“…exceptional storytelling abilities and a profound understanding of social change.”
speaking
Kristen speaks regularly at universities, conferences, and book festivals on social change, storytelling, and her work with Judy Heumann.
- Allyship & Judy Heumann
- Social Change & Collective Action
- Storytelling, Co-Writing & Memoir
- Women, Power & Leadership
- Reimagining Families & The Power of the Complicated
- Narrative & Media for Social Change
WHAT KRISTEN SPEAKs ABOUT
03
02
A talk about the words we reach for when too many people are involved - even though too-many-people is exactly where the strength lies. Whether it’s a blended family, a social movement, or a democracy - the narrative is the same. How we re-value what we’ve devalued and why we should.
The Complicated Is Not the Problem
A talk about the vocabulary that polices women, the praise we’re awarded for overcarrying it all alone, and the skills no one teaches us for making a fuss and making the collective work.
Making a Fuss in an Unequal World
05
04
01
Signature Talks
A book talk about Being Heumann and collaboration as an act of allyship: the kebab-lunch confession that started it, the arguments that shaped it, and what living inside someone else's story does to your own.
Five Years Inside Someone Else's Life
Real social change looks messy in the middle - random, experimental, slow - and only strategic in retrospect. A talk for nonprofit leaders and funders about how the bias for clean and fast decides who gets left out - and where the solutions lie.
The Collective Is the Strategy
"Don't say blind spot," Judy Heumann told Kristen, early in the five years they spent co-writing Being Heumann - and Kristen, twenty years into a human-rights career, understood she'd never once examined the phrase. A talk about how exclusion actually operates - not as malice, but as habit, language, and design - what it means to build belonging, and why Judy trusted democracy: the one system that can be held to its own promise.
Don’t Say Blind Spot