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Keynote Speaking & Workshops

Looking to inspire leaders to be their best selves at work? Want to foster positive behaviors among colleagues? Need to boost morale and reduce stress and burnout? Hire Beth Ridley to give the keynote address at your event, speak at a lunch and learn, deliver an interactive workshop or facilitate a panel discussion.

Beth’s presentation style is energetic and interactive, heartfelt and humorous. Her content is rooted in positive psychology and diversity and inclusion principles and draws upon her diverse and broad leadership experience as well as advice from hundreds of professionals and leaders she has interviewed for her blogs and podcasts.

About Beth

Fortune 100 corporate executive turned entrepreneur, Beth Ridley, works as an organizational transformation expert, speaker, author, and CEO of Ridley Consulting Group. Beth combines 25 years of leadership and management consulting experience with expertise in diversity and inclusion and positive psychology to help companies achieve thriving workplace cultures.

Beth is passionate about simplifying what it takes to embed diversity, equity and inclusion practices into business operations to improve profitability, brand identity, and the ability to attract and retain top talent. Her work appears in national publications and as a regular contributor on TMJ4’s “The Morning Blend.” Her forthcoming book– Jumpstart DEI: Practical Steps to Get Everyone Engaged– is scheduled for release in Spring 2022.

Beth holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Virginia, an MA in International Relations from Tufts University and an MBA from Columbia University. Beth has lived in London, Tokyo, Johannesburg and Bangkok and now resides in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her husband and three children.

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Most Requested Keynote and Workshop Topics

DEI Topics

Lack of clarity on what DEI is and fear of doing or saying the wrong things are often the biggest barriers to getting started with building a culture of belonging.

Through this interactive workshop, we simplify what it takes to initiate your organizational DEI journey. Your team will gain the clarity and confidence needed to break through initial barriers in order to put small steps toward building a culture of belonging into action right away.

Workshop outcomes:

  • Shared understanding of foundational DEI concepts and terminology.
  • The business benefits of a culture of belonging are identified along with key measures of success.
  • High-level roadmap for how to embed DEI throughout the business to achieve benefits
  • Easy to implement action steps to put DEI principles into practice right away.

Overview

According to new research in Harvard Business Review, 89% of knowledge workers have reported a decline in their workplace wellbeing since the start of COVID-19. Meanwhile, loneliness (one outcome of a lack of belonging) is on the rise, with staggering effects on business.

Given this landscape, leaders are focusing more than ever on workplace wellbeing. Increasingly, effective wellbeing strategies are including a focus on fostering employees’ sense of belonging – an accumulation of day-to-day experiences that enable a person to feel safe, foster genuine connections with others and bring their full, unique self to work so they can thrive.

 

Learning Objectives

  1. Learn what belonging at work is and what current research is telling us about why it matters to employee wellness and wellbeing.
  2. Understand how diversity, inclusion and equity (DEI) best practices contribute to belonging.
  3. Gain easy to implement tips rooted in DEI best practices to build belonging in your meetings to support daily wellbeing among employees.

As we continue on our DEI learning journey, we must appreciate the role we each play in building a sustainable workplace culture of belonging. Part of that role means holding ourselves and others accountable for speaking up in support of DEI and belonging for everyone. The truth is, speaking up when you experience or witness behavior that is non-inclusive or inappropriate isn’t easy. It’s human to not want to rock the boat or create conflict with someone. With some simple strategies, however, speaking up can be less awkward and effective. And when more of us speak up, we fuel collective courage, confidence and commitment to DEI that is needed to sustain the work.

Join this interactive learning session to gain practical tips for speaking up when you experience or witness behavior that is non-inclusive or inappropriate. 

Agenda:

  1. Kick off and session overview
  2. Best practices for speaking up and how to apply them to real life scenarios
  3. Role play applying tips to case studies in small break out groups
  4. Recap and wrap up

As companies work to embrace diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) principles to foster a workplace culture of belonging, many are experiencing barriers to progress due to disengaged and outright resistant employees. Without active engagement from employees, cultural transformation will remain an uphill battle, contributing to burnout among DEI champions and lower than expected return on investment. In this interactive workshop, participants will learn and practice strategies to reach leaders and employees who don’t see value in DEI efforts.

3 Steps to Achieve Sustainable DEI Outcomes

Lack of clarity on what DEI is, fear of doing or saying the wrong things and not sure what to do beyond training are often the biggest barriers to getting started with truly integrating DEI practices into your business and building a sustainable culture of belonging.

In this workshop/keynote, I cover best practices to initiate and advance your organizational DEI outcomes. You will gain the clarity and confidence needed to break through DEI barriers in order to put steps toward building a culture of DEI and belonging into action right away.

Agenda:

  • DEI trends in the workplace
  • Barriers to sustainable DEI change
  • DEI benefits and business case for belonging
  • Strategies to get everyone engaged with DEI
  • Roadmap for sustainable DEI change
  • Tips to take action right away
  • Q&A

The ability to bridge across differences to build a culture of belonging is one of the most important leadership skills. In this interactive workshop participants learn what belonging at work is and why it matters as well as what it takes to develop and demonstrate inclusive leadership and communication skills in order to contribute to a culture of belonging. Take-aways include:

  • Simplify and demystify foundational diversity and inclusion principles.
  • Learn what hinders and what helps to foster belonging.
  • Learn inclusive leadership and communication skills.
  • Brainstorm easy ways to apply skills in daily interactions with others to foster a culture of belonging.

Diversity in the workplace can challenge values, relationships and productivity. When managed effectively, however, diversity is a catalyst for creativity, innovation and better decision-making. Learn behaviors and communication skills to harness diversity as a differentiator in meetings and foster a culture of inclusion.

Learning how to bridge across differences and leverage diversity as an asset are critical leadership skills today and beyond. And when we learn to apply DEI best practices to our daily discourse and decision-making, diversity is a catalyst for creativity, innovation and better outcomes. 
 
In this workshop/keynote, I cover easy to implement steps to apply DEI best practices to the decision-making process to achieve more inclusive discussions that minimize group think and broaden perspectives, resulting in more thoughtful decisions and better outcomes.

Many companies wonder why their ED&I efforts fail to produce desired results. The key to achieving sustainable outcomes is to consider each decision in your diversity and inclusion strategic planning process from an inclusive lens before taking action. In this workshop I guide your team through a problem-solving methodology that integrates equity, diversity and inclusion principles with design thinking to develop better strategies to achieve your diversity recruiting and other ED&I desired outcomes.

Positive Psychology Topics

Building a positive organizational culture doesn’t mean investing in big transformation initiatives. The key to fostering a positive culture is to bring positive values to life consistently in the micro moments of every day. Learn research­-based positivity psychology best practices that work and easy ways to apply them every day to shift the culture.

Conferences, consultants, coaches — leaders do it all to build their competencies and improve their teams. But the best approach to being a better leader involves easy tactics you can do for free by applying research-based best practices from positive psychology. These practices could completely change the game for you and your teams!

79% of employees experience burnout at work. Finding small ways to infuse a sense of purpose and meaning in your every day, to make gratitude and appreciation contagious and to foster connection and fun with colleagues goes a long way to increase positivity and to reduce stress and burnout. Learn and practice these research-based techniques that work.

It was a pleasure working with Beth on a recent workshop for a group of emerging women leaders. Beth met with our team to talk through content most relevant to our attendees – women in various stages of their leadership journeys – and created a workshop specifically for them! Beth customized her presentation to relate to the various experiences and stages represented in our audience. Beth led the audience in an engaging presentation that fostered collaboration and connection through table conversations, question prompts, technology and reflection questions. We tasked Beth with leading a session that was relevant to many different women and she delivered in a way that was approachable, fun, engaging, and left attendees with tangible takeaways they could leave the event with and implement immediately.

Kelsiee Arreguin
Director of Member Engagement & Experience, Tempo Milwaukee

Beth helped us start our EDI journey by giving us a common starting point, proven communication tactics, and hands-on practice aligning inclusion strategies with our organizational mission. I loved her framework of teaching these principles as a leadership competency, and her thoughtfulness, good humor, and great facilitation skills. Creating culture change is hard work, but I have seen my staff actively choose to re-examine old assumptions with a new lens.

Layla Zaidane
Executive Director & COO Millennial Action Project

It was a pleasure to work with Beth Ridley as a speaker for our employee event. She listened to our needs and about our culture so she could make a strong connection. Our attendees loved Beth’s down-to-earth presentation style and content. Her suggestions were practical and easy to implement during a busy workday. It was a great experience!

Patti Ulwelling
MGIC Senior Talent Development Specialist

Beth delivered a keynote at the Management Summit that we host each year for our business partners. Beth’s frameworks and presentation style makes the idea of creating a culture of belonging one that’s easy to adopt by providing actionable suggestions that can be implemented immediately. We provided all attendees with a copy of the 50 Everyday Acts of Inclusion flipbook, and everyone loved it! Such a handy resource for simple ways to be more inclusive in our everyday lives. Beth is awesome and we’ll definitely hire her again!

Tosha Clay
Director, Physicians Realty Trust

Beth Ridley was absolutely incredible in delivering the best DEI session I have encountered. Her openness, honesty, and intentionality around the topic made it easy to engage and learn. Even though the session was on DEI, Beth made sure the focus was on her audience, as she took time to interact and respond to any questions or thoughts brought forward. I am excited that we get to listen to her again soon!

John Radke
Northwestern Mutual

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