Glenn Llopis Speaker Biography
Cuban-American Entrepreneur, High-Performance Culture Expert, Keynote Speaker, and Bestselling Author
Glenn Llopis (pronounced ‘yō-pēs) is a Cuban-American entrepreneur, bestselling author, speaker, and senior advisor to Fortune 500 companies and organizations in healthcare, retail, consumer packaged goods, and beyond. He is a former c-suite corporate executive and current chairman of the Glenn Llopis Group (GLLG), a nationally recognized workforce development and human capital consulting firm.
Leadership Expert
Known for helping organizations move HR leadership to where it belongs – to corporate strategy and transformation – Glenn uses strategies his research has identified to help leaders to drive business growth through inclusive leadership and the power of individuality. His goal is to guide those leaders to be more inclusive and embrace a new kind of thinking – an innovation mentality mindset – to help them evolve and stay ahead of the rapid changes in the workplace and marketplace to drive growth.
Inspiration
As part of his work at GLLG, Llopis coined the term Cultural Demographic Shift™ or CDS. Llopis’ current work on the CDS and the innovation mentality is based on the well-grounded lessons of the “immigrant perspective” inspired by his father, Frank Llopis. Frank was a prominent Latin music pioneer who introduced rock ‘n’ roll into the rhythms and sounds of Salsa and Merengue music with his quartet Los Llopis. A victim of Castro’s revolution, he and his wife eventually made it to the United States where he played one last concert before becoming part of the team that invented Miller Lite.
Early Career
Llopis graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles with a degree in political science. After UCLA, he fast-tracked at the Gallo Wine Company as a sales representative and then at Sunkist Juice Beverages, where he became the youngest executive in the company’s 100-year history. Leading the successful turnaround of Sunkist’s juice beverage division opened the door for his next endeavor – at only 30 years old – as a senior executive at American Seafoods Company, leading the foodservice and retail business operational units. The result was an increase in market share, new brand introductions, and a full-scale transformation of the company.
Entrepreneur
In 1997, Llopis launched his first business, Luna Rossa Gourmet Foods, which focused on the sales, marketing and distribution of gourmet vegetables, pasta sauce, and salad dressing under its Luna Rossa and Chef’s Harvest brands. In 2007, he founded the Glenn Llopis Group to focus his work on leadership and business development around the “immigrant perspective.” As part of GLLG, Llopis started the Center for Hispanic Leadership (CHL), which created competitive advantages for Fortune 500 companies through their development and advancement of top Hispanic talent.
Author
Llopis is a contributing writer to Forbes, Entrepreneur, and The Harvard Business Review. He was recognized as a top 20 influential writer at Forbes and a top 100 leadership speaker and business thinker by Inc. Magazine. His writings, speaking engagements, and consulting assignments focus on strengthening inclusive leadership and diversity of thought, elevating corporate cultures and building teams in a wisdom based economy, maximizing organizational and people potential, and enabling business growth and evolution through the Cultural Demographic Shift™.
Affiliations
Hispanic Keynote Speaker Glenn Llopis is a member of the Kellogg Innovation Network and serves on the advisory board of the Brittingham Social Enterprise Lab at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. He is a board member for Lion’s Heart, a national, non-profit community service organization for teen volunteering and leadership. Additionally, he is a mentor for Junior Achievement and a member of the exclusive Renaissance Weekend think-tank.
Glenn Llopis Speaking Topics
Unleashing Individuality: Hispanic Heritage Month Speaker
As Hispanics, we suppress our own individuality without even knowing it. We inadvertently keep ourselves functioning far below our full capacity. We fail to see and support each other’s full humanity, as individuals and as a community. As a result, we've become conditioned to allow others to hold us back. Latinos can't afford feeling stifled in the workplace as we tackle our most urgent challenges, to: • be more resilient during times of volatility • lead to leave a legacy of significance • unlock our most authentic leadership identity through our (6) Hispanic superpowers • achieve a true sense of belonging through the (5) indicators of individuality The temptation is to try to solve for each separately. But all are linked and can be addressed when we recognize they all share the same major obstacle: suppressed individuality. Four-time author, leadership strategist and Cuban-American Senior Executive and Contributor to Forbes, Glenn Llopis breaks individuality down into its component parts and o¬ers a practical method to help you continuously assess, interrupt and pivot from suppressing to unleashing. This is your new playbook. It’s packed with: • Individual stories of people unleashing individuality • Practical tools and methods to get started immediately • Mr. Llopis' own personal journey and success inspired by his father's Hispanic wisdom. Whatever you’re trying to accomplish, you need people at their fullest capacities connecting with and elevating each other as they contribute to a shared mission, individually and collectively. Interrupt your assumptions about who belongs where, doing what, and how. We make assumptions about capabilities based on education or experience. We make assumptions about personality based on groups we (often unconsciously) associate people with. We make assumptions about how someone should perform a task based on how it’s been done in the past. This keynote will teach you the skills to interrupt those assumptions and provide you with the clarity you seek to navigate today's most uncertain times in modern history. Mr. Llopis will unlock your integrated identity and future self by revealing the unnecessary fears, doubts, and insecurities that create barriers to the significance that we seek in our careers and our lives. These learnings will elevate your confidence to see and seize previously unseen opportunities. You will walk away from this dynamic, thought provoking and heavily reflective experience knowing what you are running from and what you should be running towards. Let’s unleash each other.
Cultivating the Interdependence of Human Resources and Business Strategy
Organizations need to consider both their clients and their employees as important consumers whose needs and expectations must be met for the organization to succeed. This involves improving client care and enhancing the employee experience. Financial, health and most service sectors were not trained to achieve this. They have long followed a playbook that favors hierarchical structures and top-down management styles that focused on operational efficiency, financial performance, and adherence to regulatory standards. These playbooks were grounded in standardization, expecting uniform behaviors and attitudes from the workforce. That approach doesn’t recognize or address the individual needs and aspirations of both employees and clients. It compartmentalizes employees as cost centers and views clients as growth strategies – failing to acknowledge the symbiotic relationship between the two and their impact on the organization’s outcomes. This is why it’s difficult for traditional service sectors to see the interdependence of business strategy and human resources. But this has now all changed as it’s become less about the business defining the individual (employees) and much more about the individual now defining the business. It’s a fundamental mindset shift from standardized to personalized ways of working, leading and conducting business. Personalization promotes a shift from a one-size-fits-all model to a more tailored, individual-centric approach. As organizations explore new strategies for growth, they must focus on understanding and addressing the unique needs, preferences, and values not only of each client, but also each employee. Hence the timesensitive need for organizations to cultivate the interdependence of business strategy and human resources. In this session, Mr. Llopis will address topics to help finance, health and other service sectors how to connect human resources with business strategy. These topics include but are not limited to: • Embracing Synergy: 6 Strategies that Unleash the Combined Impact of Human Resources and Business Strategy • From Standardization to Personalization: 5 Operational Shifts to Accelerate Success in the Modern Age • Breaking Down Silos: 5 Indicators to Transform Operating Structures and Leadership Styles for Prosperity • Harmonizing Growth: Seeing Growth Opportunities Previously Unseen with Connecting Human Resources with Business Strategy • Embracing Agility and Adaptability: Navigating the Changing Landscape of Business and Human Resources
They’re Ready: Are You? The Future of Talent
Gen X is ready to lead, Gen Y is eager to influence, Gen Z is already doing both. Your talent pool is more diverse than ever, and they all want to contribute in their own way. As we shift from standardization to personalization, recruiting, retaining and energizing talent will depend on how well organizations lead and serve employees as individuals. More than anything, people want to know: Do you see me? Do you know me?
Greatest Contribution: Discover What You Solve For
What do you consistently think about in a big way? What problems are you drawn to? What kinds of solutions do you favor and are especially suited to offer? When you know what you solve for, that’s when you make your most meaningful contribution to any mission. Knowing what you solve for is a continuous journey of personal exploration and reinvention, as you evolve along with the workplace and the marketplace.
Constructive Interruption: Build a High-Performance Culture of Inclusion
Inclusion is the most essential skill today. It requires that we constructively interrupt our auto-pilot thoughts about who belongs where, doing what. It’s not just about who gets hired or promoted. It’s also about how people are allowed to grow, to collaborate, to experiment, and to contribute. A culture of inclusion requires a mindset to see opportunity, anticipate the unexpected, unleash passionate pursuits, live with an entrepreneurial spirit, work with a generous purpose, and lead to leave a legacy.
Leading Hispanic Employees
Hispanics are the fastest growing workforce in the United States and organizations must become more culturally proficient in support of their Hispanic employees, customers and overall business goals. To prepare for the rapid increase of Hispanic employee in the workplace, organization can gain a distinct competitive advance by knowing how to lead, recruit and retain top Hispanic talent. This keynote provides audiences deep insights and reveals the hidden truths about Hispanic employees that are affecting workplaces across America. Llopis teaches audience how Hispanic employees think, what their performance tendencies are and how to earn and advance a trustworthy relationship with them. The goal of this keynote is to help non-Hispanic leaders identify the most common workplace behavioral cues and tendencies in order to successfully lead, leverage and encourage your Hispanic employee's natural strengths and proactively avoid potential tension that may disrupt engagement and their overall performance.
Glenn Llopis Books
Unleashing Individuality: The Leadership Skill that Unlocks All Others
Purchase BookLeadership in the Age of Personalization: Why Standardization Fails in the Age of Me
Purchase BookThe Innovation Mentality: Six Strategies to Disrupt the Status Quo and Reinvent the Way We Work
Purchase BookEarning Serendipity: 4 Skills for Creating and Sustaining Good Fortune in Your Work
Purchase BookAwakening the Latino Facto
Purchase BookWomen Leaders must Dive In Not just Lean In: The Six Fundamental Truths of the Dive-In Principle
Purchase BookWhy a Personal Employee Brand Will Save Your Career – And Your Workplace
Purchase BookGlenn Llopis Videos
Glenn Llopis Articles
Glenn Llopis Speaker Testimonials
“Unleashing Individuality is the mindset vaccine we need to survive and thrive in the age of personalization.”
- Gustavo Canton | Analytics Leader, Starbucks
“Glenn puts a clear framework to what we are experiencing and trying to make sense of as a result of the pandemic—power structures being turned upside down with the employee / patient / customer operating in the mindset and with the tools to be fully self-actualized. Unleashing Individuality provides a playbook for how organizations can shift to being ‘in flow’ in this new world and win in business through first removing the friction and empowering the individual to win. Masterfully done.”
- Monica Pool Knox | SVP, Chief People Officer, LivePerson
“As a true visionary and cultural sage, Glenn Llopis provides an astonishingly perceptive roadmap for those ready to embrace the movement toward personalization. As I learned personally, he offers a guiding light for leaders ready to free those they serve from outdated standards, unleashing their suppressed individuality and enabling them to unlock their full potential.”
- Frank Ross | Senior Manager, Cyber Security, General Mills
“Glenn is an expert at bringing people together from all different facets and, through his authentic style and strategic mindset, unleashing their individuality, helping them identify what they solve for, and igniting the passion in us to come together and pivot to action for something greater than ourselves.”
- Kristin Gwinner | EVP, Chief Human Resources Officer, Chico’s FAS, Inc.