[In Development] 2026 Fall NOW Encore Series Workshops

Next Opportunity at Work 2026: Explore Your Potential, Empower Our Future - Encore Series

All s taff career development workshops and career coaching sessions for UC Berkeley staff are held remotely, unless specified otherwise. Registrants will be sent a link to participate online.

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) to fully participate in any Grow Your Career staff programs or services, please contact People & Culture (grow@berkeley.edu) with as much advance notice as possible, and preferably at least 7 days in advance of a program or service offering.

2026 Fall NOW Encore Series Workshops

Building on the success of the NOW Conference, we have curated a series of post-conference career development workshops designed to ignite your potential. Presented by a diverse range of internal and external subject matter experts, these workshops are tailored to foster deeper engagement and offer a more intimate learning environment for UC Berkeley staff.

This series helps UC Berkeley staff develop clarity and action plans to connect their interests and abilities with career opportunities. All offerings will be held virtually via Zoom. As the virtual workshop date approaches, registrants will receive a bCal invite and Zoom link.

To register, click on workshop titles below or log in to the UC Learning Center and search by title.

Empowered by AI: Create a More Breathable, Sustainable Workday (BECAR 705)

Tuesday, 9/8/2026, 10:00 am - 11:30 am

Presenter: Helanah Warren (she/her), Executive Coach & AI Business Strategist

Higher education staff are navigating unprecedented workload pressures: increasing demands, shrinking resources, and the nonstop expectation to do more with less. Meanwhile, AI has entered the workplace—but most employees are unsure how to use it effectively, ethically, or in ways that genuinely reduce overwhelm rather than add to it.

This session reframes AI through a human-centered, wellness-first lens. Instead of treating AI as a productivity mandate, participants will learn how to use AI as a tool for clarity, boundaries, and sustainable success.

Using Helanah Warren’s “Breathable Workday Framework,” this interactive workshop demonstrates how AI can help UC staff reclaim time, reduce cognitive load, and create more space for the work that matters—without burnout, tech fatigue, or over-automation.

Learning Outcomes:

--How to use AI to streamline tasks like email, communication, planning, and documentation.

--Scripts, prompts, and workflows that turn overwhelm into clarity.

--Micro-boundaries that prevent AI from becoming “one more thing.”

--A 3-step model for integrating AI ethically and sustainably.

--Somatic and mindset strategies to stay grounded during tech-driven change.

Registrants will be sent a Zoom link and bCal invite as the virtual workshop date draws near.

Charting Your Path in a Changing World: Using Creativity & Innovation to Shape What’s Next (BECAR 703)

Wednesday, 9/16/2026, 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm

Presenter: Tricia Garwood (they/them), Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Bright Bridge Strategies

In a time of ongoing change across higher education and public service, the ability to anticipate, adapt, and move forward with intention has become essential. This highly engaging 75-minute virtual session invites UC Berkeley staff to explore how their creative and innovative capacities can help them chart a meaningful, resilient path - regardless of role, function, or career stage.

Participants will explore how to shift from prediction to anticipation, using future-forward thinking to expand possibilities while remaining grounded in UC’s mission. The session emphasizes change agility in practice: recognizing signals that it may be time to pivot, letting go of perfection in favor of progress, and using learning, not failure, as feedback. Through real-world examples, guided reflection, and practical application, participants will identify small, intentional actions that build readiness and momentum, even amid uncertainty.

Learning Outcomes:

--Differentiate between prediction and anticipation and use anticipation as a practical, future-forward approach for navigating complexity and uncertainty in their work.

--Recognize signals that indicate when to adapt or pivot, reframing change and learning as sources of insight that strengthen change agility rather than as disruption or failure.

--Apply creative and innovative thinking to take one meaningful next action, making progress without waiting for perfect conditions while remaining aligned with UC’s mission.

Registrants will be sent a Zoom link and bCal invite as the virtual workshop date draws near.

Architecting Human Power in the Age of AI (BECAR 702)

Friday, 9/25/2026, 11:30 am - 1:00 pm

Presenter: Sarah Peterson (she/her), CEO & Founder of Elevate She.

In a workplace increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, many professional development sessions focus on what tools to learn next. This session takes a different approach. It focuses on who you are becoming—and how intentionally aligning your strengths, passions, and lived experience is the most powerful way to remain relevant, impactful, and fulfilled in an AI-enabled world.

This is not an AI skills workshop. Instead, it helps participants re-engineer how they show up at work by clarifying and leveraging their innate human advantage. When individuals are aligned with what energizes them, how they contribute best, and what they value most, productivity and impact increase naturally—because the work fits the person, not the other way around.

Led by Executive Coach and former Fortune 500 Marketing Leader Sarah Peterson, this interactive 90-minute session blends storytelling, reflection, and practical application. Sarah shares her personal journey from high-achieving executive to burnout and realignment—sparked by a sudden family health crisis that reshaped her understanding of success, sustainability, and purpose. That experience led to the creation of her Leadership DNA Pyramid, a framework inspired by brand strategy used to build iconic brands and adapted for individuals navigating change and complexity.

Learning Outcomes:

--Participants will clarify their unique human strengths as a competitive advantage in an AI-enabled workplace.

--Learn a practical framework to intentionally align how you work with who you are.

--Leave with a personalized Leadership DNA Pyramid and clear next steps for immediate application.

Registrants will be sent a Zoom link and bCal invite as this virtual workshop date draws near.

Decision Making with AI: Think Better, Choose Smarter (BECAR 704)

Tuesday, 10/6/2026, 10:00 am - 11:30 am

Presenters: Daria Rudnik (she/her), Team Architect & Executive Leadership Coach, Daria Rudnik Coaching & Consulting

We are rapidly heading into an AI-driven future. At first, we feared it might cost us jobs, but now we see the bigger risk: it could cost us our judgment. When we outsource our thinking to fast answers, we lose the ability to ask better questions.

To be ready for this future — to truly empower it — we must strengthen our uniquely human potential: clarity, critical thinking, and decision-making. That’s what this workshop is about.

In this interactive, hands-on session, participants will learn how to frame better decisions — before they ever open a chatbot. Using a practical tool called the Decision Framing Canvas, they’ll work through a real business case and discover how to define decisions as real, actionable choices (not just goals or problems). At every step, participants will collaborate with AI — not to skip the thinking, but to deepen it. They’ll use AI to challenge assumptions, expand options, and uncover what might be missing.

This workshop helps participants take back control of their thinking in an AI-saturated world. It’s not about better prompts — it’s about better minds.

Participants will walk away with a repeatable method to make smarter, clearer decisions in their daily work — and a deeper understanding of how to use AI not just as a tool, but as a thinking partner.

No technical background required. Just bring your brain, your curiosity, and your favorite LLM (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc).

Learning Outcomes:

--Use the Decision Framing Canvas to define complex decisions as actionable choices between real options clearly.

--Collaborate with AI to challenge assumptions, uncover blind spots, and expand decision options before jumping to solutions, and

--Learn key principles for working effectively with AI as a thinking partner — and apply them immediately to real decision-making scenarios.

Registrants will be sent a Zoom link and bCal invite as this virtual workshop date draws near.

Leading When Energy Is Low: Self-Leadership Tools for Change, Stress, and Uncertainty (BECAR 707)

Thursday, 10/15/2026, 11:30 am - 1 pm

Presenter: Mirna Mejia, Ph.D, ACC (she/her), Associate Certified Coach, Your True Canvas Executive & Life Coaching

Periods of change, constraint, and constant adaptation place invisible demands on all of us—especially those in leadership and informal leadership roles. When energy is depleted, even highly capable professionals can find themselves reacting rather than leading, withdrawing rather than collaborating, or questioning their effectiveness.

This session introduces an energy-based self-leadership framework that helps participants understand how they show up under pressure—and how that impacts decision-making, communication, and change readiness. Rather than focusing on fixing people or increasing output, we’ll explore how energy and mindset shape leadership behavior in real time.

Participants will examine common stress-response patterns that emerge during high workload, uncertainty, or organizational change, and learn how to interrupt unhelpful cycles before they cascade into burnout, disengagement, or conflict. Through reflection, live polling, and applied examples from higher education and healthcare environments, attendees will gain practical tools to lead themselves more consciously—even when circumstances are not ideal.

This session is especially relevant for supervisors, managers, and staff who influence others without formal authority. The emphasis is on self-leadership as a prerequisite for sustainable leadership: cultivating awareness, flexibility, and agency so individuals can respond to change with clarity rather than depletion.

Participants will leave with actionable strategies to stabilize energy, improve communication under stress, and lead with intention during times of ongoing change.

Learning Outcomes:

--Recognize how stress and burnout influence leadership behaviors and communication

--Identify their default energy patterns during pressure and change

--Apply at least one self-leadership strategy to respond more intentionally in challenging situations

Registrants will be sent a Zoom link and bCal invite as the virtual workshop date draws near.

Finding Your Northern Star: Designing Work That Aligns with Who You Are

Tuesday, 10/27/2026, 11:30 am - 1 pm

Presenter: Marina Zdobnova (she/her), Sustainability Data and Program Manager/ Leading Enterprise Sustainability Strategy, UC Berkeley Facilities Services.

Many professionals reach a point where their role no longer feels fully aligned with who they are, what they value, or how they want to contribute. This sense of being “stuck” can lead to disengagement, uncertainty, or the feeling that one’s potential is underutilized — even in meaningful work. This interactive workshop offers participants space to pause, reflect, and reconnect with a clearer sense of direction.

Using the concept of a personal Northern Star, participants will explore how their talents, aspirations, and the causes they care about can be integrated into a guiding framework for career decisions. Rather than assuming that fulfillment requires an immediate job change, the session expands the conversation to include multiple pathways for alignment: reshaping aspects of a current role, integrating meaningful work through projects or hobbies, or intentionally preparing for a future transition.

Through a guided Northern Star exercise and a priority-mapping activity, participants will identify what matters most to them at this stage of their career, recognize areas of alignment and misalignment, and clarify where they want to invest their time and energy. The emphasis is on practical reflection that leads to actionable insight.

Learning Outcomes:

--Articulate the key elements of your personal Northern Star that bring clarity to your professional direction.

--Assess alignment across different areas of your work and life to identify realistic opportunities for change without requiring an immediate job move.

--Apply a simple prioritization approach to determine next steps that support both personal fulfillment and professional sustainability.

Registrants will be sent a Zoom link and bCal invite as the virtual workshop date draws near.

Aliveness, Agency, Affect: A Framework for Meaningful Impact at Work and Beyond

Tuesday, 11/10/2026, 11:30 am - 1 pm

Presenter: Hailey Holl-Valdez (she/her), Scheduler, UC Berkeley Dept. of City & Regional Planning & Career Coaching Staff Fellow w/People & Culture.

This workshop offers a framework for centering the felt-sense impact you want to have in your work & life. It aims to help participants identify what you care about & the impact you want to have (affect), reflect on what nourishes you & challenges around this (aliveness), and connect to your resources & sense of empowerment (agency), while understanding how aliveness & agency relate to what they care about (circling back to affect).

The workshop will be divided into 3 main sections (each 10-15 minutes) where we will introduce concepts, offer experiential practices (e.g. a visual meditation, practicing “resourcing ourselves”, recalling a time when participants experienced agency), and create space for reflective writing & sharing as a group.

Learning Outcomes:

--Clarify the impact you want to have at work and/or in life (Affect)

--Identify how to support your vitality (Aliveness) & ability to take action (Agency)

--Create a small action plan to prepare you for having meaningful impact (Integration)

Registrants will be sent a Zoom link and bCal invite as the virtual workshop date draws near.

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[In Development] 2026 Fall NOW Encore Series Workshops

2026 Fall NOW Encore Series Workshops

Empowered by AI: Create a More Breathable, Sustainable Workday (BECAR 705)

Charting Your Path in a Changing World: Using Creativity & Innovation to Shape What’s Next (BECAR 703)

Architecting Human Power in the Age of AI (BECAR 702)

Decision Making with AI: Think Better, Choose Smarter (BECAR 704)

Leading When Energy Is Low: Self-Leadership Tools for Change, Stress, and Uncertainty (BECAR 707)

Finding Your Northern Star: Designing Work That Aligns with Who You Are

Aliveness, Agency, Affect: A Framework for Meaningful Impact at Work and Beyond

Explore the 2025 NOW Encore Series Recordings for Additional Career Support