KEYNOTE • INTERVIEWER • EMCEE
DANIEL TATAR
Nonprofit Executive and Working TV Actor who has appeared on stages and screens across the world.
“Teams that build relationships when nothing is at stake
are the ones still standing when something is.”
THREE WAYS TO FIND OUT WHAT A RELATIONSHIP IS ACTUALLY WORTH.
BUILT IT
The Company Men
The national vocal group Dan founded and built into corporate and private events across the country. Headlined stages with Bon Jovi; Earth, Wind, and Fire; Natalie Cole; and more. It still tours today and it does so without him.
GREW IT, THEN CLOSED IT
The iCenter
Dan expanded a national organization, then took the top job to wind it down: staff, funders, board, and a body of work that had to outlive the entity holding it.
DID IT ON CAMERA
Primetime Television
As a working actor (Grey’s Anatomy, The Studio, Euphoria), Dan walks onto sets where the company has worked together for six seasons, and has a few hours to become someone they trust.
Anyone can hold a company together while they are standing in the middle of it. The question is what happens the day you walk out.
A wind-down strips out every incentive people have to be generous with you. What is left is the relationship, or nothing.
No runway, no history, and a camera recording up close whether the connection is real. Trust either forms fast or it shows.
SIGNATURE KEYNOTE
The Only Thing That Outlasts You
Organizations measure the things that are easy to measure. Then something happens that the metrics did not price in: a founder leaves, a merger lands, a division closes, and what determines the outcome turns out to be the quality of the relationships built years earlier, when nobody was tracking them. Dan has been on all three sides of that. He built a national touring company that runs almost 15 years later without him, served as Interim CEO of a national organization through its wind-down, and spends his other career walking into rooms where he has only a few hours to earn the trust most people get years to build. This keynote is what he learned, and what it should change about how your people spend their week.
Why the relationships built during growth are the ones that decide what happens during contraction
What a business that survives your departure has that others don't, and how to build it on purpose
How to earn working trust quickly, with people who have no reason yet to give it
How to end something well, and why the wind-down is the part people remember longest
ALSO AVAILABLE
Endings Are Part of the Job
Every speaker sells growth. Almost nobody prepares leaders for contraction, and most will face it. How to close, merge, or hand off an organization in a way that protects the people, the work, and your own name.
Read the Room, Not the Script
The tactical element. A 5-step sequence for steering a conversation that is going sideways, with a live demonstration drawn from Dan’s stage and screen work. Best as a breakout alongside the keynote.
Onstage Interviewer
Interviews your key guests, moderates panels, warms up the audience with custom material.
Emcee
Hosts the full day or the full conference. Years of corporate ballrooms means he knows what a room looks like at 4pm on day two.
TESTIMONIALS
“A pro who knows how to engage a room and a crowd.”
“You were a big hit! I got several calls and emails from people raving about you. Here’s to many more successful shows together.”
“Your facilitation is exceptional and your enthusiasm is contagious!”
ABOUT DAN
He has built organizations, grown them, and closed them. The closing taught him the most.
Dan Tatar founded The Company Men, a national vocal group that grew into the top quarter of all touring acts and performs for corporate clients including State Farm. He built it, toured it, and left it, and it is still on the road today. That last part is the one he is proudest of.
He joined The iCenter as Director of Strategic Partnerships and Engagement, expanded the organization’s national reach, and later became Interim CEO, leading it through its wind-down. Staff, funders, board, and a body of work all had to land somewhere, and every one of those landings ran on relationships built years before anyone knew they would be needed.
He now directs external partnerships at OpenDor Media, an international educational media organization. He is also a working actor, with recurring work on primetime (Chicago Med, Grey’s Anatomy) and streaming television (The Studio, Euphoria), a second career that has taught him more about earning trust quickly than any management book has. Between the touring years and the television years, he has spent a lot of time on the other side of an event budget, which is a useful thing in a keynote speaker.
He holds graduate degrees from the George Washington University and Spertus Institute, serves on the board of the Alliance for Jewish Theatre, and sits on the inaugural council of Voice of the People.