(And Why Public Speaking Is Part of It)

There’s a version of my life that looks accidental from the outside. One job led to another, one opportunity followed a crisis, and one microphone somehow kept finding its way back into my hand, which, when I say it like that, is actually quite funny. But if I’m honest, very little of it has been accidental. Maybe it has been more a case of right place, right time, mixed with a willingness to say yes when something felt aligned, even if I did not fully understand why at the time.

Since going self-employed, I have been asked more than once what “the plan” is, as though stepping away from a structured role must automatically mean replacing it with a beautifully formatted strategy document, complete with arrows, timelines and projected income streams. Yeah, right. The truth is there is something of a plan, it just does not live on paper. It lives in my head. It is less a roadmap and more an instinct, a quiet sense of the kinds of rooms I want to be in and the kinds of conversations I want to contribute to, even if I cannot always articulate that neatly.

And public speaking has always been somewhere within that.

When I think back properly, speaking has threaded its way through almost every chapter of my adult life. YouTube content, Pride stages, council chambers, press activity. I never labelled myself a public speaker. It was always something else, an activist, a councillor, an advocate, a connector. But the through-line was consistent. I was using my voice in rooms where it mattered, whether those rooms were welcoming, tense or openly hostile, and each of them taught me something about presence, about tone, about intent, and about how much responsibility sits within simply being in the room.

I did not set out to build a speaking career. I set out to speak honestly.

Going freelance has not shifted that, but it has given me the space to look at it more deliberately. Leaving full-time employment forced me to confront questions I had been circling for years. What parts of my experience do I want to carry forward intentionally, and how do I make them part of the work I do in a way that sustains both me and the communities I care about? I have never wanted to drift away from advocacy. If anything, I have wanted to continue in that space on my own terms, choosing platforms rather than simply reacting to circumstances.

That is where speaking becomes something I actively want to pursue rather than something I happen to fall into.

Advocacy does not only live in community centres or grassroots meetings, important as those spaces are. It lives in workplaces, conferences and leadership events, in rooms where people are grappling with inclusion, culture and representation but do not always know how to move beyond policy into practice. I have been in enough of those rooms now to know that I can hold them, not through rehearsed slogans or performative confidence, but through lived experience, honesty and storytelling that reflects the complexity rather than smoothing it out.

Being represented by Raise The Bar does not feel like a dramatic pivot. It feels like an acknowledgement of the work that has already been happening quietly in the background. It formalises what has, until now, been organic, and it gives shape to something that was always part of that internal plan. It says that this work has value, that these experiences translate beyond the spaces I have traditionally occupied, and that advocacy can exist within professional environments without losing its edge.

It also feels aligned with this freelance chapter more broadly. If I am building something that blends communication, creativity and advocacy, then speaking sits naturally within that ecosystem. Proudly Said is about conversations. My client work is about helping others communicate with clarity. Public speaking is where those strands intersect with lived experience in a way that feels coherent rather than forced.

I do not pretend to have everything mapped out. Freelance life is still uncertain, sometimes expansive and sometimes unnervingly quiet, with weeks that feel full of momentum and others that feel like gently nudging doors to see which ones might open. The plan may not live in a colour-coded document, but it is there, evolving, becoming clearer with each room I step into.

And this feels like part of that shape coming into focus.

Check out my profile reel below, and you can find out more about booking me to speak on my Raise the Bar profile, HERE.