Dr. Jen Clifden
Educator | Relationship Researcher | Retention Specialist
Engaging - Empathetic - Empowering
Jen's keynote and one-time professional development offerings are designed to spark meaningful change, foster resilience, and remind those who serve others that their light is worth protecting, too.
Every keynote address includes
Direct instruction on current, evidence-based knowledge and research about the 5 core capacities of mental health, burnout awareness, stress resilience strategies, and adaptive approaches staff can immediately apply at work or at home.
A simple, yet effective, trauma-responsive exercise that strengthens the parasympathetic nervous system's relaxation response, soothes a busy mind, and reconnects your staff with their body's intelligence.
Beautifully illustrated Put Into Practice handouts that outline detailed integration practices they can immediately apply to their professional and personal lives to extend and deepen the keynote conversation.
Engagement and interaction! Every keynote will get your staff connecting to themselves, each other, and to the collective mission that drives their work.
"Your keynote today was fantastic!!
It was just what I needed. I honestly felt like you were talking specifically to me. I love your style of presenting; you are a lovely teacher and human."
Special Education Teacher
FEATURE KEYNOTE
You Are A Force
As a human-service professional, your Presence -- your energy, your way of being -- is not just a personal asset; it is the force behind your calling that makes an impact on others.
It’s the source of the calm, care, and compassion that shape every relationship you build with those in your care. Your Presence is the living expression of your purpose, the quiet power that helps others feel seen, safe, and supported.
Protecting your being-ness is not a luxury; it’s essential work. It is central to preventing burnout and is one of the strongest predictors of youth mental health, well-being, and learning.
Burnout corrodes this force. It dulls your intuition, narrows your capacity to attune, and slowly distances you from the very purpose that once felt alive in you. Left unattended, burnout drains your Presence until showing up feels like effort instead of calling.
As someone called to a relationship-centered calling, your Presence is a potent professional gift; the invisible force that turns a space or your relationship with another into a field of calm, care, and compassion.
Honoring your calling means tending to the very force that fuels it: your Presence.
In this highly experiential keynote, participants will explore three core principles and experience science-backed practices help them strategically magnify their Presence and mitigate burnout by:
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maintaining a healthy nervous system that allows you to flow (not freeze, fawn, fight, or flee) through the attitudinal phases of teaching feeling confident and competent to keep low self-efficacy from taking root,
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metabolizing stress inherent in the profession as the catalyst to develop your 5 competencies of SEL that keep depersonalization and self-detachment from happening,
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creating resilient relationships with your students where you both feel safe, seen, and secure in the space that you share to keep emotional exhaustion from corroding your capacity to care.
Neuroscience-Informed, Trauma-Responsive Approach to Staff Mental Health, Stress Transformation, and Relationship-Driven Impact
Standalone Professional Development Formats
Select your session length
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One to Four Hour --- Single PD Event
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One Day Immersive Event | 6 hours | 6 Clock Hours
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Two Day Event | 4 - 6 hours per day | 8-12 Clock Hours
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Three Day Event | 4 - 6 hours per day | 12-18 Clock Hours
Select your preferred session focus
Browse the most in-demand PD topics and know that during your complimentary consultation, we will customize a session that speaks to your staff and aligns with your desired intent for impact.
Burnout is Protective; not Defective
Learning to read the symptoms of burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress as meaningful signals of your body’s way of showing you what inner resources need strengthening, replenishment, or protection.
The Science of Safety & Your Stress Appraisal System
Learning how your nervous system works, how it perceives and responds to stress, and how to balance the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses; protecting yourself from burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma.
Stress, Tension, and Transformation
Discover how resilience is built through the stress cycle, learning to work with tension, rather than against it, so it becomes a catalyst for inner growth, wisdom, and self-actualization
Compassion | The Reset that Reinforces Connection
Practicing self-compassion protects against fatigue and transforms your connections with students and colleagues.
The Science of Hope
Explore how hope is a measurable neurobiological process that fuels motivation, resilience, and meaningful action, and how your hopeful presence becomes a stabilizing force that uplifts, protects, and empowers the people you serve.
Mirroring and Modeling Mental Health through Resonant Relationships
How to read another's behaviors through a nervous-system lens [seeing them as signals rather than problems] and practice co-regulatory ways of relating that help those in your care feel safe, organized, and emotionally supported.
