Keynote Speaker · Show + Tell
Serious subjects.
Seriously funny.
Thirty years of reading rooms — every kind of room. Clinical insight. Comic timing. Real talk.
Thirty years in the business of understanding what people need to hear — and how to actually make it land.
Dr Nicola Brown is a clinical psychologist, PhD‑qualified medical educator, and award‑winning comedian. Her talks sit at the intersection of evidence, empathy, and entertainment — honest, specific, funny, and never motivational in the conventional sense.
She has delivered keynotes and workshops to
Corporate audiencesHealth professionalsEducatorsLawyersExecutivesFringe festival crowds
…and knows how to read every one of those rooms.
Talks & Workshops
Keynotes
01
Take Back Your Time
For anyone who is busy, burned out, or both.
Most of us don’t have a time problem. We have a focus problem, an energy problem, and a habit problem — and nobody told us. This talk cuts through the productivity noise to offer practical, evidence‑based strategies for working effectively without burning yourself — or the people around you — to the ground. Expect clarity on what actually helps you focus, what quietly undermines it, and how to make work a meaningful part of life rather than the whole of it.
Delivered as keynote or half‑day workshop. Nicola’s most‑requested talk.
02
Brain Fog, Lost Words, Fierce Moods — and Other Superpowers
A funny, frank, and fierce tour through the peri/menopausal mind.
Perimenopause and menopause affect half the population. Most people go through it knowing almost nothing about what’s happening to their brain, their body, or their identity — and most workplaces aren’t much better informed. This talk changes that, with warmth, humour, and enough clinical detail to actually be useful. Audiences leave better equipped to understand their own experience, and better placed to support the people around them.
Particularly popular with health, education, and corporate audiences. Suitable for mixed‑gender audiences.
03
Lightbulb Moments
Thirty years of clinical wisdom, distilled.
What do thirty years of sitting with people in their hardest moments actually teach you? This talk is the answer — a carefully curated collection of the tools, reframes, and insights that have most reliably helped Nicola’s clients get the results they came for. Practical, evidence‑based, and delivered with characteristic dry wit. Audiences often describe it as the talk they wish they’d heard twenty years earlier.
04
What Next? The Psychology of Retirement
For people approaching retirement — and the organisations that support them.
There is no shortage of advice on the financial aspects of retirement. The psychological side is another matter entirely. This talk explores the identity shifts, relationship changes, and emotional terrain that make retirement smooth for some people and surprisingly rocky for others — and offers a framework for navigating the transition with intention. Honest, evidence‑based, and occasionally very funny.
Suitable for pre‑retirement programmes, financial planning contexts, and HR teams.
05
I Wouldn’t Touch You With a Bargepole
On medical miscommunication in women’s and intimate health — and how to do better.
The title comes from something a surgeon actually said to a patient. It stuck with Nicola — because it’s not an anomaly, it’s a pattern. Drawing on her PhD in medical education and thirty years as a clinical psychologist specialising in women’s health, this talk examines why communication breaks down in intimate health contexts, what the consequences are, and what clinicians, organisations, and patients can do about it. Rigorous, frank, and delivered with enough dark humour to keep the room breathing.
Particularly relevant for health sector audiences, medical educators, and allied health teams.
Signature Format
Show + Tell
Nicola’s signature format combines a live solo performance with keynote delivery — comedy, storytelling, and clinical insight woven together into a single experience that is genuinely unlike anything else on the speaking circuit.
Show + Tell can be tailored to your event theme, audience, and duration. It works particularly well as a conference centrepiece, end‑of‑day session, or event closer — when you want something that lands emotionally as well as intellectually, and that people are still talking about in the car park.
Booking Info
Practicalities
Tell Nicola about your event and she’ll come back to you.
BasedŌtepoti Dunedin. Available nationally and internationally.NoticeTwo weeks’ notice domestic, four weeks international.TechnicalWireless lapel mic, PowerPoint A/V, projector and screen. Stool for longer sessions.FeesOn request. Varies by format & duration. Community and not‑for‑profit rates available.