I show high-capacity leaders and teams how to outsmart knee-jerk reactions in high-stakes moments, name what's theirs to own, and design different conditions.
Dr. SHANS in ACTION - Live Teaching
"...Shannan brings such a wealth of practical experience and academic preparation, mixed with a huge dose of great storytelling ability...”
Dr. Mitch Marovitz /ProfeSSOR
RECENT SPEAKING Engagements
In Practice
SIGNATURE SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS
Burnout, Boundaries, Blind Spots, Oh My: The Art and Science of Prioritization
We prioritize every second of the day.
Our brains never stop triaging, and most of the time it's making those calls before a conscious thought shows up. Then the funding gets cut, the grant doesn't renew, half the team is doing the work of a whole team, and someone rolls out a new system on top of it. Under that kind of pressure, the part of the brain that weighs the long-term goes quiet, and the part that chases a quick, certain win grabs the wheel.
That's why busy always wins and the team feels burnt out. It isn't a discipline gap, and it doesn't get fixed with another reminder to set boundaries or take care of yourself.
Using humor, real-world stories and just enough science to explain what is happening in those moments this talk answers: why the alarm drowns out the strategist, why uncertainty itself burns the fuel people need to think, and why busy work feels like winning when the body is quietly paying. Shans offers an alternative on how to identify and prioritize the things that matter, what's competing, and how to silence the noise, so that as an individual, as a team, and as an organization, you drive to the goals and outcomes you want and innovate with greater creativity.
Key Takeaways:
Recognize why the brain reaches for busy over what matters, even when they know better
Tell the difference between the priorities that are theirs and the ones they inherited, and at what cost
Pinpoint why lasting change comes from redesigning conditions, not willpower, and where to start
Quirky: The Skill of Showing Up as You Are
Most leadership skills get named, taught, and rewarded - strategy, communication, judgment, vision. Showing up as yourself isn't on the list. It's treated as a personality trait you either have or don't. So smart, capable women leaders learn to manage around it: editing in real time, holding back what doesn't quite fit, leading from the version they think the room expects.
Quirky says it's a skill — and a teachable one. Anchored in The Invisible Loop™, this keynote shows leaders what's been shaping the way they show up at work - what's inside them, what's around them, where the two meet - and gives them the practice of doing it on purpose. The version of themselves they've been managing around is often the one their leadership actually needs.
Key Takeaways:
Stop performing a version of themselves that wasn't built for them
See the patterns shaping how they show up - and where those patterns came from
Lead with what makes them them - without apology
Let’s Get Started
BOOK Dr. Shans to be a SPEAKER at YOUR EVENT
Dr. Shans’ OFFICIAL BIO
Dr. Shannan Simms is an integrative psychological scientist, enterprise strategist, and former executive with two decades of experience in high-stakes environments - including building and transitioning two multi-million-dollar consulting practices.
As a neurodivergent thinker, Dr. Shans sees what standard playbooks miss. She skips generic cheerleading to name the exact friction points leaders, teams, and high-achievers carry but struggle to name. Drawing on cognitive mechanics and real-world lived scars, she helps audiences decode their 200-millisecond defaults, stop compensating for broken systems, and redesign the conditions that produce different results.
This isn’t about more effort.
This is about designing different conditions for better decisions in the moments that matter.
