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Steve Sunderland

  • Executive Vice President of Operations, Dollar General | Led 150,000+ Team Members Across 48 States
  • 38-Year Career leading teams across Retail’s most iconic brands | Sears, OfficeMax, Bally Total Fitness & Dollar General | Northwestern Kellogg MBA
  • Author, 'Nobody. Special.'
  • Creator, Walk Your Walk, LLC

Steve Sunderland has led more people than most executives ever will. What he learned is that leadership gets more personal, not less, as the scale grows. As Executive Vice President of Operations at Dollar General, he oversaw approximately 20,000 stores and more than 150,000 team members, following leadership roles at Sears and OfficeMax.

Behind those numbers is a deeply human philosophy of leadership. Sunderland believes that people experience leadership through everyday interactions, not titles or organizational charts. His book, Nobody. Special., draws on nearly four decades of successes and hard-earned lessons to explore how leaders earn trust and shape the people around them.

On stage, Sunderland turns a career spent leading at extraordinary scale into a compelling case for more human leadership. Through candid storytelling, he challenges audiences to think differently about how they show up, how they lead, and the impact they leave on the people who work alongside them.

 
Steve  Sunderland headshot
Past Hosts Include:
  • Texas A&M University
  • Sears
  • OfficeMax
  • Dollar General

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Talks & Conversations with Steve Sunderland
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Across all Topics, Steve’s goal is to connect company vision with individual purpose.

Steve will work with corporate to understand the business culture and craft his message to engage each attendee to connect their personal mission to their corporate journey, inspiring the impact of each individual. His goal is to use his personal experiences to trigger the audience to reflect on their own life’s journey in real time. Steve’s presentations are not about Steve, but are intended to penetrate each listener to recognize that each experience could be about him or her.

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Embracing Your Impact

Creating awareness around the importance of moments we live each day. Steve spends this time immersing the audience in the value of each moment. Contemplation of the audience’s past moments of impact from others and then translating that into the importance of each interaction he or she has in each day – in their work and personal lives. 

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Evolving Your Impact

This discussion centers around the concept that we are all our own mosaic made up of the people and experiences of our lives. Steve’s goal is to inspire the audience’s reflection on the people and experiences that have informed who you are today and how to become more aware of how to evolve that mosaic in the future. The goal will be to inspire future experiences and future relationships that enrich both the individual’s goals tied to the Company vision.

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Solidifying Your Essence

A focused look at Humility, Patience and Trust as keys to leadership growth. Here, Steve will walk through personal and professional examples of these key innate characteristics, to trigger self-reflection from the audience to their own. These foundational elements are critical at all levels in every business (and our personal lives).

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Paying it Forward - Recognizing your role in enhancing others as others have touched you

An introspective look at the relationships of our life and our impact as leaders. This discussion centers around mentors, confidantes, and imposters of our lives. This will call upon reflection to those that have touched our lives and impacted who we are. However, the true value comes from flipping the script and ensuring all the participants recognize each of their impact on others and how to ensure one greets each day understanding their responsibility to those they touch.

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Walking Your Walk

Looking inwardly at what YOU stand for and how to express this in all aspects of life and in support of your work. The last Chapter of Steve’s book “Nobody. Special.” is the culmination of the unique beauty of each individual and the importance of being true to oneself in your worldly pursuits. This is an ode to every person’s individuality and how what makes each of us special is unique to each of our life’s journeys.

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Special Note: Retail and Service Industries

Any of the above leadership discussions can be accompanied by a more specific discussion to key operational elements of the business – Customer Experience, Strategy, Operational Execution, Associate Engagement, P&L Management – The goal being to connect the business imperatives with the leadership skills to better accomplish any goals.

Books by Steve Sunderland
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Biography
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