talks, keynotes, workshops, panels and more

Speaking

Represented in speaking by GTN, Lacey is available for a variety of speaking opportunities, including lectures, keynotes, panels, workshops, dialogue facilitation, academic residencies, and guest appearances on radio, podcast and television shows. An award-winning storyteller, Lacey uses a narrative-based approach to reach audiences with simple, impactful messages.  Known for her engaging approach coupled with useful and articulate insights, Lacey weaves together her personal narrative, entertaining stories, and insightful observations to illustrate how people can embrace the power of their own stories and transform the quality of individual experience, community realities, workplace performance, business culture, and team engagement. Lacey’s sincere and intimate talks have inspired countless individuals and organizations to excavate their inner worlds in order to discover their voices and claim their own untapped potential.  Her unique relationship-driven engagement gives voice to and brings people together to pursue collective wisdom, support and accountability.  Being multicultural herself, Lacey understands the complexity of the human condition in a way that is applicable to and touches audiences from all backgrounds, demographics, and generations from students to professionals, to community members, and to organizations in any industry and in many settings. In her speaking engagements, Lacey also frequently uses media to spark dialogue and includes practical and easy to follow formulas. These creative step by step processes guide audiences to become unconventional problem solvers and revolutionize their approach to achieving professional and personal goals. 

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The success of Little White Lie provokes the deeper conversation. Lacey Schwartz will know how to sustain it with courage and insight that can open up whole new ways of seeing our world.

/ The forward /

Topics

Choose from a wide range of topics, tailored to your audience. 

True to the diversity of her life trajectory, Lacey speaks publicly around the world on a large range of topics including  social impact, inclusivity, creativity, identity, leadership, work and family dynamics, and the power of telling the truth at universities, conferences, and festivals nationwide.  She is also a sought-out speaker on issues of race, ethnic and cultural diversity, the Jewish community, social impact filmmaking, business strategies for creative entrepreneurs, and the promotion of the creative arts as a career path for underrepresented populations and others. 

Here is a sample of talks Lacey is available to give:

Little White Lie: A Journey from White to Black

Using clips from her personal documentary, Lacey’s signature keynote takes the audience through her engaging and thought-provoking personal story combined with an examination of whiteness and its supposed invisibility. As Lacey says in the film, ”Black people think about our blackness all the time, but white people don't think about whiteness.” Lacey is one of the few people who has genuinely experienced what it is to be black and what it is to be white.  She will share her insights gathered from being a witness and participant in different spaces of our racialized society.  Her story provides further reflection and hope for anyone who has struggled to figure out who they are as an individual, in a family and as a member of a team. 

Secrets, Denial and Race: The Power of Truth Telling

In this talk, Lacey explains how denial and secrets impact the nuanced ways in which we shape our identities and race functions within society. Lacey shares tools to help audiences move from silence to truth telling, including how to identify denial, what stage of denial you are in and how to move past it with the transformative power of truth. She can further help companies and organizations understand how denial informs your institutional culture and how to move past it, by giving tools to help engage in issues of race and identity that often create social barriers to productivity.

Creating an Organizational Culture of Empathy and Inclusion and Accountability

Lacey has had the blessing of being a part of many different communities throughout her life and has learned how to bridge the divide between different points of view. In this lecture, she shares unique advice on how to evaluate your own individual, community and institutional cultures around inclusion and belonging and how individual and institutional accountability need to exist for change to occur.  Juxtaposed to a world that feels like it so often comes down to bi-polarity of identity, white and black, Democrat and Republican, Lacey shares daring and funny insights and personal experiences to encourage us all to think about how we want to navigate an increasingly divided world.  This lecture focuses on how to create and maintain environments that spark dialogue and collaboration between diverse groups of people while still helping individuals find their own affinity group. Attendees learn how to not only empathize with people who have different experiences from them but also how to be accountable to how those differences play out with the goal of ultimately building stronger communities that propel people and organizations forward.

The Truth Circle Game: A Workshop on Identity and Truth-telling

Using the interactive discussion card game created in partnership with the film Little White Lie, Lacey facilitates meaningful dialogue and introspection on individual experiences with race and racism, as well as other preconceptions or biases. This workshop uses Lacey’s personal story as the entry point into exploring the broader impact of “little white lies” on personal identity, race & diversity, family dynamics, and community & social dynamics.  By breaking down these “little white lies” on an individual basis, rather than tackling these issues on a structural level (public policy, institutional reform), this workshop contributes to the building of healthy communities in which individuals are encouraged and celebrated for expressing their own truths and complex identities, and able to express those same values toward their peers.  The power of this workshop is it gives audiences an opportunity to use personal narrative to address often unvoiced issues, which may be uncomfortable, polarizing, and guilt inducing, through a personal lens first, rather than societal or political lenses.  In a time when these issues are so prevalent in the cultural discourse, this workshop will give audiences the tools to express their own truths in the process therefore adding nuanced and complex voices to the conversation.

Resilience and Self Care in Moments of Change

In Lacey’s personal documentary she sets out on a journey to have difficult conversations for the first time about family secrets and her mixed identity. The film serves as a document of an in-depth process of healing and self-care that not only helps Lacey embrace who she is, but also heals her family. In this keynote, Lacey shares how to create processes and evolve coping strategies to give people the courage to face secrets and denial in order to free themselves from fear. Lacey helps audiences know how to recognize their own resilience and lean into it in order to accept and work through tension and conflict. The acclaimed filmmaker behind Little White Lie and Difret shares stories that inspire everyday leadership and motivate people to do their part to make the changes they need and that will make a difference for the larger society.

The Impact of Personal Change on Social Justice

In a world where issues of race and inequity seem to dominate and at times feel insurmountable, Lacey shares tools to help audiences take on personal advocacy strategies to make a difference. In this constructive talk, Lacey explains how advocacy strategies that aim to change norms need to target both little “a” advocacy (winning hearts and minds and helping people understand and unpack their behaviors) and big “A” advocacy (coalition-building to build the power needed to advocate for policy change) to make an impact. Stories are a powerful way to teach people about how to do this because it makes social change personal. While people struggle to be accountable in a racialized society, Lacey shares tools for how to make even small changes in the quiet, intimate spaces in personal and professional spaces.

Growing up on the Racial Divide: The Loving Generation

Using clips from the short films in the viral series The Loving Generation, Lacey will share what we can learn from this generation of people with one white parent and one black parent that grew up on the “color line” after the Civil Rights Movement and before the Census allowed individuals to check more than one race. Lacey will share stores told by the series contributors - which include some of the great thinkers of our time, including Nikkole Hannah-Jones, Melissa Harris Perry, and Adam Serwer - on the complexities of what makes up our identities and experiences. The talk revolves around lessons learned from the topic of each episode: history, family, growing up and society. 

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At synagogues… and the black students’ organization…, Schwartz brings generosity to conversations most of us are too scared to have out loud.

/  VILLAGE VOICE  /

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This was a truly transformative program.  Lacey did a phenomenal job.  Her answers to participants’ questions were thoughtful and substantive. Some attendees were moved to tears. It [was] interesting, moving and useful with my staff.

/ testimonial from American association of law libraries conference/