Speaking
Speaking That Moves Leadership Forward
Practical, candid, real-world conversations for leaders and teams navigating growth, change, accountability, trust, and the people-side challenges of business.
Michelle Reines Betke brings more than 40 years of leadership and operational experience to every speaking engagement. Her presentations are grounded in real experience, practical insight, and the belief that meaningful leadership development should help people think differently, lead more intentionally, and take action.
Customized Speaking Engagements
Every keynote and speaking engagement can be customized around the audience, business challenge, leadership need, or area of focus.
The presentations below are examples of some of Michelle's most requested and popular topics — not a fixed menu.
Michelle can tailor the content, stories, examples, exercises, and emphasis to fit the organization, industry, event, audience, and desired outcome.
Flagship Keynote
From BAD to BADASS: Forging the Unstoppable Leader
Leadership is not defined by title, popularity, or personality. It is shaped by self-awareness, accountability, trust, and the choices leaders make every day.
In this candid, practical keynote, Michelle draws from more than four decades of real-world leadership experience to explore the behaviors that strengthen — or quietly undermine — a leader's impact. Audiences are challenged to recognize blind spots, course-correct unproductive patterns, and lead with greater clarity, credibility, and intention.
Audiences will leave with:
- Greater awareness of how their behavior impacts trust, performance, and team dynamics
- Practical leadership tools they can apply immediately
- A clearer understanding of the habits and choices that shape leadership credibility
- A framework for leading with greater confidence, accountability, and intention
This keynote can be tailored to leadership teams, management groups, conferences, associations, and industry audiences.
Selected Popular Speaking Topics
These are a few examples of Michelle's most requested speaking topics. Every presentation can be tailored to the audience, business challenge, leadership need, and desired outcome.
Blind Spots, Trust & Leadership Impact
Leadership impact is often shaped by the things leaders do not see in themselves. This keynote explores how blind spots, habits, communication patterns, and everyday decisions influence trust, credibility, and team performance.
Leaders will examine how trust is built, lost, and rebuilt through consistency, accountability, follow-through, and self-awareness — and what it takes to course-correct before small leadership missteps become larger organizational problems.
Expand Your Tribe: Leading Beyond Your Role, Team, or Title
Strong leaders do more than lead the people directly around them. They build connection, influence, collaboration, and belonging across teams and organizational boundaries.
This presentation explores how leaders can break down silos, strengthen relationships, expand their influence, and create greater alignment without relying solely on title or authority. Participants are challenged to think beyond their immediate role and consider how they can become a stronger connector, collaborator, and contributor across the organization.
Create the Struggle: Stretching People Beyond What They Think Is Possible
Growth rarely happens in the comfort zone. This keynote explores how leaders can create healthy, productive struggle that challenges people to think differently, build new skills, take on greater responsibility, and discover capabilities they may not yet see in themselves.
Drawing from Michelle's own leadership journey, this presentation explores how to stop prematurely disqualifying ourselves, make the vision bigger than the fear, and intentionally create the right kind of stretch for others.
Leaders will learn how to challenge people without breaking trust, create positive tension for performance, and hold individuals and teams to their greatest potential rather than their current reality.
What Michelle Brings to the Stage
Michelle's speaking style is practical, candid, engaging, and grounded in the realities leaders face every day.
- Real leadership stories and lessons learned
- Practical ideas that can be applied immediately
- Honest conversations about trust, accountability, communication, and leadership impact
- A balance of insight, humor, and challenge
- Content tailored to the organization, audience, and business environment
Speaking Formats
Michelle is available for:
Experience That Shapes the Message
Michelle's perspective is grounded in more than four decades of real-world leadership and operational experience, followed by years of advising, coaching, and developing executives and leadership teams through MDR Coaching & Consulting, Inc.
Her work spans industries, with particularly deep experience in animal health and food production, including veterinary medicine, beef, dairy, pork production, and animal-health organizations.
She is also an AAVSB Approved Instructor and has extensive experience supporting veterinary and animal-health leaders and teams.
Author
Michelle D. Reines is the author of From BAD to BADASS: Forging the Unstoppable Leader, a candid collection of leadership lessons drawn from real-world experience. The book is one part of Michelle's broader body of work and may be incorporated into selected speaking engagements when appropriate for the audience.