Global Thought Leadership
Keynote Speaking
Inspiring, Authentic, and Transformational
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Dr. Bob Dent is a globally recognized speaker, healthcare executive, author, and advocate for nurse and leader well-being. With over three decades of lived experience in healthcare leadership—from rural hospitals to major academic systems and executive coaching—Bob brings unmatched authenticity, wisdom, and impact to every keynote.
Having spoken across the U.S., as well as internationally in England and Peru, Bob offers global thought leadership that transcends borders and resonates with diverse audiences. Whether delivering a powerful 30-minute message or a dynamic 90-minute keynote, Bob customizes every presentation to fit the theme, audience, and desired outcomes of your event. His sessions are not only grounded in data and experience, but also connect deeply through storytelling, vulnerability, and inspiration.
Most Requested Keynotes:
Building a Culture of Ownership in Healthcare
Based on the award-winning book co-authored with Joe Tye, this keynote transforms how teams think about engagement, accountability, and pride in practice. Explore practical tools to shift culture from compliance to commitment.
Leading with Heart: Values-Based Leadership in Action
Rooted in Bob’s personal and professional journey, this keynote explores the power of leading with values, clarity, and compassion. Audiences walk away inspired to lead with authenticity and align their leadership with purpose.
From Burnout to Bravery: My Mental Health Journey
A transparent and heartfelt account of Bob’s journey navigating major depression, chronic suicidality, and healing. This keynote breaks down stigma, creates space for conversation, and equips leaders with strategies to support mental health in the workplace.
Elevating Practice Environments: The Role of Nurse Leaders
Drawing from decades of success in achieving Magnet® and Pathway to Excellence® designations, Bob explores how leadership directly influences outcomes in quality, safety, experience, and retention.
Tailored Topics for Your Conference
Bob has delivered customized keynotes for leadership summits, professional organizations, academic institutions, and national conferences including AONL, ANCC, Sigma, and others.
Books
Building a Culture of Ownership in Healthcare
In the aftermath of the pandemic, preexisting challenges in healthcare organizations have intensified. Stress, burnout, staffing shortages, and even the erosion of trust in organizational leadership are pressing issues that need solutions.
Using construction as their metaphor, authors Joe Tye and Bob Dent make a compelling case that a healthcare organization’s Invisible Architecture—a foundation of core values, a superstructure of organizational culture, and the interior finish of workplace attitude—is no less important than its visible architecture.
In this third edition of Building a Culture of Ownership in Healthcare, readers will learn how investing in their organization and their people can enable a significant, successful change in productivity; employee engagement; nurse satisfaction, recruitment, and retention; quality of care; patient satisfaction; and positive financial outcomes
**Get our two time award winning book**
The Heart of a Nurse Leader
Management is a job description; leadership is a life decision. Nurses do not need a management title to be the sort of leader who inspires and influences others. And in today’s dynamic and turbulent healthcare environment, we need leadership in every corner, not just in the corner office.
This book is both a celebration of the nursing calling and a practical guide to being a better nurse leader. Bob Dent and Joe Tye share values-based life and leadership strategies that every nurse leader needs to know and practice. In this book they will challenge you to be the nurse leader who leads from the heart, and who inspires others to see themselves as leaders no matter what their job title happens to be.
The book is structured around The Twelve Core Action Values, a program that has been central to the cultural transformation at Midland Health and many other organizations and which, more importantly, has been transformative in the lives of thousands of people who have made a personal commitment to practicing the values-based life and leadership skills featured in that course.