Your Working Life Caroline Dowd-Higgins

Adele Gambardella and Chip Massey are the co-founders of The Convincing Company, a crisis communications and training firm, and co-authors of Convince Me: High-Stakes Negotiation Tactics to Get Results in Any Business Situation  
 
Adele owned an award-winning PR agency in Washington, DC for 15 years, where she served as spokesperson for a variety of Fortune 100 companies, including DuPont, Deutsche Bank, Lockheed Martin, SAP, and Verizon. She has also served as PR strategist, corporate counsel, and crisis management for clients that include the United Nations, Facebook, Johnson & Johnson, and President Biden. She has taught crisis communications and business at Princeton, Cornell, George Mason, and Georgetown, and is a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Inc., and Entrepreneur. 
 
Chip is a former FBI hostage negotiator and special agent. In his 22-year career in the Bureau, he has led high-profile cases, spearheaded the New York FBI Office's Crisis Negotiations Teams, and won the prestigious FBI Directors Award. He is the co-founder, with Adele Gambardella, of the Convincing Company, a crisis communications and training firm, where he guides executives and their teams in how to apply the Bureau's negotiation techniques to business situations.
 
Book: CONVINCE ME: High-Stakes Negotiation Tactics to Get Results in Any Business Situation 
 
In the book, they share fascinating stories—including life-or-death scenarios from Chip’s FBI days—and blend the tactics of hostage negotiation and crisis PR to teach people how to persuade others in any business situation.
 
Learn how to master the art of convincing others in any business situation―with insider tips from a former FBI hostage negotiator and a top DC publicist.
 
From CEOs communicating with board members to managers negotiating salary increases and entrepreneurs looking to raise capital, it's impossible to overstate the role of persuasion in making your personal and professional goals a reality. The ability to convince others―respectfully and effectively―is one of the most important skills you can master, whatever your profession. In Convince Me, you'll find eye-opening, behind-the-scenes details revealing how some of the best in the business ply their trade.
 
Delivering compelling, real-life stories that give you an inside look at the kinds of techniques and strategies that prove effective in high-risk situations, former FBI hostage negotiator Chip Massey and top DC publicist Adele Gambardella show you how these tactics can be used in any business situation you'll face. You'll find fascinating tips on how a hostage negotiator reads people, rooms, and situations at a glance and gain insights from the neuroscience of convincing. Armed with useful, ready-to-use strategies and insightful advice as to how, when, and with whom each tool can best be used, you'll finish Convince Me feeling more capable and confident about your own powers of convincing others.
 
Topics of discussion:
 
·       The four essential elements of effective convincing: Timing, believability, likability, and repeatability.
·       How to use a technique called “forensic listening” to get better results when selling, negotiating, managing a crisis, interviewing potential hires, in board meetings, defusing a stressful situation, and more.
·       Tips from an ex-FBI hostage negotiator on how to get people to open up and reveal their “unstated narrative” – the thing they’re really after – so you can better persuade them. 
·       The five steps that FBI hostage negotiators use to defuse a situation – and how you can use them at work.
·       How to read people in just 22 seconds
·       Four FBI tactics for gaining someone’s trust
·       The FBI behavioral analysis tools that will help you master the art of reading people
·       The two convin

Selena Rezvani is a recognized consultant, speaker and author on leadership and self-advocacy. Named by Forbes “the premier expert on advocating for yourself at work,” she’s the author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book Quick Confidence, and also wrote the award-winning Pushback and The Next Generation of Women Leaders, all about ways to make your voice heard and negotiate your needs at work. Selena addresses thousands of professionals each year at places like The World Bank, Under Armour, Microsoft, P&G, and many others. Today, she’s a columnist for NBC News’ Know Your Value. Selena is based in Philadelphia where she lives with her husband Geoff and 11 year old boy-girl twins. www.selenarezvani.com
 
Book: Quick Confidence: Be Authentic, Boost Connections, and Make Bold Bets on Yourself
In Quick Confidence: Be Authentic, Create Connections and Make Bold Bets On Yourself, best-selling author and renowned leadership speaker Selena Rezvani delivers an effective and eye-opening new approach to building confidence and presence for professionals. In the book, the author walks you through―and helps you leap over―the 9 most common obstacles that stand in the way of building authentic confidence. She offers digestible actions, behaviors, and exercises you can use to change the way you think and the way you present yourself to others.
Relying on sound, scientifically validated data, the book helps you zero in on one actionable method at a time, from making a memorable entrance to stoking confidence in those around you.
 
You’ll also find:
Mental, physical, and interpersonal routines that will lock in your new and confident persona for lasting change Techniques for using silence strategically and refusing to overexplain to enhance your credibility and presence Ways to overcome the intimidation factor that goes hand-in-hand with dealing with powerful people A hands-on playbook for professionals at all stages looking for effective confidence-building advice that goes beyond “fake it ‘til you make it,” Quick Confidence is a fun and rewarding journey to a renewed self-image and enhanced well-being.
 
Social Media:
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@selenarezvani LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/selenarezvani/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/selenarezvani/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SelenaRezvaniOfficial

Roberta Matuson, The Talent Maximizer®

Matuson Consulting
LinkedIn Top Voice in Workplace and Leadership
For more than 25 years, Roberta Matuson, president of Matuson Consulting, has helped leaders in highly regarded companies, including General Motors, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, and Microsoft, and small to medium-size businesses, achieve dramatic growth and market leadership through the maximization of talent. She’s the author of seven books including, the newly released, third edition of Suddenly In Charge: Managing Up, Managing Down, Succeeding All Around, a Washington Post Top 5 Business Book For Leaders, Can We Talk? Seven Principles for Managing Difficult Conversations at Work, and Evergreen Talent: How to Seed, Cultivate, and Grow a Sustainable Workforce.
Literally two books in one, Suddenly in Charge provides all of the tools necessary to be successful at managing up and down the line of any organization. With a foreword by Alan Weiss, bestselling author of Million Dollar Consulting, this handy little book is a must-have resource to help the new manager truly shine from day one.
Social Media:
·      LinkedIn
·      Facebook
·      X

Jessica Calarco is a sociologist and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an award-winning teacher, a leading expert on inequalities in family life and education, and the author of Holding it Together: How Women Became America’s Social Safety Net (Portfolio/Penguin, June 2024). Jessica has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and CNN. She also blogs at ParenthoodPhD and is a mom of two young kids.
Book synopsis:
Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women. Holding It Together chronicles the causes and dire consequences. America runs on women—women who are tasked with holding society together at the seams and fixing it when things fall apart. In this tour de force, acclaimed Sociologist Jessica Calarco lays bare the devastating consequences of our status quo.
Holding It Together draws on five years of research in which Calarco surveyed over 4000 parents and conducted more than 400 hours of interviews with women who bear the brunt of our broken system. A widowed single mother struggles to patch together meager public benefits while working three jobs; an aunt is pushed into caring for her niece and nephew at age fifteen once their family is shattered by the opioid epidemic; a daughter becomes the backstop caregiver for her mother, her husband, and her child because of the perceived flexibility of her job; a well-to-do couple grapples with the moral dilemma of leaning on overworked, underpaid childcare providers to achieve their egalitarian ideals. Stories of grief and guilt abound. Yet, they are more than individual tragedies.
Tracing present-day policies back to their roots, Calarco reveals a systematic agreement to dismantle our country’s social safety net and persuade citizens to accept precarity while women bear the brunt. She leads us to see women's labor as the reason we've gone so long without the support systems that our peer nations take for granted, and how women’s work maintains the illusion that we don't need a net.
Weaving eye-opening original research with revelatory sociological narrative, Holding It Together is a bold call to demand the institutional change that each of us deserves, and a warning about the perils of living without it.
Questions/topics of discussion:
·       What is a “DIY society” and how does it differ from a society with a safety net?
·       How does women's labor maintain the illusion that we don't need a social safety net?
·       Why shouldn’t we celebrate the fact that mothers are back at work in a post-pandemic world?
·       Why won’t advising women to make traditional “good choices,” like obtaining a college degree, securing a job with a high salary, or working in STEM, help solve the gender pay gap?
·       How does denying women access to paid leave, and affordable, reliable childcare force them to stand in for a safety net?
·       How do women keep the economy from crumbling?
·       How would businesses benefit from universal paid family leave and universal childcare?
·       What would a robust safety net actually look like?
 
Social media:
·       Twitter: https://twitter.com/JessicaCalarco
·       Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jesscalarco/
·       Threads: https://www.threads.net/@jesscalarco
·       LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-calarco-93085928/
Website: https://www.jessicacalarco.com/

Website: www.haileymagee.com
 
Hailey Magee is a certified life coach who helps people around the world stop people pleasing and find their power. Her refreshingly nuanced perspectives on boundary-setting and self-advocacy have captured the attention of millions on social media, and her public talks and virtual workshops have welcomed tens of thousands of participants. Certified by Erickson Coaching International, Hailey is dedicated to offering clear, research-supported strategies for change, helping recovering people pleasers rediscover not only their power and agency, but their pleasure, joy, and sense of wonder. She lives in Seattle, Washington.
 
Book: Stop People Pleasing and Find Your Power
A viral life coach offers a practical, empathetic, and inspiring guide to breaking people-pleasing patterns that can harm our careers, relationships, physical, and psychic health.
For most of Hailey Magee’s life, people-pleasing came so naturally to her that she didn’t even have a word for it. When somebody wanted something from her—even a stranger—she gave it, no matter how uncomfortable, exhausted, or resentful she felt inside. People-pleasing, she learned, was a coping mechanism that had kept her physically and emotionally safe in the past, but wreaked havoc on her life in the present—and she was committed to breaking the pattern once and for all.
The solution that social media and self-help shelves gave her was to “Advocate for yourself! Speak up! Set boundaries!” But after years of ignoring her feelings and needs, Magee needed more than boundaries; she needed to reconnect with the “self” who was supposed to be doing the advocating. You can’t express yourself if you’re cut off from your feelings. You can’t fight for your needs if you don’t know what they are. And you can’t set boundaries with others until you believe you’re worthy of more than the bare minimum. Radically reconnecting with herself gave Magee the confidence and self-respect she needed to stand up for herself in her relationships. As she experienced a freedom she never thought possible, she became a certified life coach with the mission of helping others do the same.
Stop People Pleasing explains how anyone can break the pattern by learning their own feelings, needs, values, and desires; ending cycles of enmeshment and codependency; overcoming guilt; developing physical and sexual agency; and more. It is a refreshingly nuanced guide, exploring fundamental questions like:
·      How can I tell when my genuine kindness veers into people-pleasing?
·      How can I set boundaries while maintaining my empathy and generosity?
·      When is it appropriate to compromise on my needs, and when is it not?
Combining social science, psychology, and hands-on coaching exercises, Stop People Pleasing teaches you how to connect with your own feelings, needs, and dreams; courageously advocate for yourself in your relationships with friends, family, and colleagues; soothe yourself through the growing pains of healing; and dive headfirst into pleasure and play. With fresh insight, heartfelt empathy, and a keen personal understanding of the pitfalls of people-pleasing, Magee helps you say what you need and get what you deserve.
People-pleasing is a coping mechanism that kept us physically or emotionally safe in the past⁠, but wreaks havoc on our lives in the present. Hailey Magee will teach you how to break the people-pleasing pattern and master the art of self-advocacy.
STOP People Pleasing and Find Your Power shows you how to break the pattern by learning your own feelings, needs, values, and desires; setting empowered boundaries with friends, family, and partners; ending cycles of enmeshment and codependency; overcoming guilt; developing physical and sexual agency; and more.
STOP People Pleasing is a practical, inspiring, and nuanced guide for recovering people-pleasers who are ready to find their

Cynthia L. Bentzen Mercer, PhD, MBA, BCC, SPHR
Founder / CEO, Bentzen Performance Partners, LLC
Co-Founder / Managing Partner, The Zeal of the Heel, LLC
Strategic Executive, Sociologist, Servant Leader, Speaker, Author, Board Certified Coach
 
Dr. Cynthia Bentzen Mercer is an elite talent and organizational development strategist, social
psychologist, and author with three decades of experience transforming company culture through her nationally recognized approaches to identifying, unleashing, and actualizing human potential. She is a leading authority on premier workforce cultivation rooted in integrity, passion, service excellence, and diversity. Cynthia’s unique ability to inspire professional growth galvanizes a flourishing culture of innovation and discovery. Known as a visionary in organizational design, succession planning, leadership advancement, and executive coaching, she assembles top-tier teams with deep, balanced bench strength.
 
A stalwart professional, Cynthia’s experience traverses domestic and international, public and private, for-profit and not-for-profit, start-up, and aggressive growth companies within the real estate, gaming, hospitality, and healthcare industries. She has been recognized as one of Ingram’s 50 Missourians You Should Know, among Becker’s 143 Women Leaders of Hospitals and Health Systems to Know, a St. Louis YWCA Leader of Distinction, and one of St. Louis’s Most Influential Businesswomen.
 
Before starting Bentzen Performance Partners, LLC, and The Zeal of the Heel, LLC, Cynthia was executive vice president and chief administrative officer at Mercy, overseeing human resources, government relations, community relations, philanthropy, and other support functions for the ministry. A true catalyst for change, Cynthia launched Mercy’s first diversity, equity, and inclusion program and advisory board. With a passion for advancing women’s careers in business, she founded Mercy Women in Leadership. Before Mercy, Cynthia served as chief human resources officer for Ameristar Casinos, Inc., a national gaming and hospitality organization; vice president of human resources for The Cheesecake
Factory restaurants; and vice president of international human resources for Oakwood Worldwide.
Book: Now, Near, Next: A Practical Guide for Mid-Career Women to Move from Professional Serendipity to Intentional Advancement 
For some women, mid-career feels like a merry-go-round. You begin your career eager to jump on. You pick the pink pony and hold on tight. You might move to the purple pony during the first stop. Look, Mom, no hands! However, a few years later, you look up and are still belted into the same saddle, on the same ride, following behind a new group of riders, going in circles. You need a bigger amusement park and a more challenging ride! A must-read for all women trying to find or fight their way to what is possible. The methodology outlined in Now, Near, Next debunks the myth that just putting your head down, enjoying the ride and working hard is the best way to realize your fullest potential.
 
LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube
www.zealoftheheel.com
www.nownearnext.net 
https://youtu.be/EUihG4cziQI