Hi, I’m Dr. Shans.
I help leaders recognize when what’s working no longer works and decide what happens next
Book Dr. Shans for Speaking
I help leaders recognize when what’s working no longer works and decide what happens next
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 in behavioral science, including the psychology of gender, and her lived experience as a neurodivergent thinker shape 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.
Competence got you here. At some point, it stops being enough. There are points in work where the approach that created success stops producing results, but it continues to shape decisions anyway.
Research in decision-making shows that once patterns are established, people tend to default back to them, even when they stop working. Most respond by refining what they already know, increasingeffort, or optimizing within the same approach. Those moves can improve performance, but they rarely change outcomes.
Audacity shows up at the decision point, when someone recognizes a pattern is no longer working and chooses to interrupt it.
Drawing on 20+ years of experience in high-stakes organizational environments, including building and leading multi-million-dollar consulting practices, Dr. Shannan Simms examines how people maintain patterns that no longer work and what it takes to challenge them in real time. Her work in behavioral science and the psychology of gender further highlights how individuals are conditioned to stay within those patterns, even when the cost is clear.
In this keynote, your audience will walk away with five common decision points where Audicty changes the game:
• Setting boundaries without overexplaining
• Speaking up for others despite personal risk
• Challenge authority and conventional thinking in real time
• Admitting when you're stuck and asking for help without losing credibility
• Redefining success when what once worked no longer does
If you’re looking for a keynote speaker who has “been there” and brings practical insight grounded in real-world leadership experience, this session offers a clear, applicable approach to decision-making under pressure.
This keynote is well-suited for leadershipevents, 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 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.
In this keynote, your audience will walk away with:
• How to recognize different thinking and workingstyles within a team
• Why “culture fit” can limit performance and innovation
• How to create space for multiple ways ofthinking without losing alignment
• When different perspectives improve decisionquality, and when they create friction
• How to use cognitive differences as an advantagerather than something to manage
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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