keynotes & speaking

Terri Hanson Mead is an award-winning author, Stanford Continuing Studies instructor, commercially rated helicopter pilot, entrepreneur, and former Silicon Valley angel investor whose work spans leadership, innovation, investing, travel, and the choices that shape our lives.

Over a career spanning more than four decades in the San Francisco Bay Area, Terri has worked as an entrepreneur, technology consultant, startup advisor, and angel investor. As an investor, she deliberately looked beyond Silicon Valley, seeking different perspectives, problems, and opportunities around the world. She has advised international startups seeking access to the U.S. market, spoken to Nordic companies about navigating U.S. regulatory pathways, and participated in investor panels and startup ecosystems across the U.S. and Europe.

That experience reinforced something Terri had long suspected: Silicon Valley gets a lot right, but it doesn't have all the answers. Getting outside our familiar environments, whether in business or in life, allows us to question assumptions, recognize our blind spots, and see problems and opportunities we might otherwise miss.

Terri brings that same perspective to her work with women navigating midlife. As the author of Piloting Your Life and an instructor at Stanford Continuing Studies, she encourages women to question expectations, recognize the power they already have, and intentionally design and live lives of their own creation.

Whether speaking to leadership teams, conferences, universities, innovation communities, or groups of women, Terri combines candid storytelling, humor, and decades of experience with a willingness to challenge conventional thinking about success, risk, failure, leadership, and possibility.

As a tiara-wearing, champagne-drinking troublemaker, Terri isn't particularly interested in doing things simply because that's how they've always been done. Drawing on stories from aviation, entrepreneurship, angel investing, travel, and navigating the world as a woman, she challenges audiences to look beyond what's familiar, question what they've been told, and decide for themselves what is worth pursuing.