America’s mental health is in crisis. As a leader in your organization, you’re likely invested in the well-being of your employees. The workplace can often be a critical setting for understanding and supporting mental health. Basic care for employees’ psychological well-being is the fundamental expectation—aka table stakes—for today’s competitive and successful businesses.
Equipping workers to manage daily stress and handle the inevitable challenges that affect their mental health costs money, time, and energy. But evidence shows that the cost of failing to support employees’ psychological well-being is often far higher.
Weather you are starting to introduce mental health and wellbeing experiences to your company, here are some amazing speaker that you can start with:
Nilima Bhat
A facilitator of personal and collective transformation, Nilima Bhat facilitates leaders in achieving self-mastery in the areas of business and leadership. Her book, Shakti Leadership: Embracing Feminine and Masculine Power in Business (co-written by Raj Sisodia, co-author of Conscious Capitalism), shows leaders how to lead from a place of service by guiding them through experiences that identify their higher purpose and create cultures of meaning. By harnessing “Shakti” or a deeper feminine “force” of energy, a new type of entrepreneurial culture can be born – one that models humility and compassion, recognizes the value in different kinds of minds, and believes in the wholeness of all things.
Dr. Dena Simmons
Dena Simmons, Ed.D., is the founder of LiberatED, a collective focused on developing school-based resources at the intersection of social and emotional learning (SEL), racial justice, and healing. She is the former Assistant Director of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, where she supported schools to use the power of emotions to create a more compassionate and just society. Prior to her work at the Center, Dena served as an educator, teacher educator, diversity facilitator, and curriculum developer. She has been a leading voice on teacher education and has written and spoken across the country about social justice pedagogy, diversity, emotional intelligence, and bullying in K-12 school settings, including the White House, the inaugural Obama Foundation Summit, the United Nations, two TEDx talks, and a TED talk on Broadway. Dena has been profiled in Education Week, the Huffington Post, NPR, the AOL/PBS project, MAKERS: Women Who Make America, and a Beacon Press Book, Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists.
Dena is a recipient of a Harry S. Truman Scholarship, a J. William Fulbright Fellowship, an Education Pioneers Fellowship, a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship, a Phillips Exeter Academy Dissertation Fellowship, a Hedgebrook Writing Residency, and an Arthur Vining Davis Aspen Fellowship among others. She earned her doctorate degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, where she recently served as faculty in the Summer Principals Academy. Dena’s research interests include teacher preparedness to address bullying in the K-12 school setting, culturally responsive pedagogy, and the intersection of equity and social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions—all in an effort to ensure and foster justice and safe spaces for all. She is the author of the forthcoming book, White Rules for Black People (St. Martin’s Press).
Christine Arylo
Christine Arylo, MBA, is a transformational leadership advisor, social impact entrepreneur, and four-time best-selling author working with people to make shift happen – in the lives they lead, the work they do and the world they want to create. From their heart and smarts. Led by their internal power and intuition. Dedicated to making a meaningful impact, without sacrificing themselves. Her whole-being, wisdom-led approach focuses on teaching people how to design lives, daily routines, short- and long-term goals, working patterns, and teams and organizations that are rooted in wholeness, wellness and interconnectedness, where success includes personal, organizational and collective sustainability.
Blending traditional leadership techniques gained from her extensive 25 years of corporate and entrepreneurial experience, including Fortune 500 companies like Gap Inc. and Visa, and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management, with 20+ years of study in modalities based on conscious leadership, human potential, yogic science, body-mind-heart integration, intuitive thinking and somatic meditation, Arylo brings a new lens and elevated consciousness to leadership, business, organization and life design. For over a decade, Arylo has researched the roots of burnout and overwhelm in working women, and developed and taught new ways for working wise, living well, and redefining success. Her approach gives individuals and those leading others a path to designing a more sustainable way to do business and operate as a society, rooted in wellness and true wealth.
Elijah Kalā McShane
He is a kanaka oiwi o Hawai’i (native descendant of the Hawaiian Islands and direct descendant of both Hawai’i/Maui & O’ahu chiefly lineages. Elijah, also known as Kahu Kalā, is the co-founder (with his wife Jazmin Yong) of Awakened Aloha, an organization focused on “inspiring a world where aloha is the heartbeat of humanity.” Awakened Aloha’s work bridges ancient wisdom and ancestral connection to modern wellness through the mauli ola (healing arts), la’au lapa’au (plant medicine), aloha education, and community development. His work has inspired hearts in the educational, political, and spiritual sectors of modern Hawai’i to visioneer a future that promotes harmony for all people beginning with Hawai’i and her children. As an ambassador of aloha and messenger of lokahi, Elijah shares a universal message that lays at the foundation of all people and cultures, “aloha ‘aina, aloha akua, aloha kanaka” (a deep honor and reverence for the land, the spirits, and the people). May this message of truth reach all dimensions of existence and call forth unity from the depths of po (depth/origins) to the peaks of the lewa lani (highest heavenly realms). E ola mau.
Katrina Strohl
Katrina Strohl (They/She/He) served as an Aviation Structural Mechanic in the US Navy. In 2018, Katrina decided to take their own life after internalizing the behavior of an unsafe workplace. They now serve others through their work in psychological safety, mental health and boundary strategy for people who share their identities or their lived experiences.
This work includes Absolutely Not! the weekly live podcast dedicated to providing examples of setting personal boundaries at work and the vocabulary needed to name harm in those spaces.
Katrina is Black, Sāmoan and Queer.
Katrina lives with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and a substance use disorder.
Matt Lindley
Matt graduated with a degree in commerce from the University of Birmingham. After leaving University, he joined the Ford Motor Company Graduate Training Programme and joined a team implementing Japanese Management techniques in the car industry.
In 1995 Matt was selected to join the UK Royal Air Force as a pilot. During his military career, he flew many aircraft including the Hawk fighter jet. In 2000 he was selected to fly Her Majesty The Queen, members of the UK Royal Family and Government worldwide, serving on The Royal Squadron. Whilst serving, he became a qualified flying instructor and VIP qualified Captain. He flew missions in the Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Matt was one of the first openly gay pilots in the RAF.
In 2007 Matt left the Service to join a leading UK airline, initially flying the Airbus on their short haul network. Matt now flies the Boeing 777 on long haul routes.
In addition to flying, Matt specialises in non-technical training. He delivers Human Performance Factors keynote speeches and workshops which draw on flight management techniques to optimise outcomes, whilst minimising human error in the workplace.
Ingrid Harb
“It’s going inwards so that I can fill myself up and have more to give.” – Ingrid Harb
Ingrid never really fit in a box or category. She was born and raised in Mexico and then went to Texas for boarding school. So at times, she was too Mexican for the norms of an American boarding school. And in returning to Mexico, she was almost too American for her Mexican colleagues. Either she was Mexican or she was an American.
And while she admits that she initially struggled with the “either/or” mentality, Ingrid began to think about what a “both/and” mindset – one where she claim an identity where she was both American and Mexican and beyond.
To fully embrace a “both/and” identity, Ingrid needed to unlearn the categories and boxes that limit so many of us. As a result, this mindset has changed how she views social justice, identity and spirituality.
Want to explore further? Find our complete list of speakers on our website. If you’re planning an upcoming event, please reach out anytime – we are happy to jump on a call to help you craft the perfect event. Mental Health and Wellness is what people need now more than every, make sure that you make the space for these sessions to happen.