Have you ever wondered why, despite being highly skilled and knowledgeable, leading teams and communicating effectively remain a challenge for so many? What are we getting wrong about the essence of true leadership and impactful communication?

There are more times than I can count when things went wrong because despite a leader being smart and intelligent, they didn't have the tools or skills to actively listen, genuinely respond, or plain outright be honest.

I landed a huge government contract. I was the sub of a prime vendor and everything was going well. One day, we had an all hands meeting and I was sure they were calling to renew. It turned out the prime vendor added two fictitious people on the contract and was billing the client for it. I had no idea. But instead of speaking up, I kept silent, with a frozen, paralyzed voice.

That was a defining moment for me that I had lost my confidence. I had to get honest with myself to examine other areas of my life to see if there were patterns where I was not speaking up and there were.

Now, I get to empower and transform audiences to significantly improve their personal and professional lives with leadership and effective communication.

I started speaking at the age of 8 years old in front of a live audience of 100 people. When most people were running from the stage, I was running toward it. This began my speaking journey and my desire to use my gifts of clear, culturally aware and effective communication to transform audiences.

My dream was to be an international broadcast journalist, but life told me to start in Executive support. Little did I know that period would be my hands-on practical training. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. With my bubbly personality, I became the go-to person in my Executive Support role, and before long, I was often asked how to handle complex people problems. I'd sit at my desk designing and coming up with training ideas and solutions to solve these people problems, and had a vision for a company I called, Island Communications...I figured since I was from The Bahamas, I would call it that. But, that name evolved into to what we know today as Clear Communication Solutions--a global training, coaching, and consulting firm teaching leaders and teams how to keep top talent engaged.