How I Found My Voice

When it comes to presentations, it’s not only what you know. It’s how you hold the room.

For as long as I can remember, I have found joy on stages. Since the 1980s, I’ve either found a stage to climb onto or created one of my own. There is footage of me as a toddler demanding applause from my very captive audience—my paternal grandparents—each time I repeated the same line of a song and paused dramatically for effect.

I loved performance of any kind. My dancing career ended quickly—and if you saw the video footage, you would understand why—but by high school, I was all in on singing. One of the greatest blessings of my life was the gospel choir that a dear friend and mentor founded while I was in high school. Later, some of the most powerful and transformative experiences I’ve ever had happened during weekly gospel rehearsals in college. That choir became my refuge, my family, and an avenue for spirituality I had been seeking. Each week I would sit in the front pew of our spiritual center, and the voices that surrounded mine would lift and carry me, anchoring me in purpose and connection.

One of the hardest parts of moving from student life into professional life was the absence of formal spaces to sing in community. I did not know it then, but the lessons I learned in those rehearsal rooms would follow me into every training room, auditorium, and stage I entered later.

The Stage Became Something More

If you have met me in the last two decades, there is a good chance you would have no idea I used to sing. But in high school, I discovered another use for a stage: to both experience and facilitate transformation.

When I was 16, I gave my first speech as a survivor of dating violence and sexual assault. Moments before I walked onstage, the organizer of the program forcibly took my written speech from my hands. She told me later that it was a trauma response: hearing how I planned to describe my assault had triggered her own unhealed experience. It was an explanation, not an excuse.

That moment could have stopped me from speaking at all. Instead, something profound shifted in me. The voice that went unheard the night of my assault demanded to be let out. I marched onto that stage and delivered the speech I had planned to give—from memory. That was the first and last time I ever wrote out a speech word for word.

I’ve often reflected on that moment and wondered what allowed me to speak. The support I had from peers, family, and professionals was imperative; without it, I would not have been able to do it. But as I’ve gotten older and considered the whole of who I was and who I am, I also recognize that years of singing jazz and gospel had an impact. In some way, they rearranged my DNA. They shaped how I engaged with the world, how I became a facilitator and speaker, and how I now train other educators and preventionists.

Knowing the Line Is Not the Same as Understanding the Moment

My daughter has fallen in love with acting, and I get the honor of supporting her as she practices her lines. Recently, she was feeling stuck on a line she could not remember. Instead of asking her to repeat it again and again, I asked her about the scene. What had just happened? What clues were in the other actors’ lines? Why did her character need to say this particular thing at this particular moment?

Together, we discovered why she said the line, not just what the line was. That distinction matters in acting. It matters in singing. And it matters deeply in facilitation.

Great Facilitation Is More Than Content

Whenever I interviewed potential educators, I was more interested in how they engaged than in how much knowledge they already had. Knowledge can be taught. What I looked for was the person whose light came on when they had the opportunity to facilitate, because that light is what changes the energy in a room.

I wanted facilitators who could engage a large group and still feel approachable to an individual afterward. The content is critical, of course, but if the delivery feels disconnected, the content becomes much harder to hear, trust, and integrate.

Whenever I onboard or supervise educators, we spend a lot of time workshopping both the content and the flow. I do not expect every presenter to work without notes, but I do want them to feel grounded enough in the material that they can pay attention to what is happening in the room. A facilitator who is overly attached to a script may miss the question that needs to be explored, the tension that needs to be named, or the moment when the room is ready to go deeper.

The Audience Is the Conductor and the Choir

For 10 years, I stood on stages and looked to conductors to anchor me and my choirmates: where we were in the music, what depth and tone they needed from us, when to harmonize, and when to improvise. As a facilitator, the audience is both my conductor and my choir.

I need to stay attuned to the energy in the room, the nonverbal signs of engagement, and the questions that tell me where people are really sitting with the material. The topics I am there to discuss can be heavy, so I work hard to create opportunities for light and levity. My goal is for audiences to leave feeling more empowered and less overwhelmed.

I have been fortunate to have a personal and professional background that allows me to find both freedom and groundedness in those spaces. Helping other facilitators find their voice—and supporting them as they learn how to hold a room with care, clarity, and confidence—is one of my favorite things to do at JT Consulting.

Want to learn more about how we train and supervise prevention educators, or are you looking to bring a speaker into your organization who can meet the room with both expertise and humanity? Let’s talk.