MC & event host
When you need someone to hold the room: introductions, interviews, transitions and making sure other people get their moment. Hosting is about your speakers and your guests, not a keynote of my own.
Enquire about MC or hostingMC, Speaking & Workshops
Speaking with Tanya Hicks
Make room for people to light up.
I love helping people share what they know, tell a story in their own words and have their moment.
MCing, speaking and conversations with room for different ways to participate.
Because sometimes the most important shift happens when something familiar becomes impossible to see in quite the same way again.
Enquire about speaking
Signature keynote
FREE 2B ME: Less Fixing. More Living.
You don’t have to become less of yourself to have more of a life. This talk looks at the energy people spend judging, hiding or squashing parts of themselves, why so many settings ask them to, and what becomes possible when all of you is welcome in the room.
Read the transcript
Known as The Sparkly Alien, she combines lived experience and professional practice to create places where people belong without becoming less of themselves.
How much of your life is going on trying to fix yourself? Think about it.
Acceptance. Acceptance for all of you.
There’s no expectations. You don’t have to perform, and you are very much free to be you. And you belong simply because you exist.
So my question for you is this: if you had more space, what would you make room for? If you weren’t doing the things that were hard for you all the time and spending all of your energy, what would that open up? Where is your genius? Where is your joy?
Who it suits
- Conferences and leadership events
- Workplaces and teams
- Disability, health and community services
- Women’s events and community gatherings
- Professional forums
The central idea
People are often asked to fix themselves into acceptability before they are allowed more of a life. This talk makes room for the whole person: creativity, ambition, sensitivity, contradictions, difficulties, disability, support and joy. That holds for the people being supported and the people doing the supporting.
Format and access
Delivered as a keynote or conference session, shaped around your audience and purpose. Duration and format are agreed with you during planning.
Speaking, listening, writing, watching or taking a break all count as participation. Raise your audience’s access needs when you enquire so they can be built into the plan.
What participants take away
- Recognising themselves in what they hear.
- Questioning what they keep squashing or hiding.
- Naming something they want to make room for.
An enquiry is not a confirmed booking. Dates, fees and details are agreed with you directly.
Choose the shape of your gathering
Different rooms. Different ways to take part.
Keynote speaking
When you want an idea in the room. The signature keynote above, or a talk shaped around one of the questions below.
Enquire about a keynoteOther ways to work together
Panels & interviews
For organisers bringing different perspectives together. Preparation, thoughtful questions and space for more than one way to contribute.
Enquire about a panelParticipant workshops
For community groups and gatherings, including women’s events and LGBTQI+ conversations. Enquire about a tailored session; dates and content are agreed with the organiser.
Enquire about a participant workshopProfessional learning
For practitioners, teams and organisations. Unlike a keynote, this works through real situations: access, reasoning, power and accountable support.
See professional learningWomen’s events include trans women; each event’s audience is agreed explicitly.
Enquire about your event
What becomes possible when people don’t have to become less of themselves to belong?
That question runs through my work.
- Disability.
- Leadership.
- Support.
- Work.
- Professional practice.
- Parenting.
- Community.
- Systems.
And the ordinary places where people are asked, often quietly, to spend enormous amounts of themselves being acceptable enough to participate.
FREE 2B ME is about making more room for the person.
The talks
Talks, by the question they leave behind.
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What did “fine” cost?
Visible functioning can hide preparation, masking, pain, support, recovery and effort nobody counted.
What changes when we stop treating “they managed” as the whole account?
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What does our practice require the person to become?
A question for professionals, services and organisations about the hidden entry requirements inside apparently good support.
- Calmer?
- More verbal?
- More independent?
- More compliant?
- Easier to understand?
- Less inconvenient?
And what happens when those expectations start being mistaken for progress?
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Can I say no and still belong?
Choice means more when disagreement does not quietly threaten support, relationship, employment, participation or belonging.
A talk about authorship, consent, power and what it actually means to leave room for another person.
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Who is carrying the cost of this working?
A service can look efficient because somebody else is absorbing the strain. A workplace can look productive because employees are recovering privately. A family can appear to be coping because one person never stops compensating.
Functioning tells us something happened. It does not tell us what it cost.
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What happens when belonging stops requiring performance?
What would workplaces, schools, services and communities look like if people could contribute without disappearing inside the effort?
- Not identical participation.
- Not identical communication.
- Not identical capacity.
Belonging with room for difference.
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Does this leave room for me to be me?
A deceptively simple question for support, relationships, workplaces, healthcare, community and life.
Not: does everybody get everything they want?
But: can people remain recognisably themselves while being supported, challenged, treated, employed, included and loved?
The point is not to leave agreeing with me. The point is to leave noticing differently.
A good question should keep working after the speaker has left the room.
That is what I am interested in.
- A sentence in a case note.
- A person who always seems fine.
- A policy everyone calls inclusive.
- A support plan nobody has questioned for years.
- The employee who delivers brilliantly and disappears afterwards.
- The person described as “resistant”.
- The child everyone is helping.
- The meeting where the person being discussed has somehow disappeared from the account.
Rooms this has already been in
Where I have stood up and said it.
- Opening keynote and MC, Neurodivergent Minds Conference
- International keynote, Women Changing the World Conference
- Keynote, AusMumpreneur Conference
The full record of events, podcasts and print sits on the media page.
Formats
Speaking shaped for the room.
I bring together lived experience, professional practice, evidence, stories and the language developed across the FREE 2B ME body of work. Not to give a room one more framework to admire. To give it something useful to carry away.
For conference organisers
You are not booking a topic list. You are bringing an idea into the room.
Together, we can shape the emphasis around:
- belonging and identity
- hidden effort and capacity
- disability and neurodivergence
- support without takeover
- leadership and organisational conditions
- professional practice and accountability
- workplaces where contribution and difference can coexist
- lived experience shaping how things are built
The strongest talks usually begin with the question you want people still discussing afterwards.
Enquire about speaking
Tell me about your event.
- Who it suitsConferences, workplaces, professional forums, women’s and community events.
- What you can bookMC and event hosting, keynotes, panels and interviews, participant workshops.
- FormatIn person or online, shaped around your audience and purpose.
- AvailabilityBy enquiry. Dates are agreed with you.
- FeesAgreed with you directly. There is no fixed price list.
Share what you know now. Everything except your name, email, enquiry type and a short message is optional.
Prefer to write? Email sparkly@neurodivergentempowered.com. A phone number is never required.
For media, community partnerships, the Practitioner Pathway or organisational work, use other enquiries.
What happens next
Tell me what you have in mind.
Share what you know about your event, team or idea. Optional details can wait.
A reply within 48 hours.
We can work through the fit, format and access together, by email.
Agree the next step.
Dates, scope and fees are agreed with you before a booking is confirmed.
Only share what you want us to know. How your enquiry details are used.
Bring a different question into the room.
Less fixing. More living.