Speaking and workshops

Bring somatic intelligence into the room.

Keynotes, workshops, AI enablement, and consulting that give teams a shared language for stress, safety, and performance, grounded in trauma science and the realities of work in the age of AI.

Topics

What Deborah speaks on

Every talk can be shaped for your audience, from a 20-minute keynote to a half-day experiential session.

Trauma-informed leadership and psychological safety

How trauma responses show up at work, including the less familiar ones like fawn and collapse, and what leaders can do to create environments where people feel safe enough to do their best work.

Embodied leadership

Leadership is not about never losing your center. It is about noticing when you have left it and knowing how to come back. A practical, body-based session on presence under pressure.

Somatic paths to healing

An accessible introduction to how trauma lives in the body and how somatic practices support regulation and recovery, for survivors, caregivers, and service providers.

Empathetic AI and the loneliness epidemic

Deborah's research on how responsibly designed AI can act as a relational mirror, supporting regulation and helping people reach toward others with more capacity for connection.

AI enablement workshops

Adopt AI without outsourcing your people's thinking, judgment, or voice.

AI can expand what your teams are capable of, or quietly erode their confidence, expertise, and sense of authorship. These workshops help teams use AI to deepen their thinking rather than bypass it, and stay regulated through the pace of change.

What your team learns

  • Using AI as a thinking partner while keeping judgment, memory, and expertise their own.
  • Prompting and reviewing AI output critically, so quality and accountability stay human.
  • Protecting personal authority and voice in AI-assisted writing, decisions, and communication.
  • Working with the nervous-system side of change: overwhelm, fear of being replaced, and change fatigue.

Grounded in the science of learning. Deborah co-designed the undergraduate course The Science of Learning in the Age of AI with Professor Patricia Lindemann in Columbia University's aiX Convergence Design Studio. The course helps students use AI to strengthen memory, metacognition, and knowledge transfer, without handing over their cognitive capacity or their own voice.

Hands-on with AI. She has trained and evaluated large language models as an AI trainer, and as the founder of AI Empath she designed an AI-powered somatic coaching platform and built its IRB-approved research platform herself with an AI coding agent.

Workshops are tailored to your organisation, from a single leadership session to a series for teams.

Ask about AI enablement for your team

Consulting

Trauma-informed systems design

For organizations and designers who want to build environments, processes, and products that prioritize safety, accessibility, and wellbeing. Engagements are custom-scoped and can include culture assessments, leadership training, and trauma-informed review of policies, services, or UI/UX.

Past audiences and hosts include Culture Amp's Culture First New York chapter, the China Institute in America, the Asia Institute of Mentoring, and community mental wellness programs in Singapore.

Planning an event or initiative?

Share your audience, format, and timing, and Deborah will follow up to shape the right session.