Imagine waking up every day and going to work with a renewed sense of purpose. Kate helps organizations inspire people through mindfulness and corporate stress resilience workshops, retreats and tailored courses.

As a senior marketing and branding executive, Kate spent 19 years working internationally and with leading global companies including Mars, McDonald’s, Wal-Mart and Kraft, until a wake up call prompted her to reexamine her priorities. As a seasoned senior executive, Kate understands the realities of motivating a high-performance team. In 2014 she began accomplishing her most important work bringing mindfulness based social and emotional skills to corporations, schools and healthcare.

Kate has studied mindfulness meditation and interpersonal neurobiology since 2011. She has continually deepened her practice at silent led retreats with Shinzen Young in Vipassana insight meditation as well as The Centre For Mindfulness In Medicine, University Of Massachusetts, Boston. She also completed her formal teacher training in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) with the highly regarded international MBSR Professional Education and Training at University of Massachusetts Medical School. Most recently Kate completed the intensive Mind Body Medicine Training with Saki Santoreli, Florence Meleo-Meyer and Judson Brewer. Kate thrives on an active daily meditation practice of her own embodying mindfulness as a way of life.

For a good portion of my career I allowed stress to dictate my actions. I experienced burn out at least three times. Most of the time I either wasn't aware of how stress was impacting me or I chose to ignore it because I was 'too busy' to pay attention. When work or life was overwhelming, I'd make external changes in an attempt to find balance such as taking sabbaticals and even moving to a new country. Eventually I  defaulted to old behaviours and continued to allow stress to dictate. I couldn't bounce back because my mental resiliency was totally depleted. 

It was a third wake up call that got my full attention -  I was diagnosed with cancer. This set me on a path to empower myself and others with tools to reframe stress. In the process I made some interesting discoveries. Firstly, how much of the time I would race through my day and lose myself in autopilot mode (research shows that the average person is in autopilot 47% of the time).  Autopilot mode is similar to driving your car, arriving at your destination then discovering you don't remember a thing about the journey. Or, opening a bag of nuts, suddenly noticing the packet is empty and observing you've eaten a whole bag without even realizing. I became aware of how much of the time my mind was 'wandering' and how frequently I was getting lost in 'doing' and 'striving' to get more 'stuff done' instead of living fully. 

As I began training in mindfulness, meditation and interpersonal neurobiology it was intriguing to discover and experience, through direct practice, how much communication with others and self reflection is influenced by physical sensations in the body, emotions and thoughts. Prior to my training I had always assumed the mind and body were separate functioning parts. In fact they are completely integrated in how they operate. This could have ground-breaking implications for how we function and thrive in the workplace.

1. An introduction to mindfulness: incredibly simple ways to practice it anytime, anyplace

Description: Inspire and motivate your audience to take action and leave them with simple tools they can use as soon as they leave the workshop
Audience: Everyone
Length: 60-90 minutes, Q&A
What you'll learn: 

• What mindfulness is and isn't
• The neuroscience behind it
• Compelling case studies which show the benefits
• Experiential guided practices which you can apply immediately in your work and life
• Easy to use handouts with techniques taught and Kate's go-to resources

2. Bringing mindfulness into the workplace: cost effective ways to leverage it in your organization

Description: Discover how mindfulness and being present can boost your profit, drive engagement and cultivate self-aware leaders
Audience: Emerging leaders, executives, HR, employees, team building days, staff wellness events
Length: 1-2 hours, Q&A
What you'll learn: 

• How companies like General Mills, Intel and Aetna are fostering mindful practices among employees
• Why productivity rests on focused human attention
• The key to building self awareness and emotional resilience
• Practical ways to practice mindfulness at work  
• Strategies to introduce mindfulness into your organization

3. Work-life balance: winning with mindfulness

Description: A surprising, thought-provoking look at how work-life integration is the new work-life balance and why mindfulness is the key to positive change
Audience: Anyone interested in supporting colleagues, co-workers and teams to reduce stress, strengthen resilience and improve work-life
Length: 1-2 hours, Q&A
What you'll learn: 

• How our fast paced digital world is leading to alarming increases in stress, anxiety and depression 
• Why striving to achieve the perfect balance does more harm than good
• How to leverage mindfulness and present moment awareness to work smarter, not harder
• How to make time to eliminate tasks with limited productivity value
• Experiential practices you can introduce into the organization

4. Creating positive change: how to turn adversity to advantage

Description: In this candid talk you'll discover why stress isn't what you think it is, how mindfulness is a skill which teaches us to become more comfortable with adversity and how to build unshakable resilience
Audience: This talk is for everyone, but especially those who recognize it's becoming harder to bounce back from health stress, job stress and people stress
Length: 1-2 hours, Q&A
What you'll learn: 

• Why you may not be as resilient and stress hardy as you think you are
• The cost of stress on you and your organization 
• How to bounce back quicker after organizational change
• How to see failure as an opportunity
• How to thrive in a stressful environment

Want Kate at your next speaking event? Get in touch

Kate's talks can run from 20 minutes to 1-2 hours and can be standalone, or part of a conference or corporate event. If you're interested in booking Kate for a future event, drop us a line.