Keynote Speakers
Inspiring Leadership &
Game-Changing Perspectives:
Meet Our 2025 Keynote Speakers!
Our dynamic keynote speakers will share their unique stories in the context of the 2025 LCI Congress theme, Building Champions: Constructing the Game Plan for Lean Success. Learn more about their exceptional backgrounds and join us at Congress to learn from their hard-earned insights!
Jesse Itzler
Author of Living With a SEAL, Co-Founder of Marquis Jet, and Owner of the Atlanta Hawks
A successful serial entrepreneur, Jesse Itzler’s mission is to continually raise the bar and build his LIFE RESUME. With a passion for endurance challenges, he completed Ultraman in 2022 at the age of 53—an event that includes a 6.2-mile open water swim, a 261.4-mile bike ride, and a 52.4-mile run—the same year he sold his endurance hiking company, 29029 Everesting, to iFit. These achievements are nothing new for Jesse, who has also completed a 100-mile ultramarathon, sold Marquis Jet to Warren Buffett in 2010, and partnered with Zico Coconut Water, which was sold to Coca-Cola in 2013.
Jesse’s career path is as unconventional as it is inspiring. He began as a rapper on MTV in 1991, managed the legendary hip-hop group Run-DMC, and even wrote the anthem for the New York Knicks. He often says, “You don’t have to be the smartest in the room, but you have to be the most passionate.” Jesse shares his principles and best practices through his online course and coaching program, where thousands have embraced his lifestyle approach and applied it to their own lives.
When he’s not training with Navy SEALs (check out his book, Living with a SEAL) or learning from monks (Living with the Monks), you can find him plunging into cold water and sweating it out in saunas as part of his latest venture, All Day Running Co. This innovative brand combines race-like endurance challenges—such as half-marathons and marathons—with retreat-like experiences featuring cold and heat exposure.
At the end of the day, Jesse’s proudest accomplishment is his family. With three sons and a daughter, he and his wife, Sara Blakely (founder of SPANX), definitely have their hands full!
Chris Voss
Former Lead International Kidnapping Negotiator for the FBI and CEO of The Black Swan Group
Former FBI hostage negotiator and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Chris Voss shares a methodology that can be applied anywhere in the world—a strategy to build stronger relationships in less time and empower audiences to negotiate deals they once thought impossible.
Chris served as the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator and hostage negotiation representative for the National Security Council’s Hostage Working Group. He also represented the U.S. at two G-8-sponsored conferences as a kidnapping expert. Previously, Chris was the lead crisis negotiator for the FBI’s New York City Division and a 14-year member of the New York City Joint Terrorist Task Force. His high-profile cases include TERRSTOP (the Blind Sheikh Case – Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman), the TWA Flight 800 catastrophe, and the successful negotiation of the first hostage taker to surrender during the Chase Manhattan bank robbery.
Voss is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It and The Full Fee Agent: How to Stack the Odds in Your Favor as a Real Estate Professional. With 24 years of FBI experience and training from the FBI, Scotland Yard, and Harvard Law School, Chris has developed a unique, globally recognized approach to negotiation.
He is the founder & CEO of The Black Swan Group and teaches a popular MasterClass on negotiation. His accolades include the Attorney General’s Award for Excellence in Law Enforcement and the FBI Agents Association Award for Distinguished and Exemplary Service. Chris draws on his extensive experience in international crisis and high-stakes negotiations to create programs that bring these proven techniques into the business world.