Brett Trusko Speaker Biography

Global Innovation Leader, Practical Futurist, Former KPMG Partner, and International Authority on Innovation Strategy and Organizational Transformation

Brett Trusko, PhD, MBA, CPA, is an internationally recognized innovation leader, practical futurist, business strategist, and keynote speaker who helps organizations understand emerging trends, anticipate disruption, and develop innovative responses to a rapidly changing world. A former KPMG partner who led global process reengineering and former Chief Financial Officer of two companies with revenues exceeding $1 billion, Trusko combines extensive executive experience with a distinguished career advancing innovation as a systematic management discipline. As founder of the International Association of Innovation Professionals and the International Journal of Innovation Science, Chairman of the Global Innovation Management Institute’s Board of Directors, and former Chair of the U.S. Technical Advisory Group for the ISO 56000 innovation management standards, he has helped shape how organizations develop, implement, and manage innovation worldwide.

An award-winning author and experienced university professor, Brett Trusko brings a distinctive combination of business leadership, financial expertise, technology knowledge, healthcare experience, and academic insight to his presentations. His Global Innovation Science Handbook, whose first edition received a prestigious PROSE Award, was substantially updated in July 2026 with a new second edition addressing innovation systems, strategic foresight, artificial intelligence, corporate venturing, and organizational capabilities. Drawing on decades of cross-industry experience, Trusko helps leaders move beyond simply identifying trends to understanding their strategic implications and making informed decisions. His practical, accessible approach equips corporate executives, healthcare leaders, professional associations, and university audiences with the tools to transform uncertainty into innovation, organizational resilience, and sustainable competitive advantage.

Keynote Speaker Brett Trusko at a Glance

Global Innovation Leader and Practical Futurist: Helps organizations interpret emerging trends, anticipate disruption, and develop innovative strategies, business models, and operating approaches.
Former KPMG Partner: Led global process reengineering initiatives, bringing extensive experience in organizational transformation, operational improvement, and strategic change.
Former CFO of Two Billion-Dollar Companies: Served as Chief Financial Officer of two companies with revenues exceeding $1 billion, combining financial discipline with strategic leadership and business innovation.
Founder of International Innovation Organizations: Established the International Association of Innovation Professionals and the International Journal of Innovation Science, helping advance innovation as a recognized professional and academic discipline.
Global Innovation Management Leader: Chairman of the Global Innovation Management Institute’s Board of Directors and former Chair of the U.S. Technical Advisory Group for the ISO 56000 innovation management standards.
Award-Winning Author and Editor: The first edition of his Global Innovation Science Handbook received a PROSE Award; a substantially revised second edition was published in July 2026.
Experienced University Professor: Brings 15 years of teaching experience, translating complex business, technology, and innovation concepts into practical frameworks for organizational decision-making.
Healthcare Innovation and Quality Expert: Experienced in healthcare quality, informatics, forecasting, Six Sigma, and process improvement, with a focus on improving outcomes, controlling costs, and adapting to industry transformation.

A Global Leader in Innovation Strategy and Management

Brett Trusko has devoted much of his professional career to helping organizations understand innovation not as an occasional creative exercise, but as a disciplined management capability that can be developed, measured, and sustained. His work bridges innovation strategy, organizational leadership, business transformation, and emerging technologies, providing organizations with practical approaches for responding to uncertainty and identifying new opportunities. As founder of the International Association of Innovation Professionals, Trusko helped advance the professionalization of innovation management and encourage the development of consistent practices, knowledge, and capabilities across industries. He also founded the International Journal of Innovation Science, contributing to the exchange of research and practical knowledge about how organizations generate, develop, and implement innovative ideas.

His leadership extends to the Global Innovation Management Institute, where he chairs the Board of Directors, and to international standards development. As former Chair of the U.S. Technical Advisory Group for the ISO 56000 innovation management standards, Trusko contributed to efforts to establish a more systematic approach to innovation management. These experiences have given him a broad international perspective on the challenges organizations face when trying to transform promising ideas into meaningful business results. Rather than treating innovation as a collection of disconnected initiatives, Brett Trusko emphasizes the importance of leadership commitment, strategic alignment, organizational capabilities, effective processes, and disciplined execution.

Executive Leadership: From KPMG to Billion-Dollar Corporations

One of Brett Trusko’s distinguishing strengths as a keynote speaker is his extensive firsthand experience in corporate leadership and organizational transformation. Unlike futurists who focus primarily on forecasting trends, Trusko understands the financial, operational, and strategic realities executives must consider when deciding how to respond to change. As a former partner at KPMG, he led global process reengineering, working with organizations to rethink established practices, redesign operations, and improve business performance. This experience provided him with insight into the complexities of organizational transformation, including the challenges of implementing new processes, aligning stakeholders, and sustaining improvements across large enterprises.

Trusko subsequently served as Chief Financial Officer of two companies with revenues exceeding $1 billion. These senior executive roles required him to evaluate organizational performance, manage financial complexity, and make strategic decisions in environments where operational efficiency, investment priorities, and long-term competitiveness were essential. His combined experience as a consultant, corporate executive, and innovation leader allows him to examine emerging trends from multiple perspectives. He considers not only what a technological or market development might mean for the future, but also how it could affect customers, employees, costs, business models, organizational capabilities, and financial performance. For corporate leadership teams and professional associations, Brett Trusko offers the rare combination of forward-looking strategic thinking and practical executive experience necessary to turn innovative ideas into realistic business decisions.

Practical Futurism: Turning Emerging Trends into Business Strategy

Brett Trusko approaches the future as a strategic challenge rather than an exercise in prediction. His work helps organizations identify emerging developments, evaluate their potential implications, and determine how to respond through innovation, business strategy, organizational redesign, and new operating approaches. As industries confront artificial intelligence, shifting customer expectations, technological disruption, economic uncertainty, and changing competitive conditions, leaders must distinguish meaningful trends from temporary excitement. Trusko helps audiences develop a disciplined approach to understanding which changes may matter to their organizations and what practical actions those changes might require.

His perspective draws on experience in financial management, healthcare, forecasting, process improvement, and innovation systems. By connecting these disciplines, he encourages leaders to consider change from several angles, including its effects on costs, operations, customer needs, employee capabilities, and long-term organizational performance. Rather than offering predictions as certainties, Brett Trusko emphasizes informed judgment, strategic flexibility, and the ability to adapt as new information emerges. His approach helps organizations move beyond simply discussing the future to developing practical strategies for shaping their own responses, making him especially relevant for executive leadership conferences, corporate strategy meetings, professional associations, and organizations navigating complex industry transitions.

Global Innovation Science Handbook: An Award-Winning Guide to Innovation

Brett Trusko is an accomplished author and editor whose publications have helped advance innovation management, business transformation, and healthcare improvement. His Global Innovation Science Handbook is a major contribution to the study and practice of innovation, with its first edition receiving a prestigious PROSE Award recognizing its contribution to professional and scholarly publishing. A substantially revised second edition was published in July 2026, expanding the handbook’s coverage of contemporary innovation challenges and management practices. Developed with international contributors, the new edition addresses innovation systems, strategic foresight, artificial intelligence, corporate venturing, organizational capabilities, and other subjects essential to managing innovation in a rapidly changing business environment.

Positioned as both a professional handbook and an academic textbook, the publication brings together practical frameworks and international perspectives designed to help leaders, researchers, students, and innovation professionals understand how innovation can be organized and managed systematically. Arabic and Spanish editions are also being prepared, extending its potential reach to international audiences. Trusko’s other publications include Improving Healthcare Quality and Cost with Six Sigma, The Framework for Innovation: A Guide to the Body of Innovation Knowledge, and, with H. James Harrington, Maximizing Value Propositions to Increase Project Success Rates. He has also contributed chapters to additional publications addressing healthcare, compliance, quality, and organizational improvement. Together, these works reflect his longstanding commitment to connecting research, management principles, and practical business applications.

Artificial Intelligence and Building Innovation Capabilities

Artificial intelligence is creating significant opportunities for organizations to rethink how they operate, develop products and services, make decisions, and compete. Brett Trusko examines these developments through the broader perspective of innovation management, emphasizing that successful AI adoption requires more than technological investment. His approach considers how artificial intelligence can support research, forecasting, process improvement, business model development, and the identification of emerging opportunities. At the same time, he encourages leaders to evaluate the organizational capabilities, governance practices, financial implications, and human judgment necessary to use AI responsibly and effectively.

Drawing on his experience in innovation systems, executive management, and organizational transformation, Trusko helps organizations distinguish meaningful applications from exaggerated expectations. He emphasizes that artificial intelligence should support a clear business strategy rather than become an isolated initiative driven by technological enthusiasm. A central theme of his work is that innovation can be managed systematically through repeatable processes, clear responsibilities, appropriate organizational structures, and consistent leadership support. By connecting emerging technologies with innovation governance, strategic alignment, organizational culture, and disciplined implementation, Brett Trusko helps organizations develop the capabilities necessary to turn new ideas into measurable business results and sustainable competitive advantage.

Reengineering Organizations for a Changing World

Brett Trusko’s background in global process reengineering provides a strong foundation for helping organizations redesign their operations in response to changing business conditions. As a former KPMG partner who led global reengineering initiatives, he gained extensive experience examining how organizations structure their work, allocate resources, manage processes, and deliver value to customers. His approach to organizational transformation goes beyond making incremental improvements to existing practices. He encourages leaders to question whether established processes, operating models, and organizational structures remain appropriate as technologies, customer expectations, and competitive conditions evolve.

Trusko explores how process redesign, innovation management, emerging technologies, and strategic planning can work together to improve organizational effectiveness. He also considers the financial and operational implications of transformation, drawing on his experience as a CFO and senior business executive. For organizations facing disruption, his perspective provides practical guidance on identifying inefficiencies, evaluating alternative approaches, strengthening organizational capabilities, and building more adaptable operating models. Brett Trusko helps audiences understand that successful transformation requires both a clear strategic direction and the operational discipline to implement meaningful change.

Healthcare Innovation, Quality, and the Future of Employee Benefits

Healthcare represents an important application of Brett Trusko’s broader expertise in innovation, forecasting, process improvement, and organizational transformation. His professional experience includes healthcare quality, informatics, and the application of systematic improvement methods to complex healthcare environments. He has examined how organizations can improve care delivery, strengthen operational efficiency, and address the continuing challenge of balancing quality with cost. His book Improving Healthcare Quality and Cost with Six Sigma reflects his interest in applying structured improvement methodologies to healthcare delivery and operations. By connecting quality management, process analysis, performance measurement, and innovation, Trusko helps healthcare organizations identify opportunities to improve outcomes while using resources more effectively.

His perspective also extends to the broader forces shaping the American healthcare system, including rising medical and pharmacy costs, artificial intelligence, data analytics, emerging care models, and changing expectations among employers, healthcare consumers, and benefits advisors. Rather than presenting these developments as isolated trends, Brett Trusko examines how they may influence organizational strategy, financial performance, service delivery, and future business opportunities. For employers, the challenge involves managing healthcare expenditures while maintaining competitive benefits programs and supporting workforce needs. For benefits advisors, industry transformation creates opportunities to strengthen client relationships, develop new services, and provide greater strategic value. Trusko helps audiences connect emerging healthcare developments to more informed decisions about benefits strategies, operating models, partnerships, and future investments, emphasizing practical analysis rather than speculative predictions.

Fifteen Years of University Teaching and Academic Leadership

In addition to his executive and consulting experience, Brett Trusko brings 15 years of university teaching experience to his work as an innovation strategist and keynote speaker. His academic background has strengthened his ability to explain complex subjects, connect emerging ideas with practical organizational challenges, and help audiences understand how to apply new concepts in real-world settings. Teaching innovation, business, and related disciplines requires more than subject-matter expertise. It demands the ability to organize complicated information, communicate clearly, encourage critical thinking, and demonstrate how theoretical frameworks can inform practical decisions.

Trusko draws on these capabilities when addressing corporate executives, industry professionals, association audiences, and university communities. He translates emerging developments in technology, healthcare, innovation management, and organizational transformation into accessible ideas that participants can evaluate and use. His experience as both a professor and senior corporate executive provides a distinctive perspective, combining academic rigor with an understanding of the decisions and constraints faced by business leaders. For meeting planners, this combination helps ensure that Brett Trusko’s presentations deliver substantive insights without losing clarity, relevance, or practical application.

An Internationally Recognized Innovation Keynote Speaker

Brett Trusko is an engaging keynote speaker, innovation strategist, and practical futurist who brings global perspective, executive experience, and academic insight to corporate conferences, professional association meetings, healthcare events, executive leadership programs, and university audiences. His presentations explore the intersection of emerging trends, innovation management, artificial intelligence, organizational transformation, and strategic decision-making. Rather than focusing exclusively on technological developments, Trusko examines what change means for organizations and how leaders can respond through new services, business models, operating approaches, and innovation capabilities.

Drawing on his experiences as a KPMG partner, billion-dollar-company CFO, university professor, and international innovation leader, he connects forward-looking ideas with the practical realities of business management. His approach emphasizes clarity, informed judgment, and actionable frameworks. Audiences gain a better understanding of how to evaluate emerging developments, identify opportunities, manage uncertainty, and translate strategic insights into meaningful organizational action. Whether addressing healthcare executives, benefits advisors, corporate leadership teams, or innovation professionals, Brett Trusko delivers presentations designed to help participants understand the forces shaping their industries and make better decisions about the future.

Helping Organizations Turn Disruption into Competitive Advantage

Brett Trusko’s career reflects a consistent commitment to helping organizations understand change and respond through disciplined innovation. From leading global process reengineering initiatives and managing the financial operations of billion-dollar enterprises to establishing international innovation organizations and contributing to professional standards, his work demonstrates how strategic thinking, organizational capabilities, and practical execution can support meaningful transformation. His contributions to innovation literature, academic education, and healthcare improvement further reinforce his belief that organizations benefit most when emerging ideas are connected to clear objectives and actionable management practices.

As artificial intelligence, technological disruption, changing business models, and evolving industry expectations create new challenges, Brett Trusko offers a practical approach to understanding what matters and deciding what to do next. His career demonstrates how global innovation thinking, executive leadership, and cross-industry perspective can help organizations move beyond uncertainty, recognize emerging opportunities, and build the capabilities necessary to adapt, compete, and thrive in a changing world.

Brett Trusko empowers organizations to anticipate change, make informed strategic decisions, and transform emerging challenges into opportunities for innovation, growth, and lasting competitive advantage. Contact Speakers.com to learn more about Brett Trusko’s speaking fee, availability, and customized keynote presentation options.

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Brett Trusko Speaking Topics

The Next Five Years of U.S. Healthcare: Turning Disruption into Advantage for Employers and Benefit Advisors

The American healthcare system is entering a period of significant transformation driven by rising costs, artificial intelligence, pharmaceutical innovation, changing delivery models, and evolving expectations among employers and consumers. Drawing on his experience in healthcare quality, informatics, forecasting, and organizational innovation, Brett Trusko examines the developments most likely to influence healthcare over the next three to five years. He explores the implications of medical and pharmacy costs, AI-driven decision support, emerging care models, and operational change for employers, benefit advisors, healthcare organizations, and industry leaders. Rather than relying on speculative predictions or technology hype, Trusko helps audiences interpret emerging signals, evaluate their strategic implications, and identify practical opportunities to improve decision-making, strengthen client relationships, and create new sources of value.

From Trend to Strategy: Turning Emerging Trends into Innovation, Growth, and Competitive Advantage

Recognizing emerging trends is only the beginning; successful organizations must understand which developments matter and determine how to respond. Brett Trusko provides a practical framework for evaluating technological, economic, competitive, and organizational change and translating those insights into meaningful strategic decisions. Drawing on his experience in executive leadership, corporate transformation, innovation management, and forecasting, he demonstrates how organizations can identify new opportunities, rethink existing services, develop innovative business models, and adapt operating approaches to changing market conditions. Audiences gain a disciplined method for moving beyond trend-watching toward informed action that strengthens organizational resilience and long-term competitiveness.

Innovation as a Management Discipline: Building Repeatable Systems for Sustainable Business Growth

Innovation should not depend on occasional brainstorming sessions, isolated projects, or unpredictable flashes of inspiration. As a pioneer in the professionalization of innovation management and a contributor to international innovation standards, Brett Trusko explains how organizations can build repeatable systems and capabilities that make innovation a measurable, sustainable part of business operations. Drawing on his leadership with the International Association of Innovation Professionals, the Global Innovation Management Institute, and the ISO 56000 innovation management standards, he explores innovation governance, organizational processes, leadership responsibilities, strategic alignment, and performance measurement. Participants discover how to move from disconnected innovation activities to a systematic approach that supports continuous improvement, competitive differentiation, and lasting organizational growth.

AI and the Innovation Agenda: Harnessing Artificial Intelligence While Preserving Human Judgment

Artificial intelligence is creating new opportunities for organizations to improve decision-making, accelerate innovation, redesign services, and discover new business possibilities. However, successful adoption requires more than investing in technology; it demands strategic clarity, organizational readiness, and informed leadership judgment. Brett Trusko examines where AI can meaningfully support innovation, including research, forecasting, process improvement, business model development, and the identification of emerging opportunities. Drawing on his expertise in innovation systems, executive management, and organizational transformation, he helps leaders distinguish practical applications from exaggerated expectations while considering the operational, financial, and human implications of AI adoption. Audiences learn how to integrate artificial intelligence into a broader innovation strategy without losing sight of accountability, business value, and the essential role of human judgment.

Reengineering for a Changing World: Transforming Business Processes and Organizations for the Future

As organizations confront evolving customer expectations, technological disruption, rising costs, and competitive pressure, established processes and operating models may no longer deliver the results they once did. Drawing on his experience leading global process reengineering as a KPMG partner and serving as CFO of major corporations, Brett Trusko explores how organizations can redesign their processes, structures, and operations to respond more effectively to changing demands. He examines the relationship between process improvement, innovation, technology, organizational capabilities, and strategic performance, demonstrating how leaders can identify inefficiencies, challenge outdated assumptions, and develop more adaptable operating models. This presentation provides practical insights into creating organizations that are better equipped to manage complexity, improve performance, and respond confidently to future disruption.

Healthcare Quality and Cost: Improving Patient Outcomes and Operational Efficiency Through Innovation

Healthcare organizations face the continuing challenge of improving patient outcomes and service quality while controlling costs and increasing operational efficiency. Brett Trusko draws on his extensive experience in healthcare quality, Six Sigma, process improvement, informatics, and innovation to examine how organizations can address these competing demands through disciplined management and strategic transformation. Building on the principles explored in his book Improving Healthcare Quality and Cost with Six Sigma, he demonstrates how process analysis, performance measurement, innovation systems, and organizational redesign can support more effective healthcare delivery. Audiences gain practical approaches for identifying operational challenges, reducing unnecessary complexity, strengthening quality improvement initiatives, and aligning healthcare innovation with measurable financial and organizational outcomes.