Keynote Speaker
Entrepreneur; Social activist; Photographer; Documentarian
An RX Fogarty experience is immersive, interactive, and highly customized. His keynote speeches and portrait shoots allow organizations to deploy their entertainment, team building, and headshot budgets on a cohesive and transformational experience for their guests.
Robert Fogarty's speaking fee: $40K - $70K
Robert X. Fogarty is the founder of Dear World, a global storytelling movement that shares people’s most meaningful stories.
Dear World began as a photographic art project on the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, where Fogarty asked people to share a short message to the world. He then invited participants to write that message directly on their skin in washable black ink and be photographed by him.
The photographic style is now studied in university classrooms, published in 30 countries and the stark images with short messages have inspired millions.
What came next was an audacious and unique insight: Leaders could use the photographs as a way to deepen trust and align people with the mission, vision and values of their organizations.
Today, CEOs and leadership teams from Google to Duke men’s basketball bring Fogarty and Dear World to design experiences when they need more than a keynote. They are looking to create the kind of shared experience people remember long after the conference ends.
Dear World has been featured on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday, CNN, the BBC, Good Morning America and the TODAY show.
Fogarty’s work has taken him inside refugee camps, war zones, Ivy League and community college campuses, small associations, and Fortune 100 companies. Across every setting, Fogarty’s belief remains the same: “The best leaders do not just tell their stories. They make room for everyone else in the room to tell theirs.”
Write Your Future is an immersive keynote and guided letter-writing experience designed to help participants convert the emotion of a gathering into personal intention, future action, and long-term reflection.
The problem with most conferences is not what happens in the room. It’s what disappears after people leave. Write Your Future is designed to answer one of the most important questions meeting planners ask: How do we keep this going?
Through a structured writing experience, participants pause to reflect on who they are becoming, what they want to remember, and what they want to practice after the conference ends. They write to their future selves, creating a meaningful personal commitment that extends the impact of the event well beyond the agenda.
Unlike a typical closing keynote, Write Your Future gives attendees a ritual. It offers something tangible that creates continuity between inspiration and action. Designed for annual meetings, leadership retreats, and values-driven gatherings, the experience helps organizations deepen reflection, reinforce intention, and create a shared moment participants will revisit long after the event ends.
The Portrait Process is an interactive keynote and experience that teaches participants how to see, interview, and photograph one another with care, attention, and humanity.
Inspired by Robert X. Fogarty’s belief that everyone deserves to experience the power of taking someone’s portrait, this immersive session goes beyond a camera moment. Participants step out of passive observation and into the experience, learning how presence, trust, curiosity, and attention create meaningful connection.
Through a live portrait tutorial and facilitated peer-to-peer activation, attendees become both storytellers and witnesses, interviewing, photographing, and truly seeing one another.
The Portrait Process is especially powerful for organizations looking to strengthen belonging, rebuild trust, deepen leadership presence, and create meaningful connection across teams.
Align meaningful stories with your mission, vision and values
What is it?
In this immersive keynote experience, Robert X. Fogarty introduces the Brain Tattoo Method, the storytelling process behind Dear World’s iconic writing-on-skin portraits. Participants are guided to identify a short message to the world, write that message on their skin in washable black ink, and step into a photographic portrait.
Keynote Description
Fogarty opens with the origin story of Dear World and the lessons learned from photographing more than one million people across radically different environments, from disaster zones and refugee camps to leadership summits and elite teams.
Through a guided process, participants reflect on a meaningful story from their lives and distill it into a short message to the world. That message is then written directly on their skin in washable ink and captured in a Dear World portrait.
For larger engagements, the keynote can be paired with an immersive portrait activation and an optional closing reveal, where selected participant stories are shared from the stage and images captured on site are transformed into a powerful slideshow or short film.
The result is a keynote that does not end when the speaker leaves the stage. It becomes the emotional and visual centerpiece of the meeting.
This session is ideal for leaders and teams who are:
Launching or renewing mission, vision, and values
Seeking a deeper alternative to a traditional motivational keynote
Building trust across divisions, geographies, or leadership levels
Looking to create a shared emotional experience at a major gathering
Ready to make culture visible, not just talk about it
The audience will leave with:
A clear personal message connected to who they are and what they stand for
A deeper understanding of their colleagues beyond job titles and roles
A practical storytelling framework for building trust and connection
A visible, memorable artifact from the experience
A renewed sense of ownership in the organization’s mission and values
Suggested Format
Opening keynote: 20–60 minutes
Portrait activation: customized based on audience size and schedule
Optional closing reveal: 20–60 minutes
Optional deliverables: still portraits, short film, custom digital gallery or website, printed portraits, executive story coaching
Tell us about your event and the speaker you are interested in booking and we will be in touch right away.