Fotini Iconomopoulos
Leadership & Communication Expert | Bestselling Author | Global Gurus Top 15 Negotiation Expert
Verena Rizg
Award-Winning Clinician | Author | Systems Strategist | Creator of The Cost of Capable™ | Expert on High Performance and Human Capacity
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About This Speaker
Verena Rizg is a practicing clinician, author of The Cost of Capable™, and keynote speaker. Across sixteen years in occupational medicine, acute care, federal corrections, and migrant health, she saw the same pattern: the chart said functioning while the body said otherwise.
She stayed curious about the gap. Later, she recognized the same pattern in her own life: praise for the very thing that was costing her.
The daughter of Coptic Sudanese-Egyptian migrants, Verena grew up translating between cultures and languages. Today, she translates between leaders, sectors, and systems.
Her thesis: high performance often looks like ambition, but for many it is survival. Ambition can rest; survival struggles to. The two look identical from outside. The cost is not.
The Cost of Capable™ gives people, from frontline staff to CEOs, language for what they are carrying. It teaches leaders and caregivers to get curious before performance is mistaken for wellness.
Verena led the first BIPOC-focused clinic in Canadian Armed Forces history, earning the 2024 DM/CDS Excellence in Defence Award. She has trained hundreds of clinicians nationally and appeared on the Psychiatric Times podcast.
A spoken-word poet of twenty years, Verena brings clinical precision and a poet’s command of language to the stage.
Audiences leave with language they didn’t have before: a way to see who they’re about to lose, and the ability to intervene before it’s too late.
Speaker Fee: $15,000 - $20,000
Contact an agent to get Verena's availability and ratesSpeaking Topics: Verena Rizg
The Cost of Capable™ 
The people organizations rely on most are often the ones they are least equipped to see. They perform exceptionally, absorb more than anyone realizes, and receive praise for the very behaviours that are costing them. The cost often appears in the body while the work still looks fine: disrupted sleep, rising blood pressure, chronic pain. Drawing on sixteen years of clinical practice and thousands of patient encounters, Verena introduces contingent belonging: the belief that safety, worth, and acceptance must be earned through performance, productivity, silence, or self-abandonment. She reveals the personal cost of survival-driven performance, why it stays hidden behind exceptional work, and how leaders can build capacity around the people carrying the most.
Learning outcomes
• Distinguish high performance driven by ambition from high performance driven by survival, and understand why the two look identical from the outside
• Recognize behavioural patterns that signal unsustainable strain even when performance remains high
Identify where workload, support, and shared responsibility must change to build capacity around the people carrying the most
• Use curiosity to open more useful conversations with people carrying disproportionate responsibility
Learning outcomes
• Distinguish high performance driven by ambition from high performance driven by survival, and understand why the two look identical from the outside
• Recognize behavioural patterns that signal unsustainable strain even when performance remains high
Identify where workload, support, and shared responsibility must change to build capacity around the people carrying the most
• Use curiosity to open more useful conversations with people carrying disproportionate responsibility
Hold the Conversation: The Psychology of Conflict and Repair
It's fine. Every leader has heard it, and every leader has said it. Most organizations have learned to avoid conflict. Avoided conflict, like a symptom no one investigates, does not disappear because no one names it. Repair begins with seeing what has been injured.
As a clinician, Verena has spent sixteen years seeing how unresolved tension shows up in bodies, relationships, and teams. She draws on the psychology of repair to show why silence is never neutral, why empathy without accountability leaves people seen but unchanged, and how leaders can raise what needs raising, hold the conversation through discomfort, and repair trust while people are still willing to return to the conversation.
Learning outcomes
• Recognize the patterns through which unresolved tension becomes distrust, disengagement, and departure
• Understand why empathy without accountability leaves people seen but unchanged
• Apply the Raise, Hold, Repair approach to difficult conversations
• Prepare to begin a conversation they have been avoiding, using language grounded in care and accountability
As a clinician, Verena has spent sixteen years seeing how unresolved tension shows up in bodies, relationships, and teams. She draws on the psychology of repair to show why silence is never neutral, why empathy without accountability leaves people seen but unchanged, and how leaders can raise what needs raising, hold the conversation through discomfort, and repair trust while people are still willing to return to the conversation.
Learning outcomes
• Recognize the patterns through which unresolved tension becomes distrust, disengagement, and departure
• Understand why empathy without accountability leaves people seen but unchanged
• Apply the Raise, Hold, Repair approach to difficult conversations
• Prepare to begin a conversation they have been avoiding, using language grounded in care and accountability
For the Asking: The Conviction to Build What Does Not Yet Exist
Some people learn early in life to acquire what they need without asking for it. For them, asking can mean becoming a burden, and that feels like a risk they cannot afford. Verena draws from the experience of taking first-of-their-kind initiatives from idea to pilot to formalized program inside complex institutions. Often the youngest person in the room and one of the few women of colour, she built the internal support required to make the work permanent. For the Asking examines the conviction required to name what is missing, gather the data, make a consequential ask, and move an institution toward something it has never done.
Learning outcomes
• Recognize how extreme self-reliance can limit help-seeking, collaboration, and innovation
• Identify the personal and institutional conditions that make asking feel costly
• Understand how data, internal support, and a well-designed pilot build institutional capacity for first-of-its-kind change
• Formulate one consequential ask that could move an idea, opportunity, or necessary change forward
Learning outcomes
• Recognize how extreme self-reliance can limit help-seeking, collaboration, and innovation
• Identify the personal and institutional conditions that make asking feel costly
• Understand how data, internal support, and a well-designed pilot build institutional capacity for first-of-its-kind change
• Formulate one consequential ask that could move an idea, opportunity, or necessary change forward
Rain Check: Cultivating Joy in a Life That Is Already Full
I'll rest when this is done. I'll see them when things settle. I'll take care of it after. A rain check can feel responsible in the moment. Repeated often enough, it becomes a life organized around later. Work expands; later keeps moving. Verena examines how chronic deferral affects health, relationships, and our capacity for joy. She shows audiences how to identify what has been waiting, cultivate joy within the lives they are already living, and protect what matters with the same seriousness they bring to work.
Learning outcomes
• Recognize chronic deferral and its cumulative effects on health, relationships, and joy
• Assess when repeated delay has become a default way of living or leading
• Identify sources of joy, connection, and meaning that have been repeatedly postponed
• Establish a practice for cultivating joy alongside professional commitments
Learning outcomes
• Recognize chronic deferral and its cumulative effects on health, relationships, and joy
• Assess when repeated delay has become a default way of living or leading
• Identify sources of joy, connection, and meaning that have been repeatedly postponed
• Establish a practice for cultivating joy alongside professional commitments
How We Miss Each Other: The Art of Noticing What Holds Us Together
Connection is built in what we notice. A change in someone's voice. The effort behind the outcome. The ordinary moment that will not happen again in quite the same way. Pace, familiarity, and assumption make these moments easy to miss. When these moments pass unseen, distance grows in our teams, our closest relationships, and our relationship with ourselves. Verena treats noticing as a relational practice and a form of care. She shows how intentional attention deepens trust, belonging, and connection at work, at home, and within ourselves.
Learning outcomes
• Recognize how small moments of attention and inattention shape trust, closeness, and belonging over time
• Understand how pace, familiarity, and assumption make consequential moments easier to miss
• Notice bids for connection, changes in behaviour, and contributions that might otherwise pass unseen
• Apply intentional practices that strengthen connection with colleagues, loved ones, and themselves
Learning outcomes
• Recognize how small moments of attention and inattention shape trust, closeness, and belonging over time
• Understand how pace, familiarity, and assumption make consequential moments easier to miss
• Notice bids for connection, changes in behaviour, and contributions that might otherwise pass unseen
• Apply intentional practices that strengthen connection with colleagues, loved ones, and themselves
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