I’m not a public speaking coach. I’m here to help you understand the value of your ideas.
I help take some of the world’s biggest, most challenging, complex and important ideas and transform them into high-impact stories for every kind of audience. My mission is to support people – like you – to value their ideas, craft them into compelling stories and share them to bring about change in your communities, companies and the world.
I’m not a public speaking coach.
I’m here to help you understand the value of your ideas.
I help take some of the world’s biggest, most challenging, complex and important ideas and transform them into high-impact stories for every kind of audience. My mission is to support people – like you – to value their ideas, craft them into compelling stories and share them to bring about change in your communities, companies and the world.
Impactful storytelling
I break down big complex ideas into small, simple ones to achieve impact. I run one of the world’s top TEDx events, have worked with hundreds of speakers who have been heard by tens of millions of people, changed the law in England and Wales and raised $1 billion to fight climate change.
1
law change
23
million views
$1.3
billion raised
Impactful storytelling
I break down big complex ideas into small, simple ones to achieve impact. I run one of the world’s top TEDx events, have worked with hundreds of speakers who have been heard by tens of millions of people, changed the law in England and Wales and raised $1 billion to fight climate change.
1
23
$1.3
law change
million views
billion raised
I reimagine the world through stories.
The magic lies in crafting great stories, making your listener curious, and getting them to care.
I’ve worked with expert speakers and people who have never done this before. It doesn’t matter who you are, or how much experience you have – if you want to get better at public speaking and storytelling, all you need are the right tools and the right support. I believe that speaking is a skill that can be learned, refined and developed.
I reimagine the world through stories.
The magic lies in crafting great stories, making your listener curious, and getting them to care.
I’ve worked with expert speakers and people who have never done this before. It doesn’t matter who you are, or how much experience you have – if you want to get better at public speaking and storytelling all you need are the right tools and the right support. I believe that speaking is a skill that can be learned, refined and developed.
A snapshot of my work
Climate Leadership Initiative
Providing holistic consultancy to support CLI’s goal of scaling global philanthropy to accelerate climate solutions. Including coaching external speakers for high profile events, consulting on event design and curation and supporting their team to develop public speaking and storytellings skills through workshops and one-to-one coaching.
One-to-one, organisational, workshops
RMI (Rocky Mountain Institute)
Working across senior leadership to build an overall narrative and pitch deck for fundraising. Working with Managing Directors of each portfolio to develop their overall storytelling skills, and, as needed, to work on pitches for foundations and philanthropists.
One-to-one
Atomico
Designing and curating a residential event for their portfolio of founders. Including curating and securing external speakers, briefing and coaching internal and external speakers and supporting with speech writing.
Consultancy
TEDxLondon
I’ve worked with over two hundred speakers over the past ten years to curate and coach them to speak on the TEDxLondon stage, at venues such as the Royal Festival Hall, Sadler’s Wells and Abbey Road Studios. The speakers I’ve worked with have had their talks go on to generate over 23 million views on YouTube as well as impacting UK policy, raising funding for their work, increasing their profile and helping secure publishing deals.
One-to-one
ClimateWorks Foundation - (Workshop and One-to-one)
Workshops for all of their senior program leaders on storytelling and working one-to-one with key leaders to develop or build their project pitches and develop compelling impact stories.
Oxford University - Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship
Designing an impact storytelling module for the Impact Lab as part of the Said Business School. This involves a twice yearly storytelling workshop, curriculum components, one-to-one support for students and running storytelling cafes where students can practise their skills and get feedback.
Workshops
What my clients have to say.
Andy Ratcliffe – Executive Director Impetus Private Equity Foundation
Maryam was great. I’m a pretty experienced speech writer and speaker and she helped me improve the content and the delivery of my talk. Highly recommended.
Jennifer Stokes – Managing Director Development Rocky Mountain Institute
Maryam and her team have transformed our external communications – from her coaching on scripts, presentations, and the combination of the two. Her rigorous focus on audience-centric messaging has already made an impact with our key audiences. We are so grateful for her help and expertise!
Jennifer R. Kitt – President Climate Leadership Initiative
Maryam was an absolute gift to work with, making everyone from Nobel laureates to Obama Administration Cabinet members to me refine our messages and bring out our own, authentic voice—and all this using only Zoom as a tool during the pandemic. I cannot recommend her highly enough.
Matthew Elliot – Executive Director Oceankind
“Crushes it! Maryam was a total joy to work with. She ably coached 50 conservation professionals for a virtual expert series on oceans and climate that we organized. Thoughtful, effective, insightful, and disarming in her coaching. She worked very well with the production team and the event organizers and received rave reviews across the board from the speakers (myself included). Highly recommend.”
