Lance Diaresco
Lance Diaresco is the former Disney VP & CMO and Google Brand Solutions & Innovations Director. He brings over 30 years of experience leading global brands and helps leaders thrive in the AI age with three essentials: Clarity. Trust. Impact.
Biography
Lance Diaresco is the former Disney VP & CMO and Google Brand Solutions & Innovations Director. He brings over 30 years of experience leading global brands and helps leaders thrive in the AI age with three essentials: Clarity. Trust. Impact.
"As AI becomes smarter every day, what makes humans wiser?"
- Lance Diaresco
Discernment - the ability to make clear decisions, deepen human connection, and contribute to a better world. Lance helps leaders align purpose, performance, and profit — bridging success and fulfillment.
His mission is to inspire leaders to create ripple effects that transform lives, organisations, and communities.
BIOGRAPHY LANCE DIARESCO
From Building Global Brands to Building Leaders
Lance Diaresco led high-performing teams through waves of disruption: from traditional media to mobile to AI. He helped iconic brands such as Disney, Google, YouTube, Levi’s and Colgate evolve, stay relevant, and grow across international markets.
Across industries, Lance observed a clear pattern: great leadership begins with being deeply human. The strongest leaders bring clarity to complexity, build high-trust cultures, and create meaningful impact in the world.
Growing up in poverty and losing his father at seven, Lance developed the self-leadership, courage and compassion that would later define his work. Scholarships opened doors to some of the world's most innovative companies, where he spent three decades leading through transformation.
Lance Diaresco began his career at P&G and Colgate before serving as Vice President & CMO at Disney and Levi’s. At Google he led Brand Solutions & Innovation, co-founded Create with Google, and later Coaching by Mastery, which became an award-winning global function.
Today, his work spans keynote speaking, corporate workshops, leadership retreats and executive coaching. His approach blends Disney’s storytelling craft with Google-honed rigour and evidence-based frameworks.
Having lived across Asia, the Americas and Europe, Lance Diaresco brings a cross-cultural perspective to leadership.
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Strategic Discernment Across Five Domains
Leadership | Innovation | Culture | Performance | Legacy
1. As AI Becomes Smarter, What Makes Leaders Wiser?
Drawing on 30 years of leading global brands through waves of disruption: from traditional media to mobile-first and now AI, Lance champions discernment as the leadership edge today.
The quality of our decisions determines the quality of our leadership, and ultimately the future of our organisations. Yet leaders today face data overload, competing priorities, and decision fatigue.
Discerning leaders separate signal from noise, determine what matters most, and anchor decisions in core values.
Through the Me-We-World Compass™, leaders lead with integrity, bring out the best in others, and create lasting impact beyond their organisations. Without Me, leaders burn out. Without We, teams fracture. Without World, success loses meaning.
Leaders leave with practical tools to make tough decisions with courage, align teams around what matters most, and turn disruption into strategic advantage. The future belongs to human-AI collaboration.
AI is your engine. Discernment is your compass.
2. Leading Through Disruption: How Iconic Brands Stay Relevant and Grow
Disney defined family entertainment. Levi's invented jeans. Google transformed search.
Drawing on his experience with some of the world's most innovative companies, Lance reveals three critical leadership practices that enable iconic brands to stay relevant and grow:
- Market Discernment: Separating signal from noise to focus creativity and investment on the opportunities that truly matter.
- Values-Anchored Innovation: Reinventing offerings and business models while preserving the core identity that customers trust.
- Strategic Storytelling: Using powerful narratives to unite teams around a compelling vision in times of uncertainty.
Leaders leave with practical frameworks to establish priorities, fuel creativity, and guide innovation in rapidly changing markets.
The biggest failure is solving the wrong problem.
3. The Trust Advantage: Building a Culture of Sustainable Performance
AI is reshaping business models and redefining work itself. Leaders face a critical question: How do we build trust while navigating constant change and driving performance?
Today, only one in five employees trust their leaders (Gallup).
Lance Diaresco reveals three leadership moves that build high-trust, high-performance cultures:
- Turning managers into coaches
- Converting individual strengths into collective performance
- Transforming friction into innovation
Leaders leave knowing which trust-building capability their organisation needs most and how to develop it systematically.
For organisations seeking deeper development, this keynote can be followed by practical leadership workshops that build these capabilities across teams.
4. Alignment Beyond Achievement: From Success to Significance
In business, ROI measures return on investment.
In life, ROI measures ripples of impact.
Many high performers reach an inflection point where the next promotion no longer energises them, success feels hollow, or a transition prompts a deeper question: What am I really building toward?
Drawing from his journey from poverty to leading iconic global brands, Lance helps leaders move from success to significance by aligning strengths, values, purpose, and legacy.
Leaders leave with clarity about the contribution they want to make beyond their current roles, and practical steps to align their daily work with their personal mission.
5. Leadership Development Workshops: Building Discernment at Scale
Each workshop can stand alone or be integrated into a cohesive leadership development journey aligned with your organisation’s priorities.
Workshop 1: Manager as Discerning Coach
Many managers are high-performers but few are trained to coach effectively.
This workshop develops the core capability of a discerning coach: knowing when to challenge and when to support, and asking powerful questions that uncover insights about employees’ strengths, needs, and performance drivers.
Managers learn how to turn routine check-ins into coaching conversations that drive accountability, growth, and engagement.
Workshop 2: Strengths-Based Team Performance
Most teams focus on fixing weaknesses or forcing everyone through identical development paths.
This workshop takes a different approach, helping teams build:
• Individual awareness of talents and blind spots
• Shared understanding of how diverse strengths complement each other
• Collaboration norms that turn potential friction into productive partnerships
Teams learn how to translate individual strengths into collective performance.
Workshop 3: Trust, Feedback & Effective Conflict
Many teams fall into one of two traps:
• False harmony, where politeness masks real problems
• Toxic conflict, where challenge becomes personal attack
Both undermine innovation and performance.
This workshop develops the dual capability high-performing teams need:
• Psychological safety that enables honest dialogue
• The courage for real feedback and disciplined debate that drives innovation
Teams leave with practical protocols for giving and receiving feedback, navigating disagreement productively, and maintaining trust while raising standards.
Ready to develop discernment as your organization's competitive advantage?
Book Lance Diaresco via Assemblee Speakers
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Reviews Spreker
Marriott International
Lucy Werner, Senior Vice President, Global PartnershipLance Diaresco has a remarkable ability to build authentic connections and trust. By combining frameworks, storytelling, and his own journey, Lance moves teams beyond fear to foster stronger bonds and a culture of trust. He inspires team members to own their careers and exemplifies resilience and empathy. Lance is the embodiment of what it means to practice these values, creating a foundation for happy, high-performing teams that thrive on trust and mutual respect. Any organization would be fortunate to have Lance driving their team culture forward.
Lance Diaresco has a unique strength as an international business leader and executive coach. He launched our internal sales coaching program. After proving that it builds our Googler’s confidence, grow our business, and more importantly delight our customers, the program is expanding. He is trusted by my team as he taps into his expertise as a former CMO of global brands. He inspired my team with his Vision & Mission Workshop. He also offered skills workshops such as Negotiation and Competitive Selling that are thought-provoking and practical.
The Walt Disney Company
Charlie Cain, Senior Vice President, Global Brand ManagementExtensive consumer insights experience combined with impeccable brand instincts enabled Lance Diaresco to create and scale Disney’s Brand Stewardship Training, creating the foundation of brand knowledge for a rapidly growing employee base as the company expand our brand footprint across Asia-Pacific Region. He also helped developed company-wide strategies that not only build our brand but also grow our business.