On Change & Resilience

Change can be both powerful and painful. While inevitable, it often involves risks that many don’t want to take. After nearly two decades, Anna Maria Tremonti made one of the biggest changes of her life: to step away from hosting ‘The Current’ at the peak of the show’s popularity in order to produce and host new, original podcasts. Should she have made the change when she did?

The reality is, change comes with questions. Whether you’re experiencing change in your own life, your organization, or influencing social or political change, the same principles apply. In order to cultivate innovation and disruption, remain ‘change-ready’, and earn the confidence of others we must learn to spot the difficulties before they arise while not fearing the ‘what-if’ scenarios that may never materialize. Drawing from both her personal experience & the lessons she’s learned through her interviews with others, Anna Maria sheds light on pursuing growth and questioning the status quo. This presentation will inspire audiences while also equipping them with the skills needed to assess risk, rationalize fear, find opportunity, carry on through failure, and reimagine success.

Connecting the Dots: Current Events To Future Opportunities

Anna Maria Tremonti has spent her career at the forefront of Canadian and world events. She sees the patterns in how our world is evolving, anticipates what will make an impact, resonate with humanity, and the resulting chain reactions that will shape our future. Customized to suit your audience and event, she’ll share her perspectives on the context of where we’ve come from, the relevance of our current era, and the direction she senses for our future to help you and your organization make connections.

Key Takeaways:

• How to find good quality information & resources you can trust.
• The ways human interaction can be used to positively affect the future.
• How to empower others to live differently & connect their own dots.

Technology & Truth in this Information Age

We’re in an era of information overload with access to more ideas & opinions than ever before. Technology has proven to be a double-edged sword; it has empowered citizen journalists to upload videos of uprisings and injustice but also contributed to the rise of hate-fueled fake news that deliberately misinforms. With such dramatic changes to the delivery of information, we wonder how best to get to the truth? What sources are reliable? What questions should we be asking? Using examples from news journalism and social media, Anna Maria highlights the impact of technology in the collection, distribution, and access of information, and how it’s affected every aspect of our lives, our organizations and society. She shares the value of being open to the truth, asking the right questions, understanding bias, listening, rejecting the trolls, and holding each other accountable to our shared values for a more humane future. During this very polarizing time, exposing the truth and fostering understanding is more important than ever.

Key Takeaways:

• A framework for approaching new information.
• How to ask the right questions.

The Power of Listening

People have told Anna Maria the most amazing things. Their stories, what they think, how they think, their fears, their experiences, and even their controversies. She’s discovered that you get things you don’t expect by listening. Not simply the physical act, but by truly hearing and acting on what is being said.

Soft skills or essential skills, like listening, are considered to be among the most required in our new era of automation. In this presentation, Anna Maria shares her insights as one of the world’s most skilled interviewers to show audiences practical ways to improve their asking & listening skills. The result? Your audience will be empowered to make the connections between the seemingly little dots and the big events. They will be better informed about the situation at hand. This presentation is ideal for leaders, sales, human resources professionals, healthcare workers, journalists, lawyers and anyone who requires conversation-based research to excel within their role.

Key Takeaways:

• Communication tactics for asking good questions.
• The power of silence & how to listen for the message in what you don’t hear.
• How to apply the essential skills contained within an interviewers toolkit.

Welcome to Paradise

As one of Canada’s most respected journalists, Anna Maria Tremonti has a reputation for being fearless and hard-hitting. She’s reported from some of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones, but none were as immediately threatening as her life at home.

Based on her CBC podcast of the same name, Anna Maria Tremonti opens up about a long-held secret — that she was once married to a man who abused her. She tells us about confronting that past and how it shaped her career as a journalist.

The result is a profoundly intimate portrait of a powerful woman confronting the source of tremendous pain and trauma and, remarkably, freeing herself from a life-long sense of shame.