Celebrate: Strategies for Communication, Support, and Peace

Encouraging more diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in STEM industries increases awareness for more BIPOC people to get involved, which enriches the industry and shines a light on biases. Nobody wants to be the token Chief Diversity Hire. Learn several career-growth skills like handling feedback, mentorship, micro-affirmation language, and uplifting perspectives to foster a healthy work environment.

Fine-tune Your Career with Improv

Human behavior can be fine-tuned to get the best results in your career path. Understanding how our emotions and nervous system effect our behavior makes us more effective in negotiations and communications. Train your brain to respond to get the best possible outcomes in work situations.

Practice actionable communication strategies throughout this workshop with improv, role playing in actual scenarios from the software development industry, and creative discussions.

Outcomes:

• Participants will be able to communicate with their teams to achieve successful outcomes.
• Participants will be able to negotiate with colleagues and customers to lead to winning outcomes.
• Participants will be able to communicate with executives.

How Do We Get More Diversity in Tech

The quality of STEM positions in Tech greatly improves if we highlight how diversity, equity, and inclusion can grow the field as a whole. BIPOC scientists, technologists, engineers, and educators are underrepresented due to a system that has repressed their opportunities since the inception of higher education. Encouraging more diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM industries increases awareness for more BIPOC people to get involved which enriches the industry and opens up for more funding from government entities. The concepts that will be discussed in this workshop can be incorporated into the workplace to make Tech more welcoming to BIPOC candidates and make it easier for leaders and advisors to help them flourish in the field.

In this workshop, employees and leaders will learn:

• The PAUSE method to conflict resolution that anybody can learn in and use to de-escalate conflict immediately.
• The importance of having multiple communication channels to get feedback to better handle uncomfortable conversations.
• How to become more aware of microaggressions and how to stop using them.
• Ways to incorporate impactful mentorship into the monthly workflow to get positive results.
• 3 main reasons previous DEI training workshops are ineffective.
• How a case study in Southern Nevada improved enrollment for encouraging more girls in technology through one simple idea any district or institution can implement in a weekend

Captivating Attention with an Immersive Experience

Immersive experiences improve focus, optimize retention, and nullify distraction. In product development, marketing, and training, this means efficiency, productivity, and financial gain. Graduate beyond that stale printout, report, or boring video. Learn to understand immersive experiences, from business cases to implementation plans, and how they will captivate your audience.

This Talk Won't Change You, But How You Remember It Will

Memories are unreliable and fickle, yet drive our emotions and our narrative. We are anchored not by our past but by how we remember and process our past. Learn to improve the narrative by recognizing the fallibility of memory, how that fallibility serves us, and to release the attachment holding us back.

Prepare Your Brain for Better Memory Storage and Retrieval

Often, our memories drive a narrative to which we are emotionally attached. When stressed, we lock into the way we feel and our memory becomes supportive of that stress. When we are happy, we often choose to only remember the positive. Memory is malleable and susceptible to outside influence.

In the same way that a witness has been known to take on characteristics of the suspect they are observing during a line-up, or that children who are repeatedly told they are good at math end up believing it and improving their scores, memory works in similar ways.

In this workshop, we will:

Look at the ways we access and encode memories.
Consider ways to improve memory storage.
Discuss how to train your brain for memory.

Finally, we will discuss the ways we can retrieve information in order to get that information from our memories into our work.

Fearing the Robot Overlords

We fear robot overlords as we do vampires, werewolves, and other baddies that go bump in the night. We worry that their intelligence will take our jobs, our livelihood, our freedom, and enslave us to their bidding; or at least that’s how it happens in the movies. Popular culture capitalizes on this emotion to sell Terminator tickets and Asimov novels, but this is not our future. We can celebrate Artificial Intelligence as our greatest accomplishment, and harness it for the tool that it really is. This talk addresses our relationship with computers as tools and how we should allow computers to do the work, so people can do the innovating. Our horizon awaits.

This was done as a keynote for DogFoodCon and for Devoxx Morocco. It was also done at CodeMash

Unleashing Your Creativity Workshop

For innovation to flourish, organizations must create an environment that fosters creativity; bringing together multi-talented groups of people who work in close collaboration together. Creativity is a skill you can develop with practice and a process you can manage. In this creativity workshop, you will: Understand the dynamics of creative work, the most common pitfalls, and how they affect teams. Learn to identify and eliminate the things that stop creativity. Discover specific, everyday practices that lead to long-term effectiveness. Understand the pillars of effective collaboration and creative leadership. Develop the mindset, skillsets, and toolsets of highly creative people in business. Discover your natural capacity for creativity through a range of hands-on activities that will appeal to both sides of your brain. Explore some of the thinking strategies of innovators in business and how you can apply these strategies to your everyday work. Experiment with ideation tools that supersede traditional brainstorming in a fun, inspiring action-filled environment.

This has been done as an 8-hr training workshop and a 4-hour training workshop

5 Tips for Cultivating EQ in the Workplace

Learning to manage our state of mind in the workplace is an acquired skill. While stress in the workplace in unavoidable, it is possible to cultivate Emotional Intelligence (EQ) to manage our state of mind. Practicing EQ helps us identify and eliminate stressors in our lives. Awareness of self and awareness of others strengthens personal and professional relationships. When we understand the motivations of ourselves and the perspectives of others we form deeper connections. In this presentation, learn five tips for cultivating Emotional Intelligence in the workplace.

This is my most requested talk and has been done as a keynote and a breakout session, also, as a training workshop at 3 Microsoft Offices around the U.S.A.

User Experience at Every Level of Business

User Experience is included at every level of business. This can be seen in the culture of a company. Through the content, products and services that the employees create, the company engages with its consumers. User experience is integrated into every touchpoint of a company’s infrastructure when people engage with a brand. Learn why it’s important to have a Generalist on the team to oversee the User Experience for a company at every level of its processes, including: hiring, design, development, advertising, and marketing.

This talk has a surprise within the first 5 mins of delivery, to prove a point about how we represent ourselves and our business. This talk is my second most-requested talk because it catches people by surprise. It was given at NDC Oslo, KCDC, Detroit Code, and numerous other tech conferences.

Transform Your Life, Transform Your Team! 8 Actions To Lead By Example

Leadership is a transformational journey for both the leader and for those being led. Most great leaders are go-getters, but to be an exceptional leader, you must understand that the ecology of leadership includes: diversity, mentorship, personal development, open communication, team building, skills sharing and professional development. Leaders can learn to incorporate these suggestions into their professional and personal lives to get better results from the people around them. In this presentation we will cover 8 leadership actions you can start practicing now to create a diverse, supportive environment to get better results from your team.

This talk has been done as a 4-hr workshop at IndyCode{} and also as a breakout session at CodePalousa and a Birds of a Feather talk for Devoxx US.

5 Steps to Having a Difficult Conversation

How do we resolve disparity in the workplace and have productive conversations? How do we correct our approach and stop alienating each other? We seek open and productive dialog involving often competing viewpoints, yet sensitive topics are met with kid gloves when they require compassion and balance. We must replace the apathy of tolerance with the empathy of understanding. We need to learn how to navigate difficult conversations, avoid their divisive triggers, and restore collaboration and unity. Attend this session to better understand the multi-facets of highly effective communication. Learn the 5 steps to having a difficult conversation and how these conversations can help you manage and work within diverse teams. We will also discuss how to incorporate unity, collaboration, and mentorship into your work.

This talk was done at Pink17 IT Conference and at Music City Code

Empathy Is Your Secret Weapon

It can be argued that trauma is defined by perception. As different as we all look, sound and act, so to are we different in how we process our life experiences, even the most dramatic. The things that have happened to you are likely to have the strongest influence on your current and future behavior but the way you process those experiences can be altered. Empathy is your greatest ally in life and in business. It is also a muscle that needs to be exercised in order to evolve.

A one-time, unique version of this talk was given at KalamazooX.

The 4 Deadly Sins of Mentorship

Mentorship is important to build into your organization. In order to maintain a cohesive culture of your organization, you must pass on a legacy. Mentorship allows you to impart values, creates a cohesive culture and shares experiential wisdom. Creating a caring, diverse, supportive environment allows your team to build the skills and attitudes they need for success. In this presentation, you will learn the Four Deadly Sins of Mentorship that will make or break your organization.

Mentorship can come from people in the same industry, people of varying ages and through various communication methods (in-person, email, video conferencing, etc.). Mentorship experiences can happen once or multiple times throughout the year. Mentorship is more about guiding others through challenging experiences that you’ve already experienced than it is about telling someone what to do.

Social and Emotional Intelligence at Work

You don’t have to be a manager or a boss to be a leader. Effective leadership means celebrating the strengths of individuals and empowering them with the tools to implement innovative new ideas. Time spent resolving conflicts in the workplace decreases productivity and stifles creativity. This workshop offers suggestions for improving your results at work by increasing interpersonal skills, building a personal brand, understanding your optimal work environment, and how to present professional projects.

Mr. Potatohead Branding

For most people, branding is like playing with an incomplete Mr. Potatohead. You’ve got to have all of the branding pieces in all the correct places if you want your marketing and advertising efforts to be successful. Learn important elements of building a successful brand online such as social media strategy, a website, press releases, search engine optimization, and your overall brand message.

Learn to Say "No!" Without Being a Jerk

Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed because you overcommit? A recovering “People Pleaser,” I know the harm and unrest that can come with saying “yes” too often. Learn to recognize your resistance to saying “no.” Get examples of strategies you can begin to implement immediately to get better results in your life. This talk will present tips and tricks for re-training your mind to only accept invitations that will propel you forward in life.

Better UX w/EQ

For designers and developers to create user-centric products, we must focus on creating the best possible experience for our clients. We do this by incorporating emotional intelligence into the creative process, triggering positive emotions when clients engage with our products and services. Emotional Intelligence is a skill you can develop with practice. Learn how to incorporate it into your creative process to design products and services that impress your clients. In this user experience workshop, you will:
-Understand ways user experience is included at every level of business
-Identify the touch points of your brand
-Learn the difference between UX vs. UI
-Learn to quickly identify what poor UX looks like
-Examine where UX fits into your own creative process
-Learn strategies you can implement immediately to design products and services with the best possible user experience
-Discuss companies that are effectively using EQ for their UX
-Understand the areas where you can incorporate EQ into your creative process when designing products and services