Lynette Lewis has delivered around 200 speeches in her career so far. She’s done it all from corporate keynotes, to global webcasts, to coaching women on being single in the city.
After graduating from Oral Roberts University, a Christian university in Oklahoma where she’s originally from, she started working at the school as a fundraiser and was asked to speak as a volunteer at women’s conferences. Her talent as a public speaker was quickly realized and she was invited to talk at churches and nonprofits as well. In her late 30s, she moved to New York to work at Deloitte and Touche, and it was there that she truly launched her profession, and began getting paid to impart her wisdom on larger venues.
Her newest project, Love Your Life, consists of networking events for women around Manhattan, which she described as a “forum for women to come together and have strategic networking moments.”
How did you get started in motivational speaking?
When I worked for Deloitte, that’s what got me in the city 17 years ago when I transferred from Oklahoma. I worked for eight years in a senior marketing role downtown in the World Financial Center. That’s what kind of launched me more into my speaking career, and I got invited to speak at larger, paid venues. I had always done Christian faith-based talks in churches and women’s retreats, but now have a parallel track in the corporate world where I do conferences. I don’t just speak to women. I’ve been doing it full-time for the last eight years, but, before that, had been doing it off and on for 25 years. My advice for emerging speakers is to take advantage of every invitation you get and go for it.
