Media & Speaking
Media & Speaking
Derek Wilder brings more than thirty years of business-building experience to conversations about uncertainty, growth, culture, decision-making and organizational resilience.
As a CPA, PhD, co-founder of Hallmark Homes and author of The Butterfly in the Boardroom, Derek translates complex ideas into practical language for business audiences. His central message is simple: leaders cannot control every condition, but they can design organizations that see earlier, learn faster and navigate more intelligently.
Book Derek Download Press Kit Ready-Made Talks
Speaking Topics
Each topic can stand alone as a keynote or be adapted into a workshop, panel or long-form interview.
The Edge of Chaos Is Where You Live
Why the most adaptive organizations operate between rigid order and uncontrolled disorder, and what leaders can do to remain effective there.
What the Butterfly Effect Means for Your Business
How small decisions, first conditions and early precedents create consequences far larger than their apparent size.
Why Good Plans Fail
A practical explanation of nonlinear systems and how leaders can replace brittle forecasts with shorter horizons, feedback and navigation.
The Strange Attractor in Your Culture
Why organizations return to familiar patterns, and how measures, incentives and tolerated behaviors shape the gravitational center.
The Geometry of Business
How the Zoom Test reveals whether leadership values are visible in everyday behavior at every level of the company.
Five Ways to Design for Turbulence
Rolling plans, early feedback, reversible moves, modular teams and a disciplined portfolio of small bets.
From Heroic Leadership to Resilient Systems
How owners can reduce dependency on personal rescue and build an organization with its own balance.
Leadership Reviews
What Leaders Are Saying
“Derek Wilder is like the leadership whisperer. If you are interested in recognizing patterns and identifying the invisible elements that affect culture so you can be proactive in shaping it, this is a feed I highly recommend!”
“Derek ran a homebuilder for 30 years and took it through two housing crashes, so he writes about leadership like someone who had to make payroll.”
“Derek is one of those people who makes you think a little harder about how you lead. His writing comes from actually running a company, getting things wrong, learning, adjusting, and doing the work for decades.”
Audience Fit
Good Fit For
Business & Leadership Conferences Construction & Real-Estate Audiences Entrepreneur & Founder Communities Executive Peer Groups Association Meetings Podcasts & Long-Form Interviews Business, Management & Organizational Media University & Executive-Education Programs For Publication
Approved Bios
Use these exactly as written, or trim to fit — each is cleared for direct publication.
Approved
Derek Wilder is a CPA, PhD, co-founder of Hallmark Homes, Inc. and author of The Butterfly in the Boardroom. Drawing on more than thirty years of business-building experience, he translates chaos theory into practical tools for leaders navigating uncertainty, growth, culture and organizational change.
Approximately 50 words Approved
Derek Wilder is a CPA, PhD, business owner and author of The Butterfly in the Boardroom: Chaos Theory and the Art of Growing a Business. As a co-founder of Hallmark Homes, Inc., he has spent more than thirty years leading through the real-world complexity of people, projects, markets and growth. His work applies ideas such as the butterfly effect, nonlinear growth, fractals, strange attractors and the edge of chaos to practical business decisions. Derek speaks and advises on how leaders can replace brittle certainty with better feedback, reversible decisions, resilient structures and organizations capable of adapting under pressure.
Approximately 100 words Approved
Derek Wilder is a CPA, PhD, co-founder of Hallmark Homes, Inc. and author of The Butterfly in the Boardroom: Chaos Theory and the Art of Growing a Business. For more than thirty years, he has worked at the intersection of financial discipline, operational leadership and the unpredictable reality of growing a company.
His experience taught him that businesses do not behave like machines. They behave like complex systems. Small decisions can create outsized consequences. Growth can accelerate, flatten or jump to a new curve. Culture can resist change because the organization continues rewarding the same underlying rules. Long-range plans can lose their usefulness even when they were carefully prepared.
Derek's work translates the science of chaos and complexity into practical language for owners, executives and leadership teams. Through writing, speaking, seminars and consulting, he helps leaders improve feedback, make more reversible decisions, identify recurring organizational patterns and design companies that can navigate turbulence without relying on constant heroics.
For Hosts & Producers
Suggested Interview Questions
A starting point — pull the ones that fit your audience, or use them to prep your own.
Q1
What does it mean to say that a business is a chaotic system?
Q2
How is chaos different from randomness?
Q3
What is an example of the butterfly effect inside an organization?
Q4
Why do detailed plans still fail in well-run companies?
Q5
How can a leader tell whether the company is approaching the top of an S-curve?
Q6
What is an organizational fractal, and how does the Zoom Test work?
Q7
What is a strange attractor in business culture?
Q8
Why do new values and policies often fail to change behavior?
Q9
What makes a decision reversible, and why does that matter?
Q10
What are the five operating habits of a company designed for turbulence?
Q11
How can founders reduce an organization's dependence on their personal heroics?
Q12
What does it look like to lead at the edge of chaos without creating disorder?
Book Reviews
What Readers Are Saying
“This book earns its place right alongside The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Good to Great, and How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
“What I appreciated most about this book is Derek Wilder’s ability to take something as complex as chaos theory and make it genuinely useful for leaders.”
“Wilder lays out a clear plan for creating an organizational culture of trust and transparency that builds teams and morale. I shared this book with our executives and found new energy and intentionality in moving forward.”
Get the Book Press Kit
Downloadable Media Assets
Everything needed to introduce, illustrate or promote a conversation with Derek.
High-resolution author headshot — verticalJPG High-resolution author headshot — horizontalJPG Book cover — print resolutionTIFF Book cover — web resolutionPNG Butterfly Boardroom logo filesZIP Short, medium and long biosDOC Speaking topics one-sheetPDF Book synopsis and publication detailsPDF Download Press Kit Download Headshots Download Book Cover Get In Touch
Media or Speaking Inquiry
Share the details of your event, publication or show, and Derek's team will follow up with availability, fees and topic fit.
“The person behind Butterfly Boardroom is every bit as thoughtful as the work.”
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Butterfly Boardroom · Derek Wilder — CPA, PhD Media & Speaking Resources