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Denise Godreau, keynote speaker

Keynote Speaker

She ran billion-dollar brands. She raised a daughter who never spoke. One made her better at the other.

The keynote that moves rooms — and leaves every audience with a framework for making faster, braver decisions.

The Keynotes Book Denise
Walt Disney Company SeaWorld Entertainment Baha Mar University of Pennsylvania Harvard Business School

Certainty gets in the way of done. And not-done gets in the way of creating value.

When your child cannot speak, you learn to focus your attention. You see what others miss.

You find extraordinary reserves of energy when you stop organizing your life around imagined fear.

The only thing worse than a bad decision is the paralysis of never making one on time.

About

Denise Godreau grew up in Puerto Rico — saltwater, unpredictable winds, and a father who treated a broken boat motor as a strike of good luck. Learning to embrace what she could not control turned out to be more useful than her Harvard MBA.

Over three decades she built brands at Disney, SeaWorld, and Baha Mar — engineering SeaWorld's comeback after Blackfish and helping build a $4 billion Caribbean resort. She has led teams of hundreds and nine-figure budgets — and did all of it while raising her daughter, Larisa. That proximity to real stakes is exactly what calibrated her judgment.

Penn  ·  Harvard Business School  ·  Seven-time marathoner  ·  Bilingual Puerto Rican executive

What colleagues say

From the people in the room

The most difficult brand turnaround I have witnessed in business. Denise brought the leadership, judgment, and courage to do what needed to be done.

Joel Manby

Former CEO, SeaWorld Entertainment

She comes into an organization, reads its strengths in days, and makes the changes the business actually needs. An inspirational leader.

Brad Baker

Marketing Executive, Disney Experiences

One of the savviest, smartest CMOs in the business — strategic, creative, and high-energy in everything she does.

John Schadler

Executive Director, Monogram

Denise taps into insights others cannot see.

Joni Newkirk

CEO, Integrated Insights  ·  Former SVP, Disney

Keynotes

Two talks. Two kinds of rooms.

Choose a keynote to read more.

Denise Godreau

Corporate Keynote

UNAFRAID

The Practice of Diligence & Destiny™

For leaders who are good at working hard — and ready to learn when to stop trying to control what they cannot. A framework for making faster, braver decisions.

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Denise Godreau with her daughter Larisa at the sea

Faith & Inspirational Keynote

The Laughter of the Sea

On Being Carried

A mother's testimony, told through five true stories she still can't fully explain — grief and gratitude in equal measure, and one question asked of the room at the end.

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Denise Godreau with her daughter Larisa

The Memoir

She is strong and unafraid, just like her mother.

Larisa has Angelman Syndrome — a rare neurological condition that left her without speech and living with seizures no medication has fully controlled. She also loves loud music, car rides with the windows down, and lying at the bottom of the swimming pool until her lungs tell her it's time to come back up.

Loving and caring for her for more than thirty years changed everything about how Denise leads, decides, and lives — and became the heart of her forthcoming memoir, The People I Kept.

The Memoir →

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Let's talk about your event

Every engagement begins with a real conversation — about your audience, your moment, and what you need the room to feel when she is done.

Available for keynotes, panels, and leadership workshops
Women's conferences  ·  Corporate events  ·  Associations
Based in Orlando, FL — available nationwide and internationally