Who is Denise?

“Creative. Vibrant. Full of possibility. That’s the world Denise Jacobs magically draws people into. She works in the eye of the storm, sparking big ideas and catalyzing change. Through her organization The Creative Dose, she channels creative genius, translating new approaches into actionable ideas, assisting people in finding their place in the sun. Curious, participative, and engaging, Denise is a force of nature, showing us new and better ways for us to be.”

– Marcia Connor, Managing Director of Impact Ingenuity, Executive Advisor, Analyst, and Best Selling Author

Denise Jacobs a Speaker + Author + Creativity Evangelist who increases employee productivity and engagement through evangelizing leading-edge techniques for busting through creative blocks in order help individuals to be their brilliance, cultivate collaboration, and develop leadership skills.

Through speaking, writing, training, and her consulting company, The Creative Dose, Denise helps companies to create real-world results where individuals and teams work better, produce more, and skyrocket their company’s success.

Keynote Speaker

Denise is a passionate, high-energy, thought-provoking and sought-after international keynote speaker who helps technologists, developers, designers, entrepreneurs, startup founders, C-Suite executives, marketers, and communicators bring the power of creativity to teams and individuals – even those in industries that aren’t necessarily thought of as creative. Denise’s keynotes and workshops give A Creative Dose™: a booster shot of inspiration and an injection of fresh ways to approach creativity and bust through creative blocks so that people can start doing their best work.

Denise’s high-energy, tailored opening keynotes set the stage for an event, creating both context and space for inspired thinking, deep listening, and spirited conversations.

Denise’s closing keynotes are highly customized to both the event and the audience. Interweaving insights from other speakers’ keynotes and breakout sessions with her own presentation’s concepts, Denise provides participants with a delightful integrated conference experience.

Regardless of whether she opens or closes an event, participants leave Denise’s keynotes not only motivated to put their concepts into practice through actionable takeaways, but also fully inspired to express their creativity and be their brilliance.

Denise has presented at organizations worldwide such as Google, Facebook, Automattic, GitHub, Groupon, FastWeb.It, and the BBC. She has spoken at events such as South By Southwest Interactive, The International Association of Business Communicators Worldwide Conference, NDC Oslo & London, The Trondheim Developer’s Conference, UX Week, UX Australia, UX Lisbon, UX Israel Studio, The Society for Technical Communications Summit, various chapters of The American Marketing Association, Creative Mornings, The Future of Storytelling, the CREATE Festival, Delight Conference, Inbound, AdobeMax, and TEDx RheinMain.

 

Creativity Evangelist

In the tech industry, Evangelists are people who serve as ambassadors of technologies, going out amongst the community to promote their company’s products and generate brand loyalty. Spurred by an epiphany that she experienced upon completing her first book, Denise now evangelizes creativity to tech industry conferences, companies, and individuals in order to promote engaged, inspired, and passionate workers who propel their company’s success.
>> Watch Denise in action!

Founder & CEO

Because companies recognize their future success is dependent on creativity and innovation, there is a growing demand for corporate and conference training for creativity as a skill. To meet this need, Denise founded a creativity consultancy, The Creative Dose. The Creative Dose offers a leading-edge approach – driven by neuroscience and fueled by applied improvisation – to developing the skills of creative thinking, idea generation and execution, and effective communication. The outcome is an engaged and productive workforce who has better sustainable individual performance, improved team collaboration, and new leaders within the organization.

 

Author & Writer

Denise is  the author of the newly released book Banish Your Inner Critic, the premier handbook on silencing fears and self-doubt to unleash creativity and help people do their best work. This book is a manual and toolkit to help people to not only reclaim their creativity and productivity, but bump it up to extreme productivity, clearing a path for everyone to find their zone more often – and stay in it longer. Calling upon neuroscience, psychology, mindfulness principles, and self-compassion research, deftly blended with personal storytelling, Banish Your Inner Critic presents approachable and immediately applicable techniques for putting the Inner Critic in its place.

Denise’s first book is a web design and development entitled The CSS Detective Guide. Denise is also co-author to the Smashing Book #3: Redesign the Web, InterAct with Web Standards: A holistic approach to web design, and she also contributed to the book Designing Together by Dan Brown.

 

Educator

Years ago, as part of her soap-making business, Botani Handmade Soaps, Denise started teaching soapmaking out of her house and found that she was hooked: not on soapmaking (she was already hooked on that), but on teaching people.

Since 1998, through independent workshops as well as programs in learning institutions, Denise has taught hundreds of people creative crafts, web design and development.

Now, as a Creativity Evangelist, however, she conducts workshops on engaged creative productivity, creative collaboration, and leadership development.

To give back to the community, Denise has taught coding classes as a volunteer with CodeFever Miami, and developed curricula for the Web Standards Project Education Task Force (WaSP InterAct) which is now a part of the W3C Web Education Community Group Wiki.

Passion Projects

The Creativity (R)Evolution: Creativity + Intention = Transformation

There’s a movement brewing…The Creativity (R)Evolution leverages the transformative power of creativity to change our lives, our communities, and our world for the better. The secret is in learning how to cultivate and maintain the creative spark in both ourselves and others so we produce work infused with meaning and impact.

Find out more about The Creativity (R)Evolution, then join the tribe! We’re not just talkin’ bout a (R)Evolution — we’re sparking one.

Rawk the Web: Changing the Face of the Tech Industry

The tech industry has been Denise’s tribe for more than 15 years. From her experience of speaking and conducting workshops at industry conferences and tech companies all around the world, Denise can tell you firsthand what you may already know: there’s a huge lack of diversity of visible tech experts. However, it’s not an issue of numbers because there are plenty of diverse tech experts. Instead, it’s an issue of visibility.

As a Creativity Evangelist, Denise knows that diversity drives innovation and growth. As a creative problem-solver, she focuses on developing effective solutions. So, to change the face of the tech industry, Denise started an initiative. Rawk the Web encourages more women and people of color to amplify their visibility and become known industry experts by becoming speakers, published writers, and company founders. At the same time, it’s also about serving as role models to show diverse youth that they have a place in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) industries.

Recognition

  • Miami’s TechWeek100 Key Influencer, 2014 & 2015
  • .Net magazine “Best of the Web” Judge 2014 & 2013
  • Pastry Box Project 2012
  • .Net magazine “Best of the Web” nomination 2010
  • Webbie awards nomination 2011
  • 28 days of Diversity 2011