Oversaw 102 banks and more than 500 employees as President of Retail Banking at Bank OZK.
The book + the leadership work
UNICORN Leader™
Driving Innovation and Influence in the Modern Workplace
Your team needs to try something new. What happens when someone actually does?
Leaders shape whether people speak up, share unfinished ideas, hear feedback, learn, and act. UNICORN Leader™ gives that human work a practical place in the modern workplace.
Building this with a team? Explore organizational work
Executive experience behind the work
Led retail banking, wealth management, and the call center as Chief Retail Banking Officer at Truliant.
NC TECH · September 29, 2026
The book meets the room.
Opening keynote. Books sold out. Within three hours, Kristi was hired for a leadership retreat, a workshop, and a keynote.
Practical tools from the book
Give innovation something to do on Monday.
The book includes a Braggy Board, an Innovation Wall, and learning practices. Here are starting exercises you can use with your team.
Make contribution visible.
When good work gets buried in the next deadline, people stop seeing what they contribute.
Try this in your next meeting: ask each person to name one contribution, who it helped, and why it mattered. Capture the specifics so recognition becomes something the team can learn from.
Give unfinished ideas a place to go.
When every idea has to arrive polished, people keep the useful but imperfect ones to themselves.
Try this with one real problem: capture the idea, the problem it could solve, and the smallest test. Choose an owner and a date to review what you learned.
Turn an experiment into a next decision.
A team can complete a project and still repeat the same mistakes on the next one.
After the next experiment, ask: What did we try? What happened? What will we change? Agree on one adjustment and who will make it.
One evolving body of work
Build the conditions. Practice the conversation. Use it.
UNICORN Leader™ came first. Authentic Authority™ developed afterward. BetterStory Studio™ gives people a live place to practice and hear how their message lands.
UNICORN Leader™
Leadership practices that make recognition, experimentation, learning, and contribution part of how the team works.
Start with the bookAuthentic Authority™
Understand how you build trust, then apply that insight to feedback, performance conversations, change communication, and sales.
Explore Authentic Authority™BetterStory Studio™
Bring the idea, recommendation, message, or ask. Say it out loud, hear the response, sharpen it, and use it.
Explore the live labBring the work into your organization
Your next change needs people who can lead it.
Start with the situation: a transformation, a team holding back ideas, managers avoiding feedback, or a decision people aren’t acting on. Kristi connects the relevant tools to the work your people need to do.
Keynotes
A participatory experience that connects leadership, trust, and innovation to a conversation your audience needs to have.
Team workshops
Work on a real leadership message, feedback conversation, or unfinished idea. Leave with a next action and an owner.
Executive advisory
Ongoing support for leaders navigating consequential decisions, communication, change, and follow-through.