Calendar of Events

Amy Graham is the Director of Organizational Culture and HR Strategy within the Service New Brunswick People and Culture Team. With a BA in History and French Literature combined with a Masters in Political Science, Amy is an accidental HR professional with just under 15 years in the field. Amy oversees 3 main buckets of responsibility at SNB, an organization of over 2500 employees: Strategic Talent Acquisition, Organizational Culture, and HR Systems & Data. Her work has allowed her to deep dive into topics such as Psychological Safety in order to provide guidance and advice to her Executive Management Team on the overall approach the organization should take when it comes to building a positive and healthy culture. Located in Rothesay New Brunswick, Amy is a certified Barre Instructor and aspiring Pilates instructor. She spends her free time curating playlists for her studio classes, humming along to Taylor Swift, watching F1 racing, travelling and spending time with her husband and two young daughters.

Originally coined by Harvard researcher Dr. Amy Edmondson in the late 90’s, Psychological Safety is the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes. At the team level, it refers to team members believing that they can take risks and express themselves without fear of shaming or other repercussions from the rest of the group. Research has shown conclusively that psychologically safe teams are more innovative, productive and successful. In this session, we will further define “psychological safety”, chat about its origins and explore ways HR and leadership teams can apply these concepts in order to create an organizational culture that is motivating, inclusive and highly effective.