Biography

Bethany McLean is a columnist for Slate and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. She joined Slate in October 2010 and Vanity Fair in July 2008 after spending thirteen years at Fortune, where she was an editor-at-large. In early 2001, McLean was one of the first reporters to raise questions about Enron, with her story Is Enron Overpriced? She and fellow Fortune senior writer Peter Elkind exposed the Enron scandal and wrote the national bestseller The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, which went on to become an Oscar-nominated documentary.

McLean has also written in-depth pieces about the credit rating agencies, Goldman Sachs, President Clinton’s global philanthropy, Australia’s Macquarie Bank, and more. Before joining Fortune, she spent three years as an analyst at Goldman Sachs. She graduated from Williams College in 1992 with a double major in mathematics and English.

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Fracking and Environmental Justice

Author of Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It’s Changing the World, Bethany McLean shares her expertise on fracking with audiences. McLean shares her insights on the issues surrounding fracking as well as its causes and effects on other areas of our society – how low-interest rates are driving fracking, the shifting world of energy, and changing relationships between Russia and Europe. She discusses the issue of the development of fossil fuels not aligning with the math of the Paris climate accord, posing the question of what might be next for fossil fuels and how we can protect the environment in finding the answer.

Business Ethics

From her experience as an analyst at Goldman Sachs through her work at Fortune exposing the Enron scandal, Bethany McLean gives audiences a look into what it means for a business to be ethical. In her talks, she delves into the discrepancies between morality and illegality and offers insight into the corruption that occurs when the people at the top take on all of the reward and none of the risk. In these talks, McLean draws on her published works and her personal findings as a member of the business world.

The Financial Crisis (All the Devils Are Here)

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Government Regulation of Business

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Wall Street

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Print Journalism

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Enron (The Smartest Guys in the Room)

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Booksby Bethany McLean

All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis

The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron

Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World

Shaky Ground: The Strange Saga of the U.S. Mortgage Giants

Blog Posts

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Everywhere you turn, someone is talking about health and self‑care rituals. Keynote speaker Johnny Crowder shares why true self‑care is not one‑size‑fits‑all.

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Think event planning is all about checklists and timetables? Think again. Emmy‑winning strategist Gabriella Robuccio shares more on The Keynote Curators Podcast.

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Celebrating Juneteenth with These Transformative Keynotes

Learn how intentional Juneteenth programming paired with transformative keynote speakers can turn commemoration into sustained equity and inclusion.

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AI, GEO, & SEO Marketing for Speakers: The 2025 Authority-Building Playbook

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Rethinking Events: Bite-Sized Surprises and Live Interaction with Seth Godin

Seth Godin shares his strategies and suggestions for unforgettable events—from riff-based teaching to co-creation through communication and creativity.

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Aligning Prosperity with Purpose: Money Lessons from Doug Lynam

Marine. Monk. Manager. Behavioral finance expert Doug Lynam helps you heal your relationship with finances, aligning prosperity with a deeper, personal purpose.

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