From consulting to design to facilitation to coaching
Kelsey has designed and delivered award-winning programs at Google and is now ready to partner to drive more impact and engagement for your organisation.
Learning and Culture Consulting
Where you need a bit more play
I partner with organisations, often including L&D and HR leaders, employee experience teams, and mission-driven groups, to rethink how they design learning ecosystems, cultivate learning cultures, and embed playfulness without compromising rigour.
Spicing up your team meetings
Bringing more engagement and fun to your offsite
Increasing the engagement in your learning
Workshop Design and Facilitation
From tweaks to the whole shebang
I create synchronous virtual and in-person experiences that feel safe, playful, and stretching at the same time, drawing on the same live-learning principles that have supported tens of thousands of Googlers.
Creating great custom learning programs with impact and engagement - built to be facilitator friendly
Auditing existing programs to bring more impact and you guessed it - engagement
Facilitation Upskilling
All things facilitation
I partner with organizations to upskill their facilitators through facilitation development programs and facilitation-friendly learning design.
Facilitating on facilitation (so fun!)
Facilitation of custom workshops we design together
Designing learning programs with the learner AND facilitator in mind
Speaking and Playfulness Coaching
Speaking-Engagement Coaching/Speaker Support
I help senior leaders prepare for a speaking engagements by working on both content and delivery to make it more engaging.
Coaching leaders and individual contributors on how evolve their brand - to bring more humanness and playfulness - without sacrificing credibility
I had the pleasure of meeting Kelsey at a learning conference, where she delivered an exciting and insightful presentation on the learning culture she helped to build at Google. Her energy and passion for continuous development were truly inspirational.
Impressed by her engaging approach and the depth of her content, we invited Kelsey to speak to our international HR community, where she inspired us with practical strategies and thought-provoking ideas on fostering a thriving learning culture. Her ability to captivate an audience while delivering rich, actionable insights makes her a great speaker and a true advocate for lifelong learning.
I highly recommend Kelsey to anyone looking to elevate their organisational learning practices or seeking an inspiring voice in the learning and development space.
Barbara Busi
Head of L&D, Allianz Partners
Kelsey is a rare talent who exists at the magical intersection of rigorous data science and creative playfulness. I had the pleasure of working with her across several roles at Google, and I watched her consistently transform ‘serious’ business challenges into engaging, high-impact experiences. Whether she was building the Analytical Academy from the ground up or bringing structure to our global facilitation strategy, Kelsey always kept the focus on purpose. She has a gift for making complex learning feel like fun, and I would trust her creative brilliance with any challenge. As she launches her own venture, I have no doubt she will continue to prove that the best way to drive results is to bring a little more ‘play’ to the process.
Elizabeth (Elle) Duncan
Global VP, Sales Enablement, Go-to-Market Operations for Google's Business Organization
Kelsey doesn’t just talk about playfulness; she makes it happen. Her sessions are high-energy experiences where everyone—no matter their starting point—feels seen, included, and part of the action. What really sets her apart is how she balances humor with heart. Whether she’s laughing at herself while dancing on stage or sharing vulnerable stories about her kids touching every doughnut in the shop, it never feels like a lecture. It feels like a conversation with a brilliant friend. It’s rare to find something this much fun that still leaves you with such profound, practical ways to change how you work and connect with others.
Michael Zwettler
Erste Group Bank AG
Kelsey Kates' session on playfulness was the tonic I did not know I needed. There were bubbles. There was laughter. It could easily have been dreadful, but it was not. It was not play as gimmick. It was play as energy, attention and permission. Perhaps the real work is to become more deliberate about what we delegate to machines and more devoted to what should remain beautifully, stubbornly and irreducibly human. That is the work. And that, I think, is where the soul still lives.
