NAPFA Spring 2023 National Conference Speaker

After decades in marketing, David Allison noticed unexplainable things. Seniors had taken up scuba diving, and Generation Z was listening to Led Zeppelin. Men were using Botox, and women were driving tanks. PhDs were reading comic books, and tech millionaires didn’t have a degree. People were behaving in unpredictable ways, and he decided to find out why. Allison soon learned that the mysterious behaviors we see in the world around us were not so mysterious after all. Our values drive what we do — not our age, gender, or education. Demographic labels only tell us what people are on the outside, not who they are on the inside. And it’s what’s inside that counts. So, Allison launched the Valuegraphics Project to create the first accurate inventory of core human values. And finally, after five years and 750,000 surveys in 152 languages, the project has a complete global record of what we all value and why people behave the way they do. Today, his team helps organizations such as PayPal, Lululemon, and the United Nations Foundation connect to people by honoring their values. College textbooks have been revised to include Valuegraphics, while Allison’s speaking engagements, books, and ideas attract innovative thinkers from all around the world. According to Douglas Coupland, the author of Generation X, “David Allison sees the patterns in the noise and can tell us what the real signal is. And from deep inside the global Valuegraphics data, David has deciphered a clear signal for leaders everywhere: ‘Values unite people,’ he says. “They will light the way for purpose-driven brands and lead us to a values-driven world.”