Career Strategy & Leadership Speaking Engagements
Through keynote sessions and workshops, Penney Leadership shares actionable perspectives & tools that your audience can immediately implement to advance their careers.
Planning a company event and want to ensure it’s impactful long after the day ends? Organizing a conference that goes beyond buzzwords and delivers plenty of practical takeaways?
Penney Leadership supports your participants’ career development with engaging sessions that integrate the latest in career strategy and leadership thinking with real-world application.
Get an inside look into one of our hands-on workshops
SIGNATURE SESSIONS
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SIGNATURE SESSIONS •
Interactive in-person and virtual workshops that advance professional development and engagement
As the Founder of Penney Leadership and a seasoned facilitator and speaker, Carole-Ann’s approach is equal parts interactive, reflective, and actionable.
These talks and workshops draw connections between leading research and the expertise in the room so that participants walk away with both inspiration and implementable insights.
The New Rules of the Career Road
Empowering professionals to confidently craft their own meaningful career paths
In this workshop, we’ll explore new mindsets and tools that allow us to navigate our professional lives with purpose and adaptability to change.
Participants learn how to create a cohesive, mission-driven narrative of their career path and confidently convey the transferable skills that they bring to the table—so that they can take control of their career path and open themselves up to new professional opportunities.
Participants will walk away with:
Tools to rewrite their personal career path narrative.
New mindsets to navigate their professional path with purpose and resilience.
Strategies to enhance their professional brand and online presence.
Leading at All Levels
Skill-building for professionals to lead effectively through influence rather than authority
Leadership isn’t just for the people with grand titles, direct reports, and formal authority.
In this interactive workshop, participants learn how to step up as a leader no matter where they sit in the hierarchy. We'll explore practical tools to lead at all levels and in all directions in order to support individual, team, and company success.
Participants will walk away with:
A clear understanding of what “managing up” means and why it’s critical to their success.
New mindsets on what leadership is.
Strategies to lead through influence no matter their role.
Four steps to influence and improve their relationships with their managers.
A Leading Through Influence Workbook to takeaway, which walks them through the steps of influencing a decision at work.
Receiving Feedback
Helping professionals transform criticism into fuel for success
There are countless trainings and articles out there to help managers effectively deliver feedback—but few focus on the receiving end of the conversation, despite how scary and emotional it can be.
In this interactive workshop, participants will learn to reframe their mindset about the role of feedback and learn how to manage their unique responses to criticism with resilience. We’ll explore three key questions you can ask to turn vague comments into actionable feedback—so that you become an active part of creating a quality feedback conversation.
Participants walk away with:
Guidance on getting into the driver’s seat of the conversation, instead of getting swept along on a wild and unpredictable ride.
Strategies to ask for the specific type of feedback they want.
A new framework to strategically integrate feedback to enhance their performance.
Tools to transform their response to criticism in order to be more resilient.
Our Philosophy
Each workshop is fueled by Penney Leadership’s core beliefs that:
Everyone is a leader. Leadership is not limited to those with formal authority and direct reports. Each workshop interweaves tools and perspectives that advance the leadership of both individual contributors and managers.
Effective training moves beyond presenting content. Whether it is hosted virtually or in person, each workshop is designed to be engaging and interactive. Participants are encouraged to share questions and insights, and connect with each other to foster a community of learning.
Ideas and inspiration aren’t enough—it’s all about actionable, practical applications. Each session gives participants the time and tools to reflect on their own experiences and to personalize and integrate new approaches to their current work.
We’ve spoken at and facilitated sessions for…
“Everyone left Carole-Ann’s session feeling ready to leverage actionable tools to strengthen their leadership paths and champion meaningful change in their lives!”
“Carole-Ann has a true gift for coaching, facilitation and teaching. She brings an unmatched spirit, energy, humility and rich knowledge to every engagement. Our members vary greatly when it comes to years of experience, industries and career challenges yet Carole-Ann was able to unite the group, connect with each audience member, and leave them with a greater understanding of what it means to live a life and career in total alignment to one's core values and ideology. We can't wait to bring her to the group again!”
– Carrie Majewski, Women in Leadership Nexus
“Carole-Ann is an excellent speaker who was able to create a sense of community and spark meaningful discussion even in a virtual session as she guided participants through foundational questions about purpose and professional strategy.”
“As an administrator for the program, I appreciated Carole-Ann’s professionalism and genuine enthusiasm for the workshop series.”
– Givens Parr, Brown University Alumni Relations
Carole-Ann Penney, CPC
Strategic Career Coach | Speaker | Leadership Trainer
Meet Your Facilitator
Carole-Ann Penney, CPC
Strategic Career Coach | Speaker | Leadership Trainer
As the founder of Penney Leadership, Carole-Ann coaches individuals, teams, and organizations to cultivate mission-driven leaders who are ready to take on pressing challenges. Through individual and group coaching, speaking, and interactive workshops, Carole-Ann guides her clients to develop skills and mindsets that help them become more engaged employees, more effective managers, and ultimately support more impactful organizations.
A seasoned speaker and writer on leadership and career development topics, Carole-Ann is a Senior HBR Facilitator for Harvard Business Publishing’s Corporate Leadership Development programs and an instructor for Electives’ enterprise learning solutions. She has facilitated sessions for higher education institutions including Brown University, Providence College, and Syracuse University, corporations including American Express, Hilton, and MetLife, and nonprofit organizations, philanthropic foundations, and professional associations including the New England Museum Association, the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network, the Building Commissioning Association, StayWell Health Center, and the Connecticut Community Foundation.
Carole-Ann holds a B.A. in Education from Brown University and certifications in Nonprofit Management & Leadership from Tufts University and Professional Coaching from the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC). She mentors emerging leaders through Brown University's Women's Launch Pad, Social Enterprise Greenhouse, and the Institute for Nonprofit Practice. When she is not coaching, she’s developing the most important emerging leaders in her life—her two young kiddos.
Answering questions is our favorite thing to do.
You might be wondering:
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Typically, 60-90 minutes is an ideal length for a workshop, and a keynote ranges from 20-60 minutes.
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Highly! Effective facilitated learning often includes written exercises, discussion, Q&A, and conversation between attendees. These aren’t “speeches” that people listen passively to—our goal is to spark implementable insight and action.
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Absolutely. We tailor content based on your needs and the expected participants in the room. Early career professionals or established leaders? An internal corporate event or a nonprofit conference? We’re ready for you.
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All pricing is custom depending on the needs and size of your audience, travel, planning needs, and level of the training. We also take your status as a nonprofit or educational organization into account, if applicable!
After you reach out and we discuss your event, you’ll receive a proposal with detailed information about your customized session and investment.
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Yes! We regularly deliver both in-person and virtual sessions, and know how to facilitate genuine engagement whether we’re in a room together or spread out across the globe.
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We do! We’re based in Providence, Rhode Island and regularly travel for engagements. After you inquire, we’re happy to talk through some possibilities for travel.
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Absolutely. While the sessions described here are one-time workshops, we also offer a range of coaching and training programs for organizations. We’d love to work with your company or team!
Empower your participants & elevate your impact
Inquire About Speaking & Workshops
Penney Leadership designs engaging, reflective, and generative virtual and in-person workshops for audiences at conferences, businesses, colleges, and organizations. Each workshop is tailored to your community’s needs. Sessions can be adapted to various time frames, and pricing is customized for your event.
Now booking for projects in 2025!