ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Know Your Own Executive Presence Strengths & Opportunities:
Click here to pinpoint the specific area in your executive presence that’s keeping you invisible to senior leadership and guarantees you stay working hard as a pack mule who never gets promoted.
Have you ever delivered a presentation or message you knew was packed with valuable information—only to watch your audience lose interest pretty soon?
Many leaders spend hours perfecting slides and polishing their content, yet their message still blends into every other presentation. In this episode, presentation expert Meredith Grundei explains why sounding "professional" often leads to sounding forgettable, and shares practical strategies to create presentations that engage audiences, inspire action, and leave a lasting impression.
By the end of Laura’s conversation with Meredith Grundei you’ll know:
🪝A simple presentation framework that helps you organize your ideas with clarity and confidence
🚀How storytelling, audience-focused messaging, and memorable hooks make your presentations impossible to ignore
🧲Why taking thoughtful creative risks can strengthen your credibility and help your message stand out in any room
Press play to learn how to transform your presentations from informative to unforgettable and become the speaker people remember long after the meeting ends.
Know Your Own Executive Presence Strengths & Opportunities:
Click here to pinpoint the specific area in your executive presence that’s keeping you invisible to senior leadership and guarantees you stay working hard as a pack mule who never gets promoted.
To learn more visit www.speakupwithlaura.com. New Speak Up podcast episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday early in the morning.
About our guest:
Meredith Grundei, MFA is a New York City–based public speaking and communication strategist for leaders who are done sounding like everyone else. She works with tech executives, founders, and bold thinkers to turn complex ideas into talks that actually move people. Not polite applause. Real shifts in how teams think, decide, and lead. Her clients include teams at Amazon AWS, Google, Sotheby’s, Pfizer, and Panasonic, along with mission-driven entrepreneurs who want their message to hit as hard as their work does.
No boring and rambling scripts. No corporate performance voice. Just clear structure, powerful storytelling, and presence people can feel from the back of the room.
With a background in theater directing and as a former instructor at Second City, she blends structure, storytelling, and presence. Her expertise has been featured in Business Insider. She is also the founder of Unscripted, an immersive speaking retreat.
The Speak Up Podcast helps high-performing professionals develop executive presence through strategic communication, executive confidence, and leadership influence. Each episode provides practical strategies to help you speak up in meetings, communicate with senior leaders, present ideas with clarity, build executive visibility, strengthen your leadership presence, influence without authority, stop overexplaining, answer difficult questions with confidence, and become a trusted executive leader.
Whether you're preparing for your next Vice President promotion or looking to communicate with greater credibility and gravitas, you'll learn actionable executive communication skills that accelerate career growth.
Topics covered in this episode:
Executive presence
The first 30 seconds of a presentation
How to build executive presence
Leadership communication skills
Board meeting presentation tips
Public speaking confidence
Executive communication
Body language for leaders
How to appear confident at work
Managing nerves before a presentation
High-stakes presentations
Interview executive presence
Leadership body language
Speaking with confidence under pressure
Communication skills for introverts
Building credibility at work
Presentation preparation techniques
Nonverbal communication in business
Executive presence strategies
