About
Podium Coaching was founded to offer customized solutions for:
- presentation skills training (overcome fear of public speaking and discover the best way to write a speech or deliver a presentation).
- media skills training (media interviews will boost your profile and establish your credibility – but only if you learn how to talk to the media effectively).
- writing and storytelling (learn how to write well, in articles, emails and business letters. And harness the power of storytelling to create words that sell).
The Podium Team
Halina St James
Halina St. James works with people who want to overcome the fear of public speaking. Through her presentation skills training she helps people upgrade their communication skills in speeches, presentations, or in front of the media. Her secret is her unique TalkItOut™ Technique. She created Talkitout™ to give speakers a new and effective way of writing a speech or delivering a presentation.
Fred Morley, of the Greater Halifax Partnership, described a Talkitout™ workshop as “the best leadership investment I ever made.”
Halina St James is a former CBC network television reporter and producer whose assignments included the first Gulf War, the Romanian Revolution and the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Barcelona and Lillehammer. She was instrumental in setting up media facilities for a summit meeting in Moscow between Mikhail Gorbachev and Brian Mulroney. And she survived a plane crash in a remote part of Quebec during a Canadian election campaign.
Halina is a member of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers. She speaks English, French, and a little Polish and Spanish. She’s a ballroom dancer, an avid gardener and a meditator.
Halina did exactly what we needed her to do for our group and more. She got them out of their comfort zone, she had them dancing, she had them laughing and she had them crying. Their passions were re-ignited and it is our hope, that they see the challenges ahead as opportunities to become stronger, both professionally and personally.
Stephanie Varner Watt
Pharmasave Atlantic
Neil Everton
Neil Everton brings a lifetime’s international experience with some of the top news organizations in the world to his media skills workshops.
His media training sessions are designed to provide the tools for people to understand how to talk to the media effectively. His workshops show how to create compelling media messages, how to anticipate trouble, and how to deal confidently with any media interview.
His career in journalism got him into a few scrapes, and a lot of countries. The biggest scrape was in Afghanistan. He and his BBC team were arrested at gunpoint by Russian soldiers and held on suspicion of spying. Afghanistan was one of 29 countries Neil worked in as senior foreign news producer for the BBC.
He was covering the first Gulf War in Baghdad, Jordan and Israel when he met CBC producer Halina St James. They married in 1991 and moved to Canada where they continued to work as journalists and journalism trainers, until they set up Podium Media & Communications Coaching. Now he concentrates on showing people how to deal with the media, and become credible and compelling spokespeople.
Just wanted to drop you a quick note to say a big THANK YOU for the training you both provided this week. They were truly some of the most valuable sessions I have ever participated in and quite frankly, the most entertaining! You two are a dream team!
Christy Wenzell
NS Association of Realtors
The Podium Philosophy
We believe…
- That anyone can be a good speaker
- That everyone has a story to tell
- That it’s not about speaking – it’s about having something to say
- That passion beats technique, every time
- That facts need help if they are to be memorable
- That words play the smallest part in communication impact
- That writing out a speech is crazy – unless you plan to mail it to the audience
- That talking-out a speech is your connection to your listeners
- That simplicity reinforces that connection
- That story is the glue that makes your message stick
