Future-Ready Leader
Rebuilds the leadership playbook for a modern workplace.
HR builds well-being programs for everyone else, then goes home completely spent. Leading from depletion is the most common barrier to the culture change your team is trying to drive. Your People leaders rebuild their approach around capacity instead of constant output, then test the new moves together before taking them back to the function.
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 constant output
- Stop leading from depletion, which is what stalls the culture work
- 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 function, and leave with a 30-day plan they run together.
Work in Sunlight
Reconnects your people to the work and to each other.
You chose this work because you believed in healthy organizations. Policy enforcement and headcount reductions can make that belief go quiet. We name where belonging is slipping inside the People team itself 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
- Build belonging inside the People team first, so the enterprise work lands as authentic
- 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 stretch between all-hands.
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.
“If your company is experiencing a challenge with turnover, managing a hybrid culture, or employee engagement, or is just ready to commit to an organizational well-being strategy, talk to Mark. He’s been in your employees’ shoes and can help your organization or agency chart a better path forward.”
— Rebecca Martin, Chief People & Impact Officer, Beehive Strategic Communication
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 HR leaders re-engage people who have checked out but not quit?
By going past perks to the things people actually name: whether their work matters, and whether it is safe to say what they think. Mark helps HR teams build a communication charter that sets clear boundaries. When people have some agency and know where the team is headed, engagement comes back.
What is the best way for HR to support managers through a period of change?
Give managers something to use, not another training deck. In the follow-up workshop, managers write their own team's rules of engagement instead of being handed someone else's. That creates clarity fast, cuts the friction that burns managers out, and rebuilds trust between leadership and the frontline.
How can HR prevent burnout inside the HR team itself?
HR absorbs everyone else's hardest conversations and rarely gets a turn. Mark helps HR teams lead by first understanding what their own people are carrying, so the department stops running on empty. Applying the Three-Point Impact to the People team sets boundaries that hold.
Can Mark present to the HR team and then work with the managers they support?
Yes, and it is the most common way HR brings him in. A keynote to the wider organization opens the conversation, then a facilitated session with the manager population turns it into agreements those managers actually wrote. HR gets to sponsor the work instead of enforcing it.
How much does an HR keynote or workshop 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.
