About Cindy

With a background in brand building, marketing, and advertising, Cindy founded the co-action software company If I Ran The World and is currently focused on building and funding Make Love Not Porn, a venture in the emerging #sextech category, a category in tech that she says is ready for disruption.

Before starting her own companies and growing her consulting and public speaking business, Cindy was an advertising executive and spent almost two decades with leading advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) where she first opened the Asia-Pacific, then the North American offices.

Cindy is a believer that diversity drives innovation. As a champion and advocate for gender equality and diversity she uses every opportunity to challenge the status quo with pragmatic and actionable insights on how to make any industry more diverse and not only in the aspects of gender but also in race, sexuality, disability, and more.

Show Notes:

Cindy’s favorite talk from the most recent TED Conference: Shah Rukh Khan

The day I met Cindy Gallop

The day I met* Cindy Gallop.

Cindy Gallop on how to get a raise

Cindy Gallop – Closing Keynote – 3 Percent Conference

How To Present Like A Mofo (published with Cindy’s permission)

It’s easy to be a great presenter. Here’s the mistake most people make: they think, OMG, I have to GIVE A PRESENTATION. And so instantly THE PRESENTATION becomes A Thing. ‘I have to write THE PRESENTATION!’ ‘I have to present THE PRESENTATION!’ ‘THE PRESENTATION has to be great!’

Don’t do that. Do this.

01: Talk what you know

Decide what you want to talk about, what you’re most at ease talking about, and what you’d really like to be telling your audience about.
Then talk about that.

Any theme you are asked to speak on, any talk title you are given, and any presentation objective can be easily angled to accommodate what you are at your most relaxed talking about.

02: Turn conversation into presentation

Whatever it is that you have been asked to talk about — the business you work on, the startup you founded, the cause you believe in, the pitch you’re making — it’s a safe bet that you talk about it a lot. At work. Not at work. To friends over drinks or dinner. Take the way you talk about it in conversation, and back that into a presentation. Retro-fit what comes naturally and easily to you, where your passion and your warmth and your humor comes through, into the timeslot you have to present in, along the theme you need to present on. Then it’s not Presenting with a capital terrifying P, it’s just you, talking, the way you always do.

03: You’re the presentation, not your slides

You’re talking what you want to talk about, the way you love talking about it. Slides are simply visual cues for your audience to help them pick up and focus on the points you’re making. Keep them minimal. One word. One line. YOU are the presentation. Slides are just guides.

I spoke at the Dublin WebSummit a few years ago, for fifteen minutes, and saw later a guy had tweeted, ‘It wasn’t until Cindy Gallop left the stage that I realized she hadn’t had any slides.’

When you are the presentation, you don’t need anything else.

04: Enjoy it

Yes, of course you’re going to be nervous as you get up there. I’m always scared shitless just before I speak in public anywhere. (The day I’m not is the day I start worrying.) But once you’re up there — just enjoy it. You’re getting to talk about something you feel strongly about, to an audience you can convert to sharing the same views, spreading the word, buying into what you’re saying. What could be better?

And see? You’re presenting like a mofo.