Next week, Michelle Ray will step before television cameras in the U.S. and give one of the toughest speeches of her life.
Ray and fellow Vancouverite Erica Pinsky are two of 10 finalists chosen from over 1,000 applicants competing for the title of North Americas Next Greatest Speaker.
They will speak in the finals of the competition in Dallas, Texas on July 12.
The contest is run by the eWomenNetwork, an association of female business professionals, and offers a $100,000 prize.
The competition is being filmed as a reality television pilot. Competitors will have three minutes to present their speech to four judges and an audience of several thousand. The bottom seven will be eliminated and the top three will be given six minutes to speak again on July 14 before a winner is chosen.
Ray said that although shes given thousands of professional speeches, the speech for the competition may be one of the most difficult she has ever given.
To speak for three minutes is really challenging. You have to be really succinct and you have to get your message across in the allocated time, so theres no room for fluff, she said.
While Pinsky and Ray are competitors, they maintain a friendly relationship that has developed over their 10 years as colleagues in the world of professional speaking. Both Ray and Pinksy are members of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers. While Ray works as a speaker full-time, Pinskys business focuses more on professional seminars and training on power relationships in the workplace.
Ray said her topic for the competition will be leading with your thoughts, while Pinsky plans to speak about womens relationship with power in the workplace.
Ray moved to Vancouver from Australia 18 years ago and has worked as a professional speaker for 17 years.
Pinsky said she knew she wanted to be a professional speaker after she heard U.S. motivational speaker Les Brown give a speech.
It was one of those instinctive things. I just knew it when I saw him thats what I wanted to do. I never thought Oh can I do this? or Am I good at this? I just did it.
Both Ray and Pinsky see the competition as an outlet to spread their positive messages to a broader audience.
The reason I want to be doing this work is because I want to make change in the world, said Pinsky. Im very committed to Canadian values: tolerance, fairness, justice and mutual respect, and I dont see them reflected in a lot of the ways that were going in the world.
