Maurice F. Martin

In partnership with NAMI Ohio, the Criminal Justice Coordinating Center of Excellence in the Department of Psychiatry at Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED), invited/hired Maurice to be our afternoon keynote speaker at our 2026 Ohio Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Conference. CIT Programs are community-based partnerships between law enforcement, crisis response services, mental and behavioral health providers, advocacy, individuals with lived experience, and other first responders to improve local responses to individuals experiencing a crisis. This annual conference brings together audience members from all of these fields to learn from each other to continue to grow and enhance their local CIT Programs.
A mixed audience like that can be challenging to find well-matched keynote speakers for, and we were also committed to finding someone willing to tailor their message and also discuss their own lived experience.
Maurice was incredible to work with from the first moment we reached out to him. We met with him multiple times as he wanted to learn about our work, our audience, and what we were hoping to get out of the afternoon keynote speech. Through these conversations, Maurice developed an extraordinarily engaging keynote speech for our audience. Through working with him, we mutually discovered what we really needed - someone who could empathize with the burnout and struggles of our audience and help them in 1) remembering why they do the work they do and 2) re-ignite their passion for their work.
He created exactly what we needed. He was out and about in the audience getting engagement, kept his message very clear and didn't dive into cliches. It was a truly genuine speech. Seeing audience members go up and personally thank him for his speech told us everything we needed to know!
It is not common to work with a speaker that is so willing to invest additional time into tailoring their message and having conversations to truly understand the core of the work and audience they will be speaking to. Doing this for a mixed audience poses additional challenges and nuances, all of which Maurice addressed with skill and poise.

Maurice brings a level of real, authentic, and inspirational passion and energy to every talk he gives. He combines an emotional pull with practical application to motivate and raise the audience up to their authentic selves so they leave feeling empowered and ready to grow. Fantastic speaker we will continue to invite back!

Maurice opened the Make Music Magic Summit as our keynote speaker last August. In the words of one of our attendees, his talk was refreshing and refocusing. He helped inspire thousands of teachers to start their year feeling excited and inspired. His positive energy was just what we needed as we started thinking about the year ahead.