Jenn Lim

Why organisations work with Jenn Lim

• She carries the operating lineage of the Zappos culture work directly into the room. She built the original Zappos Culture Book and co-founded Delivering Happiness with Tony Hsieh, so the source material is hers, not borrowed.
• Her Beyond Happiness book gives buyers a single, named framework (the Greenhouse Method) they can point to, rather than a generic engagement talk. Wall Street Journal bestseller and Forbes Top Business Book of 2021.
• She works at the seam where personal purpose meets commercial outcome. The Me, We, Community model is built to be used by HR and leadership teams, not just admired on stage.
• Credibility with both ends of the buyer market: Fortune 500 cultures (Starbucks, McDonald’s, Pixar) and government audiences (World Government Summit, SHRM global events).
• Selection to the Global Happiness Council of Work and Wellbeing places her inside the small group setting the policy conversation on workplace wellbeing, not just commenting on it.

Biography highlights

• Co-founder and CEO of Delivering Happiness, the culture consultancy that evolved from Tony Hsieh’s 2010 book of the same name.
• Author of Beyond Happiness (Grand Central Publishing, 2021), Wall Street Journal bestseller and a Forbes Top Business Book of 2021.
• Led the launch of Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness, a #1 New York Times bestseller that stayed on the list for 27 weeks.
• Creator of the original Zappos Culture Book.
• Selected in 2017 to the Global Happiness Council of Work and Wellbeing.
• Delivering Happiness named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in 2020.
• Speaker at the World Government Summit, SHRM and inside Fortune 500 cultures including Starbucks, McDonald’s and Pixar.

Biography

Most workplace culture conversations start with the symptoms: low engagement, attrition, burnout, the lukewarm Glassdoor scores. Jenn Lim’s work starts a level deeper, with the question of whether the people inside an organisation actually have a reason to commit. That question has been her professional terrain for two decades, first inside Zappos, then through Delivering Happiness.

The story is straight. Lim built the original Zappos Culture Book, which became the internal artefact that defined how Zappos talked about itself. She then co-founded Delivering Happiness with Tony Hsieh in 2010 and led the launch of his book, which sat on the New York Times bestseller list for 27 weeks. Delivering Happiness became a consultancy used by Fortune 500 cultures, Best Places to Work honourees and government bodies, and reached the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in 2020.

Her own book, Beyond Happiness, was published by Grand Central in 2021 and named a Wall Street Journal bestseller and a Forbes Top Business Book of the year. The argument is operational: organisations get sustained engagement when individual purpose is connected to a clear organisational mission, and leaders are the variable that makes the connection real or hollow. The Greenhouse Method and the Me, We, Community framework give HR and leadership teams a structure they can run inside the business, not just a talk to applaud.

What separates Lim from the broader wellbeing field is the lineage. She is not adapting someone else’s culture story for the stage. She built the source material, she co-founded the consultancy that productised it, and her selection to the Global Happiness Council of Work and Wellbeing in 2017 placed her inside the group shaping the policy conversation on this question.

Key speaking topics

• Workplace culture and engagement
• Purpose-driven leadership
• Employee wellbeing
• Organisational change and resilience
• Authentic leadership
• Belonging and connection at work

Ideal for

• CHROs and Chief People Officers redesigning engagement strategy after a period of restructure or fatigue
• Boards and executive teams reviewing the link between culture, purpose and commercial performance
• Heads of culture, DEI and employee experience inside Fortune 500 and large public-sector organisations
• Leadership development programmes focused on values-based and authentic leadership

Audience outcomes

• A clear way to talk about purpose that connects individual employees to organisational mission, using the Me, We, Community model.
• The Greenhouse Method as a named structure for reducing burnout and rebuilding trust through change.
• The lessons from inside the Zappos culture build, told by the person who wrote the original Culture Book.
• A defensible language for wellbeing that goes beyond the surface wellness vocabulary leaders are tired of.