SPEAKING & WORKSHOPS

The Art of Becoming a Better Leader

A diverse group of women at a conference, with one woman raising her hand to ask a question or participate, wearing a lanyard and smiling.

Whether you're looking for a keynote that inspires fresh perspectives, a conference session that shifts how your leaders think, or an interactive workshop that sparks real change—we blend research, storytelling, and practical wisdom to deliver talks that leave audiences with insights they can use immediately to produce meaningful impact.

Keynote

Can Do: The Power of Investing Your Energy Wisely Where It Matters Most

Sasha McDowell, a white woman with curly brown hair wearing a white blazer over a blue top, looking to her right, gesturing with her right arm extended, against a plain white background.

This is a mindset and performance talk about focusing on what you can control, gaining strength from adversity, and investing your energy in what you can do to move forward and perform at your best.

Many people get lost in fear, hopelessness, or fixating on everything that could go wrong. The longer you stay stuck in these places, the more you waste energy spiraling in what you can't control.

This talk shows you how to turn adversity into fuel, claim your agency, view things realistically, and adopt a positive mindset. You’ll learn ways to renew your energy and take the small steps that actually move you forward each day to transform how you lead in your work and in your life.

Conference Breakout

Productive Tension: How Senior Leaders Turn Conflict into Innovation and Competitive Advantage

Three women engaged in a discussion or meeting; one woman with blonde hair and a blazer has a serious expression, while the other two women, one with short reddish-brown hair and the other with dark hair, are partially visible and listening.

Conflict is inevitable in high-performing organizations, and it's escalating. Yet most senior teams avoid it, minimize it, or let it fester, eroding trust and weakening decisions. U.S. employees spend more than four hours per week managing conflict, costing businesses an estimated $359 billion annually.

This session reframes conflict as productive tension and positions it as a catalyst for sharper judgment, stronger innovation, and competitive advantage. It highlights why high-trust teams work with tension rather than try to eliminate it, and the mindset leaders need to convert friction into forward momentum.

Designed for senior leaders in mid-market and enterprise companies, this session equips you to lead candid conversations, face uncomfortable truths, and build organizations where differences elevate results rather than fracture relationships.

“Storytelling is the most

powerful way to put ideas

into the world today.”

— Robert McKee

A Catalogue of Our Most Popular Workshops

Topics are tailored to your organization based on your learning needs. Workshops run for 1-2 hours, and programming typically ranges from two to six months.

Leadership & Influence

This workshop helps you build a clear understanding of the leadership competencies that drive the greatest impact for your team and your organization. You'll explore the research behind effective leadership, examine the competencies that strong leaders consistently demonstrate, and learn what McKinsey's research reveals about the four behaviors that drive 89% of leadership effectiveness. You'll also complete a self-assessment and engage in small group discussion. You will leave with a clearer view of your own strengths and areas for growth, as well as a concrete plan for your continued development as a leader.
*This workshop is recommended as the first in a two-part series.
This highly interactive workshop helps you deepen your self-awareness and strengthen the areas with the most opportunity for leadership growth. You'll revisit the research on leadership effectiveness and reflect on your progress around adopting new behaviors. You’ll work in small groups to think through fresh approaches to your current challenges and navigate real scenarios with peers to refine your thinking. You will leave with a clear set of revised strategies to implement, as well as a better understanding of how to incorporate new behaviors into your leadership style.
*This workshop is recommended as the second in a two-part series.
This workshop equips you to make the shift from tactical to strategic leadership, one of the most important transitions leaders navigate as they grow. You'll explore research-backed strategies for leading more strategically, examine when to operate tactically and when to step back into a strategic view, and consider what it takes to sustain that perspective despite urgency and external pressures. You'll also use a well-established framework to assess your strengths and growth areas across the six skills that adaptive strategic leaders demonstrate. You will leave with a clearer understanding of how to create the internal and external conditions for strategic thinking and concrete approaches for elevating how you lead.
This workshop equips you to lead with grounded composure and strengthen the trust that is the foundation of every effective team. You'll examine the costs of unmanaged reactivity, explore how your composure under pressure builds psychological safety and improves performance on your team, and learn the neuroscience of why your nervous system sets the tone for the people around you. You will leave with a deeper understanding of your own responses under stress and practical skills for leading with intention and presence in high-stress situations.
This workshop helps you sharpen the judgment and decision-making skills that define effective leadership at every level. You'll explore the cost of poor judgment, examine the two systems of thinking that drive most of our decisions and the biases that distort them, and learn two decision frameworks you can apply to strengthen your judgment and make better decisions under pressure. You’ll also consider when to trust intuition and when to override it, both when stakes are routine and when they are high. You will leave with a better understanding of your own judgment and decision-making patterns and a concrete plan for how to strengthen them.

Self Awareness & Reputation

This workshop helps you build a more authentic leadership style to strengthen how you lead and deepen your impact. You'll explore what it means to show up authentically, examine the key values that shape how you lead, and learn practical strategies for aligning your personal and professional presence so that you are intentional about what you project. You will leave with a deeper understanding of your core values and concrete tools for developing the presence that allows you to lead with both confidence and integrity.
This workshop helps you develop a more powerful executive presence that is grounded in who you are, so you can increase your influence, build trust, and strengthen your impact. You'll explore the foundational elements of executive presence including gravitas and communication, and reflect on the leaders you have worked with whose presence was particularly memorable and how they used different aspects of themselves intentionally and flexibly. You'll also examine how presence shows up across different settings, including moments when you feel at ease and in situations that stretch you. You will leave with a deeper understanding of how to deliberately cultivate a stronger presence so you can show up with greater confidence, authenticity, and impact across a range of audiences and situations.
This interactive workshop helps you identify the sweet spot where your natural talents meet work that feels deeply meaningful. Through guided reflection and group discussion, you'll explore moments when you've felt most engaged and energized, pinpoint the thinking or problem-solving you're best at, and clarify the impact that matters most to you. You'll leave with a clear picture of your Zone of Genius and concrete steps to spend more time working in it—so you can do work that challenges you, reflects who you are, and puts you in flow.
This workshop helps you build the foundation of your personal brand from the inside out, by reflecting on who you are and how you communicate that consistently as a professional. You'll think through the essential elements of an authentic personal brand, including your strengths, your core values, and your why. You will develop a personal brand statement and leave with a deeper understanding of how to articulate your brand clearly and confidently.
Personal brand is designed as a two-part series; these workshops can be delivered together or as standalone sessions.
This workshop helps you communicate your personal brand consistently, translating who you are into how you are perceived. You'll examine the external elements of personal brand and identify how to communicate what you offer through the platforms you use to make yourself known, from public speaking to social media to writing. You'll also develop a networking strategy so you can intentionally expand your circle of relationships. You will leave with clear steps for communicating what you offer to multiple audiences and approaches for showing up with greater visibility, voice, and impact.
*Personal brand is designed as a two-part series; these workshops can be delivered together or as standalone sessions.
This workshop equips you to build a plan for your career that gives you a clear sense of direction while leaving room to capitalize on the opportunities that emerge along the way. You'll examine research-backed frameworks for designing the path and assess your own values and motivations as anchors in your foundation for what comes next. You'll also consider how to approach the conversations with your manager that turn your goals into visible opportunities, both when the path feels clear and when you are navigating uncertainty. You will leave with a personalized career roadmap and concrete tools for shaping your career with greater intention.

Team & Org Effectiveness

This workshop equips you to build the kind of team where people speak up, surface problems, take intelligent risks, and learn out loud. You'll examine the distinction between trust and psychological safety, understand why these team-level conditions are the single strongest predictors of high performance, and learn how to develop psychological safety and high accountability together. You'll also assess your own team using validated research tools and look at where the conditions you are creating support performance and where they may quietly hold it back. You will leave with a clearer view of your team’s current strengths and areas for growth, and a concrete set of practices for creating the conditions that drive learning, innovation, and sustained performance.
This leadership development session helps you and your team to better understand the most common collaboration challenges teams experience and normalizes the fact that every team experiences them differently. Through research-based insights, group reflection, and peer sharing, you'll identify your team's specific pain points and strengths, and explore proven strategies for building stronger relationships across departments. You and your team will emerge from this session armed with new ways to work together and clear strategies for better cross-team collaboration within your organization.
We’ll also build templates and tools for long-term program implementation that you can use beyond our engagement together.
This workshop helps you strengthen the leadership skills that drive influence and collaboration across teams, even in the moments when competing priorities and unclear ownership make it challenging. You'll examine the behaviors that distinguish leaders who collaborate well across teams from those who struggle, understand your current skill set and growth areas, and consider where you can increase your agency to drive collaboration even when you don't have formal authority. You'll also examine practical approaches for building stronger working relationships with key stakeholders. You will leave with a clearer understanding of your own leadership strengths and a set of practical strategies to help you collaborate across teams with greater effectiveness.

Managing Others Effectively

This workshop helps you become stronger at delegation, positioning both you and your direct reports to grow by spending more time on the work that stretches each of you. You'll explore the cost of under-delegating, distinguish between effective delegation and common pitfalls, examine the psychological and practical barriers that get in the way for most managers, and learn research-backed strategies for delegating in ways that scale your impact. You'll also learn how to calibrate your approach to different team members, both when your team is ready and when they are still building their capability. You will leave with a clearer view of your own delegation patterns and concrete tools that you can put into practice immediately with your team.
This session helps you develop a key leadership skill: giving feedback that helps your employees learn, grow, and improve their performance. You'll explore what makes feedback effective, learn multiple strategies for delivering it well, and use breakout sessions to improve your skills. You will leave with a deeper understanding of your own strengths and areas for growth and gain applied techniques for building an open, ongoing feedback culture.
This session equips you to navigate the delicate process of Performance Improvement Plans in a way that's fair to both your company and your direct report. You'll examine the discomfort that arises for leaders that can undermine managing a deliberate process, think through common mistakes, and learn how to support an employee’s growth while also preparing for multiple possible outcomes. You will leave with a clearer sense of what challenges may arise for you, as well as concrete tools for delivering difficult messages that balance directness, fairness, and empathy.

Change Management

This session helps you better understand your own relationship with change and gives you practical tools to navigate it with greater confidence and resilience. Through research-based insights, reflective exercises, and group discussion, you'll explore the most common challenges that arise during periods of transition, identify strategies for managing workflow disruptions, and develop a mindset that allows you to move from simply coping to genuinely flourishing. You'll leave with concrete strategies for staying grounded, communicating effectively, and adapting with purpose.
This workshop equips you to lead your team through change effectively, with the kind of clarity, presence, and communication that builds trust even in uncertainty. You'll explore the critical distinction between change and transition, examine research-backed frameworks for guiding teams through both the operational and emotional dimensions of change, and learn how to avoid common mistakes when high-stakes change is underway. You'll also learn how to spot and address dynamics that frequently emerge during change initiatives. You will leave with a clearer understanding of your own role as a change leader and concrete strategies for guiding your team through transitions with greater confidence and impact.

Mindset & Resilience

This workshop helps you understand how mindset shapes your perceptions, your performance, and your ability to manage the challenges you encounter. You'll explore the research on how beliefs about ability shape effort and outcomes, examine five research-based mindset shifts that reliably move people toward healthier thinking and resilience, and learn the practices that sustain constructive mindsets over time. You'll also examine the habitual patterns that may be holding you back and learn practical strategies for reframing, cultivating positive emotion, and building cognitive flexibility. You will leave with a clearer view of your own thinking patterns and concrete tools for making the mindset shifts that fuel your effectiveness and success.
This workshop introduces you to the concept of mindfulness and how a regular practice can increase your effectiveness as a leader and as a person. You'll explore what mindfulness is, learn about its history, and understand its measurable effects on the nervous system that reduce stress, sharpen focus, and support more deliberate responses under pressure. You'll also practice mindfulness techniques you can use on your own to improve your ability to remain grounded. You will leave with a clearer understanding of how to use mindfulness practices to become calmer, more focused, and more effective at work and in life.
This workshop helps you understand and better manage two patterns that quietly hold back even the most capable, ambitious people: imposter syndrome and self-limiting beliefs. You'll examine how these thoughts show up and hold you back, and learn specific strategies for reframing them so you can maintain accurate, constructive ways of thinking about yourself and the challenges you face. You will leave with a clearer view of when these feelings emerge for you, and applied strategies for shifting your thinking so that self-criticism and self-doubt become more manageable, freeing you to take action with greater confidence.
Stress and anxiety are normal and even necessary parts of professional life, but at high levels they reduce performance and drain your motivation, focus, and well-being. This workshop helps you better understand stress and anxiety, examine how they show up in the mind and body, and develop strategies to manage yourself when emotions run high. You'll explore evidence-based approaches that strengthen your ability to stay effective when stress is high, examine the role of the nervous system, and learn how your internal narratives powerfully influence how you cope. You will leave with a clearer understanding of your self-management strengths and areas for growth, and fresh approaches for navigating stress with greater awareness and adaptability.
This workshop helps you understand what healthy boundaries look like, why they matter for your energy and performance, and how to set them more effectively at work and in life. You'll explore how boundaries are important internal rules you set to protect your time, your priorities, and your well-being, examine the common feelings that prevent people from setting necessary boundaries, and learn specific strategies for reinforcing them when they are inevitably tested. You will leave with approaches for setting boundaries that allow you to say yes to what moves you forward and no to what gets in the way of your goals.
This workshop helps you examine the importance of courage as a key skill for taking on challenges and making meaningful changes in your life, by taking action even when you feel afraid. You'll explore the role of values and vulnerability in courageous action, examine why avoiding discomfort keeps you stuck rather than safe, and learn specific practices for summoning courage when you need it most. You'll also explore how building a mindset around accepting discomfort and embracing courage as a regular practice opens up possibilities that avoidance keeps closed. You will leave with a deeper understanding of your own strengths and challenges, and strategies for making bolder moves in your work and life even when fear is present.
This workshop helps you understand resilience as a practice you build and as an opportunity to grow through the inevitable hardships each of us experiences in our lives. You'll explore what resilience is, examine why some people emerge stronger from adversity while others remain stuck, and use real-life examples and reflection to identify the mindsets and behaviors that propel people towards growth as they recover from adversity. You will leave with a deeper understanding of ways you can strengthen your own capacity for resilience and applied tools for navigating the challenges that are part of any meaningful life.

Joy & Creativity

This workshop helps leaders reconnect with joy as a foundational resource for sustained performance and effective leadership. You'll explore the research on positive emotion and how it broadens what you can see, consider, and create, examine what we know about how a leader's inner state ripples through their team in ways most leaders underestimate, and learn the specific sources of joy that have been linked to measurable productivity and engagement outcomes. You'll also consider how joy and depletion show up in your current work, both in the moments where leadership feels generative and in the ones that are most challenging. You will leave with a clearer view of your own relationship to joy at work and concrete ways to increase it in your life, so it shows up more often in how you lead.
This workshop helps you understand and use one of the most powerful and underrecognized levers in leadership: the way your own emotional state shapes the team around you. You'll explore the cost of depletion and what happens when leaders lose access to joy, and examine the emotional contagion research that reveals how a leader's mood ripples through a team and directly impacts engagement and profitability. You'll also examine research-backed sources of joy at work and at home, consider how to amplify positive emotion across your team, and explore how building an emotional culture of joy translates to a more resilient and high-performing culture. You will leave with a deeper understanding of your own emotional impact as a leader and a concrete six-month plan for cultivating joy in yourself, your team, and your culture.
This energizing session invites you to reflect on your proudest accomplishments and celebrate your strengths. Through guided storytelling and peer reflection, you'll expand your self-awareness, deepen connection with your peers, and unearth new ways of looking at yourself. You'll also consider how your strengths show up across different settings, both in the moments where you naturally shine and in the ones that stretch you. You will leave with a personalized Superpower Statement that captures what you bring to the world at your very best and a new perspective on the varied talents and achievements of your colleagues.

DEIB

This session helps you build a deeper understanding of the concepts of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and your own role in creating cultures where everyone can succeed. You'll examine multiple facets of this work so you can engage with others with greater intention, including identity and bias, the role of self-awareness, and the inherent discomfort involved in deepening cultural awareness. You will leave with a clearer understanding of DEIB principles and concrete strategies for creating environments where people from all backgrounds feel valued, respected, and are able to do their best work.
This session helps managers and leaders understand the data behind why inclusive cultures retain people, as well as how to build them. You'll explore what inclusive cultures look like in practice, examine real-world examples of companies that have built them well, and learn the research-backed strategies that drive belonging and reduce turnover. You will leave with a clearer understanding of how inclusion functions as a retention strategy and concrete approaches for creating cultures where your best people choose to stay.
This workshop helps you understand the essentials about perimenopause and how to navigate it—either for yourself or to support your spouse—with the habits and approaches needed to feel grounded, healthy, and strong during this transition. You'll explore the full range of perimenopause symptoms, examine why effective treatment has been so difficult to access and what has changed in the research and care landscape, and learn how to identify a provider who is current on the research and equipped to provide excellent care. You'll also examine the five pillars of support that women navigating perimenopause benefit from, both when symptoms are manageable and when they are significantly disrupting life and work. You will leave with an overview of perimenopause, clarity on current needs, and a concrete action plan that will allow you or your spouse to thrive during this stage of life.

Communication & Conflict

This workshop helps you improve the communication skills that build trust, strengthen working relationships, and drive better team outcomes. You'll explore the cost of poor communication on teams and the most common difficulties teams face, examine the top communication skills that distinguish high-performing teams, and learn how to have purposeful conversations that prioritize both the work and your relationships. You'll also examine the connection between trust and communication and the impact of nonverbal cues on a conversation's effectiveness. You will leave with a better understanding of your own communication strengths and areas for growth, and concrete tools for strengthening communication across your team.
This workshop helps you adopt the frameworks, skills, and language needed to navigate the difficult conversations that are essential for keeping relationships strong and work moving forward effectively. You'll explore the cost of avoidance, examine research-backed strategies for approaching sensitive conversations with clarity and care, and learn how your own conflict style shapes the way you show up. You'll also think through how to structure difficult conversations and manage them well when the unexpected arises. You will leave with a clearer understanding of your strengths and areas for development, as well as concrete tools you can apply to work through the challenges that inevitably emerge in working relationships.
This workshop teaches you and your team how to engage in conflict in ways that strengthen collaboration and produce useful, generative conversations. You'll explore the personal discomfort and limitations that often prevent productive engagement when there’s tension, examine how different viewpoints can be leveraged when discomfort arises, and learn the specific skills that allow you to participate in constructive conflict conversations. You'll also practice a proven conflict resolution model that gives you a clear approach to use both when conflict is mild and when it requires more skill to navigate. You will leave better prepared to engage in constructive dialogue, more confident managing sensitive conversations, and equipped with concrete tools for engaging differences productively.
This workshop helps you and your team develop the skills to leverage tension and conflict so that it drives better decisions, greater innovation, and stronger working relationships rather than damaging trust and stalling work. You'll explore the research on what distinguishes productive conflict from unproductive conflict, examine the personal discomfort and fear that can arise and prevent action toward solutions, and learn key skills necessary for managing conflict constructively. You'll also practice a research-backed conflict resolution model that helps you stay grounded in important conversations, both when tensions are low and when they run high. You will leave with a clearer understanding of how you typically engage with conflict and concrete tools you can use to turn tension into progress on your team.

Productivity & Energy Management

This workshop teaches you how to maximize your productivity and manage your energy so you can sustain high performance and well-being over time. You'll explore research-backed strategies for structuring your day, increasing your focus and attention, minimizing distractions, and managing your motivation. You'll also learn how rest and recovery factor into doing your best work over time, both for your mind and your body, so you can perform at a high level without burning out. You will leave with a deeper understanding of your most effective current practices and new strategies for working at your best, consistently and sustainably.
This workshop equips you to do your best, most focused work in a world that is constantly pulling your attention in other directions. You'll explore the research on the cost of fragmented attention at work, examine what the science tells us about deep work and the conditions that produce flow, and learn specific strategies for creating the internal and external conditions that focused performance requires. You'll also rethink your relationship with modern “necessary distractions”—email, meetings, and the always-on workday—to better understand how to structure your day and improve your ability to make meaningful progress. You will leave with a clearer understanding of what most often interferes with your performance and new approaches for working more deeply and effectively.
This workshop helps you intentionally create positive changes in your life by giving you research-backed tools for building new habits and breaking old ones. You'll explore the neuroscience of the habit loop, examine the role of cues, context, and identity in creating lasting behavior change, and learn tactical approaches from leading habit researchers. You'll also learn what leads new habits to stick or fail. You will leave with a deeper understanding of how habit creation and maintenance work, and multiple strategies for changing your own behavior.

Burnout & Recovery

This session helps you build the foundation that supports sustainable leadership (as well as being a thriving human), and examine the cost of consistently deprioritizing yourself. You'll learn the science-backed arguments for making self-care a lifestyle rather than a phase, strengthen your ability to set boundaries, and understand how prioritizing your physical and mental health increases your impact at work and in life. Through structured self-assessment and reflection, you'll identify where you are on the path from burnout to thriving, and use frameworks to adopt sustainable changes. You will leave with a six-month plan that helps you show up more centered, focused, and engaged.
This session helps you identify the early signs of burnout so you can change your course before it becomes a chronic issue that’s difficult and time-consuming to recover from. You'll examine what burnout looks and feels like, understand how it develops gradually through predictable stages, and learn to identify what the early warning signs look like for you, as they show up differently in different people. You will leave with a clearer understanding of behaviors to change, when you need to self-advocate, and concrete strategies for preventing burnout from worsening so you can recover your energy while maintaining productivity.
This session helps you envision and build a path back from burnout that’s rooted in honest realities: it’s not a personal failing, it deeply depletes people, and meaningful recovery requires a plan and a realistic timeline. You'll review what burnout is and how it develops, understand what the multi-stage recovery process looks like, and determine what it takes to prevent recurrence. You will leave with a clearer sense of your current needs and concrete strategies for rebuilding your energy, your engagement, and the sustainable practices that protect both.

Supporting Parents & Caregivers

This workshop helps you plan for your parental leave and your return to work in a way that supports you, your team, and your manager through a smooth transition. You’ll learn which topics you and your manager should discuss in advance, create a coverage plan, and develop a set of strategies for your return to work that sets you up for a successful re-entry. You will leave with a framework that clearly outlines best practices for stepping away and stepping back in, so that you feel grounded both at work and at home during this joyful and sensitive time.
This session helps you understand what the mental load is and develop the skills to build a more equitable approach to domestic labor and the cognitive work that surrounds it. When this work is shared fairly, both partners have greater capacity to concentrate on other aspects of their lives, including an increased focus on their work. You'll explore common dynamics around the mental load, examine the research on why it’s shared unevenly even in progressive partnerships, and learn specific strategies both partners can use to redistribute the work. You will leave with a framework and language for talking about cognitive labor with your partner and concrete tools for rebalancing when life shifts and new challenges emerge.
This session helps parents of children with ADHD build routines at home that support their child’s development and increase their family’s ability to function smoothly. You'll learn strategies to manage several components of ADHD from the parenting perspective, including why executive functioning tutoring is essential, how to manage the relationship with your child’s school, and how to both soothe and promote coping around emotional dysregulation. You’ll also learn techniques for regulating your own nervous system, so you can remain a strong support for your child. You will leave with a clearer understanding of approaches to try with your child and your family, concrete next steps, and a path for reducing chaos at home so you feel calmer and more present in other parts of your life, including at work.
This workshop equips managers to partner with and support their employees through the significant transitions of preparing for and returning from parental leave. You’ll learn how to lead the full arc of leave, including preparing for the time away, supporting a strong return through re-onboarding, and providing the ongoing flexibility that retains caregivers over the long run. You'll also examine common dynamics that can undermine re-onboarding when left unaddressed. You will leave with a clearer understanding of your role in shaping leave culture and applied strategies for retaining the parents and caregivers on your team.
This workshop helps managers understand the meaningful role they play in retaining the parents and caregivers on their teams, often through manageable adjustments that have an outsized impact. You'll examine the research on why caregivers leave, explore the subtle dynamics that quietly push them out, and learn the specific strategies that distinguish family-friendly cultures as places where caregivers can stay and thrive professionally and personally. You will leave with a clearer view of where your team's culture is strong and where it can be improved, and gain applied strategies for retaining the parents and caregivers on your team.

“Sasha’s session was so good! It was so good, it’s hard for me to explain just how good it was. And a year later, people are still talking about what they learned at this event.”

— J.M., CHRO, Professional Services

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