Speaking
The Neuroscience of Our Hidden Patterns: How They Shape the Way We Lead and Connect
We can value authenticity and still hold back. Understand the importance of difficult conversations and still avoid them. Know who we want to be as leaders, parents, or colleagues yet find old emotional patterns shaping how we respond.
My talks combine neuroscience, storytelling, and decades of experience working with individuals and organizations to explore why we sometimes struggle to be the people we genuinely want to be.
Stories Are Part of the Experience
I use storytelling to bring neuroscience into everyday moments. Rather than simply explaining why we behave as we do, I invite audiences to recognize the emotional patterns at work in their own lives, and consider what could become possible if those patterns changed.
The result is an engaging, thought-provoking experience grounded in human stories and accessible science.
I don't just talk about the neuroscience of topics like belonging, authenticity, transformation, and change. I use real human moments so audiences feel the question before they hear the science. People leave with something new to notice in themselves.
Featured Talks and Workshops
What happens in the small moments when acceptance seems to require us to edit who we are?
Based on my TEDx talk selected by TED as an Editor's Pick, this presentation is also available in a workshop format. It explores the emotional patterns that can make fitting in feel safer than showing up authentically, and the hidden cost of that tradeoff.
The Loneliness of Fitting In: How to belong without losing yourself
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Why fitting in can become a way to avoid discomfort.
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What it quietly costs us in organizations and in relationships.
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Why understanding belonging is vital for navigating vulnerability, authenticity, and leadership
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How to belong without leaving parts of ourselves behind.
Why Knowing Better Isn’t Enough: The neuroscience of meaningful transformation
Why can intelligent, self-aware, highly motivated people know exactly what they want to change and still struggle to change?
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Why understanding neuroscience redefines what the word "resistance" means.
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Explore the learned emotional processes beneath behavior.
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Why insight, willpower, and intention sometimes are not enough.
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What neuroscience can teach us about the difference between changing what we do and transforming what's underneath.
Audience takeaway: Understand why knowing better doesn't always lead to doing differently, and what it takes to change the emotional patterns underneath our behavior.
For leadership teams, managers, and organizations navigating change.
Audience takeaway: Recognize the subtle ways we sacrifice authenticity for acceptance, and discover how to cultivate belonging without losing ourselves in the process.
For organizations, universities, and conferences interested in belonging, authenticity, leadership, and human connection.
When Emotional Discomfort Makes the Decision
How often do our reactions to uncomfortable emotions shape the decisions we make without our realizing it?
Some of the most consequential leadership moments are emotionally uncomfortable ones: disagreement, uncertainty, giving difficult feedback, receiving criticism, disappointing someone, or admitting we do not know.
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How learned responses to our own emotional discomfort invade moments that require us to navigate uncertainty, conflict, and real-time leadership.
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How to get more choice and agency back in difficult moments to make more deliberate responses possible.
Audience takeaway: Learn to recognize when emotional discomfort is driving decisions, and discover how to create more room for deliberate choice.
For leadership, coaching, professional development, parenting, and personal growth audiences.
What makes some stories more than memorable illustrations or sources of inspiration?
Explore how intentional storytelling can engage emotion, memory, and learning to create opportunities for change that explanation alone may not provide.
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Why stories create a different kind of transformational opportunity.
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How narrative, emotion, memory, and perspective can be used more intentionally in transformational work.
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How to use stories on purpose to support transformation.
Audience takeaway: Discover what makes storytelling a tool for emotional transformation, not just insight or inspiration, and how to apply these principles intentionally.
For coaches, educators, trainers, and people-development professionals.
Stories That Change More Than Minds
A Talk Designed Around Your Audience
The talks above are starting points, not fixed presentations.
Before each engagement, I take time to understand your audience, the challenges they face, and what you hope they'll take away.
Together, we'll shape the focus, stories, and format to create an experience that feels relevant and personal, connecting neuroscience to moments your audience recognizes and giving them ideas and questions to carry beyond the event.