She challenges everything. She forgets nothing. And she makes you believe the hard thing is possible.
Susan T. Scott has spent three decades inside the most consequential moments of transformation in American media. At 23, she managed the explosive growth of cable television subscriptions in Georgia. At 35, she led the accelerated launch of international channels across Europe, Asia, and Latin America for Turner Broadcasting. At 40, she negotiated deals in the largest cable channel launch in history at Fox News Channel. Later, she instituted the largest subscription fee increase in The Weather Channel’s history, producing the largest EBITDA on record, and at PBS-North Carolina, reversed a seven-figure deficit into a 125% larger surplus within a 12 month period.
She has done this — repeatedly, across industries, at scale — by doing what most leaders avoid: confronting difficult truths before circumstances force the issue. And by never losing sight of the people doing the work.
Today, Susan works with leaders and organizations at moments of inflection—when the old way no longer works, but the new way is not yet clear. Through keynotes, executive facilitation, and Jeffersonian Dinners, she helps leaders think more honestly, speak more courageously, and act with integrity. She creates the conditions where people become brave enough to tell themselves the truth.
Known for her candor, curiosity, and ability to connect seemingly unrelated ideas, Susan helps people see what they couldn’t see before.
Because transformation rarely begins with an answer.
It begins when someone is willing to ask a better question—and then finds the courage to act on what they already know.
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What shaped me?
People often ask how I became so interested in resilience, candor, and the conversations most people would rather avoid.
The answer is that my life has given me a front-row seat to transformation—in organizations, in families, and in individuals.
I've spent more than three decades helping leaders navigate uncertainty, disruption, growth, and reinvention. Along the way, I've learned that most organizations don't suffer from a lack of intelligence. They suffer from a lack of candor. The warning signs are usually there. The difficult conversation is usually available. The challenge is finding the courage to have it before circumstances force the issue.
That belief wasn't formed in a boardroom. It was formed through lived experience.
As the sister of Stuart Scott, I watched someone I loved navigate the unimaginable with courage, humor, grace, and fierce intentionality. His public battle with cancer taught millions about resilience. Watching it up close taught me something even more personal: resilience is not inspiration. It is practice. It is a choice made repeatedly when there are easier alternatives.
That lesson has continued to shape both my life and my work.
I am also the mother of two extraordinary daughters who have built lives very different from my own. One works in healthcare. The other lives and teaches in Seoul, South Korea. Watching them navigate adulthood, uncertainty, opportunity, and growth has reinforced my belief that leadership is rarely about having the answers. More often, it is about creating the conditions that allow people to discover their own.
Outside of work, I am a longtime practitioner of 26-and-2 hot yoga. Few experiences have taught me more about resilience. In a heated room, there is no shortcut around discomfort. You learn to focus, breathe, adapt, and stay present even when your instincts tell you to quit. Leadership often requires the same discipline.
I am also deeply influenced by the principles of Original Strength—the idea that human beings are often strongest when we return to foundational practices: breathing, movement, connection, recovery, and presence. The longer I lead, the more convinced I become that organizations aren't very different. When teams lose their footing, the solution is rarely more complexity. It is often a return to fundamentals.
People who have worked with me frequently describe me as both candid and deeply invested. They tell me I'm the person who will challenge an assumption, ask the uncomfortable question, connect seemingly unrelated ideas, and somehow remember your name, your story, and what you're carrying long after everyone else has moved on.
I take that as one of the highest compliments I can receive.
Because despite a career spent launching networks, negotiating complex deals, leading organizations, reversing deficits, and guiding change, I've never been particularly interested in transactions.
I've always been interested in the moment a person—or an organization—finally stops pretending, tells the truth, and becomes brave enough to act on:
Their stories.
Their potential.
Their capacity to surprise themselves.
The truth without losing their humanity.
That’s the work I do.
Today, whether I'm speaking from a keynote stage, facilitating an executive retreat, or gathering leaders around a Jeffersonian dinner table, I'm still guided by the same belief:
TRANSFORMATION RARELY BEGINS WITH AN ANSWER.
IT BEGINS WHEN SOMEONE IS WILLING TO ASK A BETTER QUESTION.
If you’re curious how that philosophy was forged over three decades of leading through change, the highlights are below.
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Susan T. Scott is a media executive, growth strategist, keynote speaker, and facilitator whose career has spanned some of the most consequential periods of change in the communications and media industries.
A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in political science, Susan has built her career at the intersection of leadership, strategy, revenue growth, culture, and transformation. Her professional experience includes senior leadership roles with Turner Broadcasting, Fox News Channel, Comcast, The Weather Channel, PBS North Carolina, and the Public Television Major Market Group (PTMMG), where she led governance transformation and strategic initiatives on behalf of major-market public television stations serving the majority of American households.
Throughout her career, Susan has been entrusted with opportunities that required both strategic vision and operational execution. At Turner Broadcasting, she helped lead the international launch and expansion of networks across Europe, Asia, and Latin America, generating more than $175 million in enterprise value. At Fox News Channel, she participated in the largest cable channel launch in history. At The Weather Channel, she led the largest subscription fee increase in the organization’s history, contributing to record EBITDA performance. At PBS North Carolina, she helped reverse a seven-figure deficit into a significantly stronger financial position while leading fundraising, sponsorship, membership, grantmaking, and major-gift strategies that increased revenue by more than 30 percent over three years.
Known for her ability to navigate complexity, Susan has spent decades helping organizations identify emerging challenges, build coalitions among diverse stakeholders, and move confidently through periods of disruption and change. Her leadership experience spans media, philanthropy, governance, fundraising, membership organizations, strategic partnerships, public policy, and executive facilitation.
Beyond her executive leadership roles, Susan serves as a coach and advisor to mission-driven organizations and digital publishers seeking sustainable growth strategies. She has worked with organizations including Capital B, Block Club Chicago, Maine Trust for Local News, and The Atlanta Voice through the Google News Initiative. She is also a frequent moderator, interviewer, and facilitator, leading conversations with authors, executives, civic leaders, and changemakers across the country.
Susan serves on the advisory board of the UNC-Chapel Hill Institute for the Arts and Humanities and has contributed her leadership to numerous nonprofit and civic organizations. Her service has included the V Foundation’s Don’t Ever Give Up board, The Carolina Theatre, Beautiful Together Animal Sanctuary, Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina, and the Durham Sports Commission.
Today, Susan brings the lessons of three decades of leadership to keynote stages, boardrooms, executive retreats, and Jeffersonian dinner tables. Whether speaking about resilience, organizational culture, leadership, strategic foresight, or the conversations that shape the future, she helps audiences think more clearly, communicate more candidly, and move forward with greater confidence and conviction.
What People Are Saying
“Susan is an outstanding thought partner to CEOs. She helps leaders identify the signals in the noise, articulate a vision, and own the boardroom or stage.”
Lindsay Bierman, CEO, Exploratorium
“Susan has a gift for facilitating conversations that elevate the work itself. Whether on a stage or in a room of decision-makers, she draws out what matters most and helps audiences arrive at insights they didn’t know they were ready for.
She combines her exceptional communications skills and experiences with a rare ability to translate complex ideas for diverse audiences in ways that feel accessible and meaningful. She is deeply attuned to culture, brings tremendous energy and enthusiasm to every endeavor, and is not only extraordinarily smart, but also a genuine joy to partner with.”
Lynn Waymer, Vice President, KPJR Films, Social Impact Consultant
“Susan is the sharpest person in the room and the one who remembers your name, your story, and what you’re up against. She brings brilliance and humanity to her audiences and the kind of executive perspective that doesn’t just inspire - it equips. Each time she’s spoken to my business students at UNC, they’ve walked away with actionable insights they could apply immediately. That is a rare gift on any stage.”
Bernard Bell, Executive Director, UNC Shuford Program in Entrepreneurship
“Susan is a galvanizing speaker. I witnessed this firsthand when she addressed the entire staff team at The V Foundation for Cancer Research. She did something that created meaningful outcomes - she reconnected an already high-performing group to the deeper meaning of their work, with an energy and interactivity that left people genuinely inspired. She’s the speaker you want when the stakes are real and the room needs to leave fired up.”
Shane Jacobson, CEO, American Cancer Society
“For Jeffersonian Dinners, Susan’s gift is not simply facilitating conversation. It is creating the conditions for conversations that would not otherwise happen. Around her table, accomplished people move beyond networking, beyond performance, and beyond the predictable exchange of ideas. What emerges is rare: candor, curiosity, intellectual rigor, and genuine human connection. Months later, people still talk about the question, the conversation, and what they discovered about themselves and one another.”
Nadira Hurley, Co-Founder, Vert & Vogue
What everyone knows. What nobody says.
Susan T. Scott brings three decades of executive leadership, hard-won resilience, and an uncommon gift for communication to every engagement. Whether you need a keynote that moves a thousand people or an intimate dinner that changes twelve minds, the goal is the same: your audience leaves clearer, sharper, and ready to act.
01 Resilience Is a Decision
Nobody discovers resilience in a crisis. They reveal it.
Resilience is often celebrated after the fact, but it is built long before the moment it is needed. In this keynote, Susan T. Scott explores what allows people and organizations to navigate uncertainty, loss, disruption, and change without losing their sense of purpose or possibility.
Drawing on lessons from executive leadership, personal adversity, and one of the most visible cancer journeys in modern sports through her brother, Stuart Scott, Susan challenges audiences to rethink resilience not as endurance, but as a daily practice of choice, preparation, connection, and courage.
Audiences leave with a deeper understanding of what sustains people through difficult seasons—and what leaders can do to create environments where resilience can be strengthened, shared, and revealed. Often people don’t discover whether they are resilient until life tests them. This keynote helps leaders build that capacity before the test arrives.
Why an industry’s fear of change cost it dearly — and what resilience actually requires. Watch 1:51 sec
02 Ignoring the Signals That Were Always There. Stop.
The disruption that blindsides organizations is rarely invisible. It is ignored. That stops today.
Organizations rarely fail because they lack information. They fail because they misread, dismiss, or delay acting on the signals already around them.
Drawing on three decades at the center of industry-defining change, Susan T. Scott explores how leaders distinguish between noise and meaningful signals, challenge assumptions, and develop the judgment required to act before circumstances force their hand.
Using principles of strategic foresight, Horizon 1, 2, and 3 thinking, data-informed decision making, and an understanding of the cognitive biases that distort perception, Susan helps audiences recognize the patterns that others miss—and the blind spots that prevent action.
Audiences leave with practical tools for identifying emerging opportunities and threats, a deeper understanding of how bias shapes decision-making, and a framework for leading through uncertainty with greater clarity and confidence.
In high-stakes situations, the discipline to wait and leverage: signals, trends, advantage, data - beats the urge to move. Watch 1:43 sec
03 Lead the Room. Change the Culture.
Culture isn’t what you say you value. It’s what you tolerate, reward, and model—every single day. How leaders shape the environment in which people work.
Leaders often talk about culture as if it’s something that happens around them. It isn’t. Culture is created by the behaviors leaders celebrate, ignore, and repeat.
In this keynote, Susan T. Scott challenges audiences to examine the signals they send through their actions—not their intentions. Drawing on decades of executive leadership, she reveals how trust, accountability, belonging, and performance are shaped long before they appear in employee surveys or strategic plans.
Audiences leave with a deeper understanding of their role in shaping culture and the practical choices that create lasting change. Every organization has a culture. The question is whether it’s advancing your mission or quietly undermining it.
A $250K mistake — and the four words that separate accountability from destruction. Watch 1:56 sec
Jeffersonian Dinners
The best conversations are rarely the ones on the agenda. Some of the most important conversations happen around a table. Not everyone wants this experience. The right people never forget it.
A Jeffersonian Dinner is not a networking event. It is not a workshop. It is a carefully curated gathering of no more than twelve people, convened around a single, provocative question.
No presentations. No panels. No performative introductions. Just thoughtful people willing to engage in the kind of conversation most organizations rarely make time for—and most participants never forget.
Facilitated by Susan T. Scott, these dinners bring together leaders, innovators, board members, and decision-makers who understand that breakthrough thinking rarely emerges from crowded agendas or crowded rooms. It emerges when smart people are given the space to challenge assumptions, explore ideas, and learn from one another.
The result is something increasingly rare: genuine connection, unexpected insight, and conversations that continue long after the evening ends.
Available by inquiry. Limited engagements each year.
See what happens when she takes the room.
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See what happens when she takes the room. 〰️
Susan T. Scott doesn’t deliver presentations. She changes the temperature of a room and what happens in it afterwards. Watch her in action — on stage, in conversations, and in the moments that matter most.
“She challenges everything. She forgets nothing. And she makes you believe the hard thing is possible.”
Watch to learn “A Few Things I Believe”… About people. About leadership. About resilience. About what becomes possible when we tell the truth and have the conversations that matter most.
Susan on stage
KEYNOTE — V FOUNDATION FOR CANCER RESEARCH GALA, DECEMBER 2023
On the Main Stage. $2.5 Million Raised.
Susan delivers the keynote at the V Foundation's BOOYAH Gala — one of the most emotionally charged fundraising stages in cancer research philanthropy. This is Susan at full force: commanding a room where the stakes are real, the audience is primed, and the outcome is measurable. The evening raised $2.5 million for cancer research.
Demonstrating an uncanny ability to lead thoughtful, high-level conversations.
Susan moderating a discussion with award-winning author and national foster care advocate, STEVE PEMBERTON and CARMEN ORTIZ-MCGHEE, childhood trauma expert for KPJR Films.
"She did something rare — she reconnected an already high-performing group to the deeper meaning of their work. She's the speaker you want when the stakes are real and the room needs to leave fired up."
SHANE JACOBSON, CEO, AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY
FACILITATION — PRIVATE LEADERSHIP GATHERING, MARTHA'S VINEYARD, AUGUST 2025
The Rooms That Don't Get Recorded. This One Did.
Not every high-stakes conversation happens on a stage. Some happen in rooms that are deliberately hard to get into — among people who have earned their seat at the table. This is Susan facilitating one of those rooms during a private leadership gathering in Martha's Vineyard at the height of summer season: drawing out what matters most, creating the conditions for insight, and leaving the room somewhere it could not have arrived on its own.
LIVE FOOTAGE
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keynote speaker, executive facilitator, strategic foresight practitionerAll Rights Reserved, 2026