Marty Parker
Available to Speak:
Virtual and in-person
About Marty
Marty Parker is a leading authority on corporate culture and executive search, dedicated to helping organizations use culture as a competitive advantage. As the Founder and CEO of Waterstone Human Capital, Marty has spent over two decades identifying and placing transformational leaders for some of North America’s most successful organizations. He is the creator and Chair of the “Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Cultures” program, which recognizes organizations that drive performance through culture. A best-selling author of The Culture Connection, Marty is a frequent speaker and advisor to CEOs and boards on how to align human capital strategy with high-performance cultural DNA to achieve sustainable growth.
Areas of Expertise
Marty Parker is a global authority on corporate culture, leadership, and human capital strategy who helps CEOs and senior leaders align culture with competitive performance. As Founder and CEO of Waterstone Human Capital, he has spent more than two decades building industry-leading practices in executive search, leadership development, succession planning, and culture transformation for high-growth organizations across North America. Marty’s work emphasizes the strategic impact of culture on performance and how leaders can intentionally craft environments that drive engagement, retention, and organizational success.
- Corporate culture strategy and transformation
- Leadership development and high performance teams
- Executive search with a focus on fit and organizational impact
- Succession planning and leadership pipeline development
- Culture-driven recruitment and retention best practices
- Human capital advisory for entrepreneurial and growth-oriented leaders
- Translating culture into competitive advantage through measurement and strategy
Types of Events
Marty is well suited for CEO and executive leadership forums, human capital strategy summits, and organizational development conferences where deep discussion and practical insight on culture and leadership are valued. His presentations and keynote addresses blend research-based frameworks with real-world examples that help leaders think differently about culture as a strategic asset rather than a by-product of operations.
Common Engagements
- CEO and executive leadership forums
- Human capital and culture summits
- Board and governance leadership retreats
- Organizational transformation conferences
- Peer-to-peer professional roundtables
- Workshops on executive recruitment and culture-driven leadership strategy
More From This Speaker
Culture Connection: How Developing a Winning Culture Will Give Your Organization a Competitive Advantage
The business world is only now beginning to open its eyes to the fact that a powerful corporate culture can generate hard-currency results. But Marty Parker has known this for years. Since 2003, his executive search and cultural assessment firm, Waterstone Human Capital, has focused its recruiting strategy on employee fit and on the best corporate cultures. Each year, the firm’s “Canada’s 10 Most Admired Corporate Cultures” program singles out companies whose cultures have led to measurable growth, increased profits, and a distinct competitive advantage.
Culture Connection: How Developing a Winning Culture Will Give Your Organization a Competitive Advantage
The Culturepreneur: How High Performance Leaders Craft Culture as Competitive Advantage
We are in the midst of a seismic shift in leadership and company culture—one accelerated by the recent pandemic. In an era of remote work and online communications, company culture isn’t bounded by walls or the type of business it does. It is tied to the attitudes, behaviors, and values of the people who create it. Throw in the increasing competition for talent, and the increasing desire for employees to find a shared purpose or connection with their employer, and it’s clear that true leadership requires a new set of skills and a new way of thinking. It requires you to become a culturepreneur—putting culture at the centre of business strategy, knowing that it is individuals who create organizational culture. In this ground-breaking book, acclaimed author, speaker, and global expert on human capital Marty Parker takes you through what it means to be a culturepreneur, and how you can implement a culture operating system that drives culture transformation. Through interviews with notable leaders, case studies, and a review of best practices across industries, Parker illuminates how to approach culture as a deliberate goal—as opposed to an organic evolution—how to curate it, and how to develop a business system around it. You’ll learn about the five key attributes of today’s high-performance leaders and emerge with a new culturepreneurial mindset that will give you the corporate culture you desire and need—one supported by planning, leadership alignment, measurement, and the right human systems. An essential resource for current CEOs, leaders, and future leaders who realize a new cultural order is transforming what effective leadership is about, The Culturepreneur will help you and your organization reach new levels of performance—driving human, organizational, societal, and economic successes that exceed even your own expectations.
The Culturepreneur: How High Performance Leaders Craft Culture as Competitive Advantage