Verena Rizg is a clinician, the author of The Cost of Capable™, and a keynote speaker on the hidden cost of high performance, belonging, relational health, and leadership. With sixteen years of clinical work across corrections, acute care, community health, and migrant health, in 2023 she founded the first BIPOC-focused clinic in the history of the Canadian Armed Forces. She is the architect of The Cost of Capable™, a clinical and organizational framework for individuals and institutions contending with the costs of contingent belonging. Verena writes, teaches, and speaks on belonging, relational health, care delivery, and leadership.
Trusted by institutions because her work holds up. Remembered by people because it reaches them.
A framework. A book. A body of work.
Built from sixteen years of clinical practice — federal corrections, migrant health, community care — and the patterns Verena watched her patients carry in silence. A diagnostic vocabulary for individuals and institutions contending with the costs of contingent belonging.
Enter the frameworkReflections on belonging, relational health, and care delivery. Sent when there is something worth sending.
SubscribeAugust 22 · Halifax Central Library
Your ticket includes a signed colour copy in your hands that night, and the digital edition the moment you reserve. $111.
Seventy in the room. Intimate, intentional, and only once.
Reserve your place →“Lots of people are educated. Many are gifted speakers. Very few have IT — that cocktail of magic and magnetism that makes a moment memorable. Verena has IT.”
Jonathan Torrens
Actor, Broadcaster & Advocate
“Her insights were both thought-provoking and inspiring. The feedback I received from those in attendance was extremely positive.”
Margaret Melanson
President & CEO, Horizon Health Network
“The fact that she has been able to trailblaze a BIPOC clinic on her own accord within a larger institution is a testament to her determination and commitment to identifying and then following through to do what is right for others.”
Dr. David Botten
Family Physician
Featured Keynote
The people who can always handle it are paying for it — and almost no one has named the cost.
This keynote traces how capability becomes expectation, and expectation becomes burden, then gives audiences the language to see it in themselves and the people they lead.
For healthcare, leadership, government, and policy stages.
Bring the book with you — volume orders for teams, cohorts, and conferences put The Cost of Capable™ in every seat.
Most organizations don’t have a communication problem.
They have a truth tolerance problem.
What’s left unsaid doesn’t disappear.
It shapes culture, decision-making, and care.
Verena works inside those moments,
where pressure reveals what’s not working,
and where people are expected to perform instead of respond.
She helps people understand what’s actually happening between them,
so they can move forward with clarity, not assumption.
If your people are carrying more than the system knows how to name, much less support, Verena is the right person for the room.
For institutions ready to move beyond surface-level solutions and do work that actually holds.
