Executive Speaking Coaching: What the Work Actually Looks Like
Dr. Jenni Torres has spent more than 30 years in education, across five states, Puerto Rico, and Colombia, working as a teacher, curriculum developer, and researcher. She is also a parent in a bilingual family. When we were working together at Waterford.org, she was the Chief Academic Officer and she and her team built the CARES family engagement framework.
CARES stands for communication, academic content, relationships, expectations, and support. The curriculum team built and validated the research with more than 2,000 families, showing those five things are what mattered most when it comes to a child's education. But when Jenni writes or talks about the CARES Framework, she opens with her own family: "As a military spouse, my family moved 14 times in 26 years. I experienced many school systems as both a parent and an educator."
Leading with her family's lived experience instead of the framework is something Jenni built deliberately over years of executive speaking coaching. You can have the best research in the world, but you have to open an audience's heart before they will open their mind. By the time she presented on stage at SXSW EDU in 2023, she knew to start with her story before she dug into the research. The same habit shows up in everything she's written since.
Executive Speaking Coaching Happens Long Before the Stage
Most people picture speaking coaching as a service you book the week before a big talk: tighten the slides, run through the talk track a few times, work on pacing. Jenni and I did that as well, but that was not the foundation of our work. Jenni and I started out working on Op-Ed pieces. From there we built a few keynote speeches together, from the arc of the talk down to the individual transitions between sections. I coached her on stage presence and gave her feedback along the way. I stayed in the room during her collaborations with outside PR firms, news interviews, and broader messaging strategy. That's why I was able to assist Jenni in becoming her most authentic self onstage. I deeply understood her passion, values, and goals.
Jenni is now the Executive Director at WIDA, still making a difference in the lives of young children. And when I read her blogs, I can see that the speaking style she built during our work together is still intact. That's the real test of whether coaching worked: does the storytelling structure survive a career change, or was it specific to one talk?
Reading a Room She'd Never Spoken to Before
Jenni is an academic, and amongst her peers, she speaks that way. But when she took the stage at SXSW EDU, her audience included classroom teachers and nonprofit staff, the people actually living inside the relationships. Preparing for a keynote speech like that means asking "what does this specific room need to hear from me and how do they need to hear it?"
This is the part of coaching that's harder to explain than transitions or pacing: you have to understand your audience and craft your message in a way that will connect with them. What story will help them see themselves in the data? If you can answer those questions before your presentation, you'll be on the right track.
FAQ
What does an executive speaking coach actually do?
An executive speaking coach helps a leader figure out what to say and how to say it in their own voice, not a performed one. In practice that means working on the arc of a talk, the transitions between ideas, stage presence, and often the writing that surrounds a keynote: op-eds, media prep, and messaging strategy. The goal is never a polished script, but rather a leader who can speak about what they actually know without reading or memorizing.
How long does it take to prepare for a keynote or conference talk?
Longer than most people think. A single prep session in the final week can help with logistics and nerves, but real change in how someone speaks usually takes months, sometimes longer. The leaders who show up most confident on stage are usually the ones who started working on their message well before the invitation to speak arrived.
How do I stop sounding academic or jargon-heavy when I speak publicly?
Start by identifying who's actually in the room. Academic and expert language works when you're speaking to peers who share your vocabulary. It stops working the moment your audience includes people outside that world: teachers, families, board members, funders, or a general public. The fix isn't dumbing down the content, it's finding the plain version of what you already know and trusting that it's enough.
What's the difference between speaking coaching and media training?
Media training prepares you for a specific format: an interview, a Q&A, a reporter who might ask something you don't want to answer. Speaking coaching is broader. It's about developing a consistent voice and message across every format you show up in: keynotes, op-eds, interviews, and everyday conversations about your work. Most leaders eventually need both, and they reinforce each other.
Can speaking coaching help with confidence, not just delivery?
Yes, because confidence on stage is usually a clarity problem. Leaders who are unsure what to lead with, or who are performing a version of themselves they think sounds smarter, read as less confident even when their delivery is technically fine. That is the primary work we do. Once someone knows exactly what they're saying and why, the confidence tends to follow on its own.
About the Author
Kim Fischer is a strategic communications consultant and Fractional CCO with 16 years of experience in journalism and nearly a decade working with founders, executives, and leadership teams. She helps leaders understand how to talk about what they do, whether that means writing messaging, sharpening a pitch deck, or finding the story that was buried in the one they already had. She is based in Dallas-Fort Worth and works with clients across the country.
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