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The Lavin Agency Speakers Bureau

A speakers bureau that represents the best original thinkers,
writers, and doers for speaking engagements.

Caitlan Maggs

Creativity is a skill, not a talent. You can learn it through practice—and unlock resilience, innovation, and collaboration.

FORMER CIRQUE DU SOLEIL ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

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Lavin Exclusive Speaker

Cirque du Soleil is one of the world’s most famously creative companies. For two fast-paced decades, CAITLAN MAGGS served as Cirque’s Artistic Director, working on nearly every groundbreaking show from 2000 to 2020. To Caitlan, creativity is the engine behind every thriving organization—and, best of all, it’s not an innate talent reserved only for artists. It’s a broad skillset that anyone, in any industry, can learn. From her unique vantage point, Caitlan has seen firsthand how it sparks innovation, enhances resilience, and super-charges collaboration. Her talks are full of fascinating stories and hard-forged takeaways. She shows you why you need creativity, how to practice it daily, and why diversity plays a major role in creative endeavors.

Over the course of her 20 years at Cirque du Soleil, the largest contemporary circus in the world, Caitlan Maggs contributed to almost every new show as Artistic Director. She led all the artistic coaches and coaching, and she worked with her team to choreograph the acrobatic acts for all the shows. She also taught creativity to world-class athletes (including Olympians), transforming them from athletes into artists over the months leading up to the show’s opening, often pulling 12-hour days, 6 days a week to ensure they were at the top of their game for opening night. Out of over 4000 employees from over 50 countries, she is one of only a handful of experts who have contributed and participated in the Cirque’s creative process at such a high level and on so many of their iconic shows.

Caitlan knows what it takes to develop creativity in high-pressure environments, and she can show you how creativity can help you and your teams foster resilience, diversity, collaboration, and originality. Creativity not only helps us innovate in more revolutionary ways, it also helps us to unlock our own potential and stay open to changing circumstances. “In today’s world of constant change, creativity has never been more important,” Caitlan says.

In her forthcoming book Inside the CIRQUE of Creativity, Caitlan tells the story of her 20-year career with the Cirque du Soleil and offers creative insights drawn from her time as Artistic Head Coach. She gives us a glimpse into the wonderful world of the Cirque, and shows us how we can draw from the Cirque’s creative process to develop and practice our own creativity, no matter what context we’re in. Caitlan shows us how to navigate different viewpoints and embrace diversity as a stepping stone to true creativity—the Cirque brings together artists from over 50 different countries—and how to develop empathy, communication, and adaptability no matter what.

In her talks, Caitlan demonstrates the power of creativity and shows us practical ways to develop it in ourselves and in our teams and workplaces. She is the Creative Director of CrEaTiVe TeAmS, through which she has conducted workshops and given talks on the creative process all around the world: from the United States to Lithuania to Japan to France.

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Greg Hoffman

Nike's Former Chief Marketing Officer | Author of Emotion by Design

George M. Johnson

New York Times Bestselling Author Of All Boys Aren’t Blue and We Are Not Broken | Emmy Nominee | LGBTQIA+ Activist

Nicholas Thompson

CEO of The Atlantic | Former Editor-in-Chief of WIRED

Speech Topics

Creativity

Turning the Ordinary Into the ExtraordinaryLearning the Skill of Creativity

We tend to think of creativity as a quality that you either have or you don’t. But Caitlan Maggs says that creativity is actually something that we can all develop through patience, passion, and perseverance. As Artistic Head Coach at the Cirque du Soleil, Caitlan spent 20 years teaching the skill of creativity to world-class athletes. She saw firsthand how creativity provokes inspiration, connection, and risk-taking, and she gained critical insights into the ways we can all learn to be creative.

Today, Caitlan draws on her singular experience, giving us all practical ways to be creative at the office, in the classroom, and in any other context. She shows us how to balance the freedom and structure we need to be creative; how to maximize the creative potential of teams of all sizes; and how to leverage creativity to develop cutting-edge ideas. Audiences will be inspired by Caitlan’s unique story, and will walk away with a new perspective on creativity and practical steps that they can put into action to incorporate intentional creativity into their work and everyday lives.