EXECUTIVE COACHING
Performance and Speech Coaching, Writing, Event Consultation

1:1 CLIENT

I adore Literary Arts, and any entity that promotes authors and books. Beyond bringing major authors to town and creating writing curriculum for schools, Literary Arts is also a big support to the storytelling show I host and produce, BACKFENCE PDX. I was brought in to work with their Executive Director for a year-long position as a presentation coach and consultant.

The goal for our year of working together was to help Andrew gain new skills that would allow him to have a more impactful stage presence. We worked to create a deeper connection to the audience, no matter if it was a thousand person auditorium, one on one, a fundraiser, or a live or digital speech. To accomplish this hefty yet doable goal, I created mock scenarios and improv-based exercises replicating a realistic environment to play around and practice in. It’s rare when someone at this position has a space to safely fail and learn. It was a blast and expedited skill learning and impacted his work in real life immediately.  In addition, I supported him during live events where he was presenting and provided him with notes to help reinforce and build new skills.

To prep for all these experiences, we built strong story foundations and arcs that supported his own style of communication, moving away from rigid statistics and emotionally disconnected messaging, which made the speeches both easier to lift off the page and more fun to present. The result was the Executive Director speaking extemporaneously from his own voice, with more conviction, fluidity, and ease in his physical presence. I continue to work with Literary Arts in performance coaching and other forms of consulting.

Additionally, I consulted on and created a pre-show protocol for green room interactions, and a staging survey that made sure to accommodate differently sized & abled people to make sure they were set up for success and felt welcome.