Self-help author to speak at BC

Award-winning author, speaker, coach and consultant Dr. Jarik Conrad will present “Hard Core Soft Skills: Transform Your Exceptional Potential into Extraordinary Performance” on Tuesday, Nov. 8, at 7:30 p.m. in Cole Hall at Bridgewater College.

The program, sponsored by the office of multicultural services, is free and open to the public.

“Each person has tremendous potential,” said Conrad. “Yet few people obtain the personal and professional success they desire.”

Conrad will focus on why neither emotions nor intellect matter most, but rather a combination of the two that “produces magic.”

“Individuals must possess not only well-developed intellectual and technical abilities, but also equally impressive social and emotional skills to navigate the ever-changing, increasingly stressful work environments,” he said.

Conrad grew up in public housing in East St. Louis, Ill.; a place so economically challenged that it has been described as the “most distressed small city in the United States.” Through education, hard work and self-determination, he earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois, two master’s degrees from Cornell University and a doctor of education degree from the University of North Florida.

Conrad is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR), a certified intercultural sensitivity expert and a certified emotional intelligence expert. He is president and founder of the Conrad Consulting Group, whose main focus is to teach skills for the development of emotional, social and cultural-emotional intelligence.

He serves on the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations (CREIO). Conrad has been an adjunct faculty member at Jacksonville University, taught continuing education classes at the University of North Florida and is an external faculty member at the Mayo Clinic. He has worked with several notable Fortune 500 companies, including Pillsbury (General Mills), Union Carbide (Dow), Citigroup and CSX Technology, a business unit of CSX Corporation, where he led the human resources department.

Conrad is a frequent radio and television commentator. His books include:The Master of Success with notable authors Ken Blanchard and Jack Canfield,The Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Intercultural Sensitivity, and the award-winningThe Fragile Mind: How it has Produced and Unwittingly Perpetuated America’s Tragic Disparities.