keynote speaking 

Rachel Morris is a global business coach and bestselling author with nearly 20 years of coaching experience working with a wide range of leading industry professionals.

Give a voice to the working parents in your organisation – book Rachel to speak at your next event, conference or team function.

Many people want to work AND have children; and workplaces want to retain talent. But both workplaces and parents are losing out as the juggle proves too hard.

Rachel combines warmth and approachability to share insights based on her decades of experience coaching working parents, so that your organisation can understand what working parents really need, is inspired to stop working parents disappearing and instead create an approach and a culture that’s a win/win for everyone.

Speaking with insight and energy about the lost population of women who suffer when home and work life collide, Rachel provides strong, focused calls-to-action on what we can all do to be part of the solution.

Keynote Topics

  • How you can best support the working parents in your organisations.

    In this talk Rachel draws on over a decade of practise and research into the experiences of new working parents.  After listening to hundreds of stories, and worked with many varied people, Rachel has gained valuable insight into the needs of individuals when they transition from being people who work, to people with children who work.

    Rachel shares with her audience the Parental Transition Coaching Model© developed to illustrate her findings, which highlights her insight about the needs people have across the three significant transition phases:

    1 – The phase before a child arrives in their lives 

    2 – The period directly after the arrival of a child

    3 – The phase when they re-enter to the workplace as a ‘working parent’

    As a coaching practitioner Rachel has observed, identified and clarified how best to support people through these phases. She’s monitored the emotions people typically bring to the coaching room, the needs that arise and importantly – she’s identified the best responses we can offer to help them find answers and solutions.

    In this talk, Rachel will share this privileged insight, alongside a series of strategies she developed in response. She will offer her audience ideas and tips on how they as employers, line managers, colleagues, friends and family members can best support the working parents around them. 

  • The urgent action needed to engage and retain female talent

    With problems in talent pipelines, the underrepresentation of women in leadership roles, attrition rates for women around childrearing age, and serious problems with the gender pay gap (resulting in significant poverty concerns for women in later life), the challenge we are facing is painful, complex and…urgent. So, face it we must.

    In this talk, Rachel shares what she understands to be the most fundamental of ways in which leaders, managers and colleagues can support their female talent at the point in which they become working mothers. To stop them from simply disappearing from sight.

    Rachel draws on over a decade of practise and research into the experiences of working mothers, sharing her views of the challenges working mothers themselves have told her they face.

    In response she shares strategies with her audience to help them to support the working mothers in their places of work. And Rachel calls on everyone to take responsibility for tackling the challenges head on.

    She offers ideas for macro level solutions – from influences on legislation through to a range of business initiatives. And also raises a call to action for each and every listener to take their own personal responsibility for also being part of the solution. 

    By the end of this talk, everyone will be clear about something they can do to positive create change.

what rachel will bring

Rachel listens for a living. She’s listened deeply to professionals in our workplaces for over two decades. And through listening in a confidential profession, she has gained incredible, privileged insight into the needs of people at work.

Rachel knows that people want to be seen and heard. And through this powerful insight is gained.

She’s learned how best to respond to those human needs and knows arming and educating others with this information is part of creating positive systemic workplace change.  Rachel aims to generously share her insight with those it might help through all aspects of her work.

As a speaker Rachel combines warmth and approachability with strong, clear and focussed calls to action, which are all driven by her desire to create positive impact in her area of expertise.

About rachel

Rachel began her career specialising in working with business leaders and today still practises as an Executive Coach.

She is the co-founder of Motion Learning, a professional global coaching company established in 2004 which focusses on supporting executive and business leaders in the workplace and also the working parents in their ranks.

Rachel is the founding partner of Coach Community, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to supporting communities by making coaching accessible to individuals who may not otherwise access it, and to developing coaches through building their confidence, expertise and professional standing.

Over the last 10 years, through her professional practise, Rachel has keenly observed the challenges faced by employees in the parental transition and developed tried and tested strategies to enable businesses to really support the working parents in their ranks. So that they can be great at work, and at home.

Rachel is a passionate advocate for all working parents, and particularly for working mothers whose careers can seem to change beyond recognition when they have children in their lives too. As a working mother herself, Rachel knows firsthand that workplaces want to retain talent, and that many people want to work AND have children. But too often workplaces and parents lose out as the juggle proves too hard.

Rachel is committed to empowering this ‘lost population’ – people who have spent years focussing on their profession before having a family and who still want a career after having one – through all aspects of her work.

Rachel is the bestselling author of ‘Working Mother: Simple coaching strategies for success at work and at home’

Contact Rachel: rachel@workingmotherbook.com