Speaking Engagements
Hire Kelly to speak at your next corporate or fundraising event. An award-winning writer, Kelly has nearly a decade of experience as a patient advocate. In that time she has learned a thing or two about resilience, survival and letting go even when faced with the unimaginable. Through hosting over 100 episodes of her podcast Seizing Life with CURE Epilepsy, and speaking to audiences across the country and virtually, Kelly has proven herself to be an engaging, relatable and dynamic speaker whether performing solo or as part of a panel.
Past clients include Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, Ernst & Young, NYU Langone Medical Center, CURE Epilepsy, Undiagnosed Diseases Network, Circle of Life Hospice, among others.
Speaking Topics
Available but not limited to...
Being Normal Broken: When you’re not sure you want to heal
Reframing Resilience: At home and in the workplace
In the early months of her grief following the death of her young daughter, Kelly Cervantes resisted healing. She didn't want to feel better, let go, or move on. It would take time, friends who understood, and a reframing of what healing looked like before she could even entertain the concept.
Time may lessen the severity of our wounds, but it doesn't necessarily heal them. Kelly will share how she eventually chose to begin healing and how it didn’t mean abandoning her grief in the process. Grief and joy can co-exist – but only if we let them.
Resilience has become quite the buzz word lately, and you don’t have to look far to understand why. Unfortunately, resilience is often confused with compartmentalizing, shoving down and moving on. In reality, resilience takes dedicated effort, acceptance and awareness. It is up to managers and team leaders to not just foster a resilient environment but to make the work of resilience desirable.
In this talk I outline several key factors toward leading a more resilient life by sharing anecdotes from my life including: several forced career changes as well as caring for my medically-complex daughter and her ultimate passing. All to show how we can help employees choose resilience and maintain it.
When You Realize We All Grieve Differently
Grief can have an immense impact on our relationships with others. Whether we are grieving the same loss or not - how that loss effects us and how we process it will vary. This was a hard earned lesson following the loss of my daughter. I imagined that my husband and I would grieve her together but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. It took time and understanding to learn how we could support each other and still have our own grief needs met.