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Hire a Mentalist & Magician for Corporate & Private Events
Planning an event means putting your name on someone else’s performance. The entertainment is the part you cannot rehearse and cannot take back, and it is the part your client will remember longest — which is exactly why it keeps you up.
Gentry is a corporate mentalist. He performs live mind reading for conferences, executive gatherings, client appreciation events, galas and upscale private celebrations. The work is built for adult professional audiences, it is built around your run-of-show rather than against it, and every guest who takes part comes out of it looking sharp in front of their colleagues.
“When I had a huge event to plan for SalesForce, I didn’t want to worry about the entertainer embarrassing me. That’s why I hired Gentry. I know he always delivers.”
— Lisa Johnson, Acuity Events
What the performance is
Live, interactive mentalism for groups of adults.
Mentalism is demonstration built around what the people in the room are thinking, deciding and noticing. Nothing depends on props or on a stage picture. It depends on the audience, which means the material is different in every room and the room knows it.
The performance blends modern mentalism, psychological demonstration, genuine audience participation and dry, situational humor. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. It is paced. It lands, and then it stops — on time.
The four formats, and which one your event wants
Walk-around. Gentry moves through a reception, a cocktail hour or a trade show floor, working with small groups. It scales to any guest count, because the performance happens in clusters all evening. It needs no stage, no sound and no change whatsoever to your run-of-show. Priced by the hour.
Stand-up. A 45- to 60-minute seated set, usually after dinner. It plays to a room of five and to a hall of several thousand — what governs it is sightlines and sound, not headcount.
Keynote. 45 to 60 minutes, where the mentalism is the demonstration rather than the garnish: judgment, perception, attention and how confidently people misread each other. Built for conferences and leadership meetings that want the substance and the memory in the same session.
Combination evening. Walk-around during the reception, a seated set after dinner. The most common booking for galas and holiday parties, because it fills the awkward hour and then gives the room a centerpiece.
The events this is built for
Corporate events, conferences and annual meetings
Executive retreats and leadership meetings
Client appreciation events and holiday parties
Galas, fundraisers and formal receptions
Upscale private celebrations and milestone events
Who has booked this work
Gentry has performed for NBC, TEDx, FOX, CBS, Amazon Web Services, Salesforce, MassMutual, Capital One, Berkshire Hathaway, Penn Medicine, DuPont and Smeg, and for law firms, insurance and financial services companies, health systems, universities, and technology and cybersecurity firms.
Twelve clients have put their names to what it was like to work with him — including the Chief Operating Officer of Nurture Marketing, the Head of Marketing at Sygnia Cybersecurity, the CEO of MassMutual of Eastern PA and a CMP Director of Events at Crowne Plaza Hotel. Read the full client reviews.
Six rooms, and what the job actually was
Black Hat 2026, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas. Booth #2561 for LayerX. Three days on the floor.
ONUG 2025, The Penn District, Manhattan. Booth #52 for Lightyear. Six hours, reading badges before engaging, working in short repeated sets, walking each qualified prospect to a named rep.
Caesars Forum, Las Vegas, December 2025. Two days on the floor for Port.io.
The Union League of Philadelphia, August 2024. Champions Night, for MassMutual of Eastern Pennsylvania.
Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn, November 2025. A customized sixty-minute leadership and morale program in the Schreiber Auditorium, built for hospital staff.
Smeg, Midtown Manhattan, May 2022. A reception for the Italian design house, engaged directly by its chief executive.
Why the room takes it seriously
Gentry holds an MA in Rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon University and a BA in Philosophy, and he has taught communication at Carnegie Mellon, Temple, Duquesne and the University of Pittsburgh — four universities. Rhetoric is the two-thousand-year-old discipline of how people are actually persuaded. Teaching is the discipline of holding a room that did not choose to be there.
His TEDx talk is Faking It IS Making It. He served in the Peace Corps in Ghana and taught in Japan through the JET Programme. He is a working jazz bassist, which is where the improvisation comes from — reading a room live and holding the structure while he does it.
He is a mentalist, and he says so plainly. The work is performance — built on rhetoric, close observation and a career spent reading rooms — and in front of an audience that evaluates claims for a living, that plainness is exactly what earns their attention.
What working with him is like before the event
You will get answers as soon as he has them, a contract, a full technical rider, and a conversation about your run-of-show rather than a list of demands about it.
Technical requirements are flexible. Typically a stand-up show uses a performance area of about six by eight feet, a sound system with a wireless mic input, good lighting, and setup access before doors — typical, not fixed, and the setup adapts to your room. Walk-around needs nothing at all.
See formats, run-of-show coordination and planning details.
If the date is set, check availability.
Where he performs
Gentry is based in Philadelphia and books nationwide and internationally, with performances in dozens of countries behind him. He works the Northeast corridor constantly, and travels for conferences, trade shows and destination events anywhere in the United States. Fees are all-inclusive — he never bills separately for travel or accommodation.
Each of these markets has its own page:
See every city where Gentry performs.
Questions planners ask
What is a corporate mentalist?
A performer who demonstrates thought, memory, prediction and influence live, in front of a business audience. A mentalist works with the people in the room — what they are thinking, what they will choose, and what they notice.
What is the difference between a mentalist and a magician?
A magician creates impossible outcomes with objects; a mentalist creates them with the audience’s own thoughts and decisions. The difference the room notices is the subject matter: mentalism is about the people watching, so the demonstrations feel personal rather than technical.
How far in advance should you book?
Send the date as soon as you have it. October through December fills first, with May and June close behind, so an early message protects the date you want. Short notice is always worth asking about — stepping in late is a regular part of this work, and a date two weeks out is still worth the call.
What size audience does this work for?
Walk-around scales to any guest count. A stand-up show plays to a room of five or a hall of several thousand.
How is the fee set?
By four things: the format, the length of the performance, the guest count, and the date. Fees are all-inclusive — Gentry never bills separately for travel or accommodation — and every proposal comes back itemized.
Read all the questions planners ask.
Six ways this gets booked
Everything Gentry does: the conference keynote, the trade show booth built to stop traffic and capture names, the evening or private event, the leadership and team session, the band whose bass player reads minds between tunes, and one-on-one cognitive analysis for a single executive. Same method, six rooms. Most clients find one of them and discover the rest later, usually while planning the next event. Booking is nationwide and international, and it is one person to coordinate no matter how many of the six a night needs.
Check availability
Tell him the date, the city, the audience and what the evening is supposed to do. He will tell you whether he is free and what it would look like.
The camera is pointed at the audience on purpose.
