Jess’s Popular Programs

Conversations That Matter

Jess’s Popular Programs

Conversations That Matter

The “Safe Different” You Are Looking For

Structured Keynotes & Programs Customized In Real Time

Let’s face it: there are people in your organization or audience who have attended 100+ conferences, conventions, trainings, and other professional events. And they’ve sat through even more presenters. Whew! They’ve seen it all, so you need a seasoned pro with a fresh face, a fabulous delivery, and a take on DEI they’ve never heard. Delightfully edgy would be great, but you can’t afford a gamble.

Welcome to the “safe different” of Jess Pettitt.
With nearly 20 years of presenting, consulting, and facilitating in the DEI space, Jess knows exactly how to make your event memorable, unique, and perfectly suited to the tastes, culture, and professional nuances of your organization or event.

Jess will tie your whole event together as your closer, get folks excited to apply their learning, and block out next year’s date to return. Her key objectives are to energize and inspire your audience “to do the best they can with what they’ve got some of the time” and to leave ’em talking about your event for weeks.

Change for good

Jess’s custom and current keynotes create a powerful connection with and between your participants by addressing their hardships and biggest frustrations and tending to their personal soft spots and learning edges through humor, powerful stories, and speaking to their real-time concerns. Best of all, Jess delivers immediately implementable action steps that lead to meaningful, positive change well after the doors close.

Tailored to your people and your event

All of Jess’s presentations are customized and personalized. She tailors her powerful message to reach everyone from upper management to front-line employees, regardless of the size of your organization or industry.

Whatever your title, these are important skills you don’t want to clock out of when you are no longer at work—because I could bump into you at the grocery store. The version of you that is unfollowing people but not unfriending them, the version that is putting the grocery cart sorta close back but not all the way back—that’s the person who needs to be paying attention today because you get to choose who and how you’re going to be in the world.

— Jess Pettitt

Feel even safer with Jess as your emcee!

Wanna go one step further and add an insurance policy to your entire event? Upgrade to having Jess emcee your entire event for a seamless experience of connection, learning, and laughing, regardless of what’s happening behind the scenes. Nobody has to know who’s stuck in traffic or what technology just caught fire when you have an event partner like Jess, waiting in the wings, ten steps ahead. She’s got it!

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Jess’s Most Popular Keynote Programs

Conversations That Matter: Better Connections Keynote

Regardless of how traditional or progressive your organization is, there are some people and topics that at some point are off limits. You just can’t do them right now, especially when you have to bring up the difficult topics with the difficult people.
What if you could engage in these conversations with more confidence, humor, and ease? What if you could let go of someone has to win and someone has to lose or someone has to be right and someone has to be wrong? You can! Because no matter the person or topic, you are your best tool for conversations that matter.
Understanding yourself and others as differently right gives you the tools to intentionally design teams, groups, and partnerships that can bring value to a single project or your entire organization.

Conversations That Matter Handout

We are all frustrating to someone (and at times even to ourselves). Once you know who and how you are, you can (re)claim responsibility for your behavior-response-patterns and leave room for others to do the same. Before you know it, you are having better conversations and fuller relationships with those around you and clearing the way for your organization to experience greater efficacy and growth. It really is that easy.

Learning Outcomes:
Participants will learn:

A three-part framework for taking responsibility for who and how they show up
Develop skills for a significant and powerful (and free) method to change culture around difficult topics and see other’s as differently right.
The powerful skills that change culturearound difficult topics and challenging people
How to see others as differently right

See What Keynote Attendees Say About Jess

Going to see Jessica speak was such a highlight. She came to Atlanta and spoke at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. Jessica was in my city-so I had to go see her. It was a treat! She was funny, engaging, interesting….really everything you would want in a Keynote Speaker. Even though the room had hundreds of people she came over to me after speaking and asked how I was, what I liked and didn’t like about what she had to say. And then I noticed she would go to as many people as she could to try to make them feel at “home” I highly recommend Jessica as a Speaker, social action extraordinaire. And she’s a fanboy of Star Wars and you have to respect that!

Harrison Nathan
CPFA Investment Advisor MassMutual, MML Investments

“A joy to work with. Inspires collaborators to transcend our limitations and be and do more than we thought we could. She creates a big tent with room for people who wouldn’t normally inhabit the same space. As a team member, she does what she says she will do, and more.”

Jim Hight
Senior Editor Climate Change Business Journal

“My team was forever changed after I brought Jess in to speak at our annual staff retreat! They all loved the personal insights that applied to each of them as individuals and we as her hilariously witty approach to building self-awareness by addressing how each person “annoys others.” Her fun, authentic presence was a breath of fresh air to lighten our heavy strategy sessions before and after her time with us. Your team will love Jess, so call and get your date locked in before someone else beats you to her calendar! “

Cara Silletto, MBA, CSP
Magnet Culture | President & Chief Retention Officer

” Jessica’s learning and conversation with our company was one of the most memorable, encouraging, and thought provoking. Months later I still refer back to the very interesting way she presented information that challenged the way I think – or thought I was supporting a broader community. She brings a LOT of knowledge and thought-provoking messages to the table that help upgrade our conversations and how we think, talk, and react to others. Thank you Jessica! “

Kaneen Christensen
Mission Assurance Director, Leidos

Good Enough Now Keynote

Sitting around pointing fingers and waiting for change to appear on the horizon—has it ever worked for you? Do you feel imbalance between who you are and who you think you should be? Do you see fulfillment, better relationships, and stronger teamwork as something to work for, but not possible now?

The truth is that all of these are available to us in this present moment, right where we are. And by being our authentic selves, we can immediately improve our companies, relationships, and communities.

This is Jess’s signature breakthrough message—an innovative, practical guide to ridding ourselves of self-doubt, self-limiting beliefs, and habitual excuses so that we can do “the best we can with what we have some of the time” and be the best versions of ourselves right here, right now. Yes, even you back there in the corner—I see you.

Learning Outcomes
Participants will learn:

The importance of being true to their authentic self
How to develop momentum based on their strengths

The three-part model to build on empathy and giving grace
How to recognize their own personal patterns and see them in others so they can leave room for edits in the stories they tell themselves about other people.

Questions About One Of Jess’s Programs?

Contact Jess Today!

Keynote Speaker Jessica Pettitt Diversity Expert

Why Diversity Initiatives Fail Keynote

After nearly two decades of leading Diversity trainings, Jess Pettitt, CSP, has uncovered why change doesn’t stick. With over 50 examples of her own clients’ previous, failed DEI responses, Jess will show your participants how our go-to answers are steps in the right direction, even if they fail. Leaving room for failure dismantles the urgency of action and gets to the core of the issue at hand to increase a sense of belonging in our organizations and build greater communities.

That’s because doing something and failing (or even doing nothing) is still a response. As long as you acknowledge what you’re doing (or not doing) and don’t hide from it, as long as you stop trying to win and focus on doing better, you will keep learning and growing as a company, and your responses will mean more and more to your people and to your public.

If your Diversity initiatives aren’t sticking, then you’re stuck in an old pattern. The only way out is disruption. So let’s do some disrupting and create change for good!
In this talk, Jess help will help your people navigate this new and unfamiliar terrain and show them how any sincere and honest response can lead to your most inclusive culture.

Learning Outcomes:
Participants will learn how to: