Your business can become more capable than you have imagined. I want to help your people see a place for themselves in that future.
That is why I created The Cost of Standing Still. I bring this conversation to organizations ready to embrace AI and automation, and to leaders who understand that the people experiencing that transition deserve thoughtful leadership.
The opportunity is extraordinary. Technology can carry work that has consumed your team’s attention for years. What could they do with that capacity? Which relationships could deepen? Which ideas could finally have room to grow?
Those questions excite me. So does the harder conversation underneath them: what happens when becoming more efficient unsettles someone’s identity, challenges a founder’s need for control, or leaves a capable employee wondering where they belong?
This is the intersection where I work: business possibility and human adaptation. If that is the conversation your audience needs, I would like to be the person who helps you begin it.
I bring the business experience and the human understanding into the same room.
I have started businesses, led a multimillion-dollar regional healthcare company, and spent 25 years consulting with organizations navigating growth and change. I understand the responsibility of making decisions when people, money, and the future of a business depend on what happens next.
My master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and my work in mental health and crisis response bring another dimension. I pay attention to what people experience when familiar sources of security, identity, and belonging are disrupted. My crisis-response work has included service following Columbine, the September 11 World Trade Center attack, and the Pulse nightclub shooting.
Those experiences have shaped how I listen. In a business conversation, that means making room for the concern behind an objection, the knowledge inside someone’s resistance, and the possibility a person has not yet found words to express.
Teaching at the University of Denver, Oregon State University, the University of Oregon, and Western Oregon University has also shaped my work. I care about making difficult ideas understandable and giving people a way to use what they learn.
The Cost of Standing Still makes the transition personal.
This talk grew from questions I have lived, including a painful business experience that informed The Queen Has No Friends. What happens when a business becomes more capable, but a person at its center feels less necessary? What does fear ask everyone else to carry? How do we keep the desire for control from consuming the future we worked to build?
I use story, humor, and thoughtful questions to invite people into those experiences. I want a leader to recognize a pattern before it becomes a costly decision. I want an employee to feel able to ask an honest question. I want the room to begin imagining what a more capable, more humane business could become.
The book gives that reflection somewhere to go afterward. Its cautionary tale offers a personal way to examine fear, power, restraint, and the relationships we put at risk when protecting our position becomes our priority.
I give your audience a way to begin.
My six-decision methodology brings structure to the conversation: Decide, Reimagine, Prepare, Reorient, Redesign, and Realize. Together, we explore what technology can carry and how people can contribute more through connection, creativity, and collaboration.
I guide your audience toward questions they can take directly into their work:
- Where are we spending human energy that automation could release?
- What might our people fear losing, and what do they need to participate?
- Which customer and colleague relationships deserve more of our attention?
- How could we redesign roles around the contribution people are uniquely able to make?
- What decision are we ready to make, and what conversation must happen first?
I want people to leave with language for what they are experiencing, a larger sense of possibility, and a place to begin together.
Our work begins before I step into your room.
When you invite me to speak, we begin with a curious conversation about your audience. What are they facing? Where are they getting stuck? What possibilities are they ready to consider? What has been difficult to discuss?
That initial facilitated conversation helps me understand the needs, obstacles, limitations, and opportunities that should shape our time together. Your audience’s reality belongs at the center of the experience.
For organizations ready to go further, my optional workshop gives participants time to apply the six decisions to their own circumstances. We can examine current challenges, surface different perspectives, and begin identifying a direction for the work ahead.
Bring me into the conversation your people need.
If you are planning a leadership gathering, association conference, or team event around AI and change, let’s talk about what your audience needs to see, feel, and begin.
I believe businesses can automate intelligently and lead humanely. I believe greater capacity can become stronger relationships, more ambitious creativity, and meaningful growth. I bring The Cost of Standing Still to your audience to help them imagine that future and begin taking responsibility for it.
Invite me to your next gathering. Let’s explore what becomes possible when technology carries more of the work and your people have more room to be human.