Speaking

Keynotes and workshops on Human-Centered Leadership and grief science.

Three topics, each offered as a 45 to 60 minute keynote or a half day or full day workshop, in person or virtual.

Book Dr. Carter

Speaking calendar

Where I am speaking.

Join me in person or online. Each session brings current grief research into language your people can use the same day.

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October22Thursday

Conference session

The Client Who Never Cries: Instrumental Grief and the Mourners We Misread

She planned the service, went back to work in a week, rebuilt the deck her husband never finished, and has not cried once. Is she avoiding her grief, or grieving exactly the way she grieves? This session explores Doka and Martin’s continuum of intuitive and instrumental grief, recognizing that grief can be expressed through emotion, thinking, planning, and doing. These patterns are not determined by gender and can shift across time and circumstances. Through research, case vignettes, and interactive practice, participants will examine how cultural, family, and gender expectations influence clinical interpretations of grief. Clinicians will learn to distinguish adaptive instrumental grieving from avoidance, recognize concerns that warrant further assessment, and select expressive, cognitive, and action based interventions that fit each client. Participants will leave with practical language and approaches that help mourners feel understood, including those whose grief is expressed through what they do.

Event
SCCMHCA 2026 Annual Conference, The Heart of Healing
Where
Columbia, SC
When
1:00 to 2:00 PM Eastern
Register here Registration is on the SCCMHCA website.
A path through a sunlit meadow
October30Friday

Keynote · Women in Facilities

Leveraging Life Experience for Professional Excellence

Your life has been preparing you to lead. The standing advice is to keep your personal life out of your professional one. That advice is expensive, and most expensive for women, because it asks them to leave their largest source of capability at the door. In this keynote, Dr. Wesley Carter makes the case for bringing it with you, with discernment. The caregiving, the setbacks, the losses, and the lessons of a whole life hold real capability, and critical thinking is how you identify which of those experiences will make you a stronger leader and a better performer. She shows how to choose them and put them to work through five leadership principles grounded in Human Centered Leadership.

Event
SRAPPA 2026 Regional Conference (Southeastern Region of APPA)
Where
Concord, NC
When
10:00 AM Eastern
Register here Registration is on the APPA website.
A lavender field at golden hour
November13Friday

Clinician training · With Judith Johnson-Hostler

Should You Recommend That Grief App? A Clinician’s Rubric for Evaluating Digital Grief Tools

Your client is already talking to a grief support app at two in the morning. At your next session, she asks, “Should I keep using it?” What would you need to know before answering? This interactive session puts digital grief tools under clinical scrutiny. Using a research grounded rubric developed by Dr. Wesley Carter and Judith Johnson-Hostler, clinicians will identify four red lines that warrant withholding a recommendation and evaluate thirteen domains, including crisis safeguarding, clinical grounding, privacy, cultural responsiveness, and support across different losses. Participants will score a tool together, weigh the findings, and practice making a recommendation. Leave with a reusable rubric for evaluating grief support apps, a practical evaluation workflow, and language for discussing benefits, limitations, and uncertainties with clients while keeping clinical judgment at the center.

Event
SCCMHCA training: the Rubric for Evaluating Grief Support Apps
Where
Online, on Zoom
When
12:00 to 1:30 PM Eastern
Register here Registration is on the SCCMHCA website.
October10 & 11Attended

Recently attended

LCCNC 2026 Annual Conference

Licensed Clinical Counselors of North Carolina, Charlotte, NC. Dr. Wesley Carter attended as a member and as Founder & CEO of Westercove™.

View the conference
The topics

What your audience will leave with.

Topic 01

Human-Centered Leadership in the Age of AI

  • A clear filter for where AI serves and where people lead
  • The ABCD Framework™ for using AI with intention
  • A 30-day plan your team can start the next morning

Who books it: Leadership meetings, associations, technology and HR conferences, universities

Topic 02

Leading Through Loss

  • What grief science reveals about how grief arrives at work, and why it keeps no timetable
  • What managers can say and do in the first week and the months after
  • How organizations support people well beyond bereavement leave

Who books it: HR and benefits leaders, SHRM chapters, hospice and healthcare leadership, employee assistance teams

Topic 03

Leading with Intention at Home and Work

  • Practical tools from AI Powered Leadership for Modern Families
  • Ways to use technology that draw people closer
  • Conversation starters for families and teams

Who books it: Parent and school groups, faith communities, libraries, educator conferences

Talk titles

Signature talks.

Leveraging Life Experience for Professional Excellence

Your life has been preparing you to lead. A story talk on how personal experience, used on purpose, becomes one of the strongest sources of performance excellence a leader has, built on the five principles of leadership from AI Powered Leadership for Modern Families.

  • Name one capability your personal life has built, and how you already use it at work
  • Apply the five principles of leadership to a real workplace challenge
  • Leave with one concrete way to support a grieving colleague after the first month

Featured at: SRAPPA 2026, Women in Facilities, October 30, 2026

Should You Recommend That Grief App? A Clinician’s Rubric for Evaluating Digital Grief Tools

A session for counselors on how to decide whether a digital grief tool is right to recommend to a client, presented with Judith Johnson-Hostler, LCMHCS, LCAS, NCC, CSI, founder of Journey to Higher Consulting Services, PLLC.

  • Distinguish grief support from general chat and bereavement task tools
  • Connect observable product behavior with established grief frameworks
  • Document fit, limits, consent, and a review plan for a specific client

Featured at: South Carolina Clinical Mental Health Counselors Association, November 13, 2026

Human Centered Leadership, Purpose Served by AI: Leading in the Age of AI

A framework for human-centered AI leadership, with a decision filter and a 30-day plan.

Your Best Self, With a Running Start

Using AI to communicate, decide, and grow with intention.

Leading Your Family on Purpose in the Age of AI

Warm, practical tools that draw families closer.

Leading Through Loss: What Grief Asks of Leaders

For managers and HR: how grief shows up at work, and how to lead people through it with compassion.

Faith, Ethics, and AI: Staying Human on Purpose

For faith and values-driven communities.

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