About Brandy Agerbeck

Visual Thinking Expert & Graphic Facilitator

Brandy demystifies drawing so you can shush your inner critic, think and communicate clearly, and erase overwhelm.

In 2016, she published The Idea Shapers: the power of putting your thinking in your own hands, an approachable and engaging visual thinking guide based on her 2013 TEDx Talk, Shape Your Thinking.

Teaching online and in-person, Brandy is a “triple threat” of world-class expert, top-notch trainer and seamless facilitator.

Continue for more detail, or jump to a section on this page —

Brandy Agerbeck smiles, looking to camera, wearing bright yellow glasses and red lipstick. Behind her head is a nimbus made from Neuland NoOne markers in rainbow order.

Past

Current

Future

Illustration by Geoffrey Nelson depicting Brandy Agerbeck as the 'godmother of visual practice,' like a chartreuse version of Glenda the good witch with an asterisk-topped wand in one hand, and a rainbow of markers in the other. Around her full, ballgown skirt says "Drawing as a Verb."

"We were having a conversation in the office about Fathers of institutions vs. Godfathers. George Washington is the "father of our country" but James Brown is the "godfather of soul"?

We decided that the parent represents the genesis, but the godparent represents the protector of the spirit, the guide, the shaper. So now, when we introduce you and your ideas to new people, we say "Brandy Agerbeck is the godmother of visual practice."

They seem to get it."

Geoffrey Nelson, M Ed

Past Brandy: Drawing for you, as a graphic facilitator.

Brandy has never closed the door on graphic facilitation. She is nearing three decades is this wonderful, intense work of being the one person in the room drawing for a group of people.

While Brandy currently focuses on teaching everyone in the room how to draw out their ideas, every client event, virtual workshop, or new video is colored from her experience:

Red hand-drawn circle is bullet point for a vast and varied graphic facilitation client list

Vast and varied client list
Understanding universal issues every organization faces while adapting to your specific challenges.

28 years of experience
Started in 1996—yes, back in the 20th century. Twelve of those years, Brandy's entire business was graphic facilitation.

blue hand-drawn circle is bullet point for Brandy Agerbeck's 28 years as a professional visual notetaker

Purple hand-drawn circle highlights the point of Brandy Agerbeck as a collaborative thought partners for her visual consulting clients

Collaborative partner
Available as a thought partner, integrating visual best practices into your event or workshop design.

Bullet point of a yellow hand-drawn circle to mark Brandy Agerbeck's strength as a visual synthesizer

Brandy's strength =
Visual Synthesis
See your ideas truly organized, with level of visual hierarchy, patterns maps, connections made.

No live event?
Let's co-create your process map, communication piece, or conceptual model.

An orange hand-drawn circle points out that Brandy Agerbeck is available for non-event projects that need visual communication strategy

Leader in the field
Published our field's "bible," The Graphic Facilitator's Guide in 2012. Grown the work internationally.

A green circle, drawn by hand, is the bullet point noting Brandy Agerbeck as a leader in the field of visual facilitation

Learn more about Brandy's graphic facilitation services

Current Brandy: Teaching you to draw for yourself.

After decades of drawing for others, Brandy has shifted her focus to something even more powerful: giving you paper, pen and her concrete, instantly usable visual thinking techniques.

Brandy Agerbeck teaches you the visual thinking skills, so you can:

💥 Crush overwhelm

💡 Organize your thoughts

🗺️ Map complexity

👂 Listen at an entirely new level

🧲 Engage your audience as a speaker or teacher

🚀 Boost collaboration and alignment

✨ Solve old problems in new ways

This is not an innate gift or mysterious talent reserved for artists.

Visual thinking a completely learnable life skill that can transform how you work, think, and solve problems every day.

Old, 1970's snapshot of Brandy Agerbeck, age 7, laser focused on drawing, sitting at a table in her grandparent's cabin

👈

See? Brandy has been practicing these skills since she was a lil' squirt.

Here are Brandy Agerbeck's cornerstones to see and shape your life and work in new ways:

Brandy Agerbeck's 2013 TEDxWindyCity talk, Shape Your Thinking, pushed her teaching mission into motion.

The 5 steps in the video became the spine of her next book, The Idea Shapers.

Watch Shape Your Thinking

Brandy Agerbeck onstage at TEDxWindyCity, between two flipcharts. To the left is a very tidy, pretty drawing but doesn't contain much thinking. On the right, Brandy leans towards a messy flipchart full of effective visual thinking.

Cover of The Idea Shapers sitting on top of an open sketchbook, surrounded by tools.

Brandy broke down visual thinking's complexity into 24 learnable techniques called "idea shapers."

As her 2016's book tagline reads, her systematic approach gives you the power of putting your thinking into your own hands.

This hefty reference book has become the never-leaves-my-desk resource for smarties in all kinds of professional roles.

Learn more about the book

You know what is really freaking hard?

Demonstrating the nuance of a complex and spatial skill set on the linear, flat pages of a bound book!

That's why Brandy spent the next two years developing her signature online course, The Agerbeck Method, her step-by step system to learn all 24 idea shapers through bite-sized videos.

Learn more about the course

Brandy's online visual thinking course, The Agerbeck Method, has changed the minds and lives of learners from over 40 countries —

Icons of 40+ flags representing the learners in The Agerbeck Method online sketchnoting course

Group Programs Available

Brandy Agerbeck also offers keynotes and workshops on visual thinking, listening, and facilitation to:

Give your team the immediate antidote to mental overload
Instill the hands-on tools to organize complex projects
Foster quality listening and clearer communications
Boost collaboration and alignment
Engage audiences in entirely new ways

Brandy's depth of knowledge is unparalleled and she excels in making intangible skill sets clear, engaging and joyful to learn.

View Brandy Agerbeck's Keynotes and Workshops

Group of learners posing with arms outstretched full of energy at the end of Brandy Agerbeck's idea shaper workshop in Eichenzell Germany and Neuland headquarters

Future Brandy: Teaching you and your team the visual thinking skills that support your executive function.

Brandy Agerbeck has built the world's most comprehensive visual thinking curriculum.

So what?

Now what?

While Brandy blissfully eats, sleeps, and breathes this stuff, nearly no one even knows what visual thinking is.

Why they should care about it, let alone invest their time, money and energy learning to be a better visual thinker?

Brandy now turns to the next era of her life's work answering those two giant questions.

So What?

After an early 2023 diagnosis of a executive function disorder, Brandy tumbled down a months-long rabbit hole of researching what medical and education professionals could teach her about executive function.

Surprisingly, she saw:

No consistent set of what the executive functions are
Far more about children than adults
A focus on dysfunction

But the best revelation?

It was precisely because she got her thoughts out of her head and organized on paper, Brandy never felt disordered or dysfunctional.

Visual Thinking is the tool set for supporting your executive function.

Much like how Brandy made visual thinking learnable and digestable, she turned her big-picture brain and teacher's heart towards the wonderful complex subject of executive function.

In Befriend Your Brain: Executive Function + Visual Thinking, you grasp the 9 executive functions and the specific visual tools that support them, leading to a new level of self-awareness and compassion.

Learn more about the workshop

Brandy Agerbeck smiles, looking to camera, wearing deep green glasses, red lipstick, and a bright chartreuse jacket. The the background is a shelf holding Neuland BigOne markers in rainbow order.

Now What?

Brandy Agerbeck's bright future is threefold:

Continue teaching individual visual thinkers through this site
Keep designing specific visual tools to support executive function
Teach new cohorts of visual thinkers through her keynotes and workshops

Inquiries and opportunities welcomed.

Contact Brandy

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