SPEAKING TOPICS

Three talks. One through-line: closing the gap between capability and impact.

All talks available as keynotes, workshops, or leadership series sessions — delivered virtually.

TALK 01

Managing Your Anxiety for Effective Presence

In high-stakes moments — the board presentation, the difficult conversation, the high-visibility meeting — your nervous system is making decisions before you’ve said a word. This talk names the exact mechanism by which anxiety undermines presence and gives people the Anxiety-Resistant Relevance Framework™: a precise protocol to build the internal steadiness that stops the performance and starts the presence.

IDEAL FOR: High-performing teams, leadership programs, government and corporate organizations

TALK 02

How to Be the Must-Have in Any Room

Capability is no longer a differentiator. The people who get called on — for the promotions, the critical decisions, the rooms that matter — are the ones whose authority walks in before they’ve said a word. This talk dissects what actually creates that authority, why conventional visibility strategies fail, and what the must-have people in any organization have that others don’t.

IDEAL FOR: Leaders and professionals navigating influence, promotion, and strategic visibility

TALK 03

The AI Leadership Trap: Why the Leaders Who Get Promoted Now Are the Ones AI Can’t Replace

AI can replicate your resume and out-credential you on paper in seconds. What it cannot replicate is the weight of your judgment, the authority that walks into a room before you’ve said a word, and the trust earned navigating real failure and real stakes. This talk makes the case that AI has permanently shifted what makes a person irreplaceable — and shows your people exactly what to do about it.

IDEAL FOR: Leadership summits, L&D programs, tech organizations, government agencies, any organization navigating AI transformation

 AUDIENCE TAKEAWAYS

What your people walk away with.

A PERSONAL PROTOCOL

A concrete, individualized framework for managing anxiety in high-stakes moments — so their nervous system stops making decisions before they do.

A Presence Diagnostic

Clarity on exactly what is costing them rooms, credit, and advancement — and the specific sequence to close that gap permanently.

An Irreplaceability Strategy

A clear understanding of what AI cannot replicate — and how to position themselves as the person no technology, restructuring, or market shift can replace.

She knows the gap your people are living in — from the inside.

Mary Lee Gannon, ACC, CAE served as a divisional CEO within a 100,000-employee organization, managing $37M in scope. She knows the conversations where decisions about people’s futures are made — not as theory, but as two decades of daily operating reality. She knows what the Edge Gap™ costs. And she knows what changes when it closes.

She rebuilt her life from scratch — from financial ruin to the C-suite — and built a practice on one operating truth: when you reconnect with your core identity, you become undeniable. Not by performing harder. By closing the distance between who you are and how you’re experienced.

Her clients include leaders at Adobe, Google, Ford Motor, Johnson & Johnson, Amazon and many more.

CREDENTIALS

• ICF Certified Executive Coach (ACC), Certified Association Executive (CAE), Duquesne University Professional Coach (PC)
• Scholarship Recipient, Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute — Georgetown University / Google
• Author: Reinvent You — From Welfare to CEO and Starting Over
• Featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Inc., Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and many more.

What Audiences Say

“I highly recommend her program to anyone looking to enhance their executive presence and the value it brings to themselves and their interactions with others.”

— Gaby Pfeifer, PhD, CPsychol, FHEA, Lecturer in Psychology, University of Southampton

The Right Fit

Mary Lee’s talks are designed for organizations whose people are navigating the gap between their capability and how they are recognized for it. If your people are accomplished, high-performing, and still not landing the way their capability deserves — this is built for them.

The Edge Gap™ framework is equally relevant in healthcare, government, corporate, and association settings — anywhere that people are expected to show up with authority and are quietly struggling to close the distance between what they can do and how they’re experienced.

VENUE LIST — display as styled list, right column:

• Corporate Leadership Development Programs
• Government Agency Leadership Series
• Healthcare Leadership & L&D Programs
• Professional Association Conferences
• Women’s Leadership Networks & ERGs
• Outplacement & Career Transition Programs
• Community & Civic Leadership Events