Presented by: Ashly Torian

In today’s high-pressure workplace, HR professionals are asked to lead with empathy, navigate emotional tension, and model resilience. This session introduces the Emotional Resolution (EmRes) Process—a proven method to regulate the nervous system in real time and eliminate disruptive emotional patterns at their root.

Participants will:

Whether you’re supporting teams through change, guiding conflict resolution, or advancing psychological safety, this session offers practical, transformational tools to elevate your HR leadership from the inside out.

Ashly Torian is a speaker, author, coach, and corporate wellness strategist with over 35 years of experience guiding professionals into emotional clarity and aligned leadership. With a B.S. in Adult Corporate Fitness, she holds advanced certifications in Emotional Resolution through the Emotional Health Institute and Eating Psychology from the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. Her work is rooted in neuroscience, leadership psychology, and metaphysical insight—creating a multidimensional approach to transformation.

As a certified practitioner of the Self EmRes Method, Ashly is passionate about using this innovative emotional regulation process to help leaders dissolve reactive patterns and step into clarity. She facilitates workshops, retreats, and corporate programs that empower HR professionals to embody resilience, emotional intelligence, and purpose. Her signature tools—State Mapping and Heart Song—support participants in shifting emotional static and activating vibrant leadership. Ashly’s presence is both grounded and visionary, making her a catalyst for change in every space she enters.

Hilton Garden Inn

3119 Colorado Blvd

Denton, TX 76210

Presented by: Andrea Johnson

This session explores how unresolved workplace conflict impacts morale, retention, communication, productivity, and organizational trust, while providing practical strategies leaders and HR professionals can use to address issues earlier and more effectively.

Hilton Garden Inn

3119 Colorado Blvd

Denton, TX 76210

Presented by: Justin Carroll and Stacey Hansen

Language, mindset, mental performance

An interactive 60-minute workshop where HR professionals learn to identify “soft talk”—the language pattern costing organizations $10,000+ per employee annually. Through three experiential exercises, participants experience how words like “maybe,” “just,” and “should” create workplace conflict and walk away with immediate application tools.

Justin Carroll is the co-founder of The Fortified Mindset and co-creator of The Fortified Mind Method, a systematic approach to identifying and eliminating the language patterns that create workplace conflict, miscommunication, and mental exhaustion in high-achieving professionals. With 8 years of coaching experience, Justin specializes in language pattern recognition—specifically soft talk, negations, dramatics, and projections—that undermine leadership effectiveness and team performance. His work focuses on practical, experiential tools that create immediate awareness and measurable behavior change, rather than theoretical frameworks.

Justin delivers corporate workshops on mental resilience, communication clarity, and mindset transformation for organizations seeking to reduce the time and cost associated with workplace conflict. He operates The Fortified Mind Method with his business partner Stacey Hansen, serving professional leaders and teams across the country who want tangible results, not feel-good platitudes.

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Stacey Hansen is co-founder of The Fortified Mindset and specializes in nervous system regulation and behavioral pattern interruption for high-achieving professionals managing stress, trauma, and emotional dysregulation. With more than a decade of experience as a trauma-informed yoga instructor and mindset coach, Stacey has developed a systematic approach to identifying the physiological and emotional drivers behind self-sabotaging behavior. Her methodology focuses on three core areas: nervous system awareness, emotional regulation techniques, and the connection between somatic responses and decision-making patterns.

Stacey's work is grounded in practical application rather than abstract concepts—clients learn to recognize their body's stress signals, interrupt reactive patterns, and implement regulation strategies that produce measurable changes in performance and wellbeing. She operates The Fortified Mind Method with her business partner Justin Carroll, serving leaders and teams across the country who need tactical tools for managing high-pressure environments.

North Texas SHRM Policies & Procedures

Hilton Garden Inn

3119 Colorado Blvd

Denton, TX 76210

Presented by: Jeff Lay

Conflict rarely explodes — it slowly drains the room, the team, and the culture around it. In this session, HR professionals will discover why most workplace conflict begins not with poor communication but with no communication at all. You'll gain practical frameworks for navigating conflict yourself, and tools to coach your managers through the situations they're avoiding. Practical, data-backed, and immediately applicable.

3 Learning Objectives:

1. Identify the root causes of unresolved workplace conflict including unexpressed expectations and uncommunicated needs

2. Apply a practical framework for navigating sensitive conflict situations with clarity, empathy, and legal defensibility

3. Develop coaching strategies to equip managers with the skills to address conflict before it escalates to HR

Jeff Lay is the founder of The People Curve, a boutique HR advisory and conflict resolution consulting firm based in Tyler, Texas. With more than 20 years of progressive leadership experience — including nearly two decades at Pine Cove Christian Camps, one of the largest camp and conference organizations in the United States — Jeff has built his career at the intersection of people, leadership, and organizational health.

As Vice President of Human Resources at Pine Cove, Jeff served as the senior strategic HR partner to the executive team, overseeing all people functions for an organization with more than 2,500 employees annually across multiple sites. In that role he built and led a centralized Employee Relations function, designed and implemented HR governance frameworks, led complex investigations, coached senior leaders through difficult personnel decisions, and used data to identify systemic workforce risks before they became crises. He also led a recruiting team of 50+ professionals and oversaw the full employee lifecycle across a complex, multi-site operation.

Through The People Curve, Jeff now serves multiple organizations simultaneously as a fractional HR advisor and conflict resolution specialist — partnering with executive directors, senior leaders, and HR teams to navigate the people challenges that require both expertise and trust. His clients span the nonprofit, ministry, corporate, and faith-based sectors.

Jeff holds the SHRM-SCP certification — the Society for Human Resource Management's senior-level credential — and is a Certified Conflict Resolution Specialist through Peaceful Leaders Academy. These credentials aren't just letters after his name. They reflect a genuine conviction that HR professionals have a responsibility to do this work well — with integrity, with skill, and with the kind of courage it takes to have the conversations most people are avoiding.

Jeff's speaking and teaching centers on a core belief: conflict doesn't blow up. It slowly drains the room — the team, the relationship, the culture — until one day something is gone and no one is quite sure what happened. His sessions are built to help HR professionals understand what conflict actually is, why it starts long before it surfaces, and what to do about it — both for themselves and for the managers they support.

He is known for a teaching style that balances research-backed frameworks with the kind of honest, grounded storytelling that comes from two decades of navigating real situations with real people. His sessions are practical, immediately applicable, and — importantly for anyone who's sat through a long conference day — genuinely engaging.

Jeff has presented to SHRM chapters and leadership audiences across Texas, including Rose City SHRM and Brazos Valley SHRM, and has submitted speaking proposals to HRSouthwest Conference and the Christian Camp and Conference Association National Conference. He is building a speaking practice anchored in conflict resolution, employee relations, and leadership development — topics he has lived, not just studied.

Prior to his HR leadership roles, Jeff served for nearly 15 years as a Camp Director across multiple Pine Cove properties — an experience that gave him an irreplaceable foundation in leading diverse teams, navigating complex interpersonal dynamics, managing organizational culture under pressure, and developing leaders at every level. It is also where he developed his deep conviction that the health of an organization is inseparable from the health of its people.

Jeff is a graduate of Texas A&M University and completed graduate coursework in counseling and organizational development at Denver Seminary. He is a Christ-follower, husband, and father, and is actively involved in the East Texas business and faith community.

He founded The People Curve on a simple belief: organizations don't have HR problems. They have people problems that HR has the unique opportunity — and responsibility — to help solve. That belief drives everything about how he works with clients, teaches in rooms, and shows up for the leaders who are carrying the weight of their organizations' most difficult people situations.

Jeff is based in Tyler, Texas, and available for speaking engagements, workshops, and organizational consulting nationwide. Learn more at thepeoplecurve.com.