Dr. Julia Garcia is a psychologist whose nearly two decades of field work span prevention programming, community mental health, technology development, and crisis intervention.
Dr. Julia holds a PhD in Psychology. She delivers keynote speaking engagements across the country. Her career started in drug and alcohol prevention and Title IX programming, working directly with the populations most at risk. From there she co-founded a youth mental health movement that reached 275,000 people across 60+ cities, built award-winning technology to combat social media harm for young girls, and deployed a crisis helpline across 62 countries.
Her debut book The Five Habits of Hope, published by HarperCollins, distills that field work into a framework your team can use on Monday, not just a feeling that fades on Friday.
Industries
We can't always alter external landscapes we're up against, but we can level out the internal field we're on.
AI is reshaping diagnostics, documentation, and decision-making across every industry. But the most critical variable in human outcomes has never been technological. It is human presence. The ability to sit with someone in their worst moment and hold steady.
Dr. Garcia has spent her career building the infrastructure that protects that ability. From prevention programming to crisis response, her work has always centered the same question: what happens to people when the systems around them stop asking if they are okay?
Your team will leave with: a neurological understanding of how hope functions under pressure, a practical system for rebuilding presence in high-burnout environments, and a framework they can implement without adding another program to the pile.
Live, Interactive Experience · 45-90 minutes · Students or Staff
Artificial intelligence is reshaping how we live, learn, and lead, making human-centered leadership skills more essential than ever. Dr. Julia Garcia integrates psychological insight, cultural innovation, and lived community impact to help leaders strengthen the human capacities technology cannot replicate.
Drawing from experience supporting over a million people through cultural and mental health challenges, partnering with hundreds of schools, organizations, and communities, and building award-winning tools used around the world, Dr. Garcia delivers a high-energy keynote grounded in real-world insight. She equips leaders with the mental habits that fuel clear thinking, courageous communication, and meaningful connection in a rapidly shifting landscape.
What sets this keynote apart is how it happens. In a time when AI can mimic almost anything, Dr. Garcia gives audiences what technology cannot: real activation. Through live interaction, courageous conversations, and behavioral-science-backed exercises, she interrupts the habits that cause people to hold back and helps them build the ones that move cultures forward. Participants do not just learn the habits of hope. They practice them in real time.
This keynote draws from her new book, The 5 Habits of Hope (HarperCollins), a practical, research-backed framework for strengthening the mental habits that expand human capacity and community connection. Designed for leaders at every level, from students and educators, to teams and organizations.
Learning Outcomes
Strengthen the human skills that drive clarity, collaboration, and meaningful connection.
Build cultures where trust and purpose guide the people who carry out the mission across leadership teams, classrooms, and communities.
Reduce burnout and disconnection through evidence-based mental habits that improve communication, problem-solving, and adaptability.
This keynote is for the organization willing to ask the harder question: what is our responsibility to the people on the other side of the screen?
Dr. Garcia built award-winning technology to combat social media harm for young girls before the industry admitted the problem. She trained 60 people with no prior experience to respond to crises on a live helpline. She has operated at the intersection of technology and human psychology for nearly a decade, not as a commentator but as a builder.
Your team will leave with: a timeline of technology's psychological impact that predates the current AI conversation, the Five Habits of Hope applied to product teams and organizational leadership, and a clear framework for what human variables AI acceleration puts at risk.
Behind every initiative, classroom, and deadline is a human being doing their best to hold it all together.
This isn't another PD to sit through. It's a live, interactive session that helps the people who make schools work rediscover why they show up, and how to keep going.
Dr. Julia Garcia is a Doctor of Psychology, TEDx speaker, and author of The 5 Habits of Hope (HarperCollins). Her sessions blend research, real talk, and spoken-word storytelling into powerful, emotionally intelligent experiences that meet educators with both empathy and tools.
With over two decades of experience supporting staff across hundreds of schools, Dr. Julia understands the emotional toll of care fatigue, burnout, and leadership in crisis. She offers a space to pause, reflect, and reset, without judgment or jargon.
Learning Outcomes
Learn practical tools for managing emotional pressure and burnout
Reconnect with your "why" and reflect on your lived experience
Strengthen team culture through shared reflection and authentic dialogue
Explore how emotional endurance supports leadership and care
Leave with renewed clarity, purpose, and connection
An optional book signing of The 5 Habits of Hope for continued growth
Dr. Julia Garcia started in prevention programming.
During the height of the pandemic, Dr. Julia Garcia, built and ran a crisis helpline that trained 60 people with no prior experience to respond to active crisis response across 62 countries. Your team deserves a speaker whose work did not start when the speaking industry told her it should.
Past Clients
RWJBarnabas Health, DART Coalition, Acorn Dentistry for Kids, Porter County Health Department, PA Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, FDIHB / Tsehootsooi Medical Center
Notable
Crisis helpline: 62 countries, 17 cohorts, 60+ trained responders. 5 years prevention and Title IX programming. First-ever TEDx at a women's correctional facility.
Technology & AI
By the time the AI conversation found its mainstream moment, Dr. Julia Garcia had already built the product and been inside the work for years.
An award-winning platform designed to protect teen psychology from the exploitation that a former Facebook executive would later admit was engineered on purpose. She has been inside this conversation for nearly a decade.
She is not a psychologist who comments on technology. She is a psychologist who builds technology. Every product she has built was designed to protect something technology was making easier to lose.
Past Clients
Salesforce, Typeform (documentary + summit keynote), Toyota, Verizon Go Wireless
Products Built
KYA platform (2017, recognized by Born This Way Foundation). Give a Dose (built in 4 days, Typeform documentary). MiniChats (AI cognitive practice tool, pre-launch).
Government & Public Health
Her work maps to the mandates your agency is already navigating.
Your teams spend their days building frameworks for the communities they serve. Dr. Garcia brings that same intentionality back to them. A framework they can use within existing structures. Tools grounded in nearly two decades of field work. And the rare experience of being in a room that was built for them, not by them.
Past Clients
Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors (multi-year), Loudoun County Government, Porter County Health Department, FDIHB / Tsehootsooi Medical Center, Victim Services Program of Toronto, SCOPE Health Council, City of Pembroke Pines
Associations
Your community shows up because the work matters.
They are not looking for entertainment. They are looking for something they can bring back to their practice, their team, and their Monday morning. A framework built in the field that actually transfers.
The Five Habits of Hope functions as a continuing education tool, not just a keynote experience. It maps onto professional development, client engagement, team dynamics, and organizational resilience. She delivers without performing expertise. She teaches from inside the work, not above it. That distinction is the one your members will notice in the first five minutes and remember six months later.
Past Clients
PA Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, IL Association for Behavioral Health, NCSL (National Conference of State Legislatures), DART Coalition, Education Forward Arizona, Empowering Families
Universities & Higher Education
She started speaking on campuses after losing someone to a drug overdose.
Dr. Julia Garcia did not have a framework. She had a reason. Nearly two decades later, she has spoken on 50+ campuses and still starts every keynote the same way: by making the room feel like the most important room she has ever been in.
She knows the difference between a room of 300 freshmen during orientation week and a room of 150 student leaders at a spring conference. She adjusts. She meets them where they are. And she gives them a framework they can use after the assembly ends, not just a feeling that fades by the time they get back to their dorm.
Past Clients
Johns Hopkins University, Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), University of Virginia, Penn State Behrend, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Indiana State University, Southern Oregon University, Weber State University, Salisbury University, University of South Dakota
Notable
100+ campus keynotes. First-ever TEDx at a women's correctional facility. CIA Speakers active college circuit. Author: The Five Habits of Hope (HarperCollins).
Dr. Julia Garcia's Keynote Presentations
Keynotes that don'tjust inspire.They Equip.
This is not a keynote about hope. It is a practice of it.
Dr. J delivers keynotes, workshops, and training programs at the intersection of human performance, mental health, and the AI era. The framework she brings into every room is the same one she built in the field, tested across 157 cities, 62 countries, and nearly two decades of working inside the hardest conversations.
The Five Habits of Hope is a behavioral system. Organizations leave with something they can use on Monday.
Keynotes. Workshops. Train the Trainer Programs. Leadership Intensives.
Bring hope to your community.
Book Dr. Garcia for your conference, leadership retreat, or professional development event.
Dr. Julia Garcia
