Mental Health Awareness: Discuss the Issues that Matter this Month
/Mental Health Awareness Month 2023: #MoreThanEnough!
What makes each of us strong? What makes each of us unique? Can we reframe what we believe as a personal flaw as something that, instead, makes us special? May is Mental Health Awareness month, and this year’s theme is #MoreThanEnough. This campaign aims to combat the negative effects of societal pressures that can impact our mental health—comparison, perfectionism, and the fear of not being enough. Instead of focusing on what’s “wrong,” this theme encourages self-care, self-compassion, and self-acceptance in achieving positive mental health outcomes. It also emphasizes the importance of seeking support and resources for mental health when needed, without shame or judgment.
Mental Health Awareness Month is more important than ever, as the COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges to our mental well-being. The pandemic has impacted the mental health of people of all ages, genders, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Isolation, loss of loved ones, financial strain, and the general uncertainty of the future have all contributed to increased levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. The pandemic also has forever changed the way work, our priorities, and the shape we want our future to take. These important conversations are central to many Outspoken speakers’ most popular talks. Our thought leaders are paving the way for more open dialogue about mental health, especially as it intersects with our professional lives and workplaces. Read more below about some of our speaker’s in-demand topics for talks about mental health and remember why the “B” (Belonging) in DEIB matters!
Nidhi Tewari is a workplace culture and wellbeing expert, bringing a decade of clinical expertise as a therapist who specializes in working with high-performing leaders to her overall work with organizations and their leadership teams. Her talks tackle an array of mental health topics such as workplace burnout, emotional intelligence, and neurodivergence.
Featured Talk: Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Supporting Neurodiversity, Mental Health, and Disabilities at Work
Why It Matters: Managers and leaders are on the frontline of supporting employee wellbeing in the workplace, but it can be difficult to know what types of assistance may be the most helpful for their teams. Invisible disabilities, such as neurodiversity, mental health conditions, chronic pain disorders, and physical challenges that are unseen, require a trauma and DEI-informed approach. In this talk, Nidhi will teach attendees how to recognize the signs that an invisible disability may be impacting a team member at work, how to engage in a meaningful dialogue with employees while maintaining boundaries, and how to attune and adapt responses to meet the unique needs of each employee.
As a user researcher and experienced manager at some of Silicon Valley’s top tech companies, Ximena Vengoechea has spent years facilitating conversations at companies like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest. Her empowering talks related to mental health focus on listening, communication, and the power of rest, relaxation, and meditation.
Featured Talk: Listen Like You Mean It: How To Be A Better Listener from the Boardroom to the Dinner Table
Why It Matters: In this keynote based on her book, Listen Like You Mean It, Ximena Vengoechea reveals tips and tricks for how to be a more effective listener, including how to cultivate a listening mindset, how to identify unmet needs in conversation, and how our own default listening mode can get in the way of connecting with others. Audience members will leave understanding the most common obstacles to effective listening as well as Silicon Valley-tested tips to improve their communication, collaboration, conflict management, and interpersonal relationships.
Caroline Maguire is a neurodiversity inclusion specialist, whose work has inspired important conversations about social skills, especially for people who struggle to fit in or communicate. Her talks provide strategies for teaching social skills, managing ADHD symptoms, and building a positive corporate culture from a science-based approach.
Featured Talk: Your Competitive Advantage: Helping Neurodiverse Employees Thrive
Why It Matters: No two brains are alike. We think, learn and work in different ways—and neurological differences, whether ADHD, autism spectrum disorders or even dyslexia, offer both challenges and gifts to any organization. There is no doubt neurodiverse people are talented with unique strengths that spur innovation. Neurodiversity offers a new competitive advantage for exceptional performance, but only if employees can thrive in the organization's culture. In this talk, social skills expert Caroline Maguire explores how observing, noticing, pausing and challenging our own assumptions in simple everyday interactions can change the culture of your organization. Caroline offers practical strategies to help each member of the organization gain more understanding about supporting a neurodiverse workforce, foster more thoughtful communication about differences, and share diverse perspectives that can lead to greater collaboration and innovation.
Jill Payne is a workplace wellness expert who has worked with individuals, organizations, and competitive teams who want to improve mental health management. As a Mental Conditioning and Culture Coach for the Canadian Women's Olympic 7's team, Jill is elevating team cohesiveness by delivering her unique approach to mental health tools as part of their mental performance program for a culture of winning in a supportive and collaborative environment. Her talks address energy management, positive disruption, and cultivating joy whether at home or on the job.
Featured Talk: The School of Unlearning: Energy Management & Finding Joy in Life
Why It Matters: Many people are feeling burnt out, overworked, disengaged, and disenchanted by things in life that once filled their buckets. Due to an extended period of time in a surge nervous system state, we as a society are feeling flat, experiencing a lack of energy, community and creativity. But what if joy became your only job? When we are feeling joyful, our work, our relationships, and even our health seem easier and our capacity greater. Jill shares with audiences how to cultivate the power of the emotion of joy to not only allow more enjoyment in all areas of life but also to create a supportive culture of people who are on this journey of harnessing joy together. In this talk, she taps into the athlete mindset in order to show up fully for life, as well as the process of unlearning habits and mindsets that do not serve a joyous professional and personal life.
Dan Doty is an executive leadership coach and an emotional resilience expert. He is the co-founder of EVRYMAN, which helps men connect and help each other lead more successful, fulfilling lives through groups and retreats. His talks focus on allyship in the workplace, the connection between nature and wellness, and men’s mental health with an emphasis on fatherhood.
Featured Talk: Be More Human
Why It Matters: Human connection is the heaviest-hitting, lowest-hanging fruit in personal growth and performance today. American culture prioritizes independence and technology amplifies our isolation, and yet underneath we are social primates that do not operate at our highest potential alone. How do we move from alone and stuck to connected and free? In this talk, Dan walks audiences through simple protocols of connection and vulnerability. Audiences will learn about the power of human connection and how to practice simple and powerful skills of communicating and relating that can immediately be implemented in their lives. From the starting point of being seen, heard, and felt, anyone’s goals and challenges become tangible and elegant.
Shantell Martin is an intuitive philosopher, cultural facilitator, curator, choreographer, songwriter, performer, and more. She’s collaborated with Kendrick Lamar, Puma, and The North Face; had an installation with Tiffany & Co.; and produced choreography for the Boston Ballet and backdrops for works at the New York City Ballet—and more! Though she’s an artist who has seemingly done a little bit of everything, her talks focus on the power and joy that comes with creativity.
Featured Talk: The Way to Yay: The Connection Between Creativity and Mental Wellness
Why It Matters: Creatives, artists, writers, even travelers have a few things in common–including the fact that they’re all somehow trying to find their way to yay. Emotional well-being and our personal emotional experience are key components of mental wellness. The emotional experience can also correspond to latent creativity and the impetus behind expression. Whether experiencing a positive or negative state, the expression of creativity provides validation to the inner experience in a way that is important to emotional health. Through sharing her own artistic process, in this talk, Shantell helps audiences explore and develop a greater understanding of their own creative process and how that can be impactful and insightful to anyone, in any industry, within any workplace.
Tayo Rockson is a corporate diversity and inclusion expert and co-founder of a strategic consulting firm that empowers organizations of all kinds to incorporate sustainable diversity and inclusion practices. In his talks, he shares his expertise with top leaders on how to build and maintain sustainable DEI practices within their organizations, using a cross-cultural approach to effective communication, which is essential to the wellness of every organization’s employees.
Featured Talk: How to be Emotionally Fluent
Why It Matters: The ability to give language to any and all of your emotions is also a necessary ingredient for developing cultural competency, cultural agility, collaboration skills and inclusive leadership. In this talk, Tayo builds on the ideas of both emotional literacy and emotional intelligence to highlight how and why emotions form. He explores the long-standing debate about whether all emotions are fixed or fluid and closes with how and what we can learn from our traumas and suppressed emotions.
Outspoken Agency is a women-owned speaking agency representing leaders, founders, public intellectuals, authors and entertainers for paid keynotes, workshops and panels at in-person and virtual events. Learn more about our female founders here.