KEYNOTE SPEAKER · AUTHOR · HR INSIDER
She Spent 15 Years on the Inside. Now She Shares What She Saw.
The AWARE Method™ is Theresa's leadership coaching framework for building the awareness, curiosity, and habits that create highly engaged teams, and turn leaders into people others want to follow.
Theresa Chilcoat heard that phrase after hundreds of exit interviews. A talented employee resigns, leadership is blindsided, and everyone says the same thing. But Theresa was in the room for the other side of those stories. Behind closed doors, she heard the quiet confessions employees never brought to their managers: "I don't feel seen." "No one listens when I speak up."
Over 15 years inside human resources, including senior HR leadership in healthcare, she coached and counseled thousands of employees, and she watched the same pattern play out again and again. Good employees signaled their disconnect long before they quit. The energy faded first. Then the voice went quiet. Then the effort felt invisible. Then the initiative disappeared. And by the time the resignation landed on a leader's desk, the decision had been made months earlier.
The signals were there the entire time. They just went unnoticed.
Theresa realized the problem wasn't that leaders didn't care. It was that nobody had ever trained them to see it coming. So she made that her mission.
Fifteen years inside human resources. Hundreds of exit interviews. One phrase she heard from leaders every time: "I had no idea.
Today, Theresa brings that insider's perspective to the leaders who need it most. Through her Retention Signals keynote, her Attention Is Retention workshop, and her AWARE Method™ leadership coaching, she gives leaders a practical skill most have never been taught: how to read the signals of disconnection and re-engage their best people while there is still time.
On stage, Theresa is candid, warm, and refreshingly free of finger-pointing. She doesn't lecture leaders about what they're doing wrong. She hands them the awareness to see what they've been missing, and positions them to be the leader who caught it in time.
Teaching Leaders to See It First
Credentials & Background
Theresa brings more than 15 years of human resources experience to the stage, including senior HR leadership roles in healthcare. She holds a master's degree in Strategic Human Resources from the University of Denver along with the PHR and SHRM-CP certifications, and she is the author of Surviving the Toxic Workplace: From an HR Insider. Her frameworks, from the Four Signals of Disconnection to the AWARE Method™, were built in the field: thousands of employee conversations, hundreds of exit interviews, and a front-row seat to what actually makes people stay.
15+ years inside human resources
Senior HR leadership in healthcare
PHR (Professional in Human Resources)
SHRM-CP (SHRM Certified Professional)
MS, Strategic Human Resources, University of Denver
Author, Surviving the Toxic Workplace: From an HR Insider
"Employees don't need perfect leaders.
They need attentive leaders."
Theresa Chilcoat