Speaking · Keynotes, Conferences & Association Events
You need a session people talk about in the hallway afterward.
A professional boxer who is also a health researcher makes for an unusual keynote. The stories hold a room; the neuroscience gives them somewhere to land; and the audience leaves with something they can physically do rather than a slide deck they will not reopen.
I teach the skills people wish they had five minutes earlier.
What the talk does
Safety is a difficult subject to put in front of a general audience. Done badly it frightens people, and a frightened audience does not retain anything.
The Momba approach deliberately inverts it. The talk is about capability rather than threat — about what is trainable, what the brain is actually doing when a situation turns, and why the gap between noticing something is wrong and knowing what to do about it is the gap worth closing. That framing lets a room engage with a heavy topic without leaving it anxious.
Carmen brings an unusual combination to the platform: an active professional fight record, three decades of teaching martial arts, and a postgraduate research background in how stress affects decision-making. Audiences get the story and the evidence, and the two reinforce each other rather than competing for the hour.
Her work has been published in Real Estate Agent Magazine and featured across industry podcasts including Investor Fuel, ASKITA and Our Family Invests.
Signature topics.
Each one tailors to the room. The framework holds; the examples change.
Performance & safety
The Anxiety Tax™
The hidden cost of unresolved uncertainty. What happens in the brain when a situation feels “off,” why the decision-making prefrontal cortex goes offline exactly when it is needed, and what that quietly costs in performance, turnover and liability.
Enquire about this talk →Readiness framework
Predict, Prevail, Persist
Three phases — and the two seams between them, which is where people actually come unstuck. The gap between noticing and acting, where hesitation lives. The gap between acting and carrying on afterwards, where most training simply stops. The phases are teachable; the transitions are the work.
Enquire about this talk →Women’s empowerment
Trust What You Noticed
Most women have already read the room. What gets trained out is the permission to act on it — the reflex to stay polite, not make a scene, explain away what the body flagged. This talk hands that permission back and empowers her to act on what she already knew. Empowerment isn’t a mood; it is the moment you stop overriding your own read. It also covers how the scripts doing the silencing shift between cultures while the pattern underneath holds.
Enquire about this talk →Reinvention
Strength Has No Expiration Date
Turning professional at 47. Seventeen years to citizenship. Rebuilding after loss while homeschooling three children. A talk about reinvention that happens to be told by someone with a professional fight record.
Enquire about this talk →Association chapters and sales meetings can take the DPOR-approved CE version for credit.
See the CE course →Formats and logistics.
- Keynote45–60 minutes including questions. Optional standing segment where the whole room practises one high-percentage response.
- Conference breakout30–45 minutes, spoken, sized for a standard session slot.
- Workshop90 minutes to half a day, hands-on, for groups that want skills rather than a talk.
- Association CETwo hours, DPOR-approved, course #0214031425, 2 elective credit hours for Virginia real estate licensees.
- Panels & mediaPanel participation, podcast and interview appearances on safety, resilience and performance under pressure.
- TravelRichmond metro as standard; Williamsburg, Petersburg, Charlottesville and Northern Virginia regularly; further afield case by case.
- RequirementsA room, a microphone for larger audiences, and clear floor space if the standing segment is included. All equipment brought in.
Recent platforms.
A selection of the rooms this work has been in.
Published · Real Estate Agent Magazine
The Anxiety Tax™: How Agent Safety Is Quietly Hitting Your Closings
A performance-framed argument for treating agent safety as a brokerage production issue, built on peer-reviewed stress neuroscience.
Read the article →
Podcast · Investor Fuel, Real Estate Pros Show
Why Realtors Need Self-Defense & Situational Awareness Training
On how stress and unpreparedness quietly erode an agent’s confidence, decision-making and productivity — and what training reverses.
Listen →
Podcast · ASKITA, Episode 177
More Than A Pro Boxer
From collegiate athlete to professional boxer and resilience educator, and the psychological dimensions of martial arts training.
Watch →
Podcast · Our Family Invests, Episode 013
Gary + Carmen Gulliksen
Building discipline, resilience and purpose through career pivots, parenting and investing in health and mindset.
Watch →
Live · Selected engagements
Agencies, academies and community organizations
Department of Veterans Affairs Police Services, SYWO Security Academy, Girls For A Change, Diversity Richmond, Women’s Circle 22, Second Arrow, The Well, Empower Gym, a Charlottesville women’s boxing and empowerment workshop, and lectures in Germany on women’s empowerment and gender-based violence.
Book Carmen for your event →Booking questions.
What size audience do you speak to?
A thirty-person association chapter, a conference ballroom, or whatever is larger than that — give me a microphone and the talk scales. What changes with room size is the hands-on portion, which is added or removed depending on the space and the time available, not the material.
How long is a typical keynote?
Forty-five to sixty minutes is standard, including questions. Breakout and workshop versions run ninety minutes to half a day, and a short-form version fits a thirty-minute conference slot.
Do you tailor the talk to our audience?
Always. The framework stays the same; the examples do not. A room of realtors gets showings, lockboxes and open houses. A room of healthcare staff gets wards, car parks and late shifts.
Is there a physical component?
Optional. A keynote can be purely spoken, or can include a short standing segment where the whole room practises one simple, high-percentage response. The standing segment is what people talk about afterwards.
Do you travel outside the Richmond area?
Yes. Engagements run regularly across Virginia, including Williamsburg, Petersburg, Charlottesville and Northern Virginia, and travel further afield is arranged case by case.
Check availability.
Dates, format and audience fit in fifteen minutes.