Zovig Garboushian is the fiery force behind Boldness Ablaze. With over 25 years of experience in marketing, management consulting, organizational change, and leadership development, Zovig's mission is simple: Help leaders reconnect with themselves as their primary source of truth so they can lead with less stress and more ease. Zovig has worked with leaders and teams at companies like Accenture, CreditKarma, New York Life, Google, Fastly, Microsoft, Planned Parenthood, Bungie Games, Wizards of the Coast, the University of Delaware, University of Washington, and Southern New Hampshire University along with numerous small businesses and startup leaders. She has spoken at organizations such as TriNet, Advancing Women in Tech, Dutchie, CFO Council, Business Networking International (BNI) and KeyBank. And, she’s the host of When Does It Get Good? podcast. Whether she's on a stage, in a workshop, or in an intimate coaching moment, Zovig is dedicated to helping her clients feel comfortable in their own skin so they can stop worrying about getting it right and go after what matters most.

Speaking Topics

The Leadership Blindspot: Stop Doing, Start Being

When leaders focus solely on results, data, and getting things done, they miss a critical piece of unshakable leadership—who they are being. This interactive talk dives into the three necessary parts of leadership—Do, Think, and Be—giving leaders a chance to see where they lean too heavily and how to restore balance.

We’ll cover:

• What Do, Think, and Be really mean
• Why leaders get stuck in Doing and Thinking but often ignore Being
• How ego blocks you from Being a great leader
• Setting your leadership North Star every day
• Why empathy, listening, and slowing down are non-negotiables in being a leader who earns and keeps trust

By the end, you’ll uncover ways to fuse your Doing and Thinking with who you’re Being, unlocking a level of motivation, connection, and trust in your team that no paycheck or promotion can match.

Letting Go of Careers Built on Shoulds, Guilt and Other Things You Don't Need

Have you gotten to the top of your career ladder and wondered, "Is this it"? If your journey from college to job to leadership has left you less than excited about where you are with work, then listen up. Listeners will explore the reasons, stories, and pitfalls that can keep them clinging to a career that checks the boxes but leaves them yearning for more. This talk will pique curiosities about who we are beyond our current job descriptions, share what it means to make conscious career choices that come from the heart and give tactics to start on the journey to reset, reshape, or completely reinvent a career—and not leave you starting from scratch.

Embrace the Burn: How Leaders Can Lean into Discomfort Extraordinary Results

Life's smorgasbord serves us an endless buffet of discomfort—ambiguity, change, conflict, and those delightful moments where we hilariously missed the mark. Our default mode is to dodge that which seems painful, resorting to the classic fight, flight, or frozen-in-awkwardness moves. Unfortunately, as leaders, we must face the friction of these moments every day. So, what if we decided to cozy up to the discomfort that comes with these difficult moments and turn toward the uncomfortable to see what's on the other side?

Embrace the Burn is your ticket to becoming a discomfort connoisseur, whether you're a seasoned executive or a fresh-faced manager. Here, we'll flip the script and learn to expect and even welcome the discomfort of conflict, challenge, and change. We'll learn to shift our perceptions about the uncomfortable moments at work and in life to give listeners a path to becoming more agile and unflappable leaders.

Get Back Up: 6 Essential Practices to Help Leaders Cultivate Their Resilience

Resilience is invaluable for seasoned executives and emerging managers, especially with today's seemingly endless avalanche of pressures, drastic changes, and layoffs. But why wait for adversity to teach us resilience when we can proactively cultivate it ourselves? This keynote explores the art of purposeful resilience-building. Listeners will discover six essential practices that will strengthen your confidence and enable you to navigate change and failure gracefully, empowering you to bounce forward and succeed, even before the fall.

Unconscious Bias: Navigating the Stories We Tell

In workplaces with increasing complexity and less predictability, the risk of unconscious bias as our default is high. The nature of unconscious bias is a knee-jerk response to our experiences, and it can steer our choices in subtle but powerful ways. This keynote explores the profound impact of unconscious bias at work, looking at how our stories about others can shape our decisions, attitudes, and actions, why it's so dangerous, and how to address it.

First, we'll peel back the layers to reveal how seemingly harmless biases can create deep craters at work, negatively affect hiring practices, and break down team dynamics and the individuals within them. Then, we'll move into practical and tactical ways to become more aware of and actively mitigate our bias at the individual level.

This talk is for leaders at organizations just beginning their journeys toward inclusive practices, hiring, and culture and is designed to challenge perceptions, inspire personal growth, and equip listeners to become more aware of unconscious bias in an ever-evolving world.