speaking
Please take a look at my current topics and let me know if any are a fit for your next conference, event, or training.
All topics can be expanded and adapted for 60-minute keynotes, 90-minute breakout sessions, and 3-hour hands-on workshops.
my work is transformation.
my people are the audacious souls who dare to bring their sacred work to life.
My message is freedom, liberation, and self-determination for all - no matter where we start out, no matter where we want to go, and no matter what befalls us along the way.
New! How We’re Working Together to Make Homelessness, Rare, Brief, and Non-Recurring in Eugene and Lane County
keynotes
A man dives off of a cliff into the beautiful, clear water below.
Dive Deep to Fly High: Grow into Audacious Leadership
Everybody hits leadership plateaus throughout their lives and work. When that happens, we have three choices:
Try to ignore it (good luck)
Choose not to choose (wait for someone else to kick you in gear)
Rise to the occasion and soar (my personal preference)
This talk will help you learn how to choose door number three (rise to the occasion and soar) so you can stop trying the same old things that no longer work and instead choose to integrate your whole self (even the parts of you that you thought were bad or unworthy or dangerous) into your leadership journey.
You’ll learn:
How to spot a leadership plateau and what to do about it
What being an audacious leader looks like
How to identify and integrate your whole self as a leader
Lotus-shaped candles float in a pond.
Rekindle Your Passion: Burnout-proof Your Life and Organization
In our fast-paced world, people are constantly moving, doing more with less, and collecting achievement after achievement.
But what happens when we pour ourselves without being refilled? We burn out. Between external and systemic pressures and unfriendly, inhumane internalized behavior patterns, we set ourselves up to flame out. Don’t! The world needs you and all your magic - so let’s rekindle your flame and keep it from burning out ever again.
Burnout is serious business. Between burnout related healthcare expenses, absenteeism, and presenteeism, American companies are losing half a trillion bucks per year. Stop it.
You’ll learn:
How to identify the signs of burnout and what to do
How burnout drains our bodies, minds, and hearts
How to build a burnout-proof life and organization
A palette of messy paints show us the beauty of a good mess.
It's Not About You: Get Comfortable with Discomfort
Those of us living in western cultures benefit from white supremacy every, single day.
And yet, dismantling systems of oppression, racism, misogyny, ableism, fatphobia, and colonialism comes with inherent cognitive and emotional challenges. There are so many pitfalls many of us have been oblivious to, and it can feel overwhelming when we are faced with the consequences of our (sometimes well-meaning, sometimes inadvertent) actions and behaviors. If you’ve ever been called out or called in and felt defensive or reactive (or maybe cried or fought or argued), this topic is for you - it is possible to move through this with grace.
You’ll learn:
How to recognize and address their own internalized biases without defensiveness or centering themselves
How to handle discomfort with curiosity and openness
How to go beyond inclusion (inviting people to your table - where you still maintain power) to developing Cultures of Belonging (where the collective is elevated and power is shared)
other topics
Me and my friend, Melanie Spring, teaching people how to show up powerfully.
How to Talk About What You Do to Launch (Normal) People into Action
So often, we start conversations with new people in the most boring way possible.
“What do you do?” is answered with an elevator pitch (if you’re lucky/unlucky), while you wait for your turn to do your pitch back. Not exactly relationship-sparking material, here.
What if, instead, you could learn a quick and simple way to start a real, human-to-human conversation that might lead to the beginning of a beautiful friendship or partnership (or client or new job or…)? Guess what! You can learn that - and that’s exactly what you will learn in this talk.
I, Sarai Johnson, lead people in tuning into their embodied wisdom.
Business Embodied: Get Your Work Out of Your Head and into the World
In business, we’ve been taught to grind our brains on every problem, to endlessly put out more and more effort to make the next big thing happen. We frantically run from minute to minute to land the next deal, put out the next fire, and barely take a moment to realize we need to do human things - like, eat.
Business Embodied is about how to live your work through your body. Learn how to tap into the wisdom you hold in all of your brains (you have three, really - head, heart, gut), and how you can bring that wisdom into the world to manifest the things you are working toward.
Me, leading another fun, interactive, get into your body and lead from within workshop.
Burning Scripts and Healing Rifts: Moving Past Binaries and Into Possibility
It seems that humans love a good binary. This is good, that is bad. This is masculine, that is feminine. This is happy, this is sad.
The thing is, life is so much richer and more complex than that. Learn how to dig into the full depth of life by transcending and bending binaries as we burn scripts - the way we have been told things “should” be done - and heal rifts - the tearing and othering that happens when we put ourselves and others into boxes we have all outgrown.
Let’s write a new future together.
Inquire for more information about workshops, custom topics, and trainings for your needs. I love to co-create with my audacious people!