Mandi Stanley Speaker Biography
With more than 27 years of experience on the seminar circuit, Certified Speaking Professional Mandi Stanley works primarily with business leaders who want to boost their professional image by becoming better speakers and writers. She has traveled throughout North America entertaining and educating more than 75,000 seminar participants, totaling more than 7,000 platform hours. Some of her repeat clients include:
- Campbell’s Soup Company
- the United States Air Force
- Kimberly-Clark’s World Headquarters
- Mississippi Hospital Association
- McDonald’s USA
- Godiva Chocolate
- and
- the National Football League (that’s right—the NFL!)
In 2003, Mandi was designated a CSP, Certified Speaking Professional. Fewer than 9 percent of all worldwide speakers have earned this designation, and Mandi is the first Mississippian in history to receive this honor through the National Speakers Association.
She’s a summa cum laude graduate from Mississippi State University with concentrations in English, communication, and management, and served as a faculty member of the American Management Association for five years. Mandi is the author of The No-Panic Plan for Presenters: An A-to-Z Checklist for Speaking Confidently & Compellingly Anywhere, Anytime, which was named a Finalist in the Career category at the Independent Book Publishers Awards in New York. Audiences appreciate her platform enthusiasm, interactive style, and content-rich messages.
Fun Facts
Her career in public speaking began on a stage in front of 700 college freshmen. Talk about a tough audience! Today Mandi Stanley has moved from the campus podium to the corporate classroom, traveling throughout North America inspiring business leaders to overcome organizational obstacles and deliver powerful written and oral presentations.
She established her early career roots as a classified ad proofreader for a small newspaper in the South. A move to Dallas, Texas, led to a full-time position as a technical proposal writer for a healthcare firm. She soon parlayed that experience into the opportunity to train others to be better persuasive communicators.
Mandi is Mississippi’s first Certified Speaking Professional, earning the designation in 2003.
She received the Highest Market Share Award from the American Management Association in 1998.
Mandi was awarded two Quality Awards for Customer Satisfaction from the American Management Association in 1998.
She wrote and developed the methodology, workbooks, leaders’ guide, and visual aids for the AMA/Padgett Thompson one-day seminar How To Be a Better Proofreader.
She graduated summa cum laude with concentrations in English, communication, and management.
She and her husband Bob have been married for 20 years and have made their home in Mississippi with their 4-year-old and 9-year-old sons, which now explains her constant frazzled expression!
To book Communication Skills speaker Mandi Stanley call Executive Speakers Bureau 901-754-9404.
No-Panic Presentation Skills: How to Speak Confidently & Compellingly Anywhere, Anytime
During this highly interactive session, participants will engage in the Big Three: message, delivery, and nonverbal know-how.
Participants can expect to improve in these areas:
- First and foremost, how to adequately prepare for a presentation at any level
- How to organize your talking points—and not ramble
- How to pinpoint your message while at the same time seeking buy-in
- The only secret to stopping vocal fillers, including the distracting credibility-robbing ums and uhs
- Tips for controlling your body language to communicate the message you want
- Keys to identifying and eliminating nervous habits and jitters
- Nonverbal know-how:
Eye contact exercises
Speaker charades
“Ricky Bobby Syndrome”
- The Three-Minute First Impression: What you absolutely must do in the first 180 seconds to build rapport and credibility with the people you meet
- How to banish boring presentation openings (by figuring out what everyone else is doing—and then NOT doing it)
- The three must-haves in a presentation opening to hook your audience (beneficial for technical presenters)
- How to avoid just fizzling out at the end by closing with conviction every time
NIX NERVOUSNESS: Participants will engage in a round-table discussion of two dozen public speaking techniques for technical professionals who can relate to the following:
- Quite frankly, you hate public speaking
- You’ve been embarrassed because you get shaky hands or a quivering voice when you stand up to speak
- You don’t want people in the audience counting every time you say “um” or “and uh”
- You just don’t want to be monotone when it’s your time to shine
Everyone from the anxious beginner to the confident professional will grow from expert advice on how to nix nervousness covered in the final minutes of the program.
E-Writing @ Work: Getting a Grip on the Stupid Stuff We Do with E-mail
During this fast-moving participatory session, you will learn how to present a professional image through your workplace e-mail by participating in and practicing:
- How to steer clear of the Top 7 Credibility-Robbing Mistakes with E-mail
- How to write a solid subject line that gets opened—and acted upon
- The five e-mails you never should send
- How to use more bulleted lists in e-mail
- A rapid-fire commentary on e-mail etiquette, including:
- Tone appropriateness
- Formatting for e-mail
- SCREAMING IN ALL CAPS!!!!!
- Other hot topics
Grammar-for-Grownups Update
This in-depth session allows for an open-floor discussion in “Grammar Group” settings to ask questions and cover the following troublesome topics:
- Run-on sentences and fragments in professional correspondence and e-mail
- Comma traumas!
- Confusing word pairs (such as affect/effect and who/whom and insure/ensure/assure)
- Commonly misused words
- Correct use of quotation marks and solutions to hyphenation headaches
- Any other hot grammar, spelling, capitalization, or punctuation question you want to ask
- BONUS: All exercises are based on realistic correspondence and examples. Oh, and don’t be surprised if there’s a pop quiz: a fun one!
Proof It! How To Be A Better Proofreader
This is the ideal breakout session for anyone responsible for overseeing outgoing correspondence, paperwork, and e-mail throughout the course of the workday. You’ll walk away with four tangible proofreading “gifts” designed to make your job easier.
- During this fast-moving interactive session, your audience will learn:
- How to make sure documents leave your office error free
- The “Newspaper Proof”: A fail-safe three-step approach to proofreading
- How to proofread for quality under tight deadlines
- The “Proofreader’s Power Pack”: What tools and resources are indispensable to a proofreader
- How to proofread in a distracting office environment
- How to spot errors of omission and why you never should proofread directly from your computer screen
- How to catch the bloopers—before the bloopers catch you!
Write It So They Read It: Better Business Writing in One Day
This crash course in better business writing is targeted for anyone responsible for overseeing outgoing correspondence and e-mail throughout the business day.
- BONUS: All examples and exercises will be based on realistic correspondence and documents.
- How to eliminate stale clichés and “smothered verbs” from your writing instantly
- FAVORITE TOPIC: The new guidelines for using bulleted lists for your message
- Tips for cutting your writing time in half
- BLUF Technique: How to get to the point and catch your skimmers
- The secret to organizing your ideas quickly
- What to do when it’s just hard to write: the sure-fire cure for writer’s block at work
- Where to cut the clutter: the wasted words and pretentious phrases that can cause confusion
- How to describe a complicated subject in clear and concise terms
- How to make sure documents with your organization’s name on them are absolutely error free
Technical Writing for Engineers and Other Knowledge Professionals
During this highly customized interactive session, participants will learn:
- A proven technique for writing crystal-clear learning objectives and instructions, including good and bad examples
- How to describe a complicated subject in clear and concise terms
- What to do when you can’t avoid using technical jargon
- How to make sure technical documents are absolutely error free
- Language guidelines for better receptivity such as non-inflammatory language, gender-neutral references, and attention to tone
- How to eliminate clichés and “smothered verbs” from documentation
- How to use mapping for instructional writing in technical documents
- How to distinguish among the prewriting, writing, and rewriting phases
- A step-by-step process for editing and proofreading your final draft (it works every time)
- Quick tips in slide preparation
- Quick and easy guidelines for technical content delivery
