Sunny Bonnell

Sunny Bonnell is a bestselling author, award-winning Co-founder and CEO of Motto®, and a Thinkers50 Radar honoree recognizing the world’s leading minds in management and leadership.

Her work sits at the intersection of vision, culture, and brand, exploring how visionary leaders turn bold ideas into cultures people rally around and brands that shape categories.

Named a “Visionary Brand Icon” by SWAGGER, Sunny is a Top 30 Global Leader in Brand, one of GDUSA’s Top 25 People to Watch, and a two-time Webby Award winner. The Webby Awards described her work as “setting the standard for innovation and creativity.”

As the visionary behind Motto®, Sunny sets the firm’s direction and standards of excellence while serving as a trusted advisor to executive teams at $100M+ and billion-dollar companies navigating growth, transformation, and innovation.

For more than two decades, her work has centered on a defining question: Why do some leaders build companies people deeply believe in, while others with equally strong products remain interchangeable?

Her answer lies in the power of shared belief: turning vision into culture, culture into brand, and brand into something people want to be part of. Sunny is an internationally acclaimed keynote speaker who has spoken for MasterCard, Microsoft, Dale Carnegie, Fast Company Innovation Festival, Inc., and Inspiring Workplaces. Her ideas have been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and The Wall Street Journal, and she has appeared on Closing Bell at the New York Stock Exchange, The Breakfast Club, and Yahoo Finance. She also writes a provocative leadership column for Fast Company with Motto Co-founder Ashleigh Hansberger.

Sunny and Ashleigh are the bestselling co-authors of Rare Breed: A Guide to Success for the Defiant, Dangerous, and Different (HarperOne), a manifesto for unconventional success praised as one of the “top 5 career books of all time” by the New York Post. Seth Godin called it “brazen,” while USA Today described it as “an entire windstorm of original thinking.”

Over her career, Sunny has advised leaders and organizations including Google, Microsoft, the NFL, Disney, Virgin, Hitachi, Hershey’s, the Minnesota Vikings, Docker, Goodnotes, Andela, Ivo, and many more, helping shape brands, businesses, and ideas that have driven billions of dollars in commerce.

Background
Growing up in the Deep South, Sunny learned the ropes of entrepreneurship early. After following a winding career path—from street musician and actor to veterinarian and designer—she completed her BA and MFA on an Arts Honors Scholarship at the prestigious Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) while also running Motto. She became a notable bluegrass player by the age of eleven and plays eight different instruments. Inspired by observing her entrepreneurial-minded parents, she learned the power of vision and hard work.