Training & Speaking
As a dynamic trainer and presenter, I offer workshops on HR and threat assessment topics. I have instructed at the renowned GDBA Advanced Threat Assessment Academy and have been a featured speaker at dozens of global conferences, including many Association of Threat Assessment Professionals (ATAP) conferences.
Contact me to request one of the trainings below for your workplace or to customize training that fits your needs!
Recent Presentations
"Dancing in the Dark: Is it Time for a Standard of Care in Threat Assessment?"
With Raymond Fleck
"Fix the Roof Before it Rains: Security and HR Working Together"
With Meco Choates
Association of European Threat Assessment Professionals
Lugano, Switzerland, April 2025
"Strengthening the Relationship Between Security and HR"
Employee Wellness Panel with Michael Hudson, Shibu Thomas, Jonathan Proulx, Rhonda Maluia
Trainings
Words Matter
The words we use shape the way we, and those around us, think. In this presentation, I share how small shifts in our language can shift our perspective from negative to positive, from hopeless to hopeful, from failure to success. This fun, interactive presentation looks through a safety lens at the neuroscience behind our words, the impact of small changes in our language, and easy ways to build trust and increase safety by replacing negative imagery with positive, future-focused language. Word shifts = world shifts!
Words Matter: A New Lens on Collective Bargaining Agreements and Contracts
Are your Collective Bargaining Agreements and other contracts easy to read? Do your labor partners, front-line supervisors, and new employees agree? In this tailored session, we’ll look at ways to build foundational trust into the language of our bargaining contracts and relationships. Using real-life examples, we’ll highlight the tangible benefits of using plain language and clear, familiar words to save time and money, reduce disputes, and foster trusting relationships.
Bridging the Gap Between HR and Security – What’s in it for HR
Building bridges between security and HR can transform our people practices into powerful tools to prevent and mitigate threats in the workplace. This interactive presentation focuses on ways to strengthen this partnership and navigate old and new challenges together in a changing workplace. Applying hard data to soft skills, this session demonstrates easy ways to turn HR practices into a force multiplier for safety in our organizations. Listen: The Defuse Podcast - Bridging the Gap Between Security and HR.
How Not to Hire a Psychopath
How Not to Hire a Psychopath brings together expertise in forensic psychology, human resources, threat assessment, and organizational practices to the prevention and management of personnel issues and workplace problems. This training helps organizations thrive by providing strategies and processes pertinent to recruitment, staff engagement, resolution management, and workplace safety and culture.
Breaking Up Doesn’t Have to be Hard to Do: Employee Separations
Ending an employment relationship is stressful for everyone involved, and unfortunately, can result in real threats to the workplace. Aggrieved former or soon-to-be former employees can cause great harm to your organization. Fortunately, there are ways to prepare for a respectful, and safe, involuntary separation – before, during, and after the conversation. Looking through an HR and threat lens, this session includes hands-on tips for how to say goodbye, when and how to stay connected to former employees, and an easily adapted checklist.
From Avoiding Liability to Building Trust
Traditional approaches to harassment and discrimination prevention training in the workplace have not worked: employees do not report concerns, and managers do not make it safe to report those concerns. This session presents a new approach, focused not on avoiding legal liability but on building trust by creating and supporting a culture where concerns are addressed long before they rise to the level of illegal harm.
Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management: It’s a Team Sport
A multidisciplinary partnership between stakeholders - security, HR, legal - is critical to effective and defensible threat assessment and management. This training brings together the art and science of these partnerships with real-life applications to address prevalent workplace hazards including intimate partner violence and spillover into the workplace, self-directed violence, and other grievance-fueled targeted violence. You’ll learn ways to prevent, mitigate, and respond to workplace violence risks and threats to reduce liability and foreseeable tragedy.
Psychological Safety – In Vulnerability We Trust
Leading with emotional intelligence, this session examines the role of emotions in the workplace and the importance of vulnerability in building trust and creating a psychologically safe workplace. Beginning with evidence-based insights into civility, this presentation incorporates active listening skills to create psychologically safe and respectful workspaces.
.png)
Collaboration in Conflict
Conflict is something we avoid or perhaps unintentionally bring into our relationships. We can’t always avoid conflict – it’s a normal part of working and existing with others. This session unpacks the sources of interpersonal conflict with curiosity rather than judgment. Then, we turn those insights into communication building blocks, layering them together with kindness and civility in practice.