What do you do when everyone in the room believes they are right? We push harder. Or we smooth the edges and rush everyone back to comfort. Drawing on more than two decades inside difficult rooms with governments, Indigenous Nations and communities, Somia takes audiences inside the anatomy of a brave conversation. Sometimes leadership isn’t about putting out the fire. It’s about letting the room burn long enough to see what can grow.

Say the wrong thing. Use the wrong word. Get called out. When we’re afraid, we fight, flee, freeze or fawn. Or we smile politely and hope someone changes the subject. In this highly interactive keynote, Somia doesn’t start with what people should already know. She starts with something we all understand: fear. It isn’t about getting the language right. It’s about becoming a little less afraid of getting it wrong.

Stories can connect us. They can also keep us apart. Somia is a peacebuilder and award-winning novelist raised within Punjabi and Kashmiri oral storytelling traditions. In this keynote she invites audiences to explore the stories we carry about ourselves and one another. Collective repair doesn’t begin by agreeing on a single story. It begins when we make room for more than one.