Every young person deserves adults who understand them.
I’m Coura Niang, a professor, Board Certified Behaviour Analyst, and Child & Youth Care practitioner. I help the schools, clinical teams, and organizations supporting young people turn behaviour science into something that holds up on a hard day.
President, Ontario Association of Child & Youth Care · Professor, Humber Polytechnic · 15+ years across schools, clinics, and child welfare
Built to leave your people more capable, not more dependent on me.
Four formats, one aim: confident, equipped adults around every young person.
Speeches
Occasion and advocacy addresses that move a room and reframe how it sees young people.
Move a roomKeynotes
Conference talks that teach as much as they inspire, sending people home with tools they can use.
Teach a roomTrainings
Hands on professional development grounded in real adult education practice.
Plan a trainingWebinars
Live and on demand sessions for distributed teams and busy communities.
Host a webinarTwo ways to speak, and the difference matters when you’re booking.
Tell me what your event needs, and I’ll tell you honestly which one fits.
Speeches
To move a room
For galas, sector events, and advocacy moments: narrative, personal, and unafraid of hard truths. My recent address on resilience opened not with a statistic, but by asking everyone to quietly say “I am resilient,” and to notice what rose up when they did.
Best for: fundraising and awareness events, conference openings and closings, advocacy and community gatherings.
Keynotes
To teach a room
Drawing on my background in adult education, these talks unpack a single powerful idea, such as why a behaviour happens, how trauma shows up in a classroom, or what ethical and relational practice looks like, then hand the audience a framework they can use immediately.
Best for: professional conferences, staff development days, and association events that want substance to act on.
Strategy that lives in the work, not on a shelf.
For not for profits, associations, and clinical teams ready for direction they’ll still be using long after the retreat ends. As President of the OACYC, I led the strategy behind a 171% rise in membership and 70% budget growth by reading the organization honestly and building a plan its people could carry.
Grounded in evidence
A behaviour analytic lens: look at what is actually happening, what reinforces it, and what the data and the people are telling you. Strategy follows from that.
Three contexts, held at once
Organizational: mission, governance, culture. Operational: budget, staffing, delivery. Social and political: funding, policy, and the sector shifting underneath you.
Equity built in, not bolted on
Drawing on decolonial and anti oppressive audits of programs and governance, asking who has shaped this organization, who has not, and whose voices decide where it goes next.
Listen
Stakeholder and community listening, document and data review, and an environmental scan of your sector.
A clear, honest picture of where things stand.Locate
Asset based assessment, root cause analysis, and an equity audit of programs and decision making.
A shared, evidence based starting point.Imagine
A facilitated session to shape a vision and theory of change together, centring voices consulted last.
A direction your people recognize as theirs.Map
Priorities, goals, and a logic model with measurable outcomes, aligned to capacity and funder reality.
A focused, fundable strategic plan.Move
Action plan, accountability, developmental evaluation, and the capacity building to sustain it.
A team equipped to lead it without me.Expert opinion for legal cases involving child & youth care.
When a legal matter turns on how child and youth care should have been practised, I provide independent, evidence based review and expert opinion. Retained by legal teams, I examine what happened against the profession’s scope and standards of practice and the obligations set out in Ontario’s Child, Youth and Family Services Act, and explain it in terms a court can use.
My areas of expertise include child welfare, residential and live in treatment, youth worker settings, educational settings, and other child centered settings.
My role is to be thorough and impartial. I develop substantiated, defensible opinions, and I will tell you honestly what the evidence does and does not support. References available upon request.
Documentation review
A sophisticated capability for reviewing complex documentation and forming opinions, drawing on academic articles and research, legislation, and the relevant governing acts.
Risk & situation analysis
Assessing how dangerous or high risk situations were understood and handled, and what a reasonable standard of care required at the time.
Standards of practice
Connecting conduct to the CYC profession’s scope and standards: what should be expected, and where practice met or fell short of the mark.
Formal vs. informal training
Distinguishing what can reasonably be expected of formally educated CYCs versus those trained on the job, across the many settings youth workers operate in.
Organizational obligations
Clarifying what organizations, not only individual practitioners, are required to do under the CYFSA and its regulations.
The same evidence base, translated honestly for the room in front of me.
For teams supporting youth & families
Consistent, ethical, trauma informed approaches your whole team can stand behind, from clinical practice to service design.
For the people in the classroom
Practical strategies for behaviour, regulation, and inclusion that work in a real classroom on a real day.
For the hardest moments at home
Compassionate, jargon free guidance for anxiety, big feelings, and tough behaviour, no degree required.
For the next generation
Supervision and mentorship for Child & Youth Care professionals and BCBA candidates bridging study and practice.
membership growth led as President of the OACYC
professionals reached per provincial conference coordinated
countries, from Ontario school boards to Montreal & Dublin
years across classrooms, clinics, residential care & child welfare
Starting points, every talk is customized to your audience.
Behaviour is communication: reading what young people can’t yet say
KeynoteTrauma informed practice in everyday settings
TrainingAcceptance & Commitment Therapy within a relational approach to care
Keynote · WorkshopNavigating disability & neurodiversity in schools and care settings
TrainingReflexivity: the advanced practice of examining how we show up
Workshop
Part academic, part practitioner, fully in your corner.
I have spent my career where research meets real life: the classroom, the clinic, the residential home, and the kitchen table. As a professor at Humber Polytechnic, a Board Certified Behaviour Analyst, and a Child & Youth Care practitioner, my work has one throughline: helping the adults around young people understand what they are seeing, and respond with confidence and care.
As President of the Ontario Association of Child & Youth Care, I have grown membership by 171%, sat at the government’s Out of Home Care Stakeholders Table, and helped shape provincial standards for the profession. What ties it together is a point of view: that behaviour is communication, that practice should be trauma informed and anti oppressive, and that the best support centres the people too often left out of the conversation.
View Coura’s full CV on LinkedInTell me about your audience.
Share your event, team, or community and the change you are hoping for. I read every message myself, and I will give you an honest answer, including if I am not the right fit.