Meet Joey Avilés, Author of Choose to Live, Keynote Speaker on leadership, human activation and performance in complex environments
Lunch Keynote Speaker: Purpose Multiplier
The Next Era of Business Belongs
to Purpose-Driven Leaders
Reimagine. Join forces. Now multiply. Three years of this community showing up, leveling up, and refusing to be overlooked. Joey Avilés has stood on this stage twice. He’s felt this room. He knows what this community carries and what it’s capable of. This year he comes back with something new: a book, a method, and a message built from the inside out. Choose to LIVE: Lead Boldly, Live Fully, Lift Others is not theory. It was forged in the same peaks and valleys that every person in this room knows intimately. In this keynote, Joey connects the ALIVE Leadership Method to the real stories of MBEs across Puerto Rico who are doing what Purpose Multipliers do: turning what they have into more than anyone expected. If you came here looking for permission, you’re in the wrong room. If you came here ready to lead, this is your moment.
What you’ll walk away with:
- Most people leave keynotes inspired. Purpose Multipliers leave activated.
- Discover the value you’ve been undercharging the world for. Learn to communicate what you bring to every partnership, supply chain, and room with the kind of clarity that opens doors and closes deals.
- Learn the ALIVE Leadership Method. A proven framework for making bold decisions and showing up fully when the stakes are high and the safe move is to stay quiet.
- Build a legacy play, not just a revenue play. Confront the difference between building a business that survives and building one that elevates everyone it touches, and commit to the shift that separates the two.
- Lead boldly when everything around you says play it safe. Ground your decisions in purpose rather than fear, especially in the moments that define what comes next.
- Leave with a plan, not just a feeling. Build a concrete, personalized next step that connects your purpose to your next opportunity, because momentum that dies in the parking lot was never momentum at all.
This is where purpose turns into impact.
📩 Information and registration: cpena@prmsdc.org
Joey Avilés’s Full Bio
Joey Avilés is a leadership architect devoted to helping leaders and organizations activate the human capabilities that drive culture, performance, and meaningful impact.
Believing that the future of leadership will be defined not only by strategy and technology, but by clarity, connection, and courageous human judgment, Joey has spent his career designing systems that help people lead with purpose in complex environments.
Joey first served as Deputy Director of elite executive leadership programs within the United States Department of Defense, where he prepared senior leaders to operate in ambiguity, conflict, and global complexity. He later led national talent strategy as Director of Recruitment and Retention at the Department of the Interior, shaping workforce systems that strengthened organizational capability across federal agencies.
He subsequently made history as the first civilian Chief of Diversity and Inclusion in the United States Coast Guard, leading enterprise-wide culture and leadership transformation across an 88,000-person organization. During this tenure, Joey also served as a government research lead on two major federal studies conducted through the RAND Corporation, contributing national insights on leadership development, talent systems, and organizational performance.
Joey is the creator of the ALIVE Leadership Method, a proprietary framework that activates awareness, belonging, well-being, productive conflict, and elevation to convert human potential into measurable performance advantage. His work bridges research, systems thinking, and deeply human leadership practice to help organizations close the gap between strategy and execution.
A TEDx speaker and author of CHOOSE TO LIVE, Joey has been recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice and an Inclusion Innovator by SHRM. His work has shaped leaders at Fortune 500 companies and global institutions including Pfizer, Baxter, BMS, Banco Popular, HSBC, Visa, LinkedIn, Dell Technologies, NASA, Blue Cross Blue Shield, the FBI, and the Peace Corps.
Proudly rooted in Puerto Rico, Joey brings a global perspective shaped by service, culture, and systems leadership. Whether advising executives, partnering with universities, or headlining international conferences, Joey Avilés brings precision, heart, and an unwavering commitment to helping leaders and organizations stay fully ALIVE.