Keynote Addresses

Keynotes that Inspire Success

Tom Wolff's keynote addresses provide inspiration to audiences throughout North America and across the globe. His presentations are relevant in virtually every field where collaborations play a key role. Tom is an engaging, high-energy speaker whose talks are illustrated with audiovisuals and handouts that engage audiences and enhance comprehension. Audiences report Tom's keynotes as inspiring and provocative, compelling them to think in new ways about their issues. He inspires people to think creatively and expansively about their work.

His recent keynotes have covered a broad range of topics:

  • Building Hope and Inspiration through Community Coalitions
  • Maximizing the Collective Impact of Your Coalition
  • Mobilizing Communities to Action
  • Engaging the Grassroots
  • Successfully Sustaining Your Collaborative
  • Developing Real Clout: Learning Advocacy Skills
  • Developing Coalitions to Address Issues of Healthy Equity
  • Building Healthy Communities from the Ground Up

Audiences have included those from public health care, health care, mental health, violence prevention, health specialties, community groups, the private sector, children's issues, community development, systems planning and healthy communities.

Customized Presentations

Tom's keynote addresses are most often customized for the audience. This provides an inspiring presentation that hones in on the interests and issues of the designated audience. To accomplish this involves discussions prior to the keynote and the review of written material, web sites etc. from your organization. Tom has been able to customize talks on collaboration for audiences as diverse as those concerned with asthma, food security, optometry, violence prevention, health equity and others.

Popular Titles and Synopses

“Engaging the Grassroots,”

This keynote focuses on the critical role that the grassroots community can play in seeking collaborative solutions. The audience is asked to examine whether their work comes from an agency based or community based model. The advantages and how to’s of engaging the grassroots are explored. Case examples of success and failure highlight the talk.

“Successfully Sustaining Your Collaborative”

We explore what needs to be sustained how it can be sustained and how to build sustainability into the ongoing life cycle of your collaborative work. Sustaining collaborations is explored from a four-step approach including but also going beyond seeking new sources of financial support. Policy changes, community institutionalization and community ownership add excitement to the sustainability process.

“Building Healthy Communities from the Ground Up.”

The major issues facing communities are outlined in the light of healthy communities solutions. The delineation of the core principles of healthy communities approaches creates new opportunities for addressing community identified needs. Principles of success for healthy community efforts along with numerous lively case examples highlight this talk.

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Tom Wolff Delivers Keynote to Canadian Community Psychology Conference

In May 2010 I was honored to be invited by Tim Aubry to be the keynote speaker at the biennial Canadian Community Psychology meeting. I was delighted to be able to join this bright, energetic and warm Canadian gathering at the University of Ottawa.

The talk entitled “The Power of Collaborative Solutions: Community Psychology Building Healthy Communities" was based on my book The Power of Collaborative Solutions that had been published earlier in the year. The talk focused on collaborative solutions in the context of the field of community psychology. The gracious bilingual introduction was done by my colleague, Liesette Brunson from the University of Quebec at Montreal. A video of the keynote is available below:

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Tom Wolff offers six principles for collaboration at International Conference in Lisbon, Portugal

Tom Wolff spoke about partnerships and collaborative solutions as sparks and catalysts for social change and innovation, at the EQUAL conference Powering a New Future in Lisbon , Portugal. He said he understood collaboration to be doing together that which you cannot do apart". A more formal definition is: A collaboration is a group of individuals and organizations with a common interest who agree to work together to a common goal.

The advantage of collaboration is that agencies can provide a rounded solution to problems - but in order to achieve that we need to bring to the table everyone who has a part to play, including those who would benefit. Tom offered six principles of collaboration

  1. Engage a broad spectrum of the community
  2. Practice true collaboration. This involved going beyond networking (talking to each other); coordination (modified activities); and cooperation (sharing resources). Collaboration occurred when you aimed to enhance the capacity of others involved.
  3. Practice democracy, so that decisions are made by the group as a whole
  4. Employ an ecological approach, looking at the strengths and weaknesses in the community
  5. Take action - you can't achieve change just by sitting talking
  6. Align your goals and the process. For example, if you wish to develop a respectful community, you can't achieve that by disrespectful leaderships.

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