"Karla is the unique diversity speaker your team needs to hear.

Going from a career in Management Consulting, to an executive trainer, to downsizing and living out of an RV and starting her own company, Karla has first-hand experience navigating through the peaks and valleys of corporate America and how to stay grounded and true to yourself."

-Lauren Hsu, Managing Director, Accenture

Let's Design the Right Experience for Your Team!

Inspire & activate your teams

About Karla's Speaking & Workshop Services

As a leader in Management Consulting and as a Life & Career Coach, I have spent 14+ years helping people become more innovative, compassionate, and effective leaders and teams. I have helped countless leaders, managers, and individual contributors in sales, consulting, IT, HR, and ERGs adopt new ways of working that drive greater collaboration, more effective problem-solving, elevated performance, and fun!

Leading Accenture's Dallas Hispanic Employee Resource Group also gave me a front seat to the urgency of building diverse teams of people that feel INCLUDED. This is why I'm passionate about helping corporate teams build environments that enable all employees, especially minorities, to perform and feel their best.

Speaking & Workshop Highlights

HEI Hotels and Resorts: Workshop Lead at the annual Leadership Conference for Women (2022)
Ecolab: Keynote Speaker & Development Week Speaker for the Hispanic American ERG (2022 & 2021)
Simple Interact: Design Thinking Team Collaboration Workshop Lead & Facilitator (2022)
Accenture Salesforce Practice: Diversity & Performance Speaker (2021)
University of Minnesota HR Conference: Diversity & Team Inclusion Speaker (2021)
Accenture (worldwide): Innovation Faculty & Workshop Facilitator focused on Design Thinking, Storytelling, Agile, and Value Creation (2019-2020)
Accenture International Women's Day: Innovation Speaker (2019)
Siemens IT: Workshop Co-Lead focused on Innovation, Relationship-Building, Social Styles, and Design Thinking (2019-2018)

Sample Talks & Workshops

Below are examples of talks I've delivered at various companies virtually and in person. These talks and workshops are available to other companies as well; alternatively, I'd be glad to design a custom talk or workshop experience tailored to your specific goals.

FOCUS: CONFIDENCE

A hands-on talk about how to achieve our goals by reframing our thinking away from saboteur influences that cause anxiety and fear, and instead, activate the parts of our brain that allow us to achieve our goals with confidence.

FOCUS: NEGOTIATION & INFLUENCE

A role-play-based interactive workshop to practice new mindsets and languages that help us reach the best possible outcomes during a negotiation. These are languages focused on empathy, aspiration versus need, and building on each other's positions collaboratively.

FOCUS: ENABLING HIGH PERFORMANCE

A talk about the 6 major influences (mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, social, and environmental) on our energy that can lead to or detract from high performance at work and a sense of fulfillment across other life areas.

FOCUS: BUILDING INCLUSIVE TEAMS

A talk that explores three types of non-obvious inclusive languages to help participants gain an elevated awareness of common biases, and new language tools that foster inclusivity through curiosity, empathy, and innovation.

FOCUS: PROMOTING WELLNESS

A talk that explores how inner "saboteurs" get in the way of our ability to feel and be our best, and how we can reshape our brain's neural pathways using mind-body connection to activate positive emotions.

FOCUS: INNOVATING

Design Thinking (DT) is a mindset and methodology that enables teams to brainstorm, problem-solve, and innovate more effectively. I'm a highly-experienced DT facilitator and can customize workshops to meet clients' desired outcomes, like strengthening collaboration and communication among teams or developing solution prototypes for a specific challenge.

What are People Saying?

Audience feedback during a talk at Ecolab's 2022 Development Week:

"What a fantastic presentation - thank you so much! Definitely inspiring."
"Very well organized session… so much to take away."
"This was now a session that I will keep in mind. It really was worth following it out of Belgium. Two words: interesting and great."
"Your presentation was awesome! Thank you for sharing and being so transparent. These are some really helpful tips to guide us towards a meaningful and successful way of life."
"Thank you for the positive and enlightening message!"
"Imagine how powerful this information would be if learned at a very young age."
"So many great takeaways from this presentation!"
"I'm signed up for 14 Development Week sessions this week and this might have been the most impactful and helpful for me."

From Ravi Kalidindi, Founder & CEO of Simple Interact:

"We had Karla conduct a Design Thinking session at our recent all-hands meeting. Karla surveyed the many space options we had and quickly decided to conduct the session outdoors. With paper pads, color post-its, and markers, she made it a very fun and engaging 'standing session', and all our team members totally dug it. Karla's session was super insightful. We learned about word choices that help with collaboration and building on each other's ideas as opposed to discouraging ideas. We applied the Crazy Eights ideation method to a real-world problem to come up with many great ideas, then collaboratively narrowed them down to the best combination of ideas, all within a very short time. This exercise helped team members get more comfortable with coming up with new ideas quickly and effectively, versus overthinking and stalling on ideation. Thank you again, Karla! I highly recommend Karla's Design Thinking session to any leader looking to engage their team."

From Francis Sadac, Employee Experience Leader & HR Conference Organizer:

"I was so thrilled that Karla agreed to be a speaker at the University of Minnesota's HR Tomorrow conference, of which I was a member of the Conference planning committee. Our conference had a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) focus, and Karla's presentation on how to understand diverse communication styles and build successful teams around them was one of the presentations that resonated the most. Karla took a little-known but important topic and made it clear and relatable to our conference participants. She is a terrific facilitator, and always demonstrates an effective command of her topic."

Let's work together!

Get in touch with me so we can co-create the talk or workshop experience that supports your team's goals.

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