Linda Stout creates inspiring speeches for public speaking engagements. She is a powerful speaker and story teller. By speaking from the heart, she draws on her own life experiences and 30-years of social activist work to present compelling and entertaining keynote speeches to all types of audiences. She speaks on a variety of issues and tailors her presentations to the audience and subject. Linda has facilitated hundreds of workshops, events, trainings and retreats. She empowers, entertains and inspires her audience through her unique and transformative story-telling.
Cultural Shift For Progressive Change – What shifts are needed to build inclusive, powerful and diverse organizations and communities? This presentation explores how we, as activists and organizations, need to change the way we work in order to build winning organizations and communities.
Classism – Exploring barriers of class in order to create strong, diverse and powerful organizations. This presentation includes looking at culture, language, and education as well as the long term implications of internalized oppression. Suitable for audiences of all class backgrounds.
Collective Visioning – Transforming the future. Linda speaks about why visioning is a critical part of social change and why lasting change cannot happen without it. Visioning helps us to build a strong and powerful focus for change and also helps overcome barriers and divisions that keep us from being as successful as we have the potential to be.
Working With Poor People (multi-racial, white, immigrants) – Finding our voices! Drawing from her personal experiences of growing up in poverty and decades of working with poor people, this speech speaks to the invisible walls that keep poor people from fully participating in their own self-interest and civic engagement. This presentation can be tailored for middle class and wealthy audiences, as well as low income folks.
Poverty – The destructive power it holds for everyone. How poverty determines people’s lives and actions that affect all of us. Linda discusses how internalized oppression keeps poor people from being able to act and speak for themselves, how it leads to breakdown in our communities and organizations and how to address it in order to create a more just and equitable world.
Empowerment – Empowering youth through visioning and how it can change their lives. Experience and research has shown that students who hold a vision for their future are much more likely to graduate and pursue higher education.
Yes! We can be organizers, activists and leaders and have a healthy, balanced life. How to create a way of working for change which requires body, heart and spirit but also allows a balanced and healthy life. This speech enables individuals to avoid burnout and health issues.
Linda has been working for social justice for 35 years as a disabled person and has learned that in addition to her own self-care, she also has to promote staff and volunteers to practice self-care in order to be the most productive and powerful leaders in their work.
Any of the above speeches can be tailored to include a workshop or training specifically designed to meet the needs of the audience members.
Linda has facilitated hundreds of trainings and workshops throughout the world specifically designed to facilitate positive movement and change within individuals, organizations, communities and schools.
Collective Visioning – Transforming the future. Leading activists, organizations, communities, schools or youth (age 12-and-up) through a collective process of creating a 1-year to 25-or-50-year vision for what they want in their communities, organizations, and schools. This workshop also involves strategic action planning so that participants are prepared to actively work towards what they envision.
Same Vision, Different Strategies – How to work together to build a cohesive and unified strategy in order to achieve our collective vision. This workshop focuses on helping organizations, communities or activists find commonalities to create effective and sustainable strategies for growth and empowerment.
Organization Cultural Shift – What organizations need in order to shift and build an inclusive, powerful and diverse organization. This workshop aims to facilitate organizational shift by incorporating a strong and focused vision around what organizations need to prosper. Participants will be empowered to tap into the wisdom already present in the group.