In this presentation, Charlotte Kemp recounts a pivotal moment eight years ago when an international speaker she admired identified her only as the "association's admin lady," despite her self‑perception as a professional speaker. The mislabeling sparked a deep examination of her personal brand and led her to work with a business coach to clarify her identity, future goals, and positioning. Kemp later served as president of the Global Speakers Federation, a role that cemented her global leadership stature and reinforced the lessons she learned about career design, resisting external expectations, and intentionally shaping one’s professional narrative. She now offers a "Strategic Moves" coaching program that guides participants through global and future‑oriented perspectives, network expansion, and effective communication, inviting listeners to contact her for a personalized meeting.
Chapters
About 8 years ago, I attended a speaker conference here in Cape Town. I was looking forward to meeting one visitor from overseas because I'd been following his career and it looked really interesting. And during a tea break, I walked up and introduced myself. He said, oh yes, I know who you are. So my heart soared with joy. He said, you're the association's admin lady. And my heart plummeted. I had volunteered to support the association that I was a member of. I had been doing the admin in the gap between one service provider and another, but I saw myself as an international professional speaker and not as the admin lady. So that was the start of me exploring how I had positioned myself incorrectly. So I found a business coach. And the priority in that relationship was working out my identity, what I actually wanted as a goal in the future, and how I wanted to position myself. I have just recently ended my term as the president of the Global Speakers Federation. That is the body to which all of the local and national associations around the world belong to. So I, I think I have addressed my positioning quite well. But in that process of going from being seen as someone in the back office doing admin to being in a global position in terms of leadership, I have learned a great deal about how we position ourselves, how we actually design our careers, what it is we are trying to achieve, how often we, we allow other people's ambitions to influence us rather than exploring what is really important to ourselves. And those are the things that I want to explore with you in the Strategic Moves coaching program. We'll look at global perspectives and futures perspectives. We'll look at our network and how we make it grow and how to communicate. If this is something that is interesting to you, then please be in touch with me, and we can arrange a meeting and explore what your career could look like.
