Skip to main content
Heather Dowdy
Keynote Speaker · Accessibility Catalyst

The Future's Biggest Growth Opportunities AreHiding in Plain Sight.

Heather Dowdy is a former enterprise technology operator turned executive keynote speaker on innovation, AI, and growth. She helps leadership teams see what their competitors keep filing under compliance — and turn it into product excellence, customer loyalty, and market expansion.

Book Heather for Your Event →
Netflix · Microsoft · Motorola · U.S. Presidential Appointee · 20 Years
Heather Dowdy delivering a keynote on stage in a signature orange suit
About Heather

Heather Dowdy spent 20 years building accessible technology at Motorola, Microsoft, and Netflix — where she became the company's inaugural Head of Global Product Accessibility. In 2022, the President appointed her to the U.S. Access Board. Today she leads The Accessibility Catalyst Group, helping organizations turn the disability market from a compliance burden into their competitive advantage.

  • Presidential Appointee · U.S. Access Board
  • Inaugural Head of Global Product Accessibility, Netflix
  • COO · Microsoft AI for Accessibility
  • Accessibility Engineering Lead, Motorola
  • ECE Young Alumni Award · University of Illinois 2024
Full bio + speaker kit →
Why Organizations Book Heather

Your audience came for inspiration. They leave with a strategy.

Not another motivational speaker. A 20-year technology executive who ties every insight to the outcomes leadership is measured on — innovation velocity, customer loyalty, market share, and competitive position.

01

Executives Leave with Strategy, Not Sentiment

No guilt, no lecture. Heather frames every insight in the language leadership already uses — market size, product velocity, customer lifetime value, competitive position. Growth is the most durable driver of organizational change.

02

An Operator, Not a Commentator

Netflix. Microsoft. Motorola. Presidential appointee. Heather has shipped this work inside global enterprises at scale — so the room hears how it actually gets built, funded, and defended.

03

Story That Makes the Stakes Unmistakable

Raised by Deaf parents on Chicago's South Side, Heather has lived the cost of exclusion and the value of design done right. Narrative carries the strategy further than data alone ever does.

04

Built Around Your Audience, Every Time

Every engagement begins with a discovery call, industry research, and customization calibrated to your audience's sector, seniority, and growth stage. No two Heather Dowdy keynotes are the same.

05

Momentum That Outlasts the Event

The measure of a keynote is what happens the following week: the strategy session that gets scheduled, the roadmap item that gets funded, the customer group that finally gets consulted.

The Audience Journey

What your audience experiences.

Three deliberate movements — shifting how your audience sees the disability market and what they do about it.

01
Before the Talk

What they walk in with

  • Accessibility as a legal obligation — a cost center, not a strategy
  • The disability market as a niche, not a mainstream growth lever
  • Fear of getting it wrong — or confusion about where to start
  • Accessibility and revenue siloed into separate conversations
02
During the Talk

What happens in the room

  • The $18T+ disability market number lands — in their industry, their numbers
  • They recognize customers they've been turning away without knowing
  • Heather's personal story makes the stakes immediate, not abstract
  • The shift: from "we should care" to "we cannot afford not to act"
03
After the Talk

What they do differently

  • They launch a disability consumer advisory group
  • Accessibility enters brand and marketing planning
  • They use Heather's framing in strategy decks and budget pitches
  • The disability market becomes a measured business segment
Book Heather Now →
Signature Keynotes

Three Keynotes. One Outcome: Growth Through Access.

Organized around the priorities already on your leadership agenda — innovation, AI, customer experience, competitive advantage, and leadership. Every talk is customized to your industry and audience.

01Growth · Revenue · Brand Strategy

Accessibility Is Your Biggest Untapped Revenue Lever

Your next breakthrough product and your most loyal customers are already sitting in a backlog labeled "accessibility" — and nobody has connected either one to revenue.

Why now · At $18 trillion, the global disability market is more than four times the size of Japan's entire economy. The organizations designing for the edges are the ones defining what mainstream looks like next.

What Your Audience Learns
  • Why designing for the margins produces breakthroughs that redefine mainstream markets
  • The curb-cut effect as a repeatable innovation method — and a brand differentiator
  • Why this is not a niche: it is the entry point to families, caregivers, and communities
  • How Netflix, Microsoft, and Motorola turned access decisions into measurable growth
  • The business case framework that gets this funded in any boardroom — enterprise or startup

Leaders leave able to name the market they've been turning away — and a specific place to start on Monday.

Ideal For
C-Suite & Corporate Leadership · Business Conferences · CMO & Brand Summits · Retail, Beauty, Sports & Entertainment · Founders, VC & Startup Summits · 45–60 min
02AI Transformation

Building AI That Doesn't Leave Your Market Behind

AI is being deployed faster than it is being examined — and the users it excludes today become the liabilities and lost revenue of tomorrow.

Why now · Model and product decisions being made this quarter will define who your technology serves for the next decade.

What Your Audience Learns
  • Where AI is genuinely expanding access for 1.3 billion people — with real use cases
  • How algorithmic bias enters intelligent experiences, and how to catch it early
  • The upside: reach, personalization, and independence at a scale nothing before could deliver
  • Operator lessons from Microsoft's AI for Accessibility and Netflix product work

Technical and executive audiences leave with a shared vocabulary for responsible AI that also grows the business.

Ideal For
AI Summits · Technology Conferences · Future-of-Work Symposiums
03Competitive Advantage · Global Markets

Your Compliance Deadline Is a Market Opportunity in Disguise

European Accessibility Act enforcement began June 2025, and most global brands are treating it purely as legal exposure.

Why now · Regulation forces every competitor to move at once. The ones who move with strategy instead of panic capture the market first.

What Your Audience Learns
  • What the EAA requires, who it applies to, and the timeline leaders cannot ignore
  • Why compliance is the floor — and how leading brands are using it as product and brand strategy
  • The first-mover advantage: how accessible design in the EU creates a global halo effect
  • Perspective from the U.S. Access Board and leading global product accessibility at Netflix

Legal, product, and brand leaders leave aligned on one plan instead of three competing ones.

Ideal For
Global Brand & Legal Leadership · EU Market Expansion · Product Strategy
Custom Keynote

Don't see exactly what you need?

Every program is tailored. Tell us your audience and outcome — we'll design the keynote around it.

Schedule Your Consultation →
Beyond the Keynote

The stage is where it starts. Not where it ends.

Organizations that want the shift to hold bring Heather in beyond the keynote — as an advisor to the teams making the decisions.

Explore Executive Advisory →Schedule Your Consultation →
Heather Dowdy, founder of The Accessibility Catalyst Group, in a green jacket
Heather's Story

She didn't choose this work. She was raised inside it.

Heather grew up on the South Side of Chicago as a CODA — a Child of Deaf Adults — raised by young, Black, Deaf parents at the intersection of race, disability, and limited economic access. Before she understood the word "design," she understood what it costs when products, institutions, and rooms are built without you in mind.

She took that into engineering — and spent 20 years inside the companies shaping how the world communicates. She built accessibility into the first Android devices at Motorola. She ran Microsoft's AI for Accessibility program as COO, funding the technologies now redefining what independence looks like. Then Netflix hired her as its inaugural Head of Global Product Accessibility, where she led product access for a service watched in nearly every country on earth.

Everywhere she went, she saw the same pattern: brilliant teams treating the largest untapped market in the world as a legal requirement. In 2022, the President appointed her to the U.S. Access Board — and the view from national policy confirmed it. The problem was never capability. It was where the work was filed.

So she built The Accessibility Catalyst Group to move it — out of compliance, into strategy. Today she works with executive teams on innovation, AI, and growth, showing them the opportunity that has been sitting inside their own organizations the whole time.

Heather doesn't raise awareness. She raises standards.

  • Presidential Appointee — U.S. Access Board (2022)
  • Inaugural Head of Global Product Accessibility, Netflix
  • COO, Microsoft AI for Accessibility
  • Accessibility Engineering Lead, Motorola / Google
  • Board: World Institute on Disability, Deaf Kids Code, Billion Strong
  • ECE Young Alumni Award, U. of Illinois (2024)
Request Full Bio & Speaker Kit →

Organizations That Shape the Future

  • Microsoft
  • NETFLIX
  • MOTOROLA
  • commercetools
  • Digital Promise
  • WebCon
  • PRATT
  • AbbVie
  • NC TECH
  • RTI International
  • Women at the Mart
  • Disability:IN
$18T+
GLOBAL DISABILITY MARKET
22%
GLOBAL POPULATION WITH DISABILITIES
20+
Years in Tech Leadership
3
Big Tech Platforms Led
Source: Return on Disability Group, The Global Economics of Disability Report. 2024
AS SEEN IN
ForbesBusiness InsiderMedia Play NewsPeople of Color in TechMicrosoft LifeU.S. Access Board
Featured Conversations

On the record about the business case for accessibility.

Women at the Mart, Chicago
Business Strategy · Brand Leaders

Accessibility as a Market Multiplier for Brands

Women at the Mart, Chicago
Culture Soup Podcast
Podcast · Leadership & Inclusion

The Business Case for Accessibility as a Growth Strategy

Culture Soup Podcast
Women in AI Ethics
Roundtable · AI & Inclusion

AI, Disability, and Who Gets Left Behind

Women in AI Ethics
From the Press
Forbes

Netflix's New Director of Product Accessibility Heather Dowdy Opens Up About Being a CODA, Making Netflix Accessible to All

Read article →
Business Insider

Netflix's head of accessibility grew up with deaf parents, and it made her more aware that TV subtitles can be terrible

Read article →
Forbes

Netflix Accessibility Boss Heather Dowdy Marks Global Accessibility Awareness Day By Touting 'Continued' Work

Read article →
People of Color in Tech

Netflix's First-Ever Director of Product Accessibility, Heather Dowdy, Is Pioneering Tech Inclusion

Read article →
Media Play News

Netflix Exec Heather Dowdy Talks About the Value of Accessibility at EnTech Confab

Read article →
U.S. Access Board

Presidential Appointee — Heather Dowdy named to the U.S. Access Board by President Biden

View appointment →
What Event Organizers Can Expect

A partner in your program, not just a name on it.

A Speaker Who Prepares Like an Operator

Discovery call, audience research, and content calibrated to your sector before a single slide is finalized.

A Story Your Audience Won't Forget

Narrative-led delivery that holds a ballroom, a boardroom, or a livestream — with the strategy carried inside the story.

Frameworks They Can Actually Use

Every talk hands leaders language and structure they can bring straight into their next planning meeting.

Effortless to Work With

Proactive coordination on AV, logistics, promotion assets, and accessibility of the event itself.

Follow-Through After the Stage

Action guides, market data, and integration tools so the ideas take root inside the organization.

Reserve Your Date

Let's unlock your biggest untapped market.

Heather's calendar fills 6–12 months in advance. If your event is coming up and you're ready to give your audience the growth strategy hiding in plain sight — start the conversation now.

  1. 01
    Submit Your Inquiry
    Complete the form. You'll hear back within 24 business hours — guaranteed.
  2. 02
    Discovery Call
    A focused 30-minute conversation about your audience, your goals, and the outcomes that matter to you.
  3. 03
    Custom Proposal
    A tailored proposal with talk brief, fee structure, and agreement — transparent and straightforward.
  4. 04
    Pre-Event Collaboration
    Content customization, audience research, and full AV/logistics coordination — handled proactively.
  5. 05
    Post-Event Resources
    Action guides, market data, and integration tools to ensure the ideas take root in your organization.

Submit your inquiry

We respond within 24 business hours.