PUBLIC RELATIONS KEYNOTE SPEAKER AND TEAM FACILITATOR
You Keep Everyone Else’s Story Straight. Mark Helps You Prioritize Your Story.
Mark helps companies build healthy, confident, and connected PR, communication, and marketing teams.
Trusted by the most influential organizations in the world
“Mark Mohammadpour firmly subscribes to the time-proven Service Profit Chain: happy and healthy people = happy and healthy clients = happy and healthy businesses. Partnering with Mark is an asset for any company looking for a strategic employee well-being partner to reduce turnover and help meet their business objectives.”
— Kim Sample, PR Council
About Mark
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A former communication executive who led award-winning teams and strategy for global brands like Microsoft, Adobe, and Amazon, and who has naturally lost and kept off 150 pounds over 15 years, Mark Mohammadpour combines Fortune 50 leadership experience with certified health coaching expertise.
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Mark comes from inside the communication world; he spent years as an executive at Edelman and Weber Shandwick, leading award-winning campaigns for global brands.
He is a PRSA Fellow and APR, which means when he walks into a room of PR and comms professionals, he’s not an outsider explaining their world back to them. Instead, Mark’s a colleague who’s been in the same pressure-cooker environments, managed the same impossible client expectations, and lived through the same cycles of always-on culture that make this industry as challenging as it is rewarding.
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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: Reducing client and employee burnout.
The Result: Growing client relationships and budgets, and a reduction in team turnover.
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The Goal: Breaking down silos and leading with empathy during crises.
The Result: Improved cross-functional trust and a culture that attracts top talent.
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The Goal: Providing high-value, "sticky" leadership tools for your members.
The Result: Increased member loyalty and high-impact conference programming.
What We Address
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We address a profession that’s been undervalued and misunderstood for decades.
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Practitioners who are tired of being “the spin team” in the org chart.
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Young talent leaving the field before they’ve seen what it can be.
“We brought Mark back because his custom interactive workshops take to heart the specific challenges we want to tackle. He brings data to back up every single one of his key points and recommendations. He ensures his programs are respectful of the needs of the staff as well as adherence to our HR policies.”
— Weber Shandwick
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.
The 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
The four facilitation topics teams ask for most.
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.
“I brought Mark in to speak at a conference of CEOs and senior executives; one of the toughest, most discerning rooms you can put a speaker in front of. And he owned the conversation. He can stand in front of a room full of chief executives and challenge their thinking with total confidence, then make every leader in that room feel personally seen. Mark is not merely a speaker you hire; he's a partner you keep.”
— Elizabeth Edwards, Founder and President, Volume Public Relations
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 agencies reduce senior-level churn and burnout?
By stopping treating burnout as the cost of doing business. Mark helps agency owners set real boundaries around after-hours client requests and the channel fatigue that comes from living in four inboxes. Protecting senior people's energy steadies client relationships, because clients notice when the team keeps changing.
Why is empathy a strategic tool for communications leaders?
Because it is how you find out what is actually happening before it becomes a problem. Leaders who understand what other teams are carrying break down silos and keep everyone aligned during a crisis, which is exactly when silos cost the most. It is a reputation-management skill, not a soft one.
How do you make this stick for teams that live crisis to crisis?
By making it part of how the team already works rather than something extra. Through the Three-Point Impact, teams write their own rules of engagement for how they communicate under pressure. That survives past the week everyone forgets the keynote, because it is the thing they reach for during the next launch.
What is the link between workplace culture and creativity in marketing teams?
Creative work suffers when people are running on empty. Teams under constant stress produce safer, more predictable work, because the mental room good ideas need has been spent somewhere else. A team that feels safe enough to pitch the risky idea produces better work and gets to it faster.
Do you work with agencies as well as in-house communications teams?
Yes, and the problems differ. Agencies are usually dealing with churn and always-on client demands. In-house teams are usually dealing with being the last to know and the first blamed. Mark has led both, at Weber Shandwick and Edelman, and builds the session for whichever room he is in.
How much does a PR or communications 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.