Speaking · Faye Bonomo
Talks that treat burnout like the operations problem it is.
Practical, research-informed, zero vendor pitch. Faye Bonomo speaks to HR and leadership audiences about retention and sustainable performance — from 18 years inside high-intensity technical industry, not from the outside looking in.
Session recording — in production
A full recording of this talk is being produced and will be posted here. Reviewing for an event in the meantime? Faye will deliver the opening and the closing audit live on a 15-minute call — the fastest way to gauge the room fit.
About the session
The exit interview is the least honest conversation in your company — not because people lie, but because by then the truth is useless to them. High performers with options don't file grievances; they go quiet, disengage, and take the recruiter's call. Each exit costs one-half to two times salary by Gallup's conservative math, plus the invisible year of disengagement before it.
Drawing on two decades inside high-intensity technical industry — and on decades of burnout research — this session shows why perk-based fixes fail and what works instead: workload designed on purpose (including the kill-list), managers trained to catch early signals months before the resignation letter, and recovery built into how teams actually run.
It's a retention and operations talk, not a wellness talk — leaders leave with tools they can use the same week, whether or not they ever speak to Brightwork again.
Reviewing for an event? The same argument, written for a reading executive: The Quiet Burnout — Executive Brief (PDF).
Attendees learn to
- Recognize the early signals of burnout in high performers — and why the absence of complaints is a risk signal, not a health signal.
- Reframe burnout as a workplace-system problem rather than an individual resilience problem, and quantify what one quiet exit actually costs.
- Apply three system mechanics — workload by design, an early-signals practice, recovery as an operating norm — starting the same week.
The slide every room photographs — the three-question audit
- Who are your three most irreplaceable people — and when did anyone last check their real workload against their real capacity? If you've never checked, the system is checking for you — via recruiters.
- Could your managers name the early signals of burnout? When did one last flag a person before the resignation letter?
- What work did you kill this year? Not add — kill. If the answer is nothing, every new priority was paid for with somebody's nights.
For organizers
Built to be easy to program.
Audiences
HR and leadership rooms — SHRM chapters and conferences, CEO peer groups, industry associations, and company leadership teams. The same talk flexes for team-lead audiences.
Formats & logistics
Keynote or concurrent session, 25–60 minutes, virtual or in-person (based in Northern Colorado; Front Range travel is easy). Self-contained slides, standard HDMI, recording permitted.
Recertification-friendly
Content maps to SHRM and HRCI competencies in business management & strategy and human resource development — retention math your CFO would sign off on.
No speaker fee for chapters
Association chapters and nonprofit HR groups: no fee. Every attendee leaves with the audit and the early-signals checklist — useful whether or not we ever work together.
About the speaker
Operator, not outsider.
Faye Bonomo spent 18 years in high-intensity technical industry — most of it at a Fortune 500 industrial technology corporation — in marketing and product management leadership. She led product launches and go-to-market strategy, guided teams through acquisitions and organizational change, and built a reputation for keeping people: her 17-person team sustained 95%+ engagement for three consecutive years in an environment where burnout was the norm.
She holds an MBA from Colorado State University, and workshop design and facilitation have been a career-long craft. In 2026 she founded Brightwork Leadership, a Northern Colorado retention and sustainable-performance practice that helps companies fix the systems that burn out their best people.
She speaks as an operator, not an outsider — the numbers were hers to hit, and the people were hers to keep.
Faye Bonomo · Founder, Brightwork Leadership
Book Faye
Bring this talk to your event.
Programming a chapter meeting, conference track, or leadership offsite? Reach out with your dates — or book 15 minutes and Faye will preview the talk live so you can judge the fit yourself.