Rave reviews

“As I watched Jennifer work, she guided the group to a new level of understanding around the value of Creative Problem Solving and possibilities it offers. Her professional and intuitive demeanor allowed for a seamless transition from uncertainty to excitement.”

Karen Freidt, Lead, NASA’s Navigation Center for Creativity, Collaboration & Innovation

“We partnered with Jennifer to be our keynote speaker for our Technology Transformation Event series – 11 events taking place across 7 cities in North America.   Our goal was to engage the hearts and minds of our technology team, to help them understand their role and be prepared for our transformation journey.

As our keynote, Jennifer was outstanding in connecting with our employees and inspiring them to embrace change and be ready for the unexpected.   She  tailored her message to resonate with her audience and helped them connect the dots to see the path forward.

While some keynote speakers deliver their speech and go – that’s definitely not the way Jennifer rolls. She has been a valued member of our team from day one – playing an integral part in the planning and delivery of our event series.  Jennifer provided great insights and feedback to help us elevate and continuously improve the event experience.  She is a true partner and has been a kind and thoughtful mentor to me.  As the person accountable to make this event series happen, with Jennifer’s support I could confidently say I got this!”

Joanne Lafreniere, Director, Employee Technology Experience & Communications, Enterprise Technology Employee Experience, Technology & Operations, BMO Financial Group

“What do you do when you have a very serious ‘venue’ challenge and need a speaker who can strategically curate content that is relevant and delivered on a plane? Easy – you call Jennifer Spear! Jennifer is brilliant. She immediately understood the unique opportunity and provided truly innovative solutions. One of the things I respect most about her, is the preparation time she invests to ensure success. Jennifer is a complete professional who is a joy to work with. I now have her on speed-dial.”

Bettyanne Sherrer, CMP, CMM, Principal, ProPlan Conferences & Events, Planner VIPlane

“We hired Jennifer to be our conference emcee and session moderator in early January 2022. It was a fantastic decision on our part! Jennifer went above and beyond to ensure a successful 2-day event! She was professional, engaging and a delight to work with at every stage from planning to execution. Great reviews from our members and staff. Thank you, Jennifer, for being a big part of our virtual event! Can’t wait to work with you again in the future!”

Kathryn Neals, Manager, Membership & Board Relations, Ontario Real Estate Association

“Jennifer Spear is a gifted speaker who knows how to engage an audience, shake participants out of their comfort zones and help them start implementing strategies immediately. A frequent speaker at CSTD events including the national conference and the national symposium, she always receives the highest acclaim from participants. Not only does she provide memorable, informative sessions, but she has audiences laughing, standing, and participating at an unprecedented level. Regardless of the space or time constrictions we may have placed upon her, Jennifer was able to adapt her content to our audience and our event while still managing to deliver superior results.

As a conference planner, I have always found Jennifer to be a creative partner willing to test new strategies to help us boost attendance and engagement. She’s a pleasure to work with and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend her to anyone looking to deliver fresh, positive and uplifting experiences to their colleagues, attendees or employees. I have no doubt she’ll prove an asset to your event.”

Danielle Lamothe, (Formerly) Director, Professional Services, Institute for Performance and Learning (formerly CSTD)

“Jennifer, Thank you for all your work behind the scenes in pulling together an engaging and interactive CanSPEP Great Debate. You’re a top-notch facilitator and kept the session moving, with questions for the Debate participants and the audience, and the polling for participant feedback. I also want to thank you for also presenting the Unscripted Events Workshop, and participating at The VIPlane discussion.  Your extensive involvement at the conference as a speaker, facilitator, in conference calls, and pre-prep work is most appreciated and is a factor in the success of this Conference. YOU ROCK!”

Ingrid Norrish, President, Creative Meeting & Marketing Services, Education Co-Chair, CanSPEP Annual Conference

“Jennifer spends time working with event organizers to truly understand her audience, the purpose of the keynote within the broader event context, and builds authentic and meaningful rapport with her clients. She delivers not only a keynote presentation, but an experience for participants with tools they can use in their work environment. Our attendees rated her presentation as excellent, on both the content and presentation style. The audience liked how her closing keynote presentation brought the entire event full circle and left the delegates with a very solid message. Having Jennifer as part of our team gave us fresh insights into our members experience and helped us achieve a deeper connection with those we serve.”

Irene Martin-Lindsay, Executive Director, Alberta Seniors Communities and Housing Association (ASCHA)

“I have been lucky enough to have experienced Jennifer’s facilitation skills on several occasions with different groups both large and small and have been amazed at her ability to bring everyone along, engage our input, keep us on task, tie a multitude of complexities together and enable great outcomes. She has a wonderful way with people and provides creative exercises that keep all involved and interested. Jennifer guided our conference design team into a space where we could be creative and focus on how we could best deliver the learning outcomes of our conference. Jennifer’s breadth of knowledge and experiences provided our team with proven approaches that helped us curate and deliver thoughtful content.”

Carolyn Leslie, Events and Engagement Specialist, Community Foundations of Canada

Working with Jennifer Spear has been an amazing experience. She continuously goes above and beyond to ensure successful delivery of her programs and is always willing to try something new. Jennifer is not just an engaging speaker, she is also an innovator. We have worked together to create unique programing at conferences while connecting back to our brand, she has delivered cutting edge content while speaking at 38,000 feet in the air, and she is my collaborator for ideas that need a little flare. Jennifer is a true industry leader and an absolute pro at what she does. I feel very fortunate to work with her. 

Candace Schierling, Director of National Conventions

“It was an absolute pleasure working with Jennifer. She was our keynote speaker and facilitator for our first ‘Unconference’ for the MPI Ottawa chapter and this educational session wouldn’t have come together without her. She was very hands on in developing the design of the sessions as soon as she came on board with us. Not only did all members of the planning team rave about working with her but also on our survey we had nothing but positive feedback about her from attendees. Here is an example of a comment ‘Jennifer Spear was excellent, she set the stage to ensure the success of the breakout groups, challenged us and brought a lot of value.’ I would highly recommend Jennifer and truly hope I have the opportunity to work with her again in the near future.”

Ashley Craven, Education Programming Committee Event Lead, MPI Ottawa

“Jennifer created an unforgettable learning event for our Leadership team. She went out of her way to get to know our organization and our needs for our retreat. She really cares about the outcome of her training and this had a significant impact on the valuable learning our team walked away with. Jennifer is fantastic to work with! Her content is smart, her delivery and experiential learning activities are flawless and people will truly learn something amazing that they can use right away (and they’ll have fun too!).”

Amanda Bjorn, (formerly) Director Learning and Development, Providence Healthcare

“I engaged Jennifer to facilitate a conference with my Business Intelligence client group involving over 100 Managers. Jennifer did a masterful job, and in particular, customized the session to be a perfect fit with the goals and needs of this unique group.”

Tammi Langdon, Senior HR/IR Consultant , BCE (Bell)

“Jennifer Spear is truly an expert in her field. She led a session for the CSAE through their Association Excellence series. The presentation was a great combination of ideas and self-discovery and is much more effective than someone claiming they know everything and telling you what to do. She would be a great person to facilitate strategic planning and problem solving.

The result is, I walked out of the session with several solutions to a problem that had kept me awake the night before. How many times does your Monday morning start out like that?”

Allan Dubyts, CEO, SafeandSecured.com Inc

“Well Jennifer, you are a rock star.  What a fabulous offsite yesterday.   The way you positioned the discussion by functional groups was so effective.  It got us thinking in a positive mindset and allowed so many “challenges” to come out in the open in a healthy way that wasn’t confrontational at all.  Wow!

It is gratifying and a testament to the character of this team that everyone walked away thinking of how we can be more awesome and how we can help each other across the team.  That is exactly what I was hoping for. Thank you.”

Joanne Lafreniere, Director – Employee Technology Experience & Communications, Enterprise Technology Employee Experience, Technology & Operations, BMO Financial Group

“Jennifer is an incredibly charismatic speaker and an effective workshop facilitator. She truly understands innovation best practices. Quickly understanding the complexities of our organization, she designed an engaging cultural transformation session that introduced current innovation theories, processes and methods in a way that resonated with all participants. The following day, key quotes were repeated in hallways and new tools were used in meetings. I would highly recommend Jennifer for your next event.”

Eric Blais, Director of Innovation, Numeris

“Improv and Healthcare? A Perfect Match! Never before has an external speaker brought so much to our organization. Jennifer had her finger on the pulse of our work. She showed a real understanding of how we operate and what our needs were. This enabled her to apply her material to our specific situation with mastery. As an educator, I appreciated the adept use of adult education principles with a multi-modal, active participatory approach. She engaged every corner of the room! The day was energizing, collaborative, thought provoking and confidence building. Can’t wait for her book!”

Anna Marie Sneath, Professional Practice Leader, Physiotherapy, Providence Healthcare

“Our work with Jennifer Spear of Clean Slate and her use of the Basadur Problem Solving methodology was the critical enabler of our organizational development strategy. Jennifer skillfully took subgroups from a recently formed professional services group through the same organizational challenge – integration – and was able to draw out several tangible problems to tackle. The wide array of employee voices was used in the construction of the departmental strategic roadmap, with strong buy-in as through Jennifer’s facilitated process, the management team was able to show themselves of stewards of the employee’s ideas. Jennifer’s passion and delivery, as well as the very scalable Problem Solving Methodology, took a very difficult and broad organizational problem, and involved all employees in finding a voice in the solution. Thank you Jennifer for all of your ongoing leadership, our department is stronger today, and also tomorrow, in large part due to your work with us.”

Jeff Conlin, Senior Director, Integrated Service Delivery, Operations Business Management , CIBC

“Clean Slate Strategies was not only able to provide insight into how to bring the right people to the table for solving problems; but also, a straightforward problem solving process to deliver results.”

Lorena M. Ferino, (formerly) Vice President, Information Technology and Systems, Weston Foods

“Jennifer is extremely knowledgeable and personable. She engaged the entire group and kept the exercises lively and entertaining. Jennifer is obviously very passionate about her craft and injects high energy into her presentations and workshops. Our team definitely benefited from this experience and walked away with usable tools to better deal with team members.”

Mike Gerrior, Purchasing Manager, Supplies and Services, Finance Department, The Regional Municipality of York

“Jennifer created a unique workshop for one of our teams at PHCP Incorporated. She engaged and ignited their creative sides to help them work better together. Our organization is very small and we must be aware of one another’s capabilities and preferences. Through innovative activities such as improv, word games and the Basadur profile she helped them to understand one another better and how to approach situations and to solve problems creatively. The team’s experience with this workshop has changed the way they relate to others at work as well, and they find that they are better equipped to handle difficult situations. They are more willing to speak up and to assist in solving problems. I feel that this was so helpful for our organization and am grateful that Jennifer was flexible and innovative and available to lead this workshop.”

Heidi Schwarzkopf, President and General Manager, PHCP Incorporated

“I had the privilege of working with Jennifer and Clean Slate Strategies and I must say, it was an outstanding, excellent partnership. Jennifer was a wonderful teacher, a gifted speaker; she captivated her audience with every word she spoke. Jennifer presented an abundance of material with ease and grace. The team was buzzing with brainstorming ideas and Jennifer captured everyone’s input and answered everyone’s questions. Jennifer was very respectful and kind when keeping everyone focussed on the process and at the same time keeping it lively, interesting and fun!

The results from the profiling tool Jennifer used quickly identified the various management styles and how individuals in the team could better work together and draw on the strengths of others quickly. We were able to quickly complement our team’s mix and select others closest to what we were looking for. The process made us aware of how essential the skills and strengths of our colleagues’ are and the extent the different skills sets can complement one another.

Organizations wanting to have the right people with the right profiles following the right process to help them be innovative and first to market will surely benefit from Jennifer’s work.

It was a pleasure and a fantastic opportunity to learn and implement the process used at Clean Slate Strategies and I look forward to working with Jennifer and Clean Slate Strategies again in the future.”

Kirsten Wells, MBA, PMP, Director & General Manager, Public Alerting, Pelmorex Communications Inc, (The Weather Network)

“The Canadian Hemophilia Society engaged Jennifer Spear of Clean Slate Strategies to assist in the development of a 5-year strategic plan. Jennifer’s work extended over an 8-month period and included facilitation of the meetings of the strategic planning steering committee, an all-day session with the Board of Directors to develop the plan and a half-day meeting with the Board to validate and endorse the plan. Jennifer conducted in-depth interviews with both internal and external stakeholders and developed on-line surveys to gather initial views and validate the draft strategic plan. She synthesized input in a way that greatly assisted our work.

One of Jennifer’s greatest contributions to the process was her ability to use challenge maps to help the leaders of the organization define its vision, mission, goals, strategies and tactics in a structured, coherent manner. Jennifer was rigorous in ensuring that input into the process was reflected in the deliberations and, eventually, in the final document. This has led to a high level of buy-in from the leaders of the provincial chapters across the country, who see their concerns and needs expressed in the plan. Eight months after adoption, the organization can already see the dividends in terms of more focused programming and more cohesive efforts.”

David Page, National Executive Director, Canadian Hemophilia Society