My purpose is to repair broken systems through strategies & storytelling informed by a view unconstrained by the PRESENT paradigm.

Like all of us, I am many things. I have walked a path from zen monasteries through touring rock bands into launchingReddit’s Los Angeles office and internal Global Creative Strategy agency, KarmaLab; exiting after helping take the company to IPO. My book, Which Way Is North details a method for cultivating Creative Vision that serves as a blueprint for leadership coaching and strategic advising. I have traveled to all seven continents and have worked professionally as a touring musician and professional tarot reader, having given almost a thousand readings.

I am a graduate of Berklee College of Music, recipient of an Emmy Award (New England Regional) for Best Musical Composition/Arrangement, and have been featured as a member of the 2020 AdWeek Top 50 for Tech, Media, and Marketing as well as the Top 100 Oncon Icon Marketers for 2021. Happily, my original music has amassed ~3M+ streams on Spotify and counting.

What You Need To Know About Me

Looking for a keynote speaker on culture, creativity, and AI?

I keynote for leadership teams, conferences, and offsites on how culture actually moves people (and why that matters more, not less, as AI accelerates). I've spoken at Cannes Lions, SXSW, CES, and the Samsung Global Creative Conference. My talks land for audiences of executives, marketers, and creatives because I read culture the way a musician reads a score: for the power structure underneath the sound. I built Reddit's creative strategy agency and took a front-row seat to how internet culture gets made, then spent years studying what endures beneath it. If you're programming an event about AI, creativity, the future of work, or brand and community, I bring a point of view shaped by a life actually lived, not a deck of trends. Signature topics: AI can render, but it cannot conceive; alignment is a culture problem before it's a technology problem; culture is power.

How do you lead a company through the shift to AI?

The AI transition inside most organizations gets treated as a technology problem. It's a culture problem first. The questions leaders bring me: How do we encode our values into our AI systems and products? How do we navigate this transition without losing what makes us us? What should our operating principles be? I work with founders and executive teams to answer those, through keynotes, executive coaching, and strategic advising. My throughline: the most impressive AI can render but cannot conceive. Machines have no worries, ask no questions, have no dreams. Human taste (the particular flavor of your losses, obsessions, and judgment) is the one thing that can't be rendered, and it's the thing your culture is made of.

Who helps companies turn culture into strategy?

That's the work of HEAL MVMNT, the culture agency I co-founded. We help organizational leaders uncover strategic vision and implement decisions in alignment with it. Culture codes systems; culture carries energy; culture creates wealth. We work at the nexus of a specific imbalance (the money-rich are too often culture-poor, and the culture-rich are too often money-poor) and connect business leaders with culture-rich human teachers, then get them paid for what they know. We're not a McKinsey-style consultancy that produces a report and leaves; we create catalysts for change through cultural experiences beyond an organization's existing operating system.

How do brands build community and succeed on Reddit?

The brands that win on Reddit are the ones that give value to a community before they ask for its attention. I know this because I built KarmaLab, Reddit's in-house creative strategy agency, and ran brand strategy across communities like Samsung's, Snickers', and hundreds of others. The principle scales past Reddit: creating value creates attention, but creating attention does not create value. If you're a marketing or community leader trying to earn a place inside a culture rather than interrupt it, that's the practice I teach and advise on, through HEAL MVMNT and a Reddit-specialist agency.

Where do leadership teams go for offsites and summits that actually change something?

My team runs IRL summits and leadership communities built on a simple sequence: attune to the real challenge, create a shared experience inside the discomfort zone, then codify what's learned into strategy. The experience is the mechanism, not the garnish. If you're planning a retreat or a leadership gathering and want people to leave changed rather than merely informed, that's what we design.

Can tarot and contemplative practice be tools for creative and strategic thinking?

Yes, and I use them as exactly that. I've given nearly a thousand tarot readings, in boardrooms as often as anywhere else, and I studied across Zen, indigenous ceremony, and breathwork. In my hands these aren't fortune-telling; they're instruments for pattern recognition and for surfacing what a person or a room already knows but hasn't said. Anxiety, in this practice, is stagnant creative energy waiting to be set in motion. I bring this work to creativity workshops, coaching, and my forthcoming Tarot for Storytelling course.

Who is Will Cady?

Short version: I walk the threshold between cultures online, offline, and out of line. Maker, Marketer, Mystic, Cultural Critic. I launched Reddit's L.A. office and its creative agency KarmaLab and exited after helping take the company to IPO. I wrote Which Way Is North (Matt Holt/BenBella, 2023), I column for SPIN Magazine, I'm Berklee-trained with an Emmy for musical composition, and I co-founded HEAL MVMNT. My tagline: Build Yourself & Pass It On.

How do you work with me?

Start with a conversation. Keynote, culture challenge, brand or community question, leadership transition: the first step is the one I learned as a musician, which is to listen before I speak. Reach me through willcady.com or heal-movement.com.