Jill Geisler
Jill Geisler, a prominent national expert on newsroom leadership, will be a featured speaker during two sessions at the 2019 IRE Conference in Houston.
Geisler, an internationally known management consultant, author and former TV journalist, holds the Bill Plante Chair in Leadership and Media Integrity at Loyola University Chicago. She also is the Freedom Forum Institute Fellow in Women’s Leadership.
Geisler is the author of Work Happy: What Great Bosses Know, a popular book for managers in any field. She wrote the book as an extension of a column and podcast that she produced over several years. Her podcasts have been downloaded more than 13 million times. For 16 years, she worked on the faculty at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. Previously, she spent 25 years at WITI-TV in Milwaukee in several roles: reporter, anchor and ultimately vice president for news.
She will be featured in two sessions:
- “Lead from where you are” -- Veteran IRE leader Manny Garcia of the USA TODAY Network will engage Geisler and the whole room in a conversation on how to lead, regardless of your title or job. Investigative journalists are at the forefront of using new technology and tools, working with new partnerships and platforms, and facing the ethical challenges that come along with all of them. How do you grow your influence in an organization? Manage your boss? Have tough conversations with good outcomes? Give feedback that motivates your colleagues, even on a rough day? How do you coach up-and-coming co-workers and not simply “fix” their work? This interactive session promises to be lively and enlightening.
- “Workplace integrity: Critical thinking and courageous conversations” -- When the #MeToo scandals broke in media organizations, The Freedom Forum Institute reached out to Geisler to help identify flawed organizational systems in which misconduct flourished. She led the 2018 Power Shift Summit at the Newseum, convening people at the heart of the breaking stories, experts on sexual misconduct and discrimination, survivors and advocates. The Summit led to the Power Shift Project, for which Geisler developed the Workplace Integrity curriculum. Unlike traditional anti-harassment training, which has not proven to be effective, Workplace Integrity is designed for the way journalists — especially investigative journalists — like to tackle problems: through critical thinking. Instead of focusing on the limits of the law, it challenges people to identify flaws in logic, check facts, surface assumptions and probe for bias — all in the course of some down-to-earth conversations we rarely have at work. Take part in the Workplace Integrity Critical Thinking exercise — and learn how your own newsroom could benefit as a result.
Browse the IRE19 schedule
We're offering more than 200 panels, hands-on classes and special presentations. Learn how to improve reporting and storytelling across all platforms.
