Improve your Writing
October 19th, 2018
You may not recognize her name, but chances are high that you’ve been influenced – if only indirectly – by her informed opinions. Nobina Robinson attended one of our Writing Compelling Commentary workshops in 2012. Since then, she’s authored or co-authored more than three dozen op eds. Her commentary has been published in a wide […]
read more...Relentless change-maker Nobina Robinson: more than 3 dozen op eds in 6 years
Improve your Writing
July 18th, 2018
In the dog days of summer 2017, when many people were at the beach, or glued to the media coverage of Charlottesville’s neo-Nazi march and the shocking response from the leader of the free world, a small posse of women with informed opinions were speaking up to make change. University of Ottawa law prof, Liz […]
read more...9 tips to improve the chances of getting your op ed published
Increase Your Impact as a Speaker and Presenter
May 25th, 2018
Why would 80 women who spend most of their working hours talking to people from the front of a room be nervous enough about their speaking ability to sign up for a presentation skills workshop? I asked myself this the first time the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO) hired me to deliver such workshops. […]
read more...Women need to let go of perfectionism: it’s the enemy of good (and of engagement)
Blog Post and Our Advocacy Work
April 27th, 2018
We recently surveyed hundreds of women who’ve participated in our workshops and remained on our mailing list. Email overflow and work-life demands being what they are, we were happy to log 57 responses from women in 16 cities across the country. They gave us insight into what use they’ve made of the training we deliver, […]
read more...What Impact are We Having? What More Can We Do?
Our Advocacy Work
January 9th, 2018
If 2017 goes down in history as a year of resolve, what will we say about 2018? That we built on the momentum to make lasting change, or that we let the energy dissipate into nothingness? From women’s marches around the world to the #MeToo movement, many people took not just to social media, but […]
read more...5 Resolutions to maintain 2017’s momentum
Increase Your Impact as a Speaker and Presenter
August 1st, 2017
The Québécoise singer-songwriter on stage at the beautifully renovated National Arts Centre is charming and talented. But she’s also distracted. The connection between her plugged-in guitar and the amp is not working. In the audience, we can hear her lovely vocals, and the music being played by her band, but not her own strumming. If […]
read more...Two unexpected performance lessons and the power of the mic
Effective Communication, Improve your Writing and Increase Your Impact as a Speaker and Presenter
July 18th, 2017
“Great lectures, bad hair.” Clearly, I’m no Einstein, but in the fight for my most memorable student evaluation as a university communications instructor, that comment from 1992 runs neck and neck with this one from 1998: “Puncuashun, and speling, to strick.” Translated, this means “Punctuation and spelling too strict.” (Which, I’m pretty sure, totally redeems […]
read more...Critical feedback is one key to success
Increase Your Impact as a Speaker and Presenter
April 27th, 2017
Brilliance, without the capacity to communicate it, is wasted. I learned this in grade 10 chemistry from the intellectually-gifted, but communicationally-impaired Mr. Philipps. Sadly, that’s about all I learned (and it wasn’t the lesson he was intending to teach). Although my parents may have been disappointed that I dropped sciences in grade 11, I’ve never […]
read more...Five Steps to Overcoming Public Speaking Nerves
Improve your Writing
April 12th, 2017
Gloria Steinem… senior bureaucrats… somebody who funds the kind of work you do? Whose attention would you most like to attract? In recent years, Canadian women writing timely, engaging and persuasive commentary have elicited responses from all of the above. Others have sparked international conversations, investigative journalism, and a reversal of government policy. And […]
read more...Whose attention would you most like to attract?
