Public Presence Coaching
Lead with your authentic presence
Hi, I'm Sarah Donnell, presence, presentation, and leadership coach.
I may not know you yet, but I'm already working under the assumption that the world needs you–the fullest version of you. As a collective, we're moving past the idea that leadership has to look and sound and show up in a homogenous, domineering way (thank goodness). So what does that mean for you?
This may involve public speaking training, yes, but goes deeper than that. What will power look and feel like as it comes through you? How can you hold it with bravery and accountability?
Let's work together and find out.
My Story
The Quick Version: Take an actor, give her day jobs in communications and PR, make her an acting teacher, also a yoga teacher, throw her into years of facilitating and power analysis, send her to a master's program about social change, then train her to tune into people's context and belief systems as a chaplain...and this is what you'll get: a coach who helps leaders find and express their authentic spark.
The Longer Version:
I started out as an actor and a writer, which had me reckoning with my expression, physicality, social identity, and stage fright from an early age. It also meant learning to collaborate to pull off large-scale events, mastering my own productive rhythms, and dipping into myriad other jobs and industries to pay the bills. For both survival and artistic reasons, I became a professional people-pleaser who could tune into expectations, learn quickly on the job, and adapt to constant transition.
But...being such a skilled shape-shifter actually made it rather difficult to find and trust my own style and voice as I reached adulthood and matured as an actor, teacher, and facilitator. It didn’t feel genuine to approximate the stock images of leadership and authority I’d been raised with. I wish I’d had a presence coach to reflect back to me where my strengths sparkled through! It’s tough to see ourselves clearly—even when we’re looking in a mirror.
Ultimately, the quest to find and feel like myself has been one of the most compelling and rewarding narratives in my life. It serves my work, my relationships, my art, my health, and my general contentment. I absolutely love accompanying others on this journey. My role as your coach braids together many strands of work and study experience: performing, teaching, marketing, personal narrative, movement, identity, voice, power dynamics, improvisation, facilitation, breath, yoga, public speaking, and even belief systems. I could ramble on about this all day, but while this is thoughtful work we can do together, it’s really more about connecting and reconnecting to feeling. It’s about being present and opening up to let your unique shine flow from you unblocked.
If that sounds a little mysterious…well, that's because it is. But that's what makes it so endlessly interesting.