EQUIPPING AUDIENCES BEFORE CRISIS. INSPIRING GROWTH AFTER IT.
Explore Madalena's keynote and breakout session offerings that combine powerful storytelling, evidence-informed resilience strategies, and practical tools audiences can immediately apply in their personal and professional lives.
Start with Madalena’s Signature Keynote…
A Hero’s Daughter;
A Survivor’s Journey
What if the skills that help us survive life's darkest moments can be learned long before crisis ever occurs?
In this unforgettable keynote, resiliency advocate, active shooting survivor, Director of School Safety, and nationally recognized speaker Madalena DeAndrea shares the extraordinary journey that shaped her understanding of resilience. From growing up as the daughter of a law enforcement leader who helped redefine America's response to school shootings to surviving the 2018 mass shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California, her story is a powerful testament to the strength of the human spirit.
Rather than focusing solely on tragedy, Madalena reveals the protective factors, practical skillsets, and powerful mindsets that prepared her to respond under unimaginable circumstances and ultimately fueled her journey of post traumatic growth. Blending deeply personal storytelling with evidence-informed resilience strategies and lessons learned from years of leading school safety and preparedness initiatives, she demonstrates that resilience is not something we are born with. It is something we intentionally build.
Audience members will leave inspired and equipped with practical tools to strengthen themselves, support the people they love, and cultivate more resilient families, workplaces, and communities before crisis ever occurs. Through hope, authenticity, and actionable insights, Madalena reminds us that while we cannot always choose what happens to us, we can choose how we prepare, how we respond, and who we become in the aftermath.
Duration: 90 minutes, including the full keynote presentation and audience Q&A. Following the program, Madalena remains for a brief meet and greet with individual attendees.
Build an event that best serves your audience by pairing Hero's Daughter with one or more of the sessions below. These presentations are designed to complement Madalena's signature keynote by extending key themes, deepening understanding, and providing additional practical tools and facilitated discussion.
Each session can be:
Added to the keynote experience to extend programming
Delivered as a standalone breakout session
LOOKING TO CREATE A MORE IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE?
KEYNOTE ADD ONS OR BREAKOUT SESSIONS
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Resilience Readiness: Preparing for Post-Traumatic Growth
In this interactive and practical session, resiliency advocate, active shooting survivor, Director of School Safety, and nationally recognized speaker Madalena DeAndrea explores how individuals and communities can intentionally build protective factors before crisis occurs.
Madalena breaks down what protective factors are, how they function in everyday life, and why they are essential in shaping outcomes during moments of extreme stress and in supporting healing in the aftermath. Drawing from both her lived experience as a survivor of the 2018 Borderline Bar & Grill active shooting and her professional expertise in school safety, she translates the often overwhelming work of preparing for crisis into clear, actionable steps that can be applied immediately in personal, professional, and community settings.
At the center of this session are Madalena’s five guiding questions, designed to help individuals, teams, and organizations identify, strengthen, and actively build protective factors in advance of crisis. These questions create a practical framework for reflection and action, focused on readiness, connection, and resilience long before adversity occurs.
Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how protective factors are developed, how they can be strengthened over time, and how intentional choices today can significantly influence safety, stability, and resilience in the future, strengthening the potential for post-traumatic growth in the aftermath.
As Keynote Add-On:
Duration: Extends Hero’s Daughter by 30 minutes
As Standalone Breakout Session:
Duration: 1-hour, including the full breakout presentation and audience Q&A. Following the program, Madalena remains for a brief meet and greet with individual attendees.
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Inside the Incidents: Learning from Real School Scenarios
In this interactive and practical session, resiliency advocate, active shooting survivor, Director of School Safety, and nationally recognized speaker Madalena DeAndrea draws from the real-life incidents managed in one of Colorado's largest school districts to explore how schools can respond intentionally to the situations they are most likely to face. Through authentic school scenarios, participants will examine the decisions, challenges, and opportunities that shape effective response and strengthen organizational resilience.
Rather than focusing solely on emergency response, this session challenges attendees to think beyond checklists and protocols. As each scenario unfolds, participants will work through how they would respond within their own school or organization, identify gaps in their current practices, and explore the systems, partnerships, and planning that strengthen a school's ability to navigate complex incidents with confidence.
Attendees will leave with practical strategies they can immediately apply to strengthen preparedness, enhance multidisciplinary collaboration, and improve decision-making within their own school communities. Because every scenario is drawn from real events, this session provides an honest, relevant, and engaging opportunity to learn from another school's lived experiences before they become your own.
Standalone Breakout Session ONLY:
Duration: 1-hour, including the full breakout presentation and audience Q&A. Following the program, Madalena remains for a brief meet and greet with individual attendees.
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Through the Eyes of a Survivor: A Retrospective Threat Assessment of the Borderline Shooter
In this powerful and deeply reflective session, resiliency advocate, active shooting survivor, Director of School Safety, and nationally recognized speaker Madalena DeAndrea examines the 2018 Borderline Bar & Grill shooting through the lens of modern behavioral threat assessment.
Madalena reviews the shooter’s background, known risk factors, and behavioral indicators leading up to the attack, as well as key actions during the incident. She then places this analysis alongside her own lived experience, highlighting the protective factors that shaped her response and ultimately contributed to her survival.
By comparing these two parallel paths, Madalena helps audiences understand how risk factors can escalate without intervention, and how protective factors can change outcomes. This session provides practical insight into early warning signs, prevention strategies, and the importance of building strong factors in individuals.
As Keynote Add-On:
Duration: Extends Hero’s Daughter by 30 minutes
As Standalone Breakout Session:
Duration: 1-hour, including the full breakout presentation and audience Q&A. Following the program, Madalena remains for a brief meet and greet with individual attendees.
Looking to take your event even deeper with a multi-generational experience in resilience, crisis response, and real-world preparedness? In addition to solo keynotes and breakout sessions, Madalena also offers a powerful joint presentation with her father, Deputy Chief AJ DeAndrea (Ret.), bringing together two generations of lived experience, leadership, and insight into crisis response, preparedness, and resilience.
A rare father-daughter perspective…
Dark Nights of the Soul; When Terror Hits Home
Deputy Chief AJ DeAndrea (Retired) was in a leadership role in three school shootings that changed the fabric of American society and police response to active shootings around the world. He takes a deep dive into these tragic events and more importantly analyzes the positive things that came from them in decision making, improved tactics, and mental health practices.
Most importantly, he is accompanied by his oldest daughter, Madalena DeAndrea, who survived the Borderline active shooting incident in Thousand Oaks, CA in 2018. Madalena, a current Director of School Safety with Jeffco Public Schools Department of School Safety in Colorado shares how the protective factors she learned growing up the daughter of a law enforcement officer, ultimately saved her life. She shares her insights as a survivor of an active shooting, and her choice to experience post-traumatic growth following an experience of evil.
AJ and Madalena passionately speak from the perspective of having been inside the building during the aforementioned active shootings. These events have led to the creation of their Eight Pillars of Preparedness that can help prevent active shootings from occurring or help stop and manage them more effectively if one is to kick off in your jurisdiction.
Duration: 4 hours, including the full keynote presentation and audience Q&A. Following the program, AJ & Madalena remain for a brief meet and greet with individual attendees.
Every Event Is an Opportunity to Build Resilience.
Whether you're gathering first responders, educators, mental health professionals, threat assessment teams, or community members, your event has the power to inspire meaningful change. Create an experience that not only moves your audience in the moment, but equips them with practical tools, deeper perspective, and lasting hope for whatever lies ahead.