Maureen Douglas Speaking
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Engaging, funny and memorable keynotes that inspire positive change.

Maureen “Mo” Douglas’s keynote speeches engage audiences with humour and insight. Mo shares ideas, possibilities and opportunities through the stories and strategies that come from 25 years of leadership, public engagement and major event successes. Mo’s keynotes are accessible and engaging, using relatable real-world experiences that capture the attention of her audience. Wherever she presents, her speeches get top marks from audiences and conference organizers.

Maureen Douglas’s national audiences have included RBC, Microsoft, the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Meeting Professionals International, the Purchasing Managers Association of Canada, the Professional Convention Management Association, the Vancouver Convention Centre and the World Council of Credit Unions. Internationally, she’s presented to audiences in Singapore, Russia and Brazil.

Keynote speeches run between 45 and 60 minutes. Speaking length can be adjusted to suit your needs with opportunities for Q and A as requested.

Current Keynotes

You can’t lead from behind a closed door. Collaborative leaders know this. That’s why their teams deliver outstanding results.

Collaborative leaders roll up their sleeves to work alongside their team members. They build positive, respectful, trusting environments that motivate and inspire everyone to bring — and share — their best. Collaborative leaders keep their teams connected, informed and engaged. And they empower their team members to lead, no matter what their title. The result? Greater investment, better decision-making and creative problem solving. Employees flourish while organizations meet their goals.

A rebel with a cause, Maureen Douglas has been building winning teams of confident, creative leaders for 25 years. Whether leading international human rights missions or delivering an extraordinary Olympic Games, she’s known for building strong, collaborative and powerfully positive teams. Often hilarious, always insightful and powerfully positive, Maureen will leave your audience empowered to become enthusiastically collaborative leaders.

The Collaborative Leader: Working Better…Together will teach your audience:

  1. Why the old model of “the boss” no longer works.
  2. How to create leaders within your team.
  3. How collaborative leadership can improve your bottom line.
  4. How collaborative leadership sparks innovation, embraces change and fosters resilience.

What’s the difference between a good manager and great leader? Good managers meet their organizations goals. Great leaders meet their people’s needs, so their organizations exceed their goals.

Great leaders inspire, mentor and motivate the people around then. Great leaders give time, focus and commitment to their team’s needs while still achieving their personal work objectives. And they move their organizations forward with the support of teams that give their best.

Maureen Douglas made the leap from manager to leader early in her career. Funny, motivating and powerfully positive, Maureen shares her insights on how to fearlessly make the leap. Her practical approach, easy to implement strategies and real-life examples demonstrate how an organization can excel by developing leaders from within. This enlightening keynote gives new managers the confidence to embrace their leadership role and provides seasoned leaders with the coaching tools required to support managers.

The Leadership Leap: Going from Good Manager to Great Leader will teach your audience:

    1. The powerful impact of leading by example.
    2. How leaders effectively engage and communicate with their teams.
    3. How great managers can provide leadership up, down and across an organization.
    4. How to ingrain best practices into daily team leadership.

Mo is receiving rave reviews from DMOs, tourism associations, and industry-related businesses for helping them build brand, culture and customers by leveraging the power of story.

New this year, Telling Your Best Story, is available as a 4060 minute keynote and/ or two-hour workshop. Mo gets people telling their best stories — stories that take marketing in exciting new directions. Telling Your Best Story will captivate your audience, igniting new ideas and renewed enthusiasm.

Illustrating key points with real world examples, Mo shares how to find and craft a story that will build your brand and increase sales. Laughing as they learn, your audience will take away new skills, increased confidence and the ability to tell a compelling story that benefits your business.

Crisis. Disaster. Scandal. For many organizations, communities and events, crisis communications involves planning for theoretical situations that will never happen, while some organizations never even get around to writing the plan. So when crisis hits, will you be ready?

Maureen Douglas has been in the eye of the storm through several crisis communications incidents, from tragic fatalities at international events to damaging misinformation created internally and diffusing crises manufactured by the media. Maureen shares her experiences, challenges, lessons and best practices with insight on how to plan and prepare to manage the message, the media, your team, local authorities and your stakeholder community. Mo’s lessons in crisis communications will help attendees:

  1. Determine if their plan is comprehensive and execution-ready
  2. Build confidence in crisis communications execution
  3. Identify the best spokespeople and issues management team to lead in a crisis
  4. Manage the “unmanageable” world of social media when crisis information goes public
  5. Understand the critical importance of calm, compassionate and transparent leadership in a crisis
  6. Debrief, identify and revise weaknesses in the plan and close the loop with all involved parties

Crisis communications requires a delicate balance of transparency, information management and compassion. In learning from Mo’s experiences, attendees can prepare their organizations for crisis communications success.

“You hit a home run! Your keynote was the perfect balance of interesting “behind the scenes” information and emotion, to give our Advisory Board a real feeling of what it was like through the Olympic Games. You did a remarkable job, thank you.”
Claire Smith, Vice-President, Vancouver Convention Centre
“When I first contacted you, I’d mentioned that CITAP wished to “shake it up” a bit. Your storytelling keynote certainly helped “shake it up.” Thank you for delivering such a polished, professional and relevant topic to the tourism industry that we could all relate to.”
John Webster, Canadian Inbound Tour Operators Asia Pacific Board member, CITAP
“Maureen’s energetic quick-witted personality made her presentation a truly memorable experience. We appreciated that both her messages and her delivery style were tailored to maximize their relevance to our audience.”
Karen Goodwin, Vice-President, Sales, Tourism Whistler
“Mo Douglas was a keynote speaker at the It’s T.I.M.E. Conference, a training conference for meeting professionals by meeting professionals. What an impressive and engaging presenter! Mo’s combination of humour and sharing of personal experiences and stories made the topic “From Issue to Crisis: Navigating Successfully Through Rough Waters” meaningful and engaging. Attendees described her session as “excellent”, “fabulous” and “what they liked best about the Conference”.
Sarah Lowis, Sea to Sky Meeting Planners, MPI-BC
“Maureen gave a wonderful keynote address to our annual conference of 200 people. Her on-stage presentation style
kept our audience engaged and tuned in. Our attendees rated her presentation very highly in our follow up survey and we would be glad to welcome Maureen back in the future!”
Melanie Moore, VP , UNIGLOBE Travel

“Mo-ments” from Mo’s keynote speeches