Breakout Presentation
Presentation Details
"Culture Keepers in the Collapse"
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We are living through a convergence of political, technological, and institutional change that is reshaping how organizations operate. The people feeling it most are culture keepers: HR leaders, communicators, brand builders, educators, and creators who have been tasked with holding culture together while discovering that the old playbook no longer applies.
In this session, Bryetta Calloway explores what's happening beneath the headlines, why traditional expertise is no longer enough, how power is shifting inside today's institutions, and what it takes to lead through uncertainty. Drawing on two decades of executive leadership across higher education, healthcare, and nonprofits, she combines research on narrative authority and institutional trust with practical strategies attendees can apply immediately.
This session is for the people committed to building stronger workplace cultures, even as the ground beneath them continues to shift.
Participants will leave ready to:
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Recognize and describe the forces reshaping today's workplace and why traditional leadership playbooks are falling short.
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Understand how power and influence are shifting inside organizations and adapt their leadership approach accordingly.
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Apply practical strategies to strengthen culture, build trust, and lead effectively through uncertainty.
Speaker Bio:
Bryetta Calloway is the founder of Stories Seen, where she researches and writes on visibility, narrative, and the collapse of institutional authority; work that powers her emerging framework, Culture Keepers in the Collapse, on who holds culture together when traditional systems no longer can. She brings a research-first lens to every talk, grounded in original studies like her work on barriers facing Black women in corporate America, featured on Bloomberg's Black Business Beat, and her paper "Storytelling as the Bridge Between Trust and Visibility," published in Intersections: The Education Journal of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center at Emory, which introduces her "trusted visibility" framework. Her career spans tech startups, academia, and mission-driven organizations, including her role as VP of Marketing at Relay Graduate School of Education, as well as prior leadership at WeWork x Flatiron School, ThriveDX, LifeLabs Learning, and MassChallenge. A three-time CultureCon speaker also known for stages like INBOUND, SXSW, and SHRM, she remains a catalyst for inclusive growth as a speaker, mentor, researcher, and creative force for the experiences of humans in our modern workspaces.
