Speaker
Bio
John first managed a business at age 15 when he started his family's
roadside sweet corn stand in Madison, Wisconsin. By 20, he'd captured
a 70% market share at Madison supermarkets. After graduating from St.
Norbert College in Business Administration, John pursued a career in
corporate real estate, first as a tenant representative for the commercial
division of Edina Realty, then as a partner and owner at Brentwood Commercial
Real Estate and then as a marketing consultant for the Keewaydin Group
in Minneapolis. John left the corporate world to pursue a full time
career in comedy and acting in 1993. In 1997, John and his wife Jenni
Lilledahl purchased the Brave New Workshop (BNW) Comedy Theatre from
founder Dudley Riggs, integrating John's talents for business and comedy
into a successful and unique venture.
Since devoting
his energies full-time to improvisational comedy in 1993, John has performed
more than 1,500 live shows for the Brave New Workshop and Second City
Communications in Chicago and more than 500 corporate shows (including
over fifty performances for Fortune 100 companies). In addition, John
has created and facilitated more than 100 training workshops for organizations
around the globe, all of this while continuing as Executive Producer
for Brave New Workshop Theatre productions in Minneapolis and St. Paul,
directing many of the performances at BNW's various venues, and leading
the corporate services division.
In the
last five years, John and his wife Jenni have built the Brave New Workshop
into a company with revenues exceeding a million dollars. The company
has grown from 5 to 45 employees. The have also created the Brave New
Institute improvisational training center that currently teaches over
275 students. After taking the reigns of the Brave New Workshop from
founder Dudley Riggs, John copyrighted the show creation process used
at the BNW and refined the role of improvisation in creativity. In doing
so, he took the opportunity to develop an entire corporate training
curriculum based on the principles and philosophies of improvisational
theater. Brave New Workshop's Corporate Training has grown ten-fold
over the last four years and John has taught clients ranging from General
Mills to Hewlett Packard to 3M. To date, John has helped to expose thousands
of people to the Brave New Workshop's improvisational philosophies through
BNW shows, the Brave New Institute, and corporate training and entertainment.
John has been featured in Forbes, How magazine, and a variety of other
publications.
Speaker
Content Highlights
- Introduce
the Brave New Workshop's 43-year old creative process to increase
the quality and quantity of new, innovative ideas
- Involve
the audience onstage and in discussion to create a truly interactive
environment
- Share
and lead the group in simple exercises that reinforce key learning
points - the exercises are engaging, accessible, easily remembered
and quickly implemented outside of the training
- Evaluate
and improve the level of creative safety in the work environment
- Expose
the audience to the similarities between a good improvisational scene
and a good creative workplace
- Share
the power derived from deferring judgement at the beginning of creative
processes
- Entertain,
teach, engage, and motivate through the art of improvisation.
Speaker
References Available Upon Request
John
Sweeney