Dr. Melanie Ho

Is your team or audience looking to transform in bold new ways?
Melanie’s unique keynotes and workshops draw from research at the frontier of transformational change, from management science and organizational behavior to cognitive science and psychology. Her engaging sessions incorporate the latest thinking on how the imaginative arts (fiction, comics, theater, and more) can shift our perspectives and make concepts stick. Examples include:

• Future visioning—applying techniques from science fiction and world-building to design wholly new ways to support our teams, customers, constituents, or stakeholders
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)—using art as a way to lower our defenses on emotionally-charged topics; building empathy through the same tools used by fiction writers
• Leading change—learning how improv and theater can help us build cultures and strategies that better adapt to the twists and turns
Melanie designs talks and workshops on a variety of leadership, organizational, and DEI topics. Her signature sessions are below.

--------------- SIGNATURE SESSIONS ---------------

“Design Fiction” for Future Visioning
Did you know that Jeff Bezos was inspired to create the Kindle after reading Neal Stephenson’s science-fiction-classic The Diamond Age? A growing number of universities, businesses, and other organizations are finding that the tools of the imaginative arts — fiction, drawing, theater — can provide a powerful way to design new futures, shift mindsets, and align stakeholders around a common vision. In this unique interactive session, participants will use the tools of “design fiction” to create aspirational future visions for how to better meet the shifting needs of their audience (whether employees, customers, stakeholders, or constituents).

Renewing Our Commitment & Taking DEI to the Next Level
In candid moments, leaders confess that their organizations aren't making progress quickly enough on diversity, equity, and inclusion goals. It's hard to make time for meaningful DEI work when we're all facing new demands and grappling with systemic burnout. Plus, it can be challenging for “real talk” to occur when emotionally-charged topics give everyone reason to feel guarded. This innovative session draws from cross-industry research on how organizations achieve bolder transformation when progress is difficult despite our best intentions. Participants will learn hidden ways that organizations unintentionally self-sabotage their DEI efforts and leave with a plan for new actions they can take tomorrow to take DEI to the next level.

Leading through the Twists and Turns
Leading change has never been easy, but most of us have never experienced anything like this — trying to steer others through complex change and continued uncertainty while teams (and many leaders) are burnt out. The leadership mindsets and practices that got us here don’t *necessarily* feel wrong, but they don’t feel right either for a wholly new set of challenges. Many leaders today feel fatigued by a world that won’t stand still. How do we provide transparency about uncertainty without fueling anxiety? How do we ensure silos are aligned when there are so many moving parts? What new muscles do leaders need to build for greater organizational agility? We’ll answer these questions and more, providing participants with a toolkit for managing ambiguity and rallying stakeholders around complex change.

“Real Talk” about What Women Face at Work 
Much of the advice for professional women focuses on the need to lean in, but what about the barriers to doing so, or the unequal rewards (and even penalties) when women do lean in? All too often, the “real talk” about the challenges that professional women face happens behind closed doors. That makes it hard for women to make sense of their own experiences, and even harder for those across genders to partner together for gender equity. This session, which can include both women and allies, will discuss what’s needed from a systemic and cultural perspective to create more equitable environments that allow all professional women to thrive.