Hi, I’m Dr. Shans.
I help leaders make sharper decisions in the moments that matter most.
Book Dr. Shans for Speaking
I help leaders make sharper decisions in the moments that matter most.
Book Dr. Shans for SpeakingWith more than 20 years operating in high-stakes environments and building multi-million dollar consulting practices, Dr. Shans brings a perspective grounded in real decisions, not theory.
Her work sits at the intersection of behavioral science, cognitive psychology and the psychology of gender, and is lived through her experience as a neurodivergent thinker which shapes how she challenges conventional approaches and surfaces what others often miss.
She is known for helping leaders and teams recognize patterns that limit performance, rethink how decisions are made, and operate in ways that produce better outcomes, not just more effort.
High-impact sessions that challenge conventional thinking and offer clear, actionable insights leaders can apply immediately.
Interactive sessions designed to move from insight to application, helping teams work through real challenges, clarify decisions, and create forward momentum.
Structured experiences that go beyond connection to focus on how teams think, collaborate, and operate under pressure.
Targeted sessions that align leaders around critical decisions, surface competing perspectives, and improve how leadership teams function together.
Customized engagements designed around specific organizational challenges, with a focus on decision-making, execution, and team performance.
McKinsey's Women in the Workplace research found that 43% of senior women leaders are exhausted and considering leaving their organizations (McKinsey & Company & LeanIn.Org, 2023). Organizations are responding -investing in wellness, leadership development, and retention programs at recordlevels.
The investment is right. The diagnosis has been incomplete.
Here's the pattern that keeps getting missed: the most careful career decisions high-performing women make... the ones that look like humility, patience, and professional restraint... are often the ones quietly costing them the most. Behavioral science calls this the “modesty norm”- a prescriptive stereotype, decades in the making, that socializes women to down play competence, deflect credit, and wait to be recognized rather than advocate directly. Women who violate the modesty norm face social and professional backlash, whereas women who follow the norm get over looked(Rudman, 1998; Bowles et al., 2007), creating a double bind.
That's not a talent pipeline problem. That's a pattern problem.
Dr. Shannan L. Simms doesn't do motivation. As a behavioral scientist and consulting leader with 20+ years partnering with high-stakes organizations and adjunct faculty at Walden University teaching the psychology of gender, she does pattern interruption. As a neurodivergent researcher whose pattern recognition tends to find the thing others talk around... she names the invisible rules quietly shaping perspective - rules embedded so deeply in professional culture they register as personal preference rather than socialized default.
Absolute Audacity sits at the intersection of gender psychology, cognitive-behavioral science, and two decades of lived experience with organizational pattern recognition across industries. The keynote names the norms, traces their origin, and interrupts the defaults - giving audiences the context to see what's been shaping their decisions and internalized self-doubt, and giving organizations the missing piece to influence retention conversations. This isn't a talk about confidence.
Confidence isn't the gap. The gap is the invisible rulebook. And the fact that no one handed leaders a copy.
Absolute Audacity is built for leadership events, ERGs, HR forums, team building or offsites, and organizations ready to move beyond symptoms and address what's driving the pattern. When the root cause gets named, the investment finally lands.
This keynote is well-suited for leadership events, professional development programs, ERGs, and organizations navigating change
Most teams have the capability to solve complex problems. Few are designed to use different ways of thinking strategically.
Organizations optimize for alignment to improve efficiencyand productivity. Over time, that alignment narrows how problems are viewed and solved.
Research in cognitive science and organizational behavior shows that groups tend to converge toward similar thinking patterns, especiallyin environments that reward agreement and predictability. The default response is to standardize further, hire for fit, or reinforce consistent ways of working. Those moves can improve coordination, but they often reduce perspective.
Quirky shows up in how people process information, interpret situations, and approach decisions differently from the expected pattern. In team environments, those differences are commonly filtered out, misunderstood, or treated as friction. When they are recognized and used intentionally, they expand options, surface risks earlier, and improve decision quality.
Drawing on her experience building and leading high-performing teams across industries and organizational contexts, Dr. Shannan L. Simms focuses on how cognitive differences show up in real teams and why they are often filtered out in favor of alignment. As a neurodivergent thinker, she approaches problems differently, seeing patterns, risks, and options that don’t always surface in conventional thinking. Her background in behavioral science and the psychology of gender further highlights how norms around “fit” determine which perspectives are included and which are excluded.
High-performing teams are not the most uniform. They are the ones that know how to work with different ways of thinking without forcing them into the same mold.
If you’re looking for a keynote speaker who has build high-performingteams across industries, contexts, and settings and brings practical insightgrounded in real-world leadership experience, this session offers a clear, applicable approach to and how different ways of thinking can be used to improve outcomes, not just inclusion.
This keynote is well-suited for leadership teams, staff retreats, offsites, and organizations focused on improving collaboration, innovation, and decision-making.
She is known for high-impact, no-nonsense talks that challenge how work gets done, helping leaders rethink outdated models, make clearer decisions, and lead in environments where the old rules no longer apply.
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