All workshops are designed for a duration of 1.5 hours of in-person delivery, however, can be customized to suit your organization. Whether you are a small start-up, a multinational corporation, or a publically-funded institution, we will work together to ensure that the end product is aligned with your goals.
Each workshop is a learning environment that is built with the intent to provide a safe space to ask questions and share perspectives, especially those thoughts we fear might be “wrong”. I believe it’s crucial for people to be able to express uncertainty and make mistakes, especially when it comes to complicated human topics.
DEI Workshops
In all of my workshops, I strive to bring joy and humanity into the topic being covered.
I believe that lasting education requires more than technical expertise. It requires storytelling that can capture hearts and inspire the desire to see things differently.
Leveraging my background in stand-up comedy and improv theatre, I approach each workshop as a performance. I work to integrate humour, metaphors, and interactive exercises that can help each unique audience resonate with complex academic definitions and theories about DEI.
Build your own - DEI 101
You cannot deliver an effective & comprehensive workshop about DEI in 1.5 hours. However, recognizing that many organizations face budget and time constraints, this workshop is designed to be flexible to cover the specific topics that are the highest priority first, with follow-up sessions available to continue.
Beginning with the foundational definitions and concepts that anchor DEI work, clients can build on their learning by selecting from a range of different modules to apply their learning more broadly. The intention of this workshop is to provide organizations with flexibility to accomodate limited DEI resources.
Navigating DEI in Higher Education
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion are becoming a key mandate for universities across the country, with many constituencies putting increased pressure on their leadership to take action toward building a more inclusive student community.
Yet, the details of the outcomes of this work are often unclear, creating a challenging situation for aspiring student leaders who want to make a difference but are unsure where to start. This workshop will cover how student leaders can best navigate the different pressures they face to more effectively serve their community.
Topics covered:
Foundational concepts and definitions of DEI
Allyship and Creating an inclusive culture
Principles of inclusive leadership
For many people, transgender issues are new territory. If you are unfamiliar with them, concepts such as gender identity, gender expression, and pronoun usage can be overwhelming.
Using an open and friendly approach, we will unpack the language around gender diverse identities, pronouns, and the unique (often invisible) barriers created by gender.
Gender Diversity 101
What we will cover:
The basics of gender identity + expression, gender inclusive language, and how to support the gender diverse people in our lives.
In this workshop....
Explore evocative icebreakers to help deepen and connect to personal relations to gender
Understand the different pronouns and how we use pronouns in our day-to-day speech
Unpack allyship and how to create a gender-inclusive culture
Unpacking Neurodiversity
General DEI workshops
In the late 1990s, sociologist Judy Singer coined the term "neurodiversity" as a way to discuss how individuals can perceive, interact, and think about the world in unique ways.
Encompassing terms such as ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia, and more, neurodiversity explores the different forms that the human brain can take and why those differences provide amazing persepctives when understood.
What we will cover:
This workshop will cover the basics of neurodiversity, the most common neurodivergent identities, the ways we can support neurodiverse behaviour.
In this workshop....
Learn from stories and analogies that capture different neurodiverse experiences
Discuss the value of having diverse perspectives within teams
Explore ways to empower the strenghts and mitigate the challenges of neurodiversity
As all workshops are customized, pricing is determined on a per-client basis based on # of participants, additional requests (such as resource guides/recordings) and the amount of custom content to be developed. '
To center live facilitation, prices do not change for in-person vs. online delivery, except for additional travel costs.
For value-aligned non-profit and/or student organizations, accommodations can be provided for different budgetary constraints.
What we will cover:
Starting from ground zero, we reframe the conversation of DEI to centre outcome-based definitions of the terms Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and explore the nuance of power, privilege and intersectionality.
This portion of the workshop will take roughly 30-40 minutes
Building on the basics…
The remaining workshop time can be used to explore ~1-2 of the following areas.
Topics have been grouped into pairs that work well together, but can be adjusted if needed.
Microaggressions and active/bystander intervention
Allyship and Creating an inclusive culture
Unconscious Bias and Bias reduction strategies
Inclusive language and communication
Accessibility and universal design
Principles of inclusive leadership
Sample workshop outlines
Building Inclusive Teams in the Workplace
As the workplace becomes increasingly diverse, being able to work inclusively for effective collaboration is more important than ever. Diverse teams are more prone to conflict, but when managed well can drive innovation and effectiveness.
For team members and team leaders, learning to overcome the fear of making mistakes and addressing instances of subtle acts of exclusion is crucial to creating an environment where people feel safe to contribute. This workshop will provide you necessary tools to support each other and
Topics covered:
Foundational concepts and definitions of DEI
Microaggressions and active/bystander intervention
Unconscious Bias & Creating an inclusive culture
Specific DEI Topics