Workplace mental health speaker
Mental health resources alone don’t create a mentally healthy workplace.
David P. Otey works with organizations to create mentally healthier workplaces by changing the conversations people have about strength, struggle, connection, and asking for help.
Culture & connection
You can encourage people to use the help you provide.
But culture sends its own messages.
A mentally healthy workplace isn’t created by resources alone. It’s created when the culture makes it easier for people to connect, speak honestly, and seek help when they need it.
The keynote
What if our idea of strength is part of the problem?
Strong people handle things. They push through. They don’t burden other people with their problems.
Those are qualities we often reward in the workplace. But when strength becomes synonymous with self-reliance, asking for help can begin to feel like failure.
What if we expanded our definition of strength to include recognizing when we need help—and being willing to ask for it?
Signature keynote
Redefining Strength
The Key to a Mentally Healthier, More Productive Workplace
Through lived experience, story, research, and practical tools, David challenges audiences to reconsider what strength looks like when life gets difficult—and how everyday conversations can make it easier for people to seek and accept help.
Audience outcomes
What changes when audiences hear David’s message?
A keynote won’t change an organization’s culture overnight. But it can change what people notice, what they talk about, and what they’re willing to do differently.
After Redefining Strength, audiences leave better prepared to…
Recognize that asking for help can be an act of strength.
Resilience isn’t always about pushing through. Sometimes the stronger choice is acknowledging that something isn’t working and reaching out.
Talk about mental health.
People gain language and perspective that can help turn uncomfortable subjects into more natural human conversations.
Respond when someone else is struggling.
Employees don’t need to become counselors. They can learn to notice, listen, connect, and help someone take the next appropriate step.
The goal isn’t to turn employees into mental health experts. It’s to create more people who are willing and able to have the right conversation at the right time.
The experience
A serious message doesn’t have to be a heavy experience.
Mental health and suicide are difficult subjects. Bringing them into the workplace requires someone who can treat them with the seriousness they deserve without leaving an audience overwhelmed by them.
David brings a different perspective to this work.
His perspective is grounded in lived experience—his own and his family’s. But he is also a lifelong student of science, communication, and storytelling. He knows how to make research understandable, how to use story to create connection, and how to bring appropriate humor and humanity into a room without diminishing the subject.
The result is an experience that is candid without being clinical, personal without being uncomfortable, and hopeful without pretending that these issues are simple.
He gives audiences permission to approach a difficult subject with greater openness, empathy, and hope.
Audience feedback
What audiences say after David speaks
of 138 audience respondents rated the program valuable.
Based on post-program audience feedback. View audience feedback“I’m going to ask more questions, set boundaries for myself, and just prioritize my mental health at work.”
Mary D.
Corporate Audience Member
“He had a way of delivering this message that nobody else has done for me.”
Kathleen M.
Court Official
“Organizations should look for David to help them out. He will do a great job for you!”
Meghann P.
Meeting Planner
David has spoken for organizations including:
Colorado Judicial System
American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists
Trinity University
Association for Talent Development
Colorado School of Mines Foundation
Project Management Institute
International Institute of Business Analysis
Meetings Industry Council of Colorado
American Trucking Associations
Georgia Utilities Coordinating Council
United Suicide Survivors International
Why this work matters
This work is personal.
David spent much of his career teaching scientists, engineers, and other professionals how to communicate ideas that matter.
Then he found himself struggling to communicate something much more personal:
“I’m not okay.”
His own experience with depression—and his family’s experience with a suicide attempt—changed the way he understood strength, silence, and the importance of asking for help.
It also gave new meaning to a lesson he’d spent years teaching others: the right words matter, but connection has to come first.
Today, David brings those experiences together—not as a clinician, but as a speaker, storyteller, and fellow human being who knows firsthand how difficult it can be to say the words that need to be said.
A stronger culture starts with a conversation
Help create a workplace where asking for help is a sign of strength.
You can’t know what every employee is carrying when they come to work.
But you can help create a culture where people are more willing to speak honestly, look out for one another, and reach for support when they need it.
Change the culture, and you change which conversations become possible.
Let’s talk about how Redefining Strength can help you build a mentally healthier workplace.