Personal Statement  |  Work Background  | Motivational Speaking | Professional Spoken Word |  Public Speaking & Coaching

Beyond Classrooms and Boardrooms: Creating a Domino Effect

WORKSHOP FACILITATION

I believe in building citizens who use their education, work, and natural talent to contribute to community. Many schools and workplaces are not equipped with the resources to help people learn their role in facilitating change and addressing social issues. That’s where I come in.

Through a marriage of spoken word performance and workshop facilitation, I help people learn to embrace failure as a part of seeking and reaching success. They achieve this through the creation of original poems and short stories. Together, we have hard conversations and uncover how we can make classrooms and workplaces safer, kinder, and more compassionate spaces, while teachers, employers, and others continue fulfilling the roles that are important to keep these spaces operating.

What sets me apart from other facilitators is my acceptance and examination of the intersections at which I approach social justice issues. I come to these spaces carrying my lived experiences as a father, a poet, a recovering addict, an art scholar, a speech and debate coach, a corporate and nonprofit worker, and many others. I cross my experiences with my craft in theater and spoken word performing—add in more than 10 years of helping to create an intergenerational dialogue between youths and adults—and create a space for experiential learning.

I also organize workshops that teach people to do what I do. It’s my hope to create a domino effect, where every workshop I facilitate will lead to ten other workshops just like it, across the country. I’ve cultivated and curated Split This Rock’s curriculum of over 50 full-length workshops, over 200 writing prompts, and a performance workshop series, and coached the Hayfield Forensic Speech to several national championships. In the end, I seek to create workshops that help mold better citizens, not just better test takers.

 

SERVICES AVAILABLE

  • Performance and writing-based workshops tailored to theme, topic, or literary device
  • Specialized conversation topics such as racism, bullying, privilege, gender identity, consent, drug addiction and recovery
  • Performance workshops that include developing skills such as authenticity, projection, eye contact, diction, gesticulation, etc.