Susan Close is a speaker and licensed therapist who helps audiences understand what is really happening beneath stress, burnout, emotional overload, relationship conflict, and the pressure to keep it all together.
With nearly two decades of clinical experience, she translates psychology into practical tools people can use immediately—in difficult conversations, demanding seasons of life, leadership pressure, and everyday overwhelm.
Known for her warm, relatable, and engaging style, Susan blends humor, real-life insight, and actionable strategies to create presentations that people genuinely remember—and use.
She speaks to businesses, schools, healthcare organizations, women’s groups, and community audiences on topics including trauma, modern relationships, emotional wellness, resilience, and sustainable leadership.
Audiences leave feeling lighter, clearer, energized, and equipped for real life.
4 topics · no fee, no honorarium, no mileage
Review available topics below. Use the “Request This Free Speech” button and fill out the contact form. Susan contacts you to discuss the details of the request.
Modern relationships are full of confusion, pressure, resentment, and mixed expectations. Instead of blaming one another, this refreshing and balanced presentation explores how both men and women are navigating new emotional realities, changing roles, and unmet needs. Susan offers practical insight into communication, connection, and how couples can move from conflict to understanding.
Most people think trauma only refers to extreme events, but unresolved survival patterns often show up as anxiety, perfectionism, people-pleasing, burnout, emotional reactivity, and repeating painful relationship dynamics. In this eye-opening and hopeful presentation, Susan helps audiences understand the overlooked ways trauma can shape adult life and offers practical first steps toward healing, regulation, and change.
Many couples come into conflict believing they are arguing about the same issue—but often they are trying to solve entirely different problems. One person is fighting for reassurance. The other is fighting for fairness. One wants understanding. The other wants the argument to end. In this witty, eye-opening presentation, psychotherapist Susan Close shares what she has learned from years in the therapy room, where conflict can sound less like connection and more like cross-examination.
With humor, relatable stories, and practical tools, Susan helps audiences recognize common traps like mindreading, defensiveness, scorekeeping, assumption-making, and trying to win instead of understand.
Attendees leave with strategies to slow conflict down, communicate more effectively, and move from opposition to partnership.
School leaders are often asked to attend one more training, one more initiative, one more workshop—while already running on empty. This is different. A restorative, practical experience designed to help school leaders exhale, reconnect with themselves, and leave feeling lighter than they arrived. Through reflection, nervous system reset tools, meaningful connection, and realistic strategies for boundaries and sustainability, participants receive what they rarely get: support.
No endless slides. No performative participation. No added burden. Just something genuinely helpful.
Free Speakers Chicago is a pro bono speakers bureau. Since 1996, our speakers have given free presentations to Rotary clubs, libraries, schools, and community groups across the Chicago area. Browse the full list to book a free guest speaker in Chicago, or learn more about how it works.
