Jennifer Willey
Leaders are tired and teams are out of capacity. The state that everyone keeps calling temporary has become permanent, and most leadership development was not designed for it. Organisations now need leaders who can hold a team together through the fourth restructure as steadily as the first.
Jennifer Willey helps teams keep performing through repeated change, using the five-part Fearless Fundamentals framework set out in her Pearson book, Fearless in 5.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Jennifer Willey
- Fewer than 12% of National Speakers Association members hold the Certified Speaking Professional designation, and Jennifer is one of them. It is the NSA’s earned credential for platform delivery.
- The Fearless Fundamentals framework (Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage) comes from Wet Cement’s Fearless@Work Survey and a decade of programme delivery, and clients can keep running it internally after the keynote ends.
- The career arc, from TV news anchor to senior commercial leader at Yahoo, AOL and The Trade Desk to founder of a leadership development firm, gives her credibility with two audiences at once: the people running culture and the people running the business.
- Wet Cement is dual-certified as a Woman-Owned (WBENC) and Disability-Owned (Disability:IN) business and holds SBA Woman-Owned Small Business certification, which satisfies supplier diversity criteria where procurement applies them.
- Fearless in 5 was published by Pearson Business in August 2026. Wet Cement builds the book into its programme delivery, so a cohort keeps working from a shared vocabulary after the keynote.
Biography highlights
- Founder and CEO, Wet Cement (founded 2017); dual-certified Woman-Owned (WBENC) and Disability-Owned (Disability:IN) business
- Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), National Speakers Association
- Author, Fearless in 5 (Pearson Business, August 2026), built on the Fearless Fundamentals: Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage
- Creator of the Fearless in 5 microlearning series and the Advance Women at Work practice; co-founder of WE.DOOH at the Digital Place Based Advertising Association
- More than 20 years across Yahoo, AOL, pwc, WebMD, Sharecare and The Trade Desk; earlier career as a TV news anchor and reporter for ABC and CBS affiliates
- Opening keynote at Ad Tech Tokyo, then emcee for the full two-day conference of 10,000 attendees
- Clients include Johnson & Johnson, Nissan, Paramount, Samsung, Genentech, NBCUniversal, Comcast, NPR, Walmart and Wesco
Biography
Wet Cement works with teams on their third or fourth restructure of the year, where composure becomes the binding constraint on performance. Jenn Willey founded the firm in 2017, after more than 20 years leading sales and marketing teams at Yahoo, AOL, pwc, WebMD and The Trade Desk, and an earlier career as a TV news anchor and reporter for ABC and CBS affiliates.
The methodology is the Fearless Fundamentals framework, five capabilities: Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage. It draws on the Wet Cement Fearless@Work Survey and a research collaboration with Wharton behavioural scientists, and has been deployed at Johnson & Johnson, Nissan, Paramount, Samsung and Genentech.
Fearless in 5 was published by Pearson Business in August 2026. Its twenty chapters sit under the five capabilities, from evicting the inner impostor to building a personal board of directors and self-advocating under bias. Pearson positions the book for professional women and for the leaders who manage them, and Wet Cement sells it into organisations as a common leadership language for a whole cohort.
Wet Cement is dual-certified as a Woman-Owned (WBENC) and Disability-Owned (Disability:IN) business, and Jenn is a Certified Speaking Professional, the National Speakers Association designation held by fewer than 12% of its members. She opened Ad Tech Tokyo and then emceed the full two-day conference for 10,000 attendees. Her work in this region includes the Empower and Elevate Training Academy for ethnic-minority-owned businesses in Europe and the UK, delivered with ESDP and MSDUK.
Key speaking topics
- Fearless leadership and team capability under repeated change
- Self-leadership and resilience under sustained pressure
- Executive presence and confident communication for senior leaders
- Inclusive leadership beyond DEI framing
- Women’s leadership and the Advance Women at Work approach
- Career navigation, sponsorship and the personal board of directors
- Generative AI for confidence, communication, and networking
Ideal for
- Heads of leadership development and CHROs designing executive and senior-leader programmes for change-fatigued teams
- Executive teams and senior off-sites looking for a speaker who can also run the programme behind the keynote
- Women’s leadership networks, ERGs and high-potential cohorts that need a credible voice on confidence and self-advocacy
- Media, technology, advertising and life sciences organisations where her commercial vocabulary maps directly onto the audience
Audience outcomes
- A working version of the Fearless Fundamentals (Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage) applied to their own context
- Specific behaviours for staying composed and decisive when the brief keeps changing, drawn from the Wet Cement Fearless@Work research
- The vocabulary to coach team members through impostor patterns and self-advocacy
- A case for inclusion as a leadership capability that holds up in organisations that have stopped using DEI as a label
- A method for building and using a personal board of directors, drawn from the chapter on it in Fearless in 5
- Specific AI prompts for drafting a self-assessment, finding a mentor, and auditing their own calendar
Talks
A personal keynote tracing an unusually crooked career, from child actor on a 1980s TV show to the youngest certified fitness instructor in the US, then TV news anchor, IT management consultant, and tech and media executive.
Key takeaways:
- The case that adaptability, resilience, and confidence are built skills rather than inherited traits, argued from a career that changed direction repeatedly
- Specific mindset shifts for acting before conditions feel right, and for replacing self-doubt with a clearer read of your own value
- Permission to find the humour in the hard parts, which is a large part of why the room stays with her
An interactive workshop on the habits that stall innovation inside teams, chiefly perfectionism and discomfort with uncertainty, with evidence that organisations building psychological safety and belonging see a 5x productivity increase (Stanford) and 21% higher profitability (Gallup).
Key takeaways:
- A rapid problem-solving challenge that makes the case for progress over perfection in the room itself
- A reverse brainstorming exercise that surfaces the team’s own collaboration pitfalls, and an improv-based exercise on adapting under uncertainty
- A personalised action plan each participant leaves with, naming what they will change in their day-to-day role
A session on impostor patterns at work, built on Wet Cement research in which 98% of professionals reported some aspect of impostor syndrome. Intended for all employees, with a manager version also available.
Key takeaways:
- What triggers impostor patterns, and the cost they carry in turnover, withheld ideas, delayed decisions, and burnout
- Tools for reframing limiting beliefs and for asking for help without losing standing
- Methods for managers whose team members are held back by low confidence rather than low capability
A workshop in which participants build a named network of sponsors, mentors, peers, allies, and protégés, with a plan for approaching each one.
Key takeaways:
- Which relationship types do which work, and where the participant’s own network is thin
- Conversation openers for approaching a potential sponsor or advocate, supported by Center for Talent Innovation research that people with strong networks of mentors, sponsors, and advocates are 23% more likely to advance
- Named prospective board members, identified during the session itself