Director & Co-Founder
Liz credits her parents with starting her on the path to becoming a fan, practitioner and trainer of presentation skills. Liz’s mother was a shy and self-conscious little girl who was given old-fashioned “elocution lessons” to build her confidence. Not wanting her daughter to suffer the same shyness, Liz’s mom took her to the same teacher. The plan worked and Liz grew up reciting poetry for the family and acting in school plays. She pursued theatre for a time, earning a Theatre Arts degree at Ithaca College in upstate New York and performing in summer stock. Eventually Liz found her niche in market research, where she incorporated her knack for performing into moderating thousands of focus groups and presenting research findings to project teams and corporate executives.
On the other side of the family, Liz’s dad was a draftsman and designer, and relatives teased that he was incapable of telling a story without drawing a sketch. But Liz enjoyed those sketches, and would find herself drawing on flip charts in focus groups and client presentations to visualize complex information. With the widespread use of presentation software, Liz recognized the potential for visual storytelling that was now within everyone’s reach and began coaching her research colleagues in presentation design.
On a trip to the beach in 2008, friends Liz Van Patten and Bev Thompson came up with the idea for See Me Speak training, combining their talents to help speakers develop, design, and deliver more effective presentations.
