Arik Housley · Author of Always November
A Corporate Keynote on Grief, & Showing Up for Your Team
Every workplace has someone quietly carrying loss — a death in the family, a health scare, a layoff, a hard year.
Arik Housley helps organizations build the resilience and emotional intelligence to support each other through it, without losing a step on performance.
Why Corporate Teams Book Arik
Arik Housley lost his daughter, Alaina, in the 2018 Borderline Bar & Grill shooting. Instead of stepping back from public life, he leaned into it — writing the Amazon-bestselling book Always November and building a message that resonates as strongly in a boardroom as it does on a stage.
His talks are not generic “wellness” content. They are built from lived experience, and they land with executives, HR leaders, and frontline managers alike because they are honest, specific, and immediately usable.
Companies bring Arik in for:
- All-hands meetings and leadership offsites
- HR and People Ops conferences
- Employee wellbeing and mental health awareness weeks
- Manager training on supporting grieving or struggling employees
- Team resilience workshops following organizational change, layoffs, or loss
What He Covers
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Grief at work
How to acknowledge loss on a team without derailing productivity, and why silence costs companies more than compassion does
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Team resilience
Practical tools for bouncing back from setbacks, restructuring, and hard news as a unit
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Trauma-aware leadership
How managers can recognize when an employee is struggling and respond with confidence instead of avoidance
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Living with tragedy, not in it
Arik’s own framework for processing loss while still showing up fully for work and family
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Building a culture of presence
Why the highest-performing teams are the ones that make space for being human
The Arik Housley Story
Arik Housley is a father, husband, business leader, and community member from Napa Valley who turned an unimaginable tragedy into a message of purpose.
After losing his daughter Alaina, he and his family chose — deliberately, and daily — to find the positive in every moment. That choice became Always November: Lessons in Loss, Love, and Resilience, an Amazon-bestselling book, and the foundation of a keynote career that has taken him from small boardrooms to rooms of thousands.
What People Say
Housley’s journey shows that even unimaginable grief can become a catalyst for growth. Always November is a powerful testament to faith’s ability to transform pain into purpose, inspiring others to choose resilience, love, and hope, even in life’s darkest moments.
Jon Gordon 17x bestselling author of The Carpenter and The One Truth
Arik’s strength to share his story, including his deepest sadness, and then lift people up from his darkest hours, is incredibly powerful and awe-inspiring… he is able to rise up and speak with this magical authenticity, and motivation for ALL of us.
Rebecca Kotch Ride Napa Valley
Bring a message to your team that goes beyond a typical wellness session — one built on real resilience, real loss, and real hope. Available for keynotes, leadership offsites, and internal wellbeing events nationwide.
Contact Form
Contact Arik and he’ll be back to you 24‑48 hours.