I am obsessed with the idea of perfect communication.   So much so that I have dedicated my life to finding out what makes someone a great speaker, charismatic, dynamic.   You see I believe that these characteristics aren't something inherent, but something that can be learned!  My journey has taken me to some very interesting and surprising places. For example:
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• Neurology and the evolution of the brain
• Modern police interrogation & lie detection
• Professional wrestling & busking
• Improv and Stand-up Comedy

My journey started right out of high school when I was hired and trained at the Ministry of Attorney General's Office of British Columbia in facilitation and spent two years travelling the province speaking to youths from 5-18 about racism and violence. My speaking audiences were amazingly diverse.  I might speak to 60 kindergarten students in the morning in an auditorium and 4 at-risk teenagers in a youth detention centre in the afternoon and finish the evening in front of teachers and police officers. It was here where I discovered my first insight: People learn best by doing.  In every situation when we had a volunteer we saw an increase in attention, energy and class interaction!  That is why my workshops are always highly interactive involving individual, partner and group work. 

When I was a student at McGill University I was selected as one of the top 4 for the business program case competition team.  This meant not only that I would be part of the team that represented the university both internationally and locally, but also that I had the backing of the whole school of management.  You see the top 4 where selected by both the faculty and students (each having 50% of the vote).  It was an amazing honour and in my time I had the opporuntity to compete and travel around the world and present in front of groups of business professionals and students ranging from 5 to 400.  It was while presenting at The Copenhangen International Case Competition that I discovered my second insight: Your presentation starts before you say a word.  You see the winning team at that competition did something that no one else did: they planned how they looked.  From the way they all stood in unison to approach the speaking area, to where they stood and how they waited while their presentation loaded.  By the time they were ready to speak they had the whole room's attention and the other teams seriously nervous.

​Ivan presented his public speaking workshop for the Interior Designers Institute (IDI) of BC of which I am an industry member.  To say he blew us away was an understatement.  His presentation was not only very useful (he made us practice as we learned), but honestly it was also very entertaining.  Too often learning is can be very serious, but Ivan made it fun and interesting.  We were thoroughly impressed in learning various ways to improve presentations as well as secrets to pitching ideas.  We look forward to expanding our sessions with Ivan in the future! 

Maria Rudman |Business Development Committee | IDIBC/IDC

In my last year of university professors started asking me if I might come to their classes and teach their students how to present. That is when my love of teaching was born, but it was to take a back seat as I entered the corporate world.  After graduating I pursued several careers:

• Finance - Morgan Stanley
• Sales - Novartis Pharmaceuticals
• Human Resources - University of British Columbia

In each of these positions it was my ability to communicate and present that was always cited as a factor in why I got the position.  It was my ability to make myself memorable with one simple tactic and this is the third key in learning.  People don't want to be talked at, they want to be talked to.  You see in every situation I would apply little mind hacks to break people out of their shell and to make our conversations unique. Even when they didn't remember my name they always remembered our conversations. My focus when I teach is to give students a toolbelt of tactics that they can use to prepare them for any situation!  

I pursued each one of the fields with varying degrees of success, but nothing really captured my interest.  Throughout this time I kept communication as part of my life and became a Distinguished Toastmaster, which is the highest designation you can get in the Toastmaster system.  At the time I was also an avid dancer and started to teach which lead to my next career as a small business owner and teacher.  I applied my communication techniques in not only how I taught, but also when developing other instructors.  Within a year of taking over the business I had a dance school with 12 employees teaching in 4 different locations, but despite this success, my passion kept going back to teaching and speaking.  I left the world of dance and entered the world of training.  I spent years researching what actually works when it comes to communication.  I studied talk show hosts, stand-up comics, poker players, buskers, professional wrestlers, ring announcers, police interrogators and more to get to the core of what it means to get someone else to listen to you.  It was this pursuit that spawned not only my unique approach to communication, but the book THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE NAKED: A NEW APPROACH TO PUBLIC SPEAKING.

​Since then I have seen several successes as a teacher, an event host/emcee and an entertainer.  Why is that important? It tells you that I not only teach, but I am constantly applying and challenging my methods in real life settings.  Here are a few highlights

• Event MC for the Pan Am Games Torch Relay: travelled around the country speaking in front of crowds from 50 to over 1000.
• Hosted the New Years Eve Celebrations for the City of Toronto at Nathan Philips Square where I animated a crowd of over 10,000.
• In-house host and half-time MC for the Pan Am Games Soccer Tournament at CIBC Football stadium.  Speaking and pumping up crowds of 2,000 nightly.
• Host for Salsa on St. Clair Canada's largest latin themed festival that received over 1000 visitors daily.

And the best part is that the journey isn't over yet. If anything I am even more obsessed with what it means to actually communicate. Beyond working as a private contractor I am also a certified Dale Carnegie trainer in High Impact Presentations and am designing a course in business communications at the University of Toronto.