Rich Karlgaard Speaker & Booking Information

Rich Karlgaard is an American journalist, bestselling author, award-winning entrepreneur, and speaker. He was named publisher of Forbes magazine in 1998 and has written two books, Life 2.0: How People Across America Are Transforming Their Lives by Finding the Where of Their Happiness, and The Soft Edge: Where Great Companies Find Lasting Success. His first book was on The Wall Street Journal business bestseller list. Karlgaard's books, articles, and speeches often focus on the fundamentals of business, the need for constant innovation, and the importance of building the right corporate culture. After graduating from Stanford, Karlgaard became an editorial assistant at Runner's World magazine.

Then in the early 1980s, he became a technical writer for the Electric Power Research Institute and a copywriter at Warr, Foote and Rose ad agency. In 1985, Karlgaard and Anthony B. Perkins created the Churchill Club, which quickly became known as an organization dedicated to producing programs where "important people say important things." The first speaker was Robert Noyce, the inventor of the integrated circuit and cofounder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel. Other speakers have included then Arkansas governor and future United States President Bill Clinton, former CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer, and founder of the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington. The Churchill Club now has over 7,500 members. For this effort, he was named a Northern California winner of the 1997 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. Karlgaard and Perkins also created Upside Magazine together in 1989. The magazine was designed to be a magazine "for Silicon Valley about Silicon Valley." It was published from 1989 to 2002, and had a circulation of over 300,000 subscribers. Karlgaard left Upside Magazine in 1992 to start Forbes ASAP, along with Steve Forbes and George Glider. Forbes ASAP attracted well-known writers such as Tom Wolfe, who in 1996 wrote a nine-thousand word essay called "Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died.” In 1998, Karlgaard was named publisher of Forbes magazine and began writing a column entitled Digital Rules.

 In 2004, he wrote his first book, Life 2.0. The book was published by Crown Business and made The Wall Street Journal business bestseller list. In 2013, he began work on his second book, The Soft Edge. The book was be published by Jossey-Bass in April 2014 and looks at how companies have thrived in business by creating innovative cultures and balancing what he calls the Triangle of Company Success. In 2014, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Northcentral University.