Bill Burnett
Executive Director of the Design Program at Stanford and co-author of the #1 New York Times-bestselling book Designing Your Life
Dave Evans
Co-author of the #1 New York Times-bestselling book Designing Your Life
Photo provided by speaker.
Dave Evans is the co-author of the #1 New York Times bestselling book Designing Your Life, which has created a global movement with 1 million copies sold and over 400 Life Design programs established around the world. Before joining the Design Program at Stanford University, Evans worked for years as a successful executive and management consultant in the tech industry, leading a team at Apple and co-founding Electronic Arts. His presentations are transformative for audiences, providing tools to build lives filled with meaning and agency.
-
About Dave Evans
Dave Evans has worked in alternative energy, telecommunications, and high tech. As an early member of the advanced systems group that built the technology that became the Macintosh, he led the first computer mouse team and laser-printing projects, before leaving to co-found the software giant Electronic Arts.
After more than thirty years of executive leadership and management consulting in the high tech world, Evans realized that what he really wanted and needed to do was help people rediscover purpose in their jobs and lives. He joined Stanford’s Design Program, teaching the incredibly popular Designing Your Life course, helping undergraduates discover their paths after graduation.
In their book Designing Your Life, Dave Evans and co-author Bill Burnett, Executive Director of Stanford’s Design School, bring these principles to a larger audience, proving it’s never too late to design a life you love through innovation, creative problem-solving, and a growth mindset. A dynamic and entertaining speaker, Evans teaches audiences of all ages that the same principles used to create amazing technology and products can also be used to design and build a life filled with purpose and joy that is constantly creative and productive. He lectures around the country on design thinking and offers a popular e-course on the subject through Creative Live with Bill Burnett. From his travel around the country and meeting and hearing from thousands of people, Evans was inspired by the Designing Your Life community to compose a second toolkit with Burnett, this time specifically focused on work. Designing Your New Work Life: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness—and a New Freedom—at Work is full of tips, tricks, and tools for optimizing and “future-proofing” work.
Dave Evans earned a Bachelors of Science and Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford and a graduate diploma in Contemplative Spirituality from San Francisco Theological Seminary. He lives in Santa Cruz.
Discover how you can find balance within your organization. Visit Bill Burnett and Dave Evans’s Company Reads page to learn more.
Contact us to learn more about booking Dave Evans for your next event.
-
Speaking Topics
Designing Your Life
The question “What do I want to be when I grow up?” is one that never truly goes away. Whether you are a college grad entering the workforce, a forty year-old shifting careers, or a sixty-eight year-old trying to define an encore career, the search for a fulfilling life never stops. Through keynote presentations and interactive workshops, Dave Evans teaches audiences how to look at career and life planning through the lens of design. Participants are given the tools to build their way forward and to develop various life scenarios just like a designer tests multiple prototypes. This approach fosters creativity and adaptability and allows audiences to accept that there is never just one right path.
The Solution to Non-Stop Disruption is Non-Stop Design
Life-altering disruptions can be personal, regional or global and are increasingly part of modern life—the rapid expansion of A.I. being a prime example. We all need to know how to design our way through them. When a disruption arrives, it ends the way things were and throws life into a confusing latent zone before the new world begins. The only way out of the waiting room is through generative acceptance. Dave Evans teaches how to turn the ambiguity of disruption into design freedom by generatively engaging the new reality and staying ahead of the unpredictable. Disruption Design is a new core competency for modern life that can not only help us learn to survive disruption, but to find new opportunities within the uncertainty.
The Human in the Room: Make Work More Meaningful
Traditional, hierarchical relationships between employers and employees are shifting rapidly, and the future of talent retention across generations lies in keeping employees engaged. Dave Evans helps organizations adopt design thinking strategies, integrating managers’ personal development conversations with employees’ life design goals so that each employee can actively co-create his or her experience within the company. Evans demonstrates how this change in relationships offers the potential to make work a more human experience for all of us and warns against the danger for business leaders who ignore this shift in the culture.
Mindfulness in Life Design
A well-designed life is a life that makes sense. It’s a life where who you are, what you believe, and what you do all line up together. From a Christian faith-based perspective, Dave Evans teaches audiences how to integrate their philosophies of life and work to form their own personal compasses, which they can then use to design their way forward in life contemplatively and mindfully.
Categories: Business + Management Speakers, AI + Technology Speakers, Bestselling Author Speakers, Christian Audiences, College + University Speakers, Commencement + Convocation Speakers, Company Reads Speakers, Education Speakers, Entrepreneurship Speakers, First-Year Experience Speakers, Future of Work Speakers, Innovation + Creativity Speakers, Leadership Speakers, Marketing + Sales Speakers, Motivational + Inspirational Speakers, Productivity and Time Management Speakers, Wellness Speakers -
Video
-
Praise for Dave Evans
Dave was terrific. Audience was extremely engaged the entire presentation. Attendees found the information very inspiring as well as actionable.
— The George FoundationDave’s visit was extremely successful with much positive feedback from students, faculty, and staff. Dave’s high energy, magnetism, and deep knowledge thrilled the Cornell Dyson community; all enjoyed interacting with him and hearing his unique perspectives on the lifelong and lifewide applications of design thinking.
— Cornell University, Cornell UniversityDave and Bill perfectly hit the balance for the audience and spoke to the crowd in a targeted way. I couldn’t have hoped for anything more. The room was packed and in spite of being early in the morning, about 1000 people attended. Smashing success.
— Clio Cloud ConferenceDave was an absolute success. His messages resonated so well with our audience—his delivery is so upbeat and energizing. He set a wonderful tone for the whole entire day.
— University of British ColumbiaDave was OUTSTANDING! He created such a buzz on day one that people were still talking about it all the way through the close of the conference. Dave set the tone for what I think was one of the best HRPS conferences ever.
— HR People + StrategyDave was very well received – both highly entertaining and educational! The whole day went swimmingly and helped put Metro State and its career center on the map. It was just what I had hoped for – Dave introduced some fresh thinking and sparked a lot of discussion already. I think people were surprised at how much fun they had and there was a lot of laughter in both sessions.
— Metropolitan State UniversityPraise for Designing Your Life
Life has questions. They have answers…Learn how to find a fulfilling career…learn how to better navigate life’s big moment decisions and kill your ‘wicked problems dead.'
— The New York TimesThe prototype for a happy life…Burnett and Evans show how to apply Stanford’s famous design principles to finding your place in the world, as a recent graduate or mid-career.
— NPR’s Brian LehrerDesigning Your Life walks readers through the process of building a satisfying, meaningful life by approaching the challenge the way a designer would. Experimentation. Wayfinding. Prototyping. Constant iteration. You should read the book. Everyone else will.
— Daniel Pink, bestselling author of DrivePerhaps the book’s most important lesson is that the only failure is settling for a life that makes one unhappy. With useful fact-finding exercises, an empathetic tone, and sensible advice, this book will easily earn a place among career-finding classics.
— Publishers Weekly -
Books by Dave Evans
-
Media About Dave Evans
Request Fees
and Availability
- 212 572-2013
- Dave Evans travels from Santa Cruz, CA
Featured Title
Designing Your Life
“Life has questions. They have answers.”
—The New York Times
“[T]he go-to book that is read as a rite of passage whenever someone is ready to create a life they love.”
—David Kelley, Founder of IDEO
Similar Speakers
Priya Parker
Facilitator, strategic advisor, and acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering
Liz Tran
Executive Coach and Founder of Reset