Session Description - Regina Brett

THE INSIDE JOB: MANAGING THE MOST IMPORTANT EMPLOYEE: YOU!

This session will highlight how to find and use your inner strengths to empower you to create a greater workplace for yourself and for those around you.

Learning objectives: Attendees will leave with tips on how to …
1. Identify and clarify a sense of mission. Create a mission statement that advances both the company’s agenda and yours.

2. Create a vision for optimizing each individual's productivity. Tips on how to make each team member essential to the company and co-workers by focusing on the value that each person can add to the workplace.

3. Design a plan of action to create a greater workplace for everyone. Tips on promoting a positive work culture by maintaining a positive attitude and engaging in productive actions. How to celebrate, reward and strengthen every professional and personal relationship at work.

Regina Brett - Bio

Regina Brett is the senior metro columnist at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio.  The PD is the largest newspaper in Ohio and one of the top 20 newspapers in the U.S.  Her columns are tucked in wallets, pressed in Bibles and stuck under refrigerator magnets all over Ohio. They are also forwarded all over the country by email.

Regina was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary in both 2008 and 2009.  In making their final awards and decisions this year, the Pulitzer jurists said this about Regina: “For her range of compelling columns that move the heart, challenge authority and often trigger action while giving readers deeper insight into life’s challenges.” 

Regina was recently named Best Columnist in Ohio by the Ohio Associated Press.  She also won two two first place National Headliner Awards, one for columns about her experience with breast cancer; the other detailing her family history (“The Inheritance”) with the same subject.  She is also the recipient of a 2nd place Headliner Award for a series of stories about the "Hicks Babies," a national story about people who were sold as babies in a black market operation at the Hicks Clinic in Georgia to adoptive parents in Ohio the late 1950's.  After Regina broke the story, it ran in newspapers across the country, prompting calls from 60 Minutes, Dateline NBC, the BBC and scores of other media outlets.

Regina won the prestigious Batten Medal in 1999, awarded by Knight-Ridder for lifetime achievement.  The award is given to those who embody understanding, fairness, courage and a deep concern for the underdog.  In addition, Regina was a finalist for another Batten Medal in 2009, again for her body of work, including columns on open discovery and Cleveland police officer Jim Simone and her series on passing the breast cancer gene on to her daughter.

It was recently announced that The American Bar Association will award Regina the organization's Silver Gavel award for her columns on open discovery.  This particular award is given to media professionals who help foster the public's understanding of the law and legal system.  The award to Regina was based numerous columns about how the restriction of open discovery rules, where prosecutors share police reports and records with defense attorneys, affected criminal cases in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.

Regina also hosts her own radio program on Cleveland’s local NPR affiliate, WCPN-FM 90.3. The hour-long show airs every Friday at 9:05 a.m.

Regina is a past president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.  Many of her columns can be found at www.cleveland.com/brett.