Join us in Rapid City, South Dakota at the Rushmore Hotel & Suites Conference Center on October 13-14 for the RBLP 2026 Conference.
Learn More. Lead Better.®
Save $100 with Early Bird pricing available through June 30th!
RBLP Certified Leader, Early Bird Special ($350)
Non-Certified, Early Bird Special ($450)
Airport: Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP)
Transportation: Rental cars, rideshare, and hotel-coordinated transportation (coordinate 24 hrs. prior)
Average Weather: 45–65°F in October
If you would like to present a 15-minute talk or a 45-minute workshop, please complete the application below.
Speaker & Workshop Facilitator Application
Approved speaker and workshop presenters can bring a guest to the conference at no cost!
Dr. Aime Black
Mental Endurance for the Long Game: A Systems Approach to Sustainable Leadership Performance
45-minute workshop
High performers in demanding environments often reach a critical threshold when the systems that sustain their performance drift out of alignment, frequently well before any visible decline on the surface.
This workshop presents the Flow Forward Effect and the Five Systems of Mental Endurance, a neuroscience-based framework. Focus, Regulation, Learning, Energy, and Connection work together to support lasting performance. When these systems match a leader’s biology and surroundings, performance and well-being improve together. When misalignment starts, capacity drops, even for the most committed professionals.
Drawing on neuroscience, behavior change research, and leadership practice, this hands-on session provides RBLP practitioners with specific skills to recognize where misalignment reduces resilience and output—in themselves and in the teams they support. Participants l leave with clear language, a self-assessment tool, and at least one proven practice they can immediately use to foster measurable improvements.
Brenda Risner
Leadership in Action: Understanding the Behaviors That Drive Results
45-minute workshop
Strong leaders don’t just focus on what they do – they understand what drives how they think, decide, and show up. In this interactive workshop, you’ll gain insight into the internal drivers that shape your leadership style, communication patterns, and responses under pressure. You’ll begin to recognize why certain situations feel easy while others create friction, and how those patterns impact your effectiveness with others. Through practical reflection and real-world application, you’ll learn how to lead with greater clarity, strengthen trust, and navigate team dynamics more intentionally. Whether you’re leading a team, influencing across an organization, or continuing to grow in your own leadership journey, this session will equip you with tools you can apply immediately to relate better, lead better, and get better results.
*As part of this workshop, all participants will receive a WHY.os Discovery, so they can discover their WHY, HOW, and WHAT – their WHY Operating System.
Dr. Chris Thomas
The Book Writing & Publication Process
45-minute workshop
Everyone has a story, but now what? This engaging 45-minute workshop guides participants through the complete book writing and publication process, from turning ideas into a clear concept, to structuring and writing a compelling manuscript, navigating editing and refinement, and understanding today’s publishing options. Whether your goal is personal legacy, professional credibility, or business growth, this session provides practical steps to move from story to published author.
Marsha Cleff
Showcasing Your Certification on Your Resume
45-minute workshop
Many mid-career professionals find their resumes look like a mere list of job duties rather than a compelling narrative of their professional impact. As RBLP-certified leaders, we need to ensure your resume accurately reflects the level of responsibility, influence, and results you bring to your work.
In this interactive workshop, participants will use the Six Star Resume Strategy guide to step back from their day-to-day work and convert their pivotal professional moments into powerful resume statements. Attendees will engage in practical exercises to:
Identify significant contributions where they took initiative, solved problems, or helped a team succeed.
Learn to structure their experience using the three components of a strong resume bullet.
Use the Professional Impact Tracker to effectively record situations where their actions improved a process or resolved an issue.
Learn exactly where to strategically position their RBLP credential within resume sections.
Participants will leave equipped to create a resume that effectively conveys the true value of their resilient leadership to any organization.
Dr. Ashley Babcock
The Resilience Sandbox: How Communities of Practice Build Leaders at Every Level
45-minute workshop
Communities of practice do not need to be complicated, expensive, or formal to be powerful. With simple tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, or other familiar collaboration platforms, organizations can create practical “sandbox” spaces where people learn together, solve real problems, test ideas, and build resilience through shared action.
This session explores how RBLP trainers can help clients design and facilitate communities of practice that strengthen resilient teams. Participants will examine how CoPs can activate the “doers” across an organization, create leadership opportunities at every level, increase buy-in during change, and support innovation without requiring a major new initiative. When structured well, these spaces help teams build trust, share lessons learned, connect work to purpose, and turn everyday experience into team and organizational learning.
The session will begin with a short case study example showing how a community of practice can support change, learning, and resilience. Participants will then break out to discuss how similar approaches could work with existing teams, departments, or client organizations. The session will close with a practical discussion of how RBLP trainers can coach clients to launch, sustain, and grow communities of practice as part of broader resilience-building leadership development.
Justin Hillstrom
Receiving Feedback Like a Leader
45-minute workshop
Throughout my career, I was taught the importance of giving feedback – and I learned a variety of strategies for how to do it effectively. But when it came to receiving feedback, the guidance was surprisingly limited: “be humble,” “don’t get defensive,” and move on.
Curious if this was just my experience, I asked my professional network on LinkedIn. Nearly half of respondents shared the same gap: they had been trained extensively on how to give feedback, but had little to no formal development on how to receive it.
This workshop addresses that gap.
Grounded in leadership research and aligned with the Resilience-Building Leader Program (RBLP) framework, this session equips leaders with the mindset and practical skills needed to receive feedback with clarity, composure, and purpose. Participants will explore why feedback often triggers a threat response, how to manage emotional reactions in the moment, and how to extract value – even from poorly delivered feedback.
Through guided reflection and practical application, leaders will leave with tools to:
If we want teams that are adaptive, accountable, and continuously improving, leaders must go beyond giving feedback – we must learn to receive it well.
Alvin Keen
Practical Experiences in Apply RBLP Traits in Today’s Disruptive Economic Conditions
45-minute workshop
Workshop to review selected RBLP Traits and how these are applicable to dynamic chaos environment in today’s economy for Professionals as part of their own career development and interaction within and outside of their firms. Engage the audience in how through self-reflection of RBLP Traits they can identify and evaluate these applied in their career.
As part of relevant practical application: I would engage audience with discussion and examine how RBLP certification has assisted my own career in military, aerospace, oil-gas, academic and defense industry in working domestic and international teams. This is especially relevant for professionals with career transitions from one industry to another industry, i.e. Military to Civilian. Lastly, as AI continues to advance rapidly how can the RBLP skills assist the professional in their own careers and how can they as RBLP certified leaders assist their colleagues and firms at this disruptive transformational time.
Dr. Shari Bowen
Leading with Emotional Intelligence: Where Motivation, Competence, and Compassion Meet
45-minute workshop
The workshop EI=MC^2 encourages leaders to understand and demonstrate emotional intelligence in the work environment. The talk hinges on the leader understanding their own emotions, having self-awareness to control and manage themselves. They simultaneously observe and manage those working for them to impact the climate of the organization leading to productivity. Motivation, Competence, and Compassion are qualities brought to the forefront of the leader characteristics to enable productivity of workers in any environment creating trust, action, influence, and transformation. The talk is engaging and interactive. Following the workshop, learners will be able to immediately apply tools teaching them to audit their organization with “Why?” 1. Why am I leading this? 2. Why does this matter? 3. Why should others care?
During the workshop we will identify a responsibility that may feel draining, followed by an understanding of the deeper purpose behind it. We will connect the dots of competence and emotional intelligence teaching “The Pause Principle.” The simple framework helps process your emotions, assess the situation, understand perspectives, speak intentionally, and evaluate outcomes.
The third component of Compassion will be introduced as a strength not a weakness. Learners will apply “The 2-Minute Connection” spending intentional time daily with team members. This reaffirms connection building trust faster than control.
The take-aways will leave learners in position to normalize feedback, practice reflective listening, ask more questions, name emotions properly, and respond instead of react to employees. They will be challenged to commit to one thing; mindset shift, communication improvement, or one relational action the upcoming week at work.
Shauna Addison
Leading Through Change Without Losing Yourself: The Spark Framework for High-Pressure Leadership
45-minute workshop
Leading Through Change Without Losing Yourself is an interactive 45-minute workshop designed to help leaders examine how pressure, change, and uncertainty influence the way they lead. In high-pressure environments, leaders are expected to build trust, maintain team cohesion, communicate clearly, and guide others through complexity — yet many leaders struggle to remain grounded and intentional while carrying those responsibilities.
This workshop introduces The Spark Framework: Self-Awareness, Reflection, Disciplined Action, and Growth— as a practical leadership model that supports resilient leadership from the inside out. Participants will explore how pressure can create reactive leadership patterns, affect communication, influence decision-making, and shape team climate. Through guided reflection, facilitated discussion, and practical application, attendees will identify how they personally respond under stress and develop one intentional action step to strengthen their leadership effectiveness.
Aligned with the principles of resilient leadership, this session reinforces the idea that leaders cannot build resilient teams if they are disconnected from their own leadership habits, stress responses, and growth areas. Attendees will leave with a practical framework they can use to lead with greater self-awareness, clarity, discipline, and resilience in high-pressure environments.
Jaclyn Kirkwood
The Power of Listening Intelligence: Building Connection Before Correction
45-minute workshop
Listening Intelligence (LQ) Overview Workshop is a high-level interactive session designed to introduce participants to the power of Listening Intelligence and how communication impacts leadership, trust, collaboration, and workplace culture. Participants will explore how listening habits influence conversations, relationships, decision-making, and team dynamics while gaining insight into practical strategies for improving communication effectiveness.
This session provides an introduction to the LQ ECHO® framework and the importance of intentional listening in both personal and professional environments. Attendees will also have the opportunity to win a complimentary LQ ECHO® Listening Intelligence Assessment and a 30-minute personalized review session. In addition, all participants will receive access to a special discounted rate for future LQ ECHO® assessments and coaching opportunities.
Shelley Lamothe
Slowing Down to Speed Up
45-minute workshop
This workshop goes through the personal resiliency – the science of the Autonomic Nervous system, practical strategies in the Physical, Mental, Social, and Spiritual Realms to improve personal resilience, and how to use your breath as a tool to reset instantly in the moment to find the calm and clarity to make good decisions.
I also touch on the chaos of everyday information and how to locate the signal from the noise in order to be a present and engaged leader who follows the principles of RBLP in a way that becomes unconscious.
Key takeaways: Adaptive thinking to address negative programming, mastering stillness with breath, and how social connection benefits resilience.
Dr. William Harvey
Stability Is a Lie. Here’s What to Build Instead.
45-minute workshop
Most resilience programs are built on a flawed premise: that stability exists, disruption is the exception, and recovery is the goal.
This workshop challenges that premise directly. Drawing on complexity theory, Toyota Kata, RBLP’s core resilience traits, and over two decades of operational and organizational leadership experience, this session reframes resilience as the capacity to maintain directional momentum inside permanent flux rather than the ability to return to baseline after disruption.
RBLP practitioners, coaches, and trainers will complete a structured diagnostic to identify where their current teams/clients are most exposed to the stability trap, examine three failure modes that undermine RBLP’s adaptability, team building, and communication traits, and practice three immediately applicable coaching moves designed to build flux tolerance at the team level. Participants leave with a scored diagnostic, a concrete coaching question, a reference tool, and a different conversation to have in their net team/client meeting.
Neco Johnson
Leadership Through Chaos: How Leaders Think, Respond, and Serve When the Pressure Rises
45-minute workshop
Leadership is tested most in the moments we do not expect. Leadership Through Chaos is a powerful blend of storytelling and practical leadership insight that helps attendees understand how emotion shapes judgment, how assumptions distort perspective, and how strong leaders regain clarity when the pressure is highest.
Through a real-life moment that challenged identity, pride, and purpose, this presentation walks attendees through a six-step framework for slowing down, seeing clearly, and leading with intention instead of reaction.
This experience reinforces the importance of recognizing when emotions are louder than the facts, re-centering before making decisions, and showing up for people in the moments that matter most.
Attendees leave with greater self-awareness, emotional discipline, and a deeper understanding of what it means to lead and serve others when frustration, emotion, and internal expectations compete for control.
Latoya Thompson
Leading Without the Title: How Real Influence Is Earned Before Authority Is Given
45-minute workshop
Leadership is often misunderstood as something tied to rank, position, or authority. In reality, some of the most impactful leaders are the people others choose to trust, follow, and rely on long before a title is ever assigned.
This engaging and thought-provoking workshop challenges the traditional view of leadership by exploring how influence is built through action, consistency, trust, communication, courage, and presence not hierarchy. Drawing from over 25 years of military leadership, healthcare operations, and executive project management experience, this session provides practical insight into what it truly means to lead in high-pressure environments when you are not the person in charge.
Through real-world examples, reflection, and interactive discussion, attendees will leave empowered to recognize that leadership is not reserved for those at the top, it belongs to those willing to set the standard, serve others, and lead from where they stand.
PJ Ellis
The Weight of Leadership: Building Judgment Under Pressure
45-minute workshop
Leadership failure rarely occurs because leaders lack knowledge. More often, it occurs when pressure, uncertainty, competing priorities, and consequence distort judgment.
Drawing on more than two decades of leadership experience leading teams and organizations in high-consequence environments, this interactive workshop explores why capable leaders make poor decisions under pressure and what separates those who remain effective when the stakes are highest.
Participants will examine common leadership traps, assess the hidden pressures influencing their decision-making, and learn a practical framework for strengthening judgment, resilience, and leadership effectiveness. Attendees will leave with tools they can immediately apply to lead themselves, their teams, and their organizations more effectively during periods of uncertainty and change.
Dr. Christine Lustik
Mindful Leadership: How increased Self-Awareness equals more resilient and productive employees.
45-minute workshop
What if the most powerful leadership tool you have isn’t a strategy framework or a performance metric — but your own self-awareness?
In this workshop, we explore how a leader’s inner clarity directly shapes the culture, resilience, and output of their team. We begin by defining self-awareness in a leadership context: not just knowing your strengths and weaknesses, but developing a real-time understanding of how your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors influence the people around you. Participants will walk away with practical, immediately applicable mindfulness-based practices designed to sharpen self-awareness — even in the midst of high-pressure environments. Finally, we’ll examine the why behind the results. Drawing on research in organizational psychology and neuroscience, we’ll connect the dots between a more self-aware leader and measurable shifts in employee engagement, psychological safety, and performance. When leaders lead from awareness, teams don’t just survive challenges — they grow through them.
Dr. Donna Newman
GRIT: What is it?
15-minute talk
This talk will highlight how leaders can embrace grit, gain a deeper understanding and apply it from a universal lens. Across cultures and contexts, grit is that steady determination, when applied, leads to lasting leadership impact. Learn ways to leverage grit as a force multiplier in your leadership.
Brenda Risner
What’s In Your Bucket? Know Yourself, Show Yourself, Grow Your Team
15-minute talk
What shows up in your leadership under pressure isn’t accidental—it’s internal. Based on the principle that “what’s in the well comes up in the bucket,” this session challenges leaders to examine what is driving their decisions, communication, and team impact from the inside out.
Designed for RBLP-certified leaders, this presentation focuses on leading yourself first through increased self-awareness, values-based decision-making, and intentional behavior. Participants will explore what to reinforce, what to remove, and how to clear the buildup that can quietly erode trust, consistency, and effectiveness. The result is a simple, practical framework leaders can immediately apply to strengthen credibility, improve communication, and lead with greater clarity when it matters most.
Dr. Carrie Morris
RBLP Certification: An Untapped Market in Educational Leadership?
15-minute talk
Educational leaders — from teacher leaders and school-based administrators to district personnel and advisory boards — represent a significant and often overlooked audience for RBLP certification. Unlike corporate organizations, education systems operate under tight budgets, but what they do have are mandatory continuing education and licensure renewal requirements that create a built-in demand for high-quality, credentialed professional development.
This session invites an open conversation about the potential of bringing RBLP certification into educational contexts, drawing on participants’ own experiences and insights, while exploring how resilience-building frameworks can shift teams away from hierarchical, compliance-driven leadership toward shared decision-making, adaptive capacity, and a culture of relational trust that sustains teams through adversity rather than fracturing under it.
Dr. Ashley Babcock
Be AI-gile: Leveling Up Leadership in the Age of AI
15-minute talk
If work is a team sport, AI is the Hall of Fame teammate leaders can no longer afford to leave on the bench. The challenge is not simply learning new tools; it is learning how to think, coach, and adapt differently when technology keeps changing the game.
This 15-minute talk introduces Be AI-gile, a practical leadership framework for using AI with agility, intention, and human judgment. Participants will explore four tenets: Observe the Chaos, Start Lighter/Move Faster, Act with Intention, and Reflect/Reframe. Together, these practices help leaders notice emerging patterns, test small experiments, make better decisions, and turn lessons learned into stronger team performance.
For RBLP trainers and leadership coaches, Be AI-gile offers a usable way to help clients build resilience, reduce fear around AI, and create cultures where people learn by doing. The session will show how AI can serve as a thought partner, practice field, and creative collaborator that expands human potential rather than replacing it. Attendees will leave with a usable playbook for helping teams embrace AI as a teammate, not a threat, and a repeatable loop for leveling up their business, coaching practice, and leadership impact.
Michael Rodriguez
“Temet Nosce — What Failure Reveals About Who You Are”
15-minute talk
Failure isn’t the opposite of success. It’s the moment that reveals who you really are.
In this talk, Michael Rodriguez shares how injury, adversity, and pressure didn’t break him; they clarified him. Through the lens of temet nosce – “know thyself” – he reframes failure as data, not defeat.
Because failure doesn’t just test your skills… it exposes your standards, your mindset, and your leadership under pressure.
You don’t rise by avoiding failure. You rise by understanding what it reveals, and choosing who you become next.
Desmond Walker
Stockdale Paradox and Resiliency in the Workplace
15-minute talk
This talk is about VADM James Bond Stockdale and his POW experience that was used to create the US Navy’s Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale Award for Inspirational Leadership. As a recent winner of the award, present a narrative that examines the “Stockdale Paradox” that highlights a specific dichotomy for leadership in the workplace.
Jean-Paul Courville
Warrior to Wanderer: Leadership, Life, and Resilience
15-minute talk
This session explores leadership and resilience through real-world experience – from structured environments to a solo Appalachian Trail thru-hike. Drawing from decades of leadership, international work, and personal transition, it challenges how we think about control, adaptability, and forward progress when the path isn’t clearly defined.
Grounded in the perspective behind Forward On: Warrior to Wanderer, the focus is on practical application – how individuals operate when structure is removed, uncertainty increases, and accountability becomes personal.
Attendees will walk away with actionable insights on maintaining momentum in uncertain conditions, adapting without losing direction, and applying discipline and perspective to both professional and personal challenges.
Chad Bacastow
When Leaders Decide to Leave an Organization
15-minute talk
Most of us have experienced the privilege of serving on great teams within organizations we were proud to be part of. The themes of climate, culture, and a leader’s role in shaping both build naturally on the foundation of RBLP. But what happens when a leader finds themselves fighting against a culture that challenges their values, conflicts with their beliefs, and undermines the positive climate they strive to create for their team?
How long should a leader remain in an environment that steadily erodes morale, where every effort feels like paddling against a current of deceit, dysfunction, or unethical behavior? At what point does perseverance become self-sacrifice? And how do leaders determine when it is time to step away and invest their passion, energy, and leadership in an organization that truly aligns with their principles?
The answer is deeply personal and different for everyone. This talk explores the difficult decision to leave a corrosive culture while still caring deeply for the people within it. It will highlight the tension between commitment and conviction, the cost of staying too long, and the courage required to let go of a great team in pursuit of healthier leadership and organizational alignment.
Zormarah Lyda
The Art of Humility and Vulnerability in Leadership
15-minute talk
This session challenges the traditional image of leadership by exploring how humility and vulnerability are not weaknesses, but essential leadership strengths. Designed for RBLP leaders both vetted and inspiring, The Art of Humility and Vulnerability in Leadership will unpack the hidden cost of performative strength, emotional isolation, and silent pressure many leaders carry.
Through powerful storytelling, practical insight, and candid reflection inspired by the mission of Candidly Unsed, attendees will learn how authentic leadership fosters trust, resilience, connection, and lasting impact. This transformative conversation will empower leaders to lead with courage, humanity, and the confidence to create spaces where honesty and growth can coexist.
Dr. William Harvey
I Build Things That Won’t Last. So Do You.
15-minute talk
Nothing we build survives intact. Training programs drift after the trainer leaves. Coaching relationships end. Standards erode. Organizations restructure. And yet the work advances.
This talk makes a single argument: impermanence is not the enemy of good leadership work. It is the operating condition. Drawing on complexity theory, doctoral Toyota Kata sustainment research, and over two decades of building things in manufacturing, education, and organizational development, this session reframes what it means for our work to matter.
RBLP coaches and trainers will leave with a different measure for their own impact: not whether what they build holds its shape, but whether it advances the line.
Neco Johnson
When the Camera Is Rolling
15-minute talk
In a world consumed with image, presentation, and performance, many people spend more time managing appearances than developing the person behind them.
In this engaging and reflective talk, Neco Johnson uses “selfie culture” to challenge leaders to slow down, reflect, and honestly examine who they are becoming personally and professionally.
Centered around a powerful personal story of self-doubt, leadership growth, and discovering confidence through authenticity, this session challenges attendees to examine how they see themselves, how others experience them, and who they are becoming behind the scenes.
Attendees will leave encouraged to look beyond the image, invest in their internal development, and recognize that some of the most impactful leadership begins with understanding and believing in yourself.
The Rushmore Hotel & Suites is located in the heart of historic downtown Rapid City.
Staying on-site at the Rushmore Hotel & Suites is encouraged for networking and convenience.
Monday, October 12 – Arrival & Networking
Tuesday, October 13 – Conference Day
Wednesday, October 14 – Conference Day
Thursday, October 15 – Explore or Depart
Nearby Attractions
Rapid City Attractions
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