From Keynotes to Comedy!
Booking now for 2024-2025!
“Nina G, more than just a comedian!”—-University of Virginia
Nina G visits colleges, schools, corporations and non-profits across the United States, transforming audiences through humor, storytelling and hands-on experiences. Whether it is her one-person show, conference keynotes, corporate trainings or professional workshops, she smashes through stigma and changes outdated attitudes. The following is a menu of typical services.
For 2023-2024 all services are offered in-person and/or online!
Every Day Ally
Content Themes: Customer Service; challenging internal bias; etiquette; building community.
Target Audience: Corporate, non-profit, activism.
Description:
Through humor, storytelling and direct instruction, Nina G shares insights on what having a disability is really like and what non-disabled people can do to be authentic allies. Participants will deepen their understanding of what disability means, how to best serve individuals with disabilities in the role that participants play and how to generally be an ally. Topics include humility, empathy building and how to join with the Disabled community. This presentation can be tailored to the audience to achieve outcomes such as elevating customer service for everyone, collaboration between communities and clinical skills.
Past clients include: MGM Grand, San Jose State University, Tedx Talk
The Dyslexic Shuffle: Deepening Your Understanding of Dyslexia
Content Themes: Building empathy and self-empowerment through real understanding
Target Audience: Education (all levels and professions), corporate, non-profit, elementary to high school students.
Description:
Dyslexia is a prevalent learning disability, impacting approximately 20% of the population. Despite its widespread occurrence, it remains largely misunderstood. This presentation aims to demystify dyslexia by exploring its biological underpinnings engagingly and interactively.
The core of the presentation will delve into the neuroscience behind dyslexia, elucidating how variations in brain structure and function can influence learning processes. By employing a lively and accessible approach, Nina transforms complex scientific concepts into relatable experiences, helping attendees to gain a deeper understanding of dyslexia.
Attendees should anticipate active participation in this dynamic presentation. The session will incorporate various interactive elements, including the potential for attendees to be part of an interpretive dance, to illustrate the impacts of dyslexia on learning. This unique approach promises to educate and entertain, challenging preconceived notions about dyslexia and fostering a more comprehensive understanding of this common learning disability. Learn about dyslexia from someone who knows it from the inside out!
Comedians with Disabilities Act
Content Themes: Humor, coping, building empathy, building comfort and community, intersectionality (race, gender and disability).
Target Audience: colleges, nonprofits, corporate events.
Description: Nina G has teamed up with professional comedians with other performers from the Comedians with Disabilities Act for in-person and Zoom shows. The troupe represents an intersection of cultural, gender and disability related experiences. Performance includes comedy and a Q & A with the audience that always serves up humor and insight!
Past clients include: West Virginia University, University of Minnesota, Disability Pride PA, Linn Benton Community College
Stutterer Interrupted
Content Themes: Acceptance; developing voice; overcoming internalized stigma.
Target Audience: Can be modified as a one-person show or a keynote. Perfect for non-profit organization fundraisers, conferences and college shows.
Description: Stutterer Interrupted explores what it’s like to be a stuttering woman in a non-stuttering world. How does it feel when people constantly try to finish your sentences? When they ask if you forgot your own name? How do you go from twenty years of hiding your voice to performing on stage every night? These are some of the questions that Nina addresses in her show.
Past clients include: Coca-Cola, Tedx Talk at Los Medanos College, Hearing, Speech & Deaf Center, Solo Sundays, SUNY Broome
History of Stand-Up Comedy
Content Themes: San Francisco Bay Area History, women in stand up, history of North Beach, Comedy Boom, LGBTQ comedy, Disability and comedy.
Target Audience: Museums, libraries, colleges (theater/communications/multicultural studies), 55+ communities.
Description: Nina and OJ Patterson met while doing comedy in 2010 and became friends because of their deep love for stand-up comedy. Since the pandemic they have worked to produce a book that represents the multi-faceted history of San Francisco Bay Area comedy. Themes in the book include development of the artistic voice, the importance of finding community, navigating barriers and finding mentors. The Bay Area comedy scene offers lessons around diversity, innovation and the importance of emotional well-being that can help inform artists and creators of all kinds. Nina and OJ's book is available for pre-order now!
Going Beyond Inspirational
Content Themes: Disability affirmation; Disability experience; motivational for teachers, parents and helping professionals; stigma; advocacy.
Target Audience: Can be modified as a one-person show or a keynote. Perfect for non-profit organization fundraisers, conferences and college shows.
Description: "How many people with Disabilities does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" Answer: "One to screw it in and 5 able-bodied people to say, 'you are such an inspiration!'"
This joke is a favorite in Nina G's stand-up comedy routine. It brings to light (no pun intended) the struggle that people with Disabilities contend with living in an able-bodied society that reduces them to images of "inspirations" who “overcome” as opposed to normalization. Nina challenges perceptions about Disability in her appropriately titled show, Going Beyond Inspirational. Going Beyond Inspirational deals with the pain, joys, and revelations growing up with Speech and Learning Disabilities.
Past clients include: CSU Bakersfield, University of Montana, University of Virginia, University of Florida, University of Albany, Skyline College, Hartnell College, SUNY New Paltz, The Disability Art and Culture Project, California Association of Postsecondary Education and Disability, Oregon-Association of Higher Education and Disability
8 Not Very Secret, Secrets to Success
Content Themes: Self-acceptance; building on success; community, pride, advocacy.
Target Audience: Youth with Disabilities
Description: Keys to success for youth with disabilities include: know your history, accept yourself, build on achievement, develop your talents, use your voice (advocacy or activism), use accommodations, self-worth, build community. All these are discussed in this dynamic presentation that engages youth.
Past clients include: the Idaho Assistive Technology Project, Family Cafe
Learning Ramps: Teaching with the Brain in Mind
Content Themes: Teaching; learning; multiple intelligence; universal design; dyslexia; disability
Target Audience: Addressing the needs of people with disabilities isn't an accommodation, it’s just good teaching and communicating! By making your classrooms, clinics and programs accessible to people with disabilities, you are able to address the needs of diverse individuals. Through understanding Universal Design for learning and communication, participants in this dynamic workshop will learn pragmatic strategies to immediately use with the individuals they work with. Workshop includes using multimodes of teaching and communicating so that participants not only learn about the topic, but are able to embody universal design. This workshop can be tailored to all populations with disability as the focus or as an adjunct to understanding diversity issues.
Past clients include the CAPED, Long Beach City, Los Medanos College, Teaching Academic Survival and Success.
Learning Ramps: Teaching with the Brain in Mind (expanded workshop)
Content Themes: Teaching; learning; multiple intelligence; universal design; dyslexia; Target Audience: Educators, job couches, independent living instructors.
Description: Same as the workshop above. This expanded workshop goes deep to explore universal design for learning principles and their applications. It includes hands-on experiences to develop a tool box of strategies to bring into a participant’s repertoire of teaching, training and communicating.
Review from this workshop:
"Nina provided an eight hour training for our staff on issues surrounding disability and universal design. Nina delivered the information in different modalities, visual, audio and kinetic, which ensured each learning style was able to access what was being presented.
Past clients include Jewish Vocational Services, Alocosta.
For Kids
Disability: Understanding, Respect, Friendship
Content Themes: Disability awareness and celebration; kid friendly ways to be an ally,
Target Audience: K-12. Program is customized to the developmental level of the audience.
Description: This powerful and fun presentation is where Nina (or as the kids call her, Dr. G) offers participants a frame to understand disability that includes:
- understanding what a disability is
- building empathy and respect
-
developing tools to be a good friend
Dr. G uses this framework (as well as herself) as a tool to transform the negative attitudes within children without disabilities and to encourage students with disabilities to have pride in their experiences. Dr. G includes a meet and greet with students who would like to interact with her after the presentation. If possible, a lunch with students receiving accommodations can also be set up to encourage students to discuss their disabilities openly.
Totally NOT For Kids
Night Club Act
Content Themes: Discrimination; Disability pride; gender; ethnicity.
Target Audience: Over 18/Adult-oriented material (i.e. naughty words)
Description: Nina G’s comedy is consistently in demand in the San Francisco Bay Area, across the United States and even three times in Ireland. The spirit and themes of her keynotes is interpreted through her comedy club act that has been vetted through open mics, showcases, feature and headlining spots. Nina has performed in every venue imaginable from dive bars, sporting good stores and laundromats to comedy clubs like the San Francisco & Sacramento Punch Line, NY's Gotham and LA’s Laugh Factory. She has performed alongside headliners that include Dave Chappelle, Geri Jewel, Danny Woodburn, Mort Sahl, Larry "Bubbles" Brown, .
Presentations (in real time)
If you are sitting in a presentation by Nina G, it is likely that she posted it here so you can access the slides. Presentations are up for only a limited amount of time.
Going Beyond Inspirations and Simulations: Sample slides for SpeakerMatch Radio
