Speaking
Doreen's keynotes and workshops are sought out by Fortune 500 companies, nonprofits, academic institutions, and organizations including Google, Nike, Southwest Airlines, Firehouse Subs, Teach for America, and the New York Library Association.
She captivates audiences with her engaging blend of cultural awareness, cutting-edge research, and rich multi-media presentations. She brings both depth and levity to complex topics and audiences.
With 30 years of on stage experience, Doreen has a uniquely, energetic, and engaging presentation style, blending culturally relevant information, eye-catching video, and cutting edge research to deepen audience member’s engagement with her topics. The most frequently made comment following her presentations is “More please! I could have listened to her talk all day!”
Doreen speaks on topics related to healthy tech use, boredom as an antidote for the negative impact of digital engagement, how to give compelling talks, and various mental health topics such as trauma, complicated grief, and effective self care.
She offers the talks listed below and can also tailor a special and sparkling presentation specific to your audience. She shines in both in person and online spaces.
Dr. Doreen loves black coffee, dancing, her meditation cushion, and people…mostly people.
Bring Doreen to your next event
What it’s like to work with Dr. Doreen
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“Balancing the demands of modern life can make it difficult to show up as your best self. Doreen’s authentic approach provides a straightforward solution, empowering employees and organizations to take a purposeful pause and recharge through valuable insights, engaging content, and thoughtful discussion.”
-Robert Stein
Employee Engagement Manager
Google -
Dr Doreen was an incredibly dynamic trainer. She brought unique ideas to our team, and she has an ability to slice through the trainees guard, and entice them to engage authentically.
Elizabeth Gemeroy,
Director of Organizing
Oregon Nurses Association -
We have had the pleasure of partnering with Dr. Doreen for over three years as part of our annual Mental Health Matters campaign, and she continues to be one of our most beloved and impactful speakers! Her warmth, authenticity, and ability to make mental health topics approachable and meaningful consistently resonate with our employees, making her sessions some of our most highly attended. We cannot recommend Dr. Doreen enough and look forward to welcoming her back year after year!
-Brandon Fries,
Senior Manager People & Culture Business Partnerships
Kate Farms -
"Doreen’s bright personality, expertise, and thoughtfulness created open conversation, reflection, and awareness to the importance of mental health and living authentically. Almost a year later, our employees are still talking about her session!
-Domenic Vermeulen,
Southwest Airlines
What We Resist, Persists: Telling the Truth about Mental Health, Stress, & Work
(General or Corporate Audiences)
The Power of Pause: Turning from Tech Toward Calm
Most people feel a deep desire to set boundaries and be able to step back from the pressures and grind of life but lack the tools to do so. This talk gives a brief overview of the neurological and intra personal benefits of being able to stop, get emotionally regulated, and develop a realistic self care plan, then dives deep into teaching the skills of psychological and physiological regulation. Breathing and boredom tolerance skills are taught and practiced in fun and inspirational ways that leave participants wanting more calm.
Does Giving Life Mean Losing Mine: Parenting While Whole
As children and teens suffer with greater levels of depression and anxiety in a world that expects more of them, caregivers are left bereft of help or comfort in the impossible task of parenting.
Giving practical tips for how to have hard conversations, get to the root of issues, and communicate well within their families, this talk will also emphasize the strong need for setting the stage for health, self care, community building, and boundary setting as a parent. Parents will leave inspired to model mental health management for their children and to care more effectively for themselves as their greatest parenting tool.
Welcome to my Boredom Party! How 10 min of Boredom Changes Everything
We live in a world that demands our attention in digital spaces and our bodies, brains, and relationships pay the price of our over attachment to devices. While the impact to our brains is real (and not in great ways), the world of neuroscience tells us that we can, with intention, work to increase our abilities to focus, delay gratification, regulate our emotions, and experience greater creativity and relational satisfaction.
The good news? We can do this by growing our ability to tolerate boredom. Eventually, just 10 minutes of what the Dutch call “Niksen” (roughly translated as “to do nothing deliciously”) might just change our lives, work teams, families and world. Packed with ample opportunity for practice and inspiration of how to accomplish this difficult (and wonderful feat), this talk will get you craving boredom in a way you never imagined.
Embodied Rest Experiences
These are experiential sessions where differing forms of meditation and regulation skills are taught and practiced. I’ve typically offered these in tandem with other talks, providing a bit of a break after a lecture and encouraging people to re-enter the space in comfortable clothing and without shoes.
I Belong to Me: Maintaining Mental Health in a World that Cares Less
Counter to the teachings of many American subcultures, we can’t healthily belong to anyone else before we belong to ourselves. When we belong to others first, we give up our own critical thinking, unique views, and, too often, put our well being and sense of self in systems outside of ourselves. This leaves us prone to anxiety and depression at the least and to control and abuse at the worst.
Belonging to self, also spoken of as having an internal locus of control, doesn’t make someone selfish. Instead, it enables them to live wild, fiery, engaged-with- others and doing-important-work lives from a place of groundedness, discernment, and effectiveness. Learning to take breaks from the curated spaces of social media and news, to settle into comfort with oneself, and to create a realistic self development plan will be encouraged and facilitated in creative and empathic ways.
Deviced! Balancing Life & Technology in a Digital World
(General Audiences or Parenting Audiences)
The research is clear: Americans spend, on average 12 plus hours a day with screens. Since this time comes from time spent accomplishing major personal and developmental milestones, there’s a double impact. We’re missing out on tasks that enable us to focus, delay gratification, and regulate our emotions while, at the same time, wiring our brains to be uncomfortable with the very settings that would help us attain these skills.
Far from tech shaming, this talk empowers audiences by helping them assess how their tech use is impacting their relational, physical, and mental health in order to make realistic plans for how to moderate use and mitigate negative effects. Filled with fast paced media and chock full of inspiring tips and tools, participants will walk away inspired to tend to their embodied lives and mental health without forcing unrealistic digital detoxes.
Self Care for Activists
Every definition of activism is filled with verbs. Action is the name of the game and passion is the driving force. Eventually, however, the need for constant adaptation, the never ending back-breaking pace, the exposure to disappointment and backlash, and the intensity of the work lead to burn out and mental health concerns for individuals and organized groups.
Offering a compassionate space in which to honor the audience members for their work while also affirming the need for rest and care, this talk offers an opportunity for groups to take a collective breath, assess their current needs (individual and communal), and make a realistic and practical self care plan. Filled with both calm and inspiration, ideas and validation for the seeming impossibility of it all, this talk will change lives and culture by enabling activists to keep going without losing themselves.
De-vicing Your Awkward, Big, Boring, Beautiful, Post Grad Life (Commencement Address)
10 minute talk overviewing the way in which technology enables us to overextend and live outside of our skin with inspiration for balancing the demands of modern life with a rich and interesting embodied life.