“Lighting a Flame: A Roadmap for Inspiring and Influencing a Culture of Innovation”

In today’s best leaders, we often see a strong aptitude for visionary thinking and innovation, but how often is that capacity intentionally cultivated among the leader’s team and across the organization writ large? Who do leaders need to be and what do leaders need to do to light a flame of innovation that spreads like wildfire through the system, sparking an intrapreneurial spirit that encourages the best in everyone? In this interactive session, participants will learn mindset hacks and actionable strategies to create "permission-to-learn cultures" where everyone is an owner and “out-of-the-box thinking” is no longer tolerated but expected.

Jill Weinknecht Wardell leads the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s (UMBC) Workplace Learning, OD, and Wellness unit within the Human Resources Department. She is a proud UMBC alumna who earned her BA in interdisciplinary studies: music performance and anthropology and holds a MA from Maryland University of Integrative Health in transformative leadership and social change. 

She is a certified executive coach with the Leadership Circle, where she works to develop the capacity for conscious leadership in organizations. She is also in the process of obtaining her Polarity PACT Training with Polarity Partnerships to help facilitate innovation and creative problem solving in leveraging polarity, paradox, or chronic tensions that organizations face at all levels of the system. 

Wardell is also an avid mindfulness practitioner and teacher and weaves a wellness approach through the training and organizational development function at UMBC and beyond. In her spare time, you can find her formulating new kombucha brews, dog earing most pages of the Harvard Business Review for her next passion project, and singing and dancing wildly with her tiny humans.

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