© Carola Doornbos
Barbara helps business leaders and professional speakers to tell their stories with confidence, clarity and impact. As a former Global Account Manager, being American and living in The Netherlands for many years, has given her a unique perspective on multi cultural communication.
Barbara is an American executive and speaker coach for Fortune 500 companies in Europe such as Deloitte, ING, Shell and Microsoft and is based in The Netherlands. She helps business leaders and professional speakers to tell their stories with confidence, clarity and impact. As a former Global Account Manager, being American and living in The Netherlands for many years, has given her a unique perspective on multi cultural communication.
As a recognized Senior TEDx coach, Barbara has coached more than 200 TEDx speakers in 25 TEDx events, with her company Successful Speaker Now. Her wide range of knowledge about effective communication, combined with her down-to-earth, supportive style of coaching, makes her a well respected and sought after coach for 1:1 coaching, group training or corporate events.
She is an executive presence coach and has trained hundreds of executives of Fortune 500 companies such as Deloitte, ING, Shell, DSM, Media Markt and many others. She is a Senior TEDx Speaker coach of 200+ speakers and is a published author of the book Boring to Brilliant! An Inspirational Guide for Speakers. Her great passion is to help speakers not be boring, but present with confidence and impact and to help businesswomen at all stages of their careers to speak up for what they want.
Meaningful presentations are not about showing how much the speaker knows. They are always about the audience: how to inform them, engage them and influence them.
"Your performance as a moderator has been highly appreciated by us and by our participants. From the past events, we know how much it is important to have a good moderator as a key actor who gives the tone and special color to the event. Thanks to your linguistic and interpersonal skills, you took time to talk to each speaker before their presentation during dinner or coffee break and know more about them.They felt welcomed and confident to take the floor, after you having introduced them in a very smart way. We liked your professionalism and your style of fulfilling this difficult exercise of moderation. As I told you, for each event, we look for a moderator with good communication style but also with a good knowledge of the content and topic of the event. Once again, we were not disappointed! Your presentation has been also very well evaluated by most participants, who highlighted it as the most interesting one ! Last but not least, I personally enjoyed having worked with you, with a special thanks for time and enthusiasm dedicated before the event and commitment and support demonstrated during and after. I will always have pleasure to see you back whenever you come in Brussels!
I thank you once again for contributing to the success of this CESI Symposium and wish you all the best for the future!"
"Barbara helped me prepare for an important Board presentation with only a couple weeks notice. She helped me transform my dry, fact-based presentation into a compelling celebration of how my team was responding to consumer opportunities with connected experiences. Barbara's framework & coaching gave me huge confidence and really set me up for success on the day. And, I'm still using the lessons she shared to this day."
“I was invited to do a TEDx talk at short notice. I had a powerful message I wanted to share, but I knew I needed help to shape it into something truly impactful. So I booked a Finishing Touch session with Barbara. Barbara was fantastic. In just one session, she helped me bring clarity and structure to my story. We worked through what to keep, what to cut, and how to make it land with the audience. Her insights were sharp, her energy was reassuring, and the session gave me the confidence I needed to step on that stage fully prepared. I can’t recommend Barbara highly enough. She’s the real deal.”