Member since October 2026
Kym Dakin-Neal, M.Ed., CPQC, is a facilitator, coach, and communication specialist whose work lives at the crossroads of storytelling, improvisation, and human potential. As a founding member of Portland Playback Theatre, she brings the same values that animate live performance - deep listening, ensemble trust, and spontaneous co-creation - into organizational and professional development settings.
Her book Head, Heart & Hands Listening in Coach Practice (Routledge, 2024) received a North American Book Award for Best Nonfiction in Business Leadership/Management, reflecting her commitment to listening as both craft and practice.
Kym trains medical professionals in patient communication at Tufts/Maine Medical and Kaiser Permanente, coaches newly promoted leaders, women running for office, and entrepreneurs, and has spoken for the New England Association for Talent Development, Maine DEP, she has been the Plenary speaker for the ASPE Conference in Montreal and the keynote speaker for the Women’s Credit Union Network of Maine. She is a two-time featured speaker at the Maine HR Convention.
As Founder and Principal of Voice Into Learning, LLC, Kym designs experiential learning that draws directly from theatrical methods — activating fuller employee potential, strengthening team morale, and sharpening the communication skills that make organizations come alive. Her repeat clients include Pierce Atwood, SMRT, Maine DEP and the US Postal Service.
I am absolutely passionate about adult experiential learning, the power of deep intentional listening, and the Positive Intelligence Coaching model. I am all in on our most understated superpower - the human voice! For women, if we know how to effectively use our voices, we can raise our status in boardrooms and executive forums around the world - no matter how little physical space we take up - AUDITORY space can be powerful terrain!
A few years ago, when my daughter was in her gap year between high school and college, she and I went out to lunch. She had been accepted into the college she very much wanted to attend, and they had signed off on her delayed start. So as far as I knew, when I sat down to soup and salad at our favorite lunch spot, she was all set with her plans. Then she made an announcement.
“Mom, I’m not sure I’m going to go to college.”
My fork froze midway to my mouth. I cleared my throat and managed to ask “How come?”
“Well” she took a deep breath. “I already have over 5,000 followers on my blog and I won’t be able to continue with that if I go to school.”
My turn to take a deep breath. It took every ounce of self control I had not to start screaming “What the *%@ are talking about?!?!?” “Of course you’re going to school!! What’s the MATTER with you??” ETC.
Instead, I concentrated on the only thing I could control at that time - Just Eat The Soup. Spoonful by spoonful.
Now, because I had created some space for myself before reacting, I had what I call a “Good Mom Moment”.
“Okay” I started. “I know that you are doing well with your blogging, and that you’ve been product posting for some companies too.”
This was true. Every week or so we would come home to boxes of strange products in the driveway: smoothie mix, jewelry, pumpkin spice gummies (?).
“But here’s the thing. I also know you are a social person. And sitting alone in your room in front of a computer for hours at a time is not really building satisfying connections for you. Right? It’s not the same as making real friends.” She heard me. We continued our lunch.
Three hours later she called me at work. “I guess I’ll go to school after all.” And then, grudgingly, “Thanks mom.”
What just happened here?
This was a high stakes conversation for my daughter and me, so my response to her feelings about college was really important.
I had to…
STOP my initial reaction. This is difficult for many of us to do. At this time in our culture, very few of us are good at self-editing and stuffing our feelings, particularly with loved ones. But I did stop. I remember taking a deep breath to quell my initial negative reaction.
Then I had to…
DROP into an activity that would ease the anxiety her announcement caused. This can take many different forms. In the Positive Intelligence model, this is where the PQ reps come in handy - rubbing two fingers together with such attention that you become aware of the ridges on your fingertips.
For me, at that time, I had the soup in front of me and that’s what I focused on. I broke down the act of eating soup into its simplest parts: scoop, raise the spoon to my mouth, pour it into my mouth without spillage. This action helped me create space so that I could better…
ROLL with my daughter’s reasons for questioning the original college plan. I could…
LISTEN to her from a calmer space so that I could then
RESPOND with some salient information about her desire for richer friendships.
I wish I could claim that from that day forward, I employ that strategy whenever these tense exchanges take place. But I'm a flawed human being, so I can't claim that. However, this single success taught me the value of first taking a deep breath before responding, so that I can avoid fanning the flames of conflict, and hopefully, plant a few seeds that will sprout into better outcomes. Remembering to do this is part of my own life's work.
Kym Dakin-Neal: Finding Her Voice (Again, and Again)
Kym Dakin-Neal has been laid off, sidelined by a pandemic, and talked into a crowded profession by a well-meaning friend. Each time, the floor she thought she was standing on turned out to be a stage. The only real question was whether she’d step forward. She always has.
Kym started out as Assistant Creative Director at Portland Radio Group, writing and producing the words that filled the space between songs. She loved it. Then the sales team missed its numbers, the budget needed a sacrifice, and that sacrifice was Kym. The team felt so terrible that they took her out to lunch at the fanciest place in town. She doesn’t remember the food. She does remember the lesson: you can do excellent work and still lose your place in someone else’s story.
The only story you control is your own.
So she started building hers. Kym trained and facilitated for law firms, medical teams, theatre companies, and professional services firms. She taught at Bowdoin, USM, UNH, and UNE, and co-founded Portland Playback Theatre, where audience members’ true stories are performed on the spot. For ten years she was coaching people without calling it that. When a friend finally told her she was a coach, her first thought was that the world already had plenty of those. Her second thought was that none of them were her.
Then 2020 arrived, and her in-person work evaporated almost overnight. Rooms she’d commanded for two decades went dark. Rather than wait for them to reopen, she wrote the book she’d been circling for years, Head, Heart & Hands Listening in Coach Practice. Routledge published it in 2024, and it won a North American Book Award. Writing about listening while the world went quiet taught her a great deal about listening.
She kept building. Kym created Shift/POV, a conversation game that invites people to step into one another’s perspectives, and Nugget, the app that highlights the important stuff in online meetings. She also earned certification in Positive Intelligence. That work gave her a language for the inner voices that tell us to stay small, stay quiet, and stay put, and a method for talking back to them.
Every pivot looked like an ending from the inside: the layoff, the empty calendar, the crowded field. Each one turned out to be an invitation to raise her voice rather than lower it.
That conviction runs through every talk she gives. Kym speaks on listening, leadership, and the stories we tell ourselves about who gets to be heard. She brings a theatre-maker’s sense of timing, a coach’s ear, and a radio writer’s instinct for the line people remember. Audiences leave with tools they can use the next morning, along with a nudge toward the microphone.
She’s especially committed to women. Too many were taught that their stories are too much, not enough, or best told by someone else. Kym has watched brilliant women shrink in meetings, apologize for their own expertise, and hand the spotlight to whoever reaches for it first. She’s done it herself. Now she helps women find the story only they can tell, and then tell it out loud, on purpose, from center stage.
If she can turn a pink slip into a fancy lunch and a lockdown into an acclaimed book, imagine what you can do with yours.
A few years ago, when my daughter was in her gap year between high school and college, she and I went out to lunch. She had been accepted into the college she very much wanted to attend, and they had signed off on her delayed start. So as far as I knew, when I sat down to soup and salad at our favorite lunch spot, she was all set with her plans. Then she made an announcement.
“Mom, I’m not sure I’m going to go to college.”
My fork froze midway to my mouth. I cleared my throat and managed to ask “How come?”
“Well” she took a deep breath. “I already have over 5,000 followers on my blog and I won’t be able to continue with that if I go to school.”
My turn to take a deep breath. It took every ounce of self control I had not to start screaming “What the *%@ are talking about?!?!?” “Of course you’re going to school!! What’s the MATTER with you??” ETC.
Instead, I concentrated on the only thing I could control at that time - Just Eat The Soup. Spoonful by spoonful.
Now, because I had created some space for myself before reacting, I had what I call a “Good Mom Moment”.
“Okay” I started. “I know that you are doing well with your blogging, and that you’ve been product posting for some companies too.”
This was true. Every week or so we would come home to boxes of strange products in the driveway: smoothie mix, jewelry, pumpkin spice gummies (?).
“But here’s the thing. I also know you are a social person. And sitting alone in your room in front of a computer for hours at a time is not really building satisfying connections for you. Right? It’s not the same as making real friends.” She heard me. We continued our lunch.
Three hours later she called me at work. “I guess I’ll go to school after all.” And then, grudgingly, “Thanks mom.”
What just happened here?
This was a high stakes conversation for my daughter and me, so my response to her feelings about college was really important.
I had to…
STOP my initial reaction. This is difficult for many of us to do. At this time in our culture, very few of us are good at self-editing and stuffing our feelings, particularly with loved ones. But I did stop. I remember taking a deep breath to quell my initial negative reaction.
Then I had to…
DROP into an activity that would ease the anxiety her announcement caused. This can take many different forms. In the Positive Intelligence model, this is where the PQ reps come in handy - rubbing two fingers together with such attention that you become aware of the ridges on your fingertips.
For me, at that time, I had the soup in front of me and that’s what I focused on. I broke down the act of eating soup into its simplest parts: scoop, raise the spoon to my mouth, pour it into my mouth without spillage. This action helped me create space so that I could better…
ROLL with my daughter’s reasons for questioning the original college plan. I could…
LISTEN to her from a calmer space so that I could then
RESPOND with some salient information about her desire for richer friendships.
I wish I could claim that from that day forward, I employ that strategy whenever these tense exchanges take place. But I'm a flawed human being, so I can't claim that. However, this single success taught me the value of first taking a deep breath before responding, so that I can avoid fanning the flames of conflict, and hopefully, plant a few seeds that will sprout into better outcomes. Remembering to do this is part of my own life's work.
Kym Dakin-Neal: Finding Her Voice (Again, and Again)
Kym Dakin-Neal has been laid off, sidelined by a pandemic, and talked into a crowded profession by a well-meaning friend. Each time, the floor she thought she was standing on turned out to be a stage. The only real question was whether she’d step forward. She always has.
Kym started out as Assistant Creative Director at Portland Radio Group, writing and producing the words that filled the space between songs. She loved it. Then the sales team missed its numbers, the budget needed a sacrifice, and that sacrifice was Kym. The team felt so terrible that they took her out to lunch at the fanciest place in town. She doesn’t remember the food. She does remember the lesson: you can do excellent work and still lose your place in someone else’s story.
The only story you control is your own.
So she started building hers. Kym trained and facilitated for law firms, medical teams, theatre companies, and professional services firms. She taught at Bowdoin, USM, UNH, and UNE, and co-founded Portland Playback Theatre, where audience members’ true stories are performed on the spot. For ten years she was coaching people without calling it that. When a friend finally told her she was a coach, her first thought was that the world already had plenty of those. Her second thought was that none of them were her.
Then 2020 arrived, and her in-person work evaporated almost overnight. Rooms she’d commanded for two decades went dark. Rather than wait for them to reopen, she wrote the book she’d been circling for years, Head, Heart & Hands Listening in Coach Practice. Routledge published it in 2024, and it won a North American Book Award. Writing about listening while the world went quiet taught her a great deal about listening.
She kept building. Kym created Shift/POV, a conversation game that invites people to step into one another’s perspectives, and Nugget, the app that highlights the important stuff in online meetings. She also earned certification in Positive Intelligence. That work gave her a language for the inner voices that tell us to stay small, stay quiet, and stay put, and a method for talking back to them.
Every pivot looked like an ending from the inside: the layoff, the empty calendar, the crowded field. Each one turned out to be an invitation to raise her voice rather than lower it.
That conviction runs through every talk she gives. Kym speaks on listening, leadership, and the stories we tell ourselves about who gets to be heard. She brings a theatre-maker’s sense of timing, a coach’s ear, and a radio writer’s instinct for the line people remember. Audiences leave with tools they can use the next morning, along with a nudge toward the microphone.
She’s especially committed to women. Too many were taught that their stories are too much, not enough, or best told by someone else. Kym has watched brilliant women shrink in meetings, apologize for their own expertise, and hand the spotlight to whoever reaches for it first. She’s done it herself. Now she helps women find the story only they can tell, and then tell it out loud, on purpose, from center stage.
If she can turn a pink slip into a fancy lunch and a lockdown into an acclaimed book, imagine what you can do with yours.
