The systems no one owns
How responsibility disappears at the seams between competent people, organizations, and processes.
Speaking
Conversations about the systems people are left to carry.
Stephen speaks with candor, warmth, and humor, pairing an educator’s clarity with the hard-earned perspective of lived experience. His work is grounded in a roll-up-your-sleeves attention to what difficult circumstances demand of people and institutions.
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Topics
Ideas grounded in the work.
Operational reliability
What it takes for information, authority, and capacity to line up when the outcome matters.
Recovery and human worth
How purpose, work, mission, and institutions shape the lives people are rebuilding.
Leadership, incentives, and accountability
How the systems, institutions, and arrangements around people determine what gets noticed, owned, and carried through.
Selected appearances
A record of public conversations.
Stephen has delivered keynotes on machine learning, AI, and the changing job landscape, as well as a Shatterproof keynote for more than 1,200 attendees. He has appeared on iHeart Radio and joins frequent podcast conversations on leadership, entrepreneurship, and recovery.
He also served on Cox Enterprises’ EMPOWER panel on the workforce impact of substance use, anxiety, stress, and depression. The broadcast reached more than 55,000 people and was moderated by multi-time Emmy winner Jovita Moore.
Stephen accepts a limited number of speaking, podcast, panel, and advisory invitations.
Discuss an invitation →Inquiries
Bring the right context.
For speaking, podcasts, panels, media, or a well-defined advisory conversation, include the organization, topic, audience, timing, and what you would like Stephen to contribute.
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