NSB Logo Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier, PhD, MBA Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier, PhD, MBA

Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier, PhD, MBA

Speaker Featured

Vancouver, BC, Canada

Leadership Psychologist and Workplace Mental Health Expert

Throughout her career in management and psychology, Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier has spearheaded the dialogue on the crucial issues of leadership resilience and work performance. Drawing on her extensive background in corporate, insurance, and governance, she brings an international perspective and unique expertise on leadership. She has over 20 years of experience as a leadership psychologist, executive coach, senior leader, and keynote speaker, and has been featured on the TEDx stage. Marie-Helene is a Member of the Global Clinical Practice Network of the World Health Organization, and past Director on the boards of the Canadian Psychological Association and the International Association of Applied Psychology. She has presented and authored and co-authored a number of industry and academic publications and has won numerous academic and industry awards.

Dr. Pelletier a member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, an opt-in research community of business professionals. She has also taught leadership resilience for many years at the University of British Columbia’s School of Business. She is the creator of The Resilience DNA™ Framework and her award-winning book, The Resilience Plan: A Strategic Approach to Optimizing Your Work Performance and Mental Health, was named a “Top 5 Book to Read” by Inc. Magazine and Forbes.

Keynote Speeches

The Resilience Plan: Sustaining Performance in Times of Relentless Change

In this keynote, which complements her award-winning book The Resilience Plan, Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier combines her expertise in leadership psychology, workplace mental health, and business to reframe resilience as a strategic capability rather than a personal trait. This session goes beyond recovery to focus on how leaders and professionals sustain performance, health, and judgment under continuous pressure and change.

Dr. Pelletier debunks common myths that limit effectiveness during demanding periods and introduces her evidence-based Resilience DNA™ model — a practical, systems-based way to understand how demands, values, and context interact to shape performance and mental health over time. This approach provides leaders and teams with a clear, actionable roadmap to protect performance while adapting to complexity and uncertainty.

Key takeaways:

  • Approaching resilience as an intentional leadership and performance strategy, not a reactive response
  • Designing a personalized resilience plan aligned with professional demands and values
  • Leveraging organizational, team, and personal context to sustain effectiveness during change
Human Performance and Resilience in Complex Leadership Environments

Leaders are currently navigating significant change, rising complexity, emerging technologies, and increasing pressure to perform. These demands intensify pressure on attention, judgment, communication, and decision-making.

In this keynote, Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier explores what leaders need in order to sustain high performance, sound judgment, and resilience in increasingly demanding environments. Grounded in psychology, leadership, and organizational resilience, this session provides practical, evidence-based strategies to help leaders have even more visibility on the impacts of this uncertainty and adapt effectively to support both performance and well-being across their teams and organization.

Key takeaways:

  • Understand the impacts of ongoing change, complex leadership environments and emerging technologies on resilience, adaptability, and performance.
  • Identify how to protect decision quality, focus, and critical thinking in fast-moving, high-pressure environments.
  • Identify ways to strengthen the human capabilities that remain essential alongside AI and evolving technologies, including judgment, trust, communication, and emotional intelligence.
Psychological Safety and High-Performance Teams

High-performing teams are not defined by the absence of challenge, pressure, or disagreement — they are defined by their ability to speak candidly, learn quickly, and adapt effectively in complex environments. Psychological safety is a critical condition that enables these outcomes, yet it is often misunderstood or oversimplified.

In this keynote, workplace psychologist and leadership advisor Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier draws on current research and her experience working with senior leaders and teams to clarify what psychological safety actually is — and what it is not. She positions psychological safety not as a “soft” concept, but as a strategic enabler of decision quality, execution, and resilience, particularly in periods of change and uncertainty.

Participants will:

  • Understand psychological safety as a performance and risk-management capability
  • Identify leadership behaviours and team conditions that support learning, accountability, and adaptability
  • Strengthen team resilience by embedding psychological safety into everyday
Igniting Curiosity: Driving Growth Through Creativity and Innovation

In today’s environment of rapid change, evolving technologies, and increasing complexity, organizations need more than technical expertise to stay competitive. They need people who can think creatively, adapt quickly, collaborate effectively, and remain engaged under pressure.

This keynote equips leaders and professionals with evidence-based strategies to strengthen curiosity, innovation, agility, and high performance across teams and their organization. Drawing on insights from psychology, leadership, and organizational resilience, Dr. Marie-Hélène Pelletier explores how to create a work climate where people can navigate uncertainty, generate new ideas, and sustain performance even in the most demanding environments.

Key takeaways:

  • Understand the impacts of ongoing change and emerging technologies on innovation, problem-solving, and engagement.
  • Identify how to build agility and adaptability to navigate rapid change while sustaining performance and productivity.
  • Identify ways to strengthen the human capabilities and curiosity organizations need to thrive in increasingly complex and AI-influenced environments.

Audience reviews:

  • Thank you so much for joining us last week and sharing your expertise with our workforce! We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback and your words are helping us spur discussion about the importance of investing deeply in wellness. - Senior Advisor to the Director, United States Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
  • Marie-Helene is one of those rare experts who truly grasps what it takes for us (both individually and organizations) to achieve goals that we may only dream of. As a colleague I am impressed with her speaking abilities. She inspires participants to take action that leads to results and does this with passion, knowledge, experience and joy. - Medical Doctor and President, Brigham and Associates (U.S.A)
  • We wanted an AI speaker and realized that MH is much better than what we thought we wanted - combining human-business-AI and not giving us ‘what to do’ but instead ‘how to do - we’re so excited’. - Fortune 100 Client
  • Dr. Pelletier recently kicked off our first in-person event in over two years, and we are so glad she did! Her talk on resilience and workplace mental health was so engaging for our audience and very helpful. We are looking forward to working with Dr. Pelletier again in the future. - Director, Stakeholder Engagement, Canadian Partnership for Women and Children’s Health (CanWaCH)
  • Dr. Pelletier is an excellent speaker! She gave a virtual presentation in French for our conference and she was professional and prepared from start to end. She tailored her speaking points to ensure they were relevant to our audience and her presentation was very well received. I felt she did an especially great job of captivating the audience in a virtual environment with her energy and her use of visual aids. Thank you again, Dr. Pelletier, for sharing your expertise at our event! - Manager, Corporate Partnerships and Marketing, Coaching Association of Canada
  • Her style is engaging, her energy is exhilarating, and her content relevant and research-based. I can see why MH is in high demand as a speaker, an advisor, and an educator. - Director, Digital Learning
  • We thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Pelletier's participation in our event. Her professionalism yet approachability was palpable during both the keynote sessions as well as the panel. We should not hesitate in recommending her for similar events, and or asking her back for one of our future events. - Events Coordinator
  • Dr. Pelletier presented a bilingual keynote address at the annual Symposium of the Association of Professional Executives of the Public Service of Canada (APEX) in 2015 (600 executives). To this day, I still put Dr. Pelletier's name forward when asked about compelling speakers on workplace mental health and resilience. Her session was one of the best received of the entire event. - Deputy Executive Director and General Counsel Environment Legal Services

Speaker Biography

Blending business acumen and psychological best practices to improve result

Dr. Marie-Helene Pelletier is an award-winning workplace mental health expert, psychologist, executive coach and speaker. She’s one of only a handful of work psychologists holding both a PHD and MBA.

Marie-Helene brings a signature mix of business and clinical expertise to the groups she works with. She translates psychology research (about health, resiliency, and leadership) into strategies professionals, business leaders and their teams need to thrive.

  1. Provides expertise for boosting performance. Marie-Helene shares what psychologists know but other professionals and business people may not. She has a robust understanding of the intersection between business success and strong workplace mental health. She held executive leadership roles, including at a major Fortune 500 corporation.

  2. Builds leadership and organizational resilience. Through her speaking engagements, Marie-Helene provides professionals and business leaders with concrete steps to prevent fatigue and burnout – and gain energy, even in tough times. She can help your leaders and their team members shift perspectives and regain and retain their passion.

  3. Helps your organization manage change. Marie-Helene provides business leaders and their team members with the psychological tools needed to adapt to, and embrace, transformational change. She equips them to respond quickly, make good decisions, and maintain stamina for ongoing productivity.

  4. Combines style with substance. Marie-Helene is a dynamic speaker. She has an engaging style, exhilarating energy, and a warm sense of humour. With this relatable approach, she brings the latest research and proven best practices to her talks, inspiring participants to take action and get results.

In her presentations, Dr. Pelletier draws from what clients call a “clear mastery of the subject matter.” She speaks with authority to engage and inspire participants with passion, knowledge, expertise, and joy. And she shares this expertise in many ways, from keynote speeches, to panel moderator roles, to more informal fireside chats.

Thought leadership and industry awards
Over the course of her career, she has participated on the boards of the Canadian Psychological Association and the International Association of Applied Psychology. She has also been an active member of the Global Clinical Practice Network of the World Health Organization, a role that she continues to this day.

She’s been featured in publications like Fast Company, Forbes and Thrive Global and her work has been published in academic journals such as Behaviour Research and Therapy, Journal of Anxiety Disorders, and Organizational Dynamics.

She has won numerous academic and industry awards, being described as a top industry leader with “credentials that make her uniquely suited to help guide the continued evolution of psychological health in the workplace”. Dr. Pelletier is a member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, an opt-in research community of business professionals. She has also taught leadership resilience for many years at the University of British Columbia’s School of Business. She is the creator of The Resilience DNA™ Framework and her award-winning book, The Resilience Plan: A Strategic Approach to Optimizing Your Work Performance and Mental Health, was named a “Top 5 Book to Read” by Inc. and Forbes.

She is a TEDx speaker and delivered Crossing the River: Resilience in the Age of AI, exploring the human and leadership implications of rapid technological change.