Arlene Wszalek is a strategic advisor, speaker, and founding partner at SW14 Group. She works with leadership teams and boards on growth strategy, marketing, and organizational decision-making — and speaks on the questions that don’t have easy answers: how leaders develop sound judgment, how AI is unexpectedly reshaping the organizations adopting it, and what it actually takes to navigate complexity in real-world environments.
What distinguishes her perspective is the range of contexts she’s operated in. She was on the launch team for AOL UK at the dawn of the consumer internet, spent a decade leading strategy and innovation at a global marketing agency, and has advised organizations across hospitality, media, and premium consumer lifestyle. She’s spearheaded enterprise AI adoption, built internal tools and frameworks used across global teams, and led large-scale operational transformation — giving her a practitioner’s view of what works and what organizations tend to get wrong.
Her speaking engagements span keynotes, panels, executive roundtables, and academic forums. She brings a cross-functional lens, a bias toward clarity over consensus, and direct experience with the decisions that define how organizations grow and adapt.
Selected Speaking Engagements
- Women in Hospitality Leadership Conference — Smarter Decisions, Stronger Leadership: Balancing Data and Empathy (Las Vegas, 2026)
- Netflix × Otis Entertainment Certificate Program — Managing Creative Projects Amid Constant Check-Ins (Virtual, 2025)
- Women in Hospitality Leadership Conference (Las Vegas, 2025)
- Content Americas — Content Considerations for 2024 and Beyond (Miami, 2024)
- Digital Hollywood (Los Angeles, 2018)
- Best of the West (Virtual, 2020)
- Genuine Humans podcast — On nonlinear careers, creative work, and what Scrabble has to do with any of it (2021)
Sample Topics
- Better dashboards won’t make you a better leader. Better questions will.
- The Leadership Pipeline Risk: What AI Efficiency Is Quietly Costing Organizations
- Capability Doesn’t Equal Adoption: Why AI Initiatives Stall and What to Do About It
- Building Better RFPs: Clarity, Strategy, and Avoiding Spec Work
- Decisions Under Pressure: How Leaders Navigate Competing Priorities and Incomplete Information
Industry Credentials
Keynote and panel speaker at the Women in Hospitality Leadership Conference, Content Americas, Digital Hollywood, and executive roundtables at USC Annenberg and Otis College of Art and Design. Judge, 2026 ThinkLA IDEA Awards. Voting member: Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), Producers Guild of America (PGA), The Recording Academy (NARAS). Former founding board member, Vintage Hollywood Foundation; served on the President’s Council of Smith College.
Booking Inquiries
Interested in booking Arlene for your event, panel, podcast, or executive roundtable? Contact us here.