Speaking

Ideas that challenge how leaders see their organizations.

I speak at conferences, executive retreats, and leadership events on the human dimensions of organizational culture and change. My sessions are grounded in research and shaped by two decades of working inside complex organizations.

These are not motivational speeches or step-by-step playbooks. They are designed to help people slow down their thinking, surface real tensions, and engage more honestly with the challenges they are already facing.

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Audiences and contexts

  • Executive leadership conferences
  • Leadership retreats and off-sites
  • Nonprofit and association convenings
  • University and academic audiences
  • Cross-sector and mission-driven organizations
  • Executive education programs

Topics

Ideas I explore on stage

Culture Is Not an Object

Most organizations treat culture as something they can design and install. This talk dismantles that assumption and replaces it with a more accurate, and more actionable, understanding of how culture actually works. Audiences leave seeing the difference between the culture they have been managing and the one that is actually operating.

You Were Trained for an Organization That No Longer Exists

The leadership models most executives were trained on were built for a different era. This talk examines the mismatch between the mental models leaders carry and the environments they are actually leading in, and what becomes possible when that mismatch is named.

Resistance Is Information

When people resist change, most leaders treat it as a problem to overcome. This talk reframes resistance as one of the most useful signals an organization produces, and teaches leaders how to read it rather than suppress it.

Change Happens in Conversation

Real organizational change does not happen through announcements, initiatives, or cascaded communications. It happens in the quality and texture of everyday conversations. This talk explores the dialogic reality of culture change and what leaders can do differently starting Monday.

Most Leaders Are Solving Today's Problems With Yesterday's Thinking

A broad exploration of how inherited frameworks for leadership, organization, and change are increasingly mismatched with the complexity of the challenges leaders face today, and what a more useful orientation looks like.

Working Together When No One Is Fully in Charge

How change actually happens across teams, organizations, and sectors, and why coordination, trust, and shared meaning matter more than formal authority.

Selected past engagements

Organizations I have spoken with

  • Alzheimer's Association (National)
  • American Marketing Association, Chicago Chapter
  • Boy Scouts of America (National)
  • Chicago Area Direct Marketing Association
  • Military Spouse Project
  • Licensing International
  • West Virginia Society of Association Executives
  • College of DuPage
  • Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

What to expect

Research-grounded. Practice-tested.

Every talk I give draws from active research and direct experience working with leaders and organizations navigating real complexity. I do not recycle the same content for every audience.

I work with event organizers to understand the specific challenges and context of the audience, and I tailor my content accordingly. The goal is always the same: leave people seeing something they did not see before.

Ready to talk?

Speaking inquiries start with a conversation about your event, your audience, and what you are hoping to create for them.

Inquire about speaking