I appear to be on a mic theme, with last week’s “Don’t Let Them Drop the Mic” post 😄 Today, I want to highlight an awesome initiative led by Anna Soliman at Meta called Pass Her the Mic.

Did you know? Only 30% of speakers at global conferences are women.

That’s why Pass Her the Mic was created. It’s an initiative to get more women onto our stages by:

1. Creating a speaker bench of excellent women speakers,
2. Connecting those speakers with event organizers.

I love the intentionality and focus on tangible outcome. Having personally attended three training sessions and a 1:1 coaching session, I’m so impressed by the focus and passion of the program’s leaders.

Here’s what I learned.

Though I’ve done three TEDx talks and a host of speaking/podcast events, I still have much to learn and improve. In particular, the below slide resonated with me (I’ve been given approval to share here). One of the first things you learn as a speaker, is to eliminate the fillers. In fact, I feel so strongly about this, I posted about eliminating that dreaded two-letter word here. But there’s more! We did a session on weak language, and I realized I still have work to do.

You see, weak language is about more than fillers. How many of these weak language phrases do you use?

What’s next…

By July 2022, Pass Her the Mic will have a publicly accessible database of more than 100 highly trained female speakers, all ready to share expertise around the most in-demand business topics like commerce, digital marketing, leadership and more. Delighted to be part of this esteemed group!

For a few related articles:

• Don’t run away from hard things – while speaking may be intimidating, here are some tips to take on the challenge!
• 3 Ways to Increase Your Effectiveness
• 1 Thing Women Must Stop Doing

To learn more about this initiative, check out Pass her the Mic website or LinkedIn.

#passherthemic