SPEAKER · FOUNDER · AUTHOR · BELONGING EXPERT
Eli Walker
Founder of the wellness brand Drunk Yoga® (now The Uplift Center), helping teams build belonging through play, laughter and connection.
FEE RANGE
In Person Keynote: $10,000
Virtual Keynote: $7,500
TRAVELS FROM
New York, NY
FORMATS
Keynote, Workshop, Emcee
About Eli
Eli Walker is a solo-performance artist, keynote speaker, and belonging expert who helps teams and audiences build real connection through play, movement, immersive storytelling, and legendary icebreakers. Trained at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and founder of the internationally acclaimed Drunk Yoga® and The Uplift Center, Eli has brought her P.L.A.Y. Method to Google, Mastercard, Intel, Pinterest, eBay, Barclays, and hundreds of institutions worldwide. Her unique approach to social wellness has been featured in Forbes, the LA Times, Women's Health, Glamour, People, and CBS. When you book Eli, your audience will move, laugh, and leave more connected than when they walked in, and they'll be talking about it long after the event ends.
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Eli Walker is a solo-performance artist, keynote speaker, and belonging expert who helps leaders and teams build the kind of connection that doesn't end when the event does.
Trained as an actor at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Eli founded Drunk Yoga® — an internationally acclaimed wellness brand that turned a viral yoga drinking game into a global belonging movement. What started as social yoga events became a full methodology: the P.L.A.Y. Method, now the foundation of The Uplift Center, her school for belonging. Along the way, she pioneered what she calls belonging architecture — using immersive storytelling, live experience design, and the art of play to help people from different backgrounds actually feel like they're on the same team.
She has brought this work to tens of thousands of individuals and hundreds of institutions worldwide, including Google, Mastercard, Intel, Pinterest, eBay, Barclays, NYU, and Columbia University.
When you book Eli, expect to move, laugh, and leave with something you'll actually use. She has a gift for making belonging feel less like a buzzword and more like something that just happened to you.
Speaking Topics
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We live in the most connected era in human history — and somehow, people have never felt more alone. The culprit isn't technology or remote work or busy schedules. It's autopilot. We move through our days, our meetings, and our relationships on autopilot, and connection becomes a casualty.
In this keynote, belonging expert and solo performance artist Eli Walker draws on live experience design, behavioral psychology, and her own journey from NYU-trained actress to founder of a global wellness movement to show audiences how to get out of their heads and into the room — in real time.
Using her signature P.L.A.Y. Method, Eli gives audiences practical, repeatable tools to create genuine connection in the moments that matter most: at work, at events, and in everyday life.
Attendees will leave knowing:
How to get off autopilot and into presence
Why connection feels hard right now (and what's actually going on)
How to facilitate belonging in day-to-day interactions
Practical P.L.A.Y. Method tools they can use immediately
Best for: company all-hands, leadership summits, conference openers, DEI and culture events
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"Balance" is a myth — and most people already know it. What high performers actually need isn't less work. It's more play. Not as a reward for productivity, but as the engine behind it.
In this high-energy, research-backed keynote, Eli Walker makes the neuroscience case for why play, creativity, and spontaneity aren't soft skills — they're performance strategies. Drawing on her background in performance, her P.L.A.Y. Method, and her work with teams at Google, Mastercard, and Intel, Eli shows audiences how to access joy under pressure and embed play into the rhythms of real work life.
This isn't a keynote about taking more vacations. It's about rewiring how you show up — every single day.
Attendees will leave knowing:
Why "balance" fails (and what to pursue instead)
The neuroscience behind play, creativity, and resilience
How to access spontaneity and joy even under pressure
Non-cringey strategies for embedding play into team culture and daily routines
Best for: corporate conferences, women's leadership events, wellness summits, team retreats
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Most organizations treat belonging as a feeling to be hoped for. The most connected teams treat it as a system to be built. There's a difference — and it's measurable.
In this strategic, story-driven keynote, Eli Walker introduces social wellness as a core organizational competency, not a perk or a program. She unpacks why most connection initiatives fail, what the research says about belonging's impact on performance, retention, and longevity, and how leaders can use the P.L.A.Y. Method to design belonging into the fabric of their culture — from meetings to rituals to the way teams communicate.
Equal parts inspiring and actionable, Belonging by Design™ gives leaders a new lens for one of the most urgent challenges in the modern workplace.
Attendees will leave knowing:
Why social wellness directly impacts longevity, performance, and retention
How to leverage the P.L.A.Y. Method within live moments of connection
Why most connection initiatives fail — and what to do instead
How to integrate belonging into meetings, rituals, and culture systems
Best for: HR and people ops conferences, executive leadership events, culture and DEI summits, SHRM chapters
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