Anita R.
Founder at The Safe & Sound Workplace Alliance
Human Resources
Education: B.S. Psychology
Denver, CO, USA
Biography
For over three decades, Anita has consulted for and worked with professional service firms throughout the country; led internal marketing organizations; coached executive teams; and turned qualitative understanding into quantifiable outcomes. Her work creates results including project wins, improved team integration, process improvement, root cause analysis and transformation. She has found that hiding our humanness is the biggest detriment to success – individually and as an organization. With that knowledge, and her own experiences, she has come to believe deeply that there is a way to use the things hiding out in the dark to help create better corporate cultures. This belief has led to her passion for helping organizations understand trauma and the importance of creating psychologically safe environments.
She has consulted for regional and national professional service firms throughout the country; led internal marketing organizations; coached teams, executives and individuals; and turned qualitative understanding into quantifiable outcomes for three decades. Her work creates results whether it is in project team wins (over $10B); the successful transition of brands that were struggling due to M&A or generational growing pains; personal successes and growth for individual coaching clients; root cause analysis around culture and leadership challenges that allow for strategic personnel changes and meaningful succession planning; and more.
Anita holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Excelsior University and a Diploma in Global Leadership from The U.N.-Mandated University of Peace, Centre for Executive Education. She is a Certified Trauma-informed Coach, Certified Chief Well-being Officer, Certified Holistic Health Coach, Certified Strengths Practitioner, and Certified CultureTalk Partner.
Passion
Anita is passionate about helping organizations understand trauma and the importance of creating psychologically safe environments including understanding invisible disabilities, the strengths that trauma-disabled individuals bring to the table, and creating spaces that allow for the most meaningful work and positive impacts for all. She believes that breaking the silence around our traumatic pasts and shining a light on the darkest parts of our humanity brings forth our highest potentials and greatest connections. She is also passionate about helping students, young adults, trauma survivors, and others build self-esteem, self-acceptance and self-efficacy through knowledge of their story, their strengths and their skills to help them find health, love and purpose in their lives and careers.
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I am willing to travel
More than 100 miles
When it comes to payments
Everything is negotiable
Topics
Best Story
I share all of my stories even the less than ideal ones as part of how I shine a light on the need for psychologically safe work environments - from the stories of how I was blamed for my stepmother's falling of the wagon when I was 10 to losing my mom at 8 and more and how that shaped my response to the world - including becoming an over-achiever, people-pleaser and workaholic. I use these stories and how the strengths that came from them have also positively helped me navigate the world and my career to help give hope to others who are struggling with their own less than ideal circumstances.
Origin Story
My branding work always led me into addressing a company's most challenging people and internal dilemmas as brand and marketing issues often point to bigger problems. The knowledge gained from this work along with my own career challenges due to my Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and fawn trauma response led me to research and develop tools and talks to help bring awareness to how trauma is impacting the places we learn and earn. My research has shown that few companies are even aware that trauma is impacting them so significantly (to the tune of billions of dollars in lost workdays and productivity) let alone providing trauma-informed psychologically safe environments.
Additionally, my difficult childhood and how it impacted my educational pursuits despite being quite intelligent led me to develop workshops, talks, and tools to help students see a brighter future despite dark times.
Example talks
The 7 Agreements of a Safe & Sound Workplace
Anita has identified 7 key agreements that leaders must embed in their organizational culture to ensure that employee and employer well-being are optimized. These agreements are trauma(human)-informed, easy to adopt, and critical to creating psychological safety in a workplace.
Trauma: The Root Cause of Burnout
With current studies showing over 70% of US adults report experiencing at least one traumatic event, and almost 20% report experiencing 4 or more of the ACE markers associated with trauma (National Council for Behavioral Health, 2023) and the world bringing even more adverse childhood, community, cultural, and climate events…THE primary root cause we must consider is trauma and trauma response. In this talk, Anita shares her personal story, her call to action for organizations, and tools for recognizing trauma response in yourself and others.
Shining a Light on the Power of our Humanness: Self Acceptance and the Whole Person Model
Anita's model on our whole person well-being focuses on who we are natally designed to be, what we have learned from our nurtured, lived experiences, and how our unique neural processing makes us think about and approach the world. Using the model and her own story of growth, self-acceptance, and strengths profile, she shines a light on the power of our humanness. This can be done as a keynote but also has powerful application as a breakout session or full workshop using the i.d.lumination Strengths Deck and Anita's proven activities and facilitation techniques.
Breaking the Silence: The Importance of Trauma-Informed Workplaces
The importance of creating psychologically safe and trauma-informed workplaces for the benefit of both the employee and employer. The talk would bring together current statistics, my personal story, my simple framework for quick wins, and ideas to catalyze awareness. Research shows that few companies understand that significant number of their employees who have been impacted by trauma, how business as usual behaviors as activating trauma response, and the cost of that trauma response in the workplace.
This talk/workshop is trauma-informed and great for students as well as adults.