Dr. Shelley Signature Presentation

What Can I Do? Journey to Liberation: acknowledging our past to Shape our future

Cultural proficiency is widely accepted as a necessary element of effective leadership.

Overlooking cultural intricacies is not just financially costly but detrimental to organizational

productivity and longevity. Using research gleaned from her career in education and leadership, Dr. Shelley shows audiences the value of interacting, communicating, and working with people from diverse cultural backgrounds in all types of settings. She does this without lingering in the barriers of shame, blame, guilt and victimization which can make this work more emotional and harder than necessary.

This presentation will help attendees: 

• Clarify terms, understanding historical connections and societal challenges that create systemic inequities
• Improve connections by recognizing and responding to the diverse needs of clients, students, colleagues, leaders, and community members
• Navigate the unique challenges posed by their own professional expectations and personal experiences
• Increase productivity, creativity, innovation, and profits by building empathy for equity in the workplace 

What is the legacy of your leadership?

Balancing Courageous Leadership where you live, learn & earn

The Five Pillars of Courageous Family Leadership—home, relational, personal, professional, and financial—are the backbone of our life’s journey. These vital elements are crucial for leadership in schools, at work as well as in the home and can guide us through the complexities and inequalities we encounter in our daily lives. Dr. Shelley shows audiences how embracing the Five Pillars is necessary to ensure leadership resilience and success and to heal intergenerational trauma and set a foundation to create generational wealth.

This presentation will help attendees:

• Uncover the courage to address inequities in the home and in the community 
• Develop historical knowledge, skills, and strategies to show up as a courageous leader in one’s family and support future generations to speak up and influence change
• Become a better professional leader and claim their legacy by focusing on individual, family, and community goals

Whom do you serve?

 Facing our Fears, focusing on our people, Increasing our success

Our future needs courageous leadership, especially when racism, sexism and systemic oppression persistently affect our lives and society. If leaders can establish their workplace as a safe space for all people, research shows that organizations can increase productivity, connection, AND profits. Dr. Shelley shows audiences why clarity in whom you serve is key to courageous leadership and how, by addressing challenges with compassion, they can create spaces filled with understanding that promote employees’ well-being along with the success of their organizations.

This presentation will help attendees:

• Operationalize agreements to create culturally safe spaces where ALL people can freely bring their whole authentic selves to work
• Develop a systemic action planning structure to gather input from those we serve as we discuss and address tough topics like race, poverty, and policing among all cultural identities without shame, blame, or victimization.
• Identify how courageous leadership that centers “minoritized” employees positively impacts the bottom line

For a parent, losing your child to hate is by far the worst nightmare imaginable. We were spared this pain and used the experience to spark a flame for helping people address issues of oppression in the schools, workplaces, and now communities of families. The prices that operationalized hate costs organizations, companies, and families have always been high and are steadily rising. Whether it is in lawsuits, recruiting, training, or retraining employees, mental anguish, shortened lifespans, epigenetic trauma, or broken families, the high price of hate continues to impact us all.

We began on a journey to address the very seeds of systemic racism that we know exist in corporations, organizations and institutions, all around us after almost losing our oldest son to racialized hate in a former sundown community. Thankfully he is doing amazing as a college student-athlete and homeowner, but the experience was traumatizing for our entire family. Being an educational family, we knew that racism also originates and permeates in homes across America. What started over 15 years ago as an instructional equity consulting organization has quickly risen to become a leader in facilitating interracial conversations about race, using the development of historical racial literacy as a tool to address and understand mental models around race. Working in school districts, cities, police departments, companies, small businesses, and non-profit organizations across America and beyond, we know that developing a shared understanding of the history of race relations helps remove shame and blame and allows us to move forward together.