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Connect. Empower. Transform. Key FEDTalks

Join us on April 30 at ĢƵ for Break|Through: How Healing Communities Drive Our Success with Dr. Carylynn Larson.

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About the Series
5 Reasons to Attend

Built on the foundation of Key Executive Leadership Programs' 50-year legacy of excellence, the Key FEDTalks Speaker Series proudly continues its 14-year tradition of delivering exceptional leadership insights. The 2025 Key FEDTalks presents practical approaches to today's most critical federal leadership challenges, demonstrating our commitment to integrity in public service, skill-building for executive leaders, and fostering the fierce resolve needed to drive organizational success.

Each session provides federal leaders with actionable strategies and innovative approaches they can immediately implement within their agencies. Participants who attend three or more live sessions will receive a certificate of participation, documenting their investment in professional growth and leadership excellence.

5 Reasons to Attend the Key FEDTalks

  1. Learn in a stimulating environment designed for federal leaders, fostering intellectual and professional growth through engagement with cutting-edge public sector concepts.

  2. Network with diverse government professionals and build valuable connections with fellow leaders, renowned faculty, and public service experts.

  3. Enhance your leadership capabilities with specialized content relevant to today's complex public sector challenges.

  4. Apply insights directly to your federal role, with the option to earn a professional certificate by attending six seminars within a two-year period.

  5. Benefit from the Key Executive Leadership Program's commitment to public service excellence and organizational mission success.

5 Reasons to Attend the Key FEDTalks

  1. Provides a stimulating environment for Key current students and alumni, which is conducive to continued intellectual and professional growth.

  2. Cultivates professional connections between current students, alumni, faculty, and staff.
  3. Supplements your Key experience with subject matter relevant to improved leadership in the public sector.
  4. Current students and alumni are eligible to receive a certificate of completion for attending at least six seminars within a two year period.
  5. Allows the Key Executive Leadership Program to reciprocate the support and serve the public good.

Upcoming Session:

Session Description:

Panelists:

FEDTalks Quick Links

Catch Up on Previous FEDTalks

Check out our previous FEDTalks session recordings from 2023!

Upcoming Session

Break|Through: How Healing Communities Drive our Success on April 30 at 4:30 at ĢƵ

Break|Through: How Healing Communities Drive Our Success with Dr. Carylynn Larson

April 30 @ 4:30 pm ET | ĢƵ, Washington, D.C.

$15 admission includes libations and hor d'oeuvres

About this FEDTalks

We all want more productive and mission-driven teams, but the relentless pace and pressure of today's workplace takes a toll on everyone. When stress builds up, communication breaks down, priorities get fuzzy, and morale suffers. To thrive, we must recognize that mental health is corporate health. It shapes how we lead and how we synergize with our team.

Every day, whether we realize it or not, we're influencing our team's mental wellbeing. Each meeting we run, policy we implement, and check-in we conduct either strengthens or weakens trust. So how do we create environments where honest conversations can flourish, boosting adaptability, connection, and results?

In this actionable FEDTalk, Dr. Carylynn Larson shares the mindset shift and practical tools organizations need to build a professional ecosystem that encourage not only meaningful communication, but how to translate intent into action. Drawing from lived experience, powerful storytelling—including a conversation that changed her life—and decades of research in workplace psychology, she reframes mental health as a foundation for trust, engagement, and performance.

You’ll leave with Dr. Larson’s “Recipe for Healing Community”, a three-part blueprint to:

  • Advance from resilience to innovation
  • Build agile and high-performing teams
  • Promote a proactive approach to workplace mental health

Carylynn Larson bio photoAbout the Speaker

Dr. Carylynn Kemp Larson is a dynamic keynote speaker who brings research, real-world experience, and personal insight to every stage. A recognized expert on leadership, team dynamics, coaching, and mental health, she has delivered dozens of speeches at corporate events, leadership summits, and professional conferences, inspiring audiences to rethink workplace well-being and build cultures of resilience and connection.

Dr. Larson holds a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from George Mason University, and is an ICF Professional Certified Coach with thousands of hours of coaching experience. She has spent her career helping leaders and teams thrive through change and uncertainty. Her work spans sectors - government, corporate, and nonprofit, in addition to serving on the faculty of renowned universities including The George Washington University, George Mason University, the United States Naval Academy, and The ĢƵ.

With a unique combination of leadership and mental health experience, Dr. Larson bridges two critical but often separate worlds—organizational success and human well-being. In 2008, she founded Rock Recovery, a national nonprofit dedicated to bridging mental health treatment gaps, designing innovative community-based recovery programs, and fostering healing through education and empowerment. Over the past 17 years, she has led the organization in multiple roles, including Executive Director, President, and Board Member.

2024 Series (So Far)

Sustaining Resilience & Wellness During Times of Change

38:36

Resilience is the human capacity to meet adversity, setbacks, and trauma and then recover to live life fully. Resilient leaders can sustain their energy level under pressure to cope with disruptive changes and adaptation. They bounce back from setbacks. They also overcome major difficulties without engaging in dysfunctional behavior or harming others. Resilience is a crucial characteristic of a high-performing leader.

One constant thing in life is that you will have to deal with change. Using resilience, people can manage their wellness to thrive during changing or uncertain times.

Learning Objectives

During this 60-minute session with Dr. Russell Robinson,participants will learn how to:

  • Prioritize their self-care to become more effective leaders and/or followers
  • Adopt essential relationship-building skills that are fundamental to minimizing stressors associated with gaining and earning trust from colleagues, peers, and supervisors
  • Examine nonproductive behaviors and responses that are contrary to resilience and successful management of work/life balance
  • Reframe challenges as opportunities to stretch capabilities

FEDTalks Archive

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2023

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AI, Government and the Public Workforce

Watch for a panel discussion on the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in the federal government, where we will explore: the potential promise of AI; mitigating risks; addressing concerns with transparency; implications for the public workforce as new technologies are integrated into the workplace and more!

2022

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Public vs. Private Ventures & the Changing Space Paradigm

Moderator:, ĢƵ Adjunct Faculty, Key Executive Leadership Program; Retired Deputy CFO NASA

Panelists:, Vice President, Civil Sales, Blue Origin;, Chief Government and External Affairs Officer, Axiom Space;, Director, Commercial Space Flight, NASA HQ

Trust & Our Government

Moderator:ĢƵ Adjunct Faculty, Key Executive Leadership Program; President, Maryland State Board of Education Board; Associate Director for Administration, Executive Office of the President; Director of Operations, National Security and International Affairs Division, General Accounting Office

Panelists:Counselor and Independent Consultant, U.S. Agency for Global Media; former President/CEO, National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA);, CEO, Kimberly Walton & Associates, LLC; NAPA Fellow and Vice-Chair Panel on Public Service; former Executive Assistant Administrator for Enterprise Support, Transportation Administration Security (TSA)

Succession Planning & the Great Resignation

Moderator:, Director, Key Executive Leadership Programs, School of Public Affairs, ĢƵ

Speakers:Kara Cotsalas,Chief, Workforce Management Branch National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), NIH, Department of Health and Human Services;Kristen G. Ellis, Esq., Director of Regulatory, Intergovernmental, and Stakeholder Engagement, US Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management (EM);Russell Robinson, EdD, Founder of Amplified Research, Civil Servant and Researcher Focusing on Employee Engagement, and Voice/Silence

2021

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Leading with Kindness & Love

1:25:14

Simple practices of gratitude, compassion, and humility can never be underestimated in terms of their impact on creating inclusive and innovative workforces. Now, more than ever, it is time to return to the basics of kindness in love for ourselves and with those we lead.

Federal Budget Strategy

1:26:36

There are many excellent agency budget documents and academic resources to tell the “what” about Federal budgeting. Learn how they can give you everything but the ingredients for the secret sauce that takes the meal to the next level in this FEDTalks session.

Ethics in Decision-Making

55:15

Explore the ethical issues lurking in decisions leaders in the federal government and industry make that can impact workers, stakeholders, and the public.
Plus, learn how to identify and address common ethical issues facing government leaders.

The Future of Work

1:28:18

This FEDTalks session will focus on what human capital leaders can do to build a better federal workforce geared toward the future of work that factors remote work, connection, wellness, burnout, social justice issues and hyper-partisan politics.

New Federal Requirements

1:31:56

Learn about the importance of the mandates, practices, and available resources to help leaders build and effectively use the needed evidence base to achieve greater success in critical areas facing agencies. Presenters alsoprovide examplesof fostering learning in organizations.

2020

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Performance Architecture

FEDTalks: Performance Architecture and Re-engineering with ISPI and KeyDr. Rose Noxon has more than 35 years’ experience in business process improvement, learning and development, and performance evaluation and. She holds certifications as a Certified Performance Technologist (CPT), as a Project Management Professional (PMP) and also holds a Performance and Training Certificate from the ROI Institute. She has a PhD in Education with a specialization in Training and Human Performance Improvement from Capella University.

High-Performance Teams

1:21:34

Every organization wants high-performance teams. But just what does this mean? How are high-performance teams created? How do you lead and evaluate them? This session will explore these issues, underscoring the three main influences for building high-performance teams.

Optimizing Performance

Optimizing Performance in Times of Uncertainty with Dr. Jim Hill in the Key FEDTalks with ISPI Workshop Series on April 9thThe world is increasingly interconnected and digital yet, performance improvement approaches are typically flat and analog. This creates inefficienciesand tears at consultant-client relationships. Impending changes to the federal budget, and the addition of virtual work requirements, having effective methods and tools is crucial to empowering teams, saving time, reducing risk, and showing value.

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ECQs - How to Make Them Real

1:07:35

This FEDTalks is about how to make the Executive Core Qualifications reflect everyday work for members of the Senior Executive Service.The presenter shares 18 reasons why initiatives like the Executive Core Qualifications fail, what the barriers are to sustainability, and what you can do to prevent them from becoming a short-lived fad.

2019

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Resilience & Mindfulness in Uncertain Times

Resilience and Mindfulness in Uncertain Times with Dr. Ruth Zaplin from Feb. 2019

Description: Coming off the heels of the longest furlough in United States history, this session will discuss practical ways to develop resilience and the role mindfulness can play. Moderated by Key Executive-in-Residence, Dr. Ruth Zaplin, join us for the first FEDTalks of 2019.

Participants also had the opportunity to directly interact with some of Key's Executive Coaches,Carlynn Larson, Mandeep Singh, Mimi Darmstadter and Vinay Kumar, and Key's Assistant Director, Jennifer Tether, for a more intimate and immersive learning session.

Culture: A Mission-Critical Priority

Culture: A Mission-Critical Priority FEDTalks with Eagle Hill Consulting from November 2019
Description: It’s no secret that an agency’s culture impacts its ability to successfully meet its mission. But what does the federal workforce really think about their agency’s culture? Working with Government Business Council, Eagle Hill recently polled federal employees on multiple aspects of culture—including leadership, employee satisfaction, and employee experience. What Eagle Hill found might surprise you. Join us to learn more about the research findings.

Change Your Career, Change Your Life

Change Your Career Change Your Life FEDTalks from May 2019
Description:Join us for an interactive and informative discussion on how to "Change Your Career, Change Your Life." Moderated by Dr. Reginald Wells, former Deputy Commissioner for Human Resources at Social Security Administration and Key Faculty member, this dynamic panel discussion will provide participants with tools, tips, and personal anecdotes for moving on or moving up in your federal career.