Nadine Naber, PhD, doesn't sit on the sidelines. She is an advocate/activist and award winning professor who has the data and stories to back up her work supporting diverse people in companies and communities.
![Nadine Naber](https://melibeeglobalspeakers.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/08/NadineNaberHeadshot1-1024x683.jpg)
Nadine Naber, PhD, doesn't sit on the sidelines. She is an advocate/activist and award winning professor who has the data and stories to back up her work supporting diverse people in companies and communities.
Candace Doby knows that life is too short to play games with your potential. She has spoken to nearly 100K+ people about how to own your brilliance at work, transforming employees into more confident, empowered, and productive people.
(Note: Candace also has a WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH version of this talk)
What stops us from taking worthwhile risks in the workplace — risks like having hard conversations about diversity and inclusion, showing up authentically for ourselves and our teams, and challenging old systems that do not serve new workplace realities? The answer centers on courage. Speaker and coach Candace Doby leverages stories of incredible courage from leaders in black history to show participants how to conjure their own to speak up, step up and show up at work.
What could your organization accomplish with a workplace culture that duly equips and rightly supports team members to take worthwhile risks and perform to their potential? A lot — including more innovation, higher employee engagement and increased productivity. In this presentation, speaker and coach Candace Doby shows leaders how to create a Courage-Ready Culture™ where everyone can contribute and own their brilliance.
An organization’s ability to reach its highest level of excellence comes down to one thing: its people — courageously owning their brilliance, in both typical and transitional times. But how do you get them to speak up with divergent ideas, show up with authenticity and step up with confidence when failure and judgment loom as potential outcomes? In this leadership development presentation, speaker and coach Candace Doby blends storytelling and research to take participants through a process for how to manage fear, activate personal courage and take worthwhile risks — so they can unleash their potential and make a greater impact on their organization.
It takes a lot of courage to thrive in a world where you are challenged, questioned, and/or dealing with daily microaggressions as a person of color. In this talk, Candace shares stories of DEI + belonging through the lens of courage. She offers advice about how to conjure your courage to more fully embody your own brilliance — to lay claim to your uniqueness, skills, and experiences — to support the creation of space for DEI+Belonging initiatives to take root in organizations. This talk is ideal for corporate ERGs as well as youth (schools/colleges/organizations) and is ideal for Black History Month, too.
“Our organization was looking for an energetic and engaging speaker to motivate our attendees in their roles as advocates. We were incredibly fortunate to find Candace Doby to give the keynote during our annual Policy Forum in Washington D.C. She presented with a fantastic energy. Her engaging style is also approachable and down-to-earth, allowing attendees to connect to her message and see themselves within it.”
–Ashlie White, Chief Programs Officer – Amputee Coalition
“Candace spoke for us at our council conference, kicking off our main event which had about 1100 attendees. Having her speak really set the tone and filled everyone with excitement as we went into the week! Her message was well-delivered, inspirational and she tailored it to fit our attendees. She was professional, fun and relatable. I highly recommend Candace as a keynote speaker!”
– Cara Dollinger, League of SE Credit Unions
Featured on MSNBC and NPR, Candace Doby is a speaker, author, and coach who works with companies and organizations to create a culture of courage where employees perform at their highest potential.
Melibee Global Speakers is a boutique speaker booking agency, laser-focused on the needs of event professionals in any industry or field seeking to book diverse keynote speakers and corporate edutainment. Our mission is to provide an easy, customer-friendly, efficient and trusted talent booking experience.
Inquire about booking MelibeeGlobal speaker, Candace Doby using the form below.
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Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens is an award winning author and a historian most known for her writings on slavery and the history of reproductive medicine. She is also widely known for capturing the history of Harriet Tubman as a disabled woman and how it relates to DEI.
Desiree creates and sustains a culture of equity and inclusivity. She’s the one who runs towards the difficult questions.
As organizations work to challenge, address, and repair racial inequities in the present, we need to know the truth of our past.
The truth is that American industry was built on genocide and chattel slavery. It’s not surprising that the concept of middle management and many accounting practices were developed on slave plantations. One year, ten years, of anti-racism work won’t reverse 400 years of colonization and white supremacy. But a long-term, resourced, intentional commitment can transform our organizations into places rooted in transparency and trust, where People of Color experience true equity, power, and inclusion.
During this talk, we’ll explore our history, its impact on today, and look at ways organizations have successfully pushed back on the norms of white supremacy.
What would it look like to be a person of color in the US and flourish? To be safe and to thrive in our workplaces, in our communities. To thrive in our own bodies and minds, without the constant need to contort and conform? To move beyond the relentless pressures placed on us. This is a moment to push what we’ve been told is possible, to deepen our analysis and imagination of what justice, equity, and liberation can look like. To invest even more deeply in each other. This workshop will create space for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to be in conversation about racial equity, the pressures of dominant cultural norms, tools for resiliency, and building collective power.
We’ll name different types of power that operate in the workplace and explore exactly what white dominant culture is, and how it impacts organizational culture, relationships, policies, and processes. We’ll look at what behaviors and practices reinforce dominant culture and share ways we can work to mitigate it.
In this talk, we’ll talk about White Dominant organizational culture, the problem with expectations of constant resilience from BIPOC, and rest as a pathway to healing.
Are we treating ourselves with enough joy, tenderness, and peace? What practices are we engendering and developing in the community to support a love ethic and claim joy? In this talk, we’ll look at a framework for lifelong learning, pleasure, and Joy as resistance.
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“Desiree’s teaching and mentorship have radically enhanced our leadership, focus and vision for our work at Be Nourished. Her wisdom and skillful presence has touched every layer of our business, imbuing each with a renewed depth of focus on equity and inclusion. Desiree leads with the kind of love that is fierce, true, and holds you to your wisest self. She embodies the kind of leadership that holds space for growth and depth of change. Working with Desiree will solidify your vision for a new world so you can stay in process with that vision for a lifetime.”
– Hilary Kinavey & Dana Sturtevant, Co-Creators of Body Trust®
“Desiree Adaway is a powerful doula for this lifelong process of inquiry and praxis. She takes participants down a sometimes painful and always revelatory path towards a deeper and more personal understanding of freedom, inclusion, access, race, and equity.”
– Tucson, AZ
“Desiree Adaway is a gifted coach and mentor.
I appreciate Desiree’s extensive wisdom, her direct, no-bullshit style of communication and her huge heart. With her guidance, I have not only developed and enhanced my leadership and communication skills but I have been able to gracefully navigate my transition out of direct leadership of the organization I founded and move into an emerging new role related to that work.”
– Amy Mandel, Founder and Funder, Tzedek Social Justice Fund
“Desiree brings compassionate rigor. She tells the truth about what she sees. Desiree challenges us to think deeply about what real equity looks like, and in the process, we live into our values and amplify our impact.”
– Danielle Keiser, Exec. Dir. and Founder, Menstrual Health Hub
“As an organization with a lot of energy behind DEI, but without much experience, Desiree Adaway has helped us navigate several important junctures on our still emerging journey. I’ve grown as a person and professional because of our partnership.”
– Carrie Meyer, Assistant Professor, Head of Special Collections and Archives, Leon S. McGoogan Health Sciences Library, University of Nebraska Medical Center
Desiree Adaway is a consultant, trainer, coach and speaker building resilient, equitable, and inclusive organizations. Desiree is the person who says the “thing”, who runs towards difficult conversations. She is an expert at teaching others how to handle complex, charged conversations (particularly around identity and power) with grace, assertiveness, and transparency.
Desiree has over 20 years of experience creating, leading and managing international, multicultural teams through major organizational changes in over 40 countries. As the Senior Director of Mobilization for Habitat for Humanity, she was responsible for planning the strategy and training for hundreds of membership organizations, totaling more than 50,000 members. She was responsible for the overall strategy and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) plans for 1,600 US affiliates and one million volunteers globally.
Her keynotes have a mix of thought-provoking content presented with humor and wit. She makes a point to create a safe space for growth. Desiree is known by colleagues, peers, and partners as being great at open, honest, and productive conversations. She is not afraid of addressing anything that gets in the way of great work. Her style is positive, approachable, engaging, service-oriented, and audience-centered.
Melibee Global Speakers is a boutique speaker booking agency, laser-focused on the needs of event professionals in any industry or field seeking to book diverse keynote speakers and corporate edutainment. Our mission is to provide an easy, customer-friendly, efficient and trusted talent booking experience.
Inquire about booking MelibeeGlobal speaker, Desiree Adaway using the form below.
Let us know by completing the form and we'll be in touch quickly!
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Jennifer Hamady empowers authentic and empowered voices in corporate teams. She specializes in DEI and developing leadership across various types of organizations.
Eleven food books, a Southern upbringing, and a sociology degree make Ashley English who she is; a food personality with a unique perspective.
In this talk, author Ashley explores telling your personal culinary experiences and journey through your cookbook or menu. Using examples (and tastings when possible!) from her book Southern From Scratch, which showcases how her culinary upbringing informed and shaped the cook she am today. She’ll discuss ways to imbue dishes with both literal and figurative, personal flavor.
Ashley guides you on the journey of creating a book concept, pitching it, working with agents versus being unaffiliated, recipe development and testing (where relevant), and more. She’s learned many helpful steps to catching an editor’s attention along her 11 book journey and she generously shares what insider tips have stuck, and what hasn’t, along the way.
Ashley invites you to more deeply explore the process of recipe writing. Having authored 11 food-based books, she’s learned quite a few tips and tricks for crafting recipes that are original yet personal, innovative yet familiar. This talk is geared not just for those interested in writing cookbooks of their own, but also for getting out of “safe” culinary ruts.
For centuries, people bonded over food—building long-term relationships based on a need to collaborate in order to grow, harvest, and preserve food. Today, the easy access to food has eliminated the need for those relationships, leaving us with one less reason to interact. In this talk, Ashley discusses how eating together has the power to create scientifically proven social bonds, engender community preservation, and serve as a form of diplomacy.
This talk is ideal for those food professionals that enjoy writing as much as they enjoy cooking. We’ll discuss ideas for creating and nurturing food-based first person essays, articles, blog posts, and more, and ways to get out of food-writing ruts.
“In a time when origin and heritage are finally enjoying the culinary spotlight, Ashley English emerges from the sweet hollars of Southern Appalachia as an honest and refreshing voice. You’ll find no truer heart and account of what it means to reject, embrace, interpret and celebrate the kitchen we come from. As a mountain girl myself and working in the TV food industry, I see many iterations of this new brand of home cook, but y’all, take notice — Ms. English is the real deal.”
– Selena Lauterer, President, Artemis Independent
“As one of the leading local voices on food, Ashley combines a unique message with a relaxed stage presence and an articulate delivery of her thoughts. She is both charming and informative. She attracted a big crowd as the keynote speaker for one of our events in 2018 and wowed the audience with ground-breaking thoughts on our relationship with food. Can’t wait to have her back for an encore!”
– Tennille Tracy, Publisher, Edible Asheville
Ashley English is the author of 11 books, including all 5 books in her “Homemade Living series” (Canning & Preserving, Keeping Chickens, Keeping Bees, Home Dairy, and Home Apothecary), as well as A Year of Pies, Quench, Handmade Gatherings, A Year Of Picnics, The Essential Book of Homesteading, and Southern From Scratch.
She has worked over the years with a number of nonprofit organizations committed to social and agricultural issues, hosted a bimonthly column for several years in the popular blog Design*Sponge entitled “Small Measures with Ashley,” is an ongoing contributor to the quarterly publication “Taproot,” and regularly contributes to a number of international, national, and regional print publications. She has been a frequent guest on Martha Stewart Radio on SiriusFM.
She regularly teaches classes on topics such as chicken-keeping, bee-keeping, canning & preserving, pie-making, creating dairy products, making homemade health & body care items, and crafting homemade beverages.
She holds degrees in holistic nutrition and sociology, and is an alumnus of both The University of North Carolina at Asheville and Clayton College of Natural Health. She lives in Candler, NC with her husband Glenn, their young sons Huxley and Alistair, and a menagerie of animals. You can follow along with Ashley’s writings at Small Measure.
Melibee Global Speakers is a boutique speaker booking agency, laser-focused on the needs of event professionals in any industry or field seeking to book diverse keynote speakers and corporate edutainment. Our mission is to provide an easy, customer-friendly, efficient and trusted talent booking experience.
Inquire about booking MelibeeGlobal speaker, Ashley English, using the form below.
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Vimala is an award winning (accidental) chef, community activist, domestic abuse survivor, immigrant, mother and grandmother. She’s got a lot to say about triple bottom line in business.
Vimala Rajendran is a chef and restaurateur who deeply believes that we grow our community by engaging intentionally in the farm to fork process and living our vision of creative resiliency. She proudly states that food is a human right and her business motto is “Vimala cooks, everyone eats.” No one is ever turned away at her restaurant – yet she still makes a profit. Her business, Vimala’s Curryblossom Cafe, prioritizes worker, environmental, and social justice; accessibility through affordability; and sustainability at every level. Her award winning restaurant, founded rather unexpectedly in 2010, pays a living wage. Their producers and investors are local, and their long-term goals are about transforming the local economy. They source produce and meat from nearby family farms; organize their workplace around joy and liberation; honor the land and our relationship to it; and practice interdependence with other organizations and small businesses with whom common values are shared.
The idea to be a triple bottom line business came naturally to Vimala, given her mission to be sustainable on every level possible. The three areas they focus on are people, planet and profit. The people they are committed to caring for include the farmers who grow the food, the hands at the back of the house that prep the food, and all the others who contribute making the food come to the table and the guests who come to their business to eat. They pay the farmers a fair price for the food, pay the workers fair wages, and have some benefits like flexible hours, allowing staff with kids to be home with their families at dinner time, offer paid sick days and vacation.
Care of the Planet Earth is honored by intentionally reducing waste. Vimala composts all food waste, utilizing all edible parts of vegetables and fruits by trimming off as little as possible, which keeps food costs down. The restaurant is mindful to keep an eye on making a profit. This is surprising to some of their supporters and that is understandable because they are so thoughtful in everything done for the community’s farmers, workers, and guests.
Vimala’s presentation takes us on a journey from India to Canada to the US – telling the story of a woman’s path from memories of her mother cooking, immigration, domestic violence, liberation and how she ultimately became a triple bottom line business owner. Her story teaches us the power of ethical business and intention in our work – and that profit CAN be attainable through this model.
“Vimala is a warrior, builder, and weaver all rolled up into one. She fights for women, immigrants, workers, and anyone who wants to participate in the culinary world. She builds community one meal at a time, sharing and teaching people not only how to make beautiful food but how to run a business that centers on equity and inclusion. She weaves together people, ideas, and practices, connecting us to her story, her community, and her food. ”
– Alice Julier, Founding Director of Food Studies, Chatham University
“We sure enjoyed having you with us for our chef training during spring break! You were terrific to work with… both during the planning process and during the training itself. I am so glad that I’ve come to know you!”
– Administrator, Oberlin College
“You are such a great role model to women everywhere. I really enjoyed hearing about how you saw your challenges as opportunities’ to grow and try new things. Also it is so inspiring that you call the US home after not being recognized as a citizen. You are AMAZING!”
– Student, St. Mary’s School (Private High School)
Vimala Rajendran grew up in Mumbai, India where she learned to cook from family, street vendors & friends. In 1994, a single mother of three, Vimala started cooking donation-based community dinners in Chapel Hill, North Carolina home. Sixteen years later, in 2010, thanks to the support of our beloved community, Vimala’s Curryblossom Cafe was born. Despite being an “unexpected chef,” her restaurant has won the Best Indian Restaurant in the Triangle (beating out all Indian restaurants in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and Cary) for 9 years and best chef in 2022 She is an immigrant, survivor of domestic abuse, community activist, social entrepreneur, mother of three and mentor to countless people.
Melibee Global Speakers is a boutique speaker booking agency, laser-focused on the needs of event professionals in any industry or field seeking to book diverse keynote speakers and corporate edutainment. Our mission is to provide an easy, customer-friendly, efficient and trusted talent booking experience.
Inquire about booking MelibeeGlobal speaker, Vimala Rahjendranusing the form below.
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