Carol Cox: Small shifts can make a huge difference in
your presentation impact and the results that
you get. Hear what they are.
And my conversation with Karen Cochran on
this episode of the Speaking Your Brand
podcast. More and more women are making an
impact by starting businesses,
running for office, and speaking up for what
matters. With my background as a TV political
analyst, entrepreneur,
and speaker, I interview and coach purpose
driven women to shape their brands,
grow their companies, and become recognized
as influencers in their field.
This is speaking your brand,
your place to learn how to persuasively
communicate your message to your audience.
Hi there and welcome to the Speaking Your
Brand podcast. I'm your host,
Carol Cox. I know, especially if you've been
listening to this podcast for a while,
that you want your presentations to do more
than inform.
You want your audiences to transform,
to be inspired, to take action,
and you want to make sure that you're
attracting new speaking opportunities and
clients long after you've left the stage.
But as I've talked about quite a bit,
many experienced professionals get stuck in
what I call the expert trap,
where they really want to deliver so much
information and content from a good place,
instead of focusing on creating connection
and really getting into the hearts and minds
of their audiences.
My guest today, Karen Cochran,
has done this really well with the
presentations that she's been delivering.
She is the founder of Philanthropy
Innovators, and she's led teams that have
raised over $1 billion.
I don't even know how to comprehend a number
that big to be personally involved in.
Karen worked with us in our one Day Speaking
Accelerator workshop in Orlando,
Florida earlier this year,
as well as in a presentation makeover before
she presented at a conference.
And we're going to talk about the results
that she got from that conference.
So we're going to talk about that approach
that she took, what she learned about
storytelling, and how she now uses her voice
to inspire generosity and change.
Karen, welcome to the Speaking Your Brand
podcast.
Karen Cochran: Thank you. Carol, it's a pleasure to be here.
Carol Cox: Well, I mentioned that you've led teams that
have raised over $1 billion.
Again, what an incredible number and
incredible success.
What drew you to the field of philanthropy in
the first place and the work that you now do?
Karen Cochran: So I was lucky to find my calling as a paid
student caller in college.
And I really got hooked because I wanted to
help people and I wanted to solve problems.
And philanthropy does just that.
It's the intersection of donors helping
organizations Fund new ideas and have impact.
Carol Cox: And so you then worked for other
organizations until you started your own
company?
Karen Cochran: I did. I spent three decades in higher
education, academic medicine,
and as a volunteer for non-profits before
founding Philanthropy Innovators in 2022.
And the whole concept behind that was,
I wanted to take everything I had learned and
share it as broadly as possible.
You know, I was lucky enough to be raised in
a family where one of the tenants was.
A mistake is only a mistake if you don't
learn from it. And I obviously in a 30 year
career, made a number of those.
Um, had a lot of mentors who helped me learn
a great deal about the business.
And as I reflected on what I wanted to do
next, I really honed in on the fact that as
fundraisers, we're very,
very good at putting a bow around the
cultivation, what we call the solicitation,
the stewardship cycles,
all of those things to have the donor
experience, what the impact is going to be.
But we don't do a really good job of sharing
what it really took to get the donor to say
yes.
Carol Cox: Mhm. Okay. So let's then dive into this
presentation that you gave at a conference
earlier this spring called AFP icon.
And I know it was a resounding success
because you shared the feedback with me that
you got from the people who were in the
audience. I always love when conferences send
the audience survey feedback that they that
they collect. So it's really,
really helpful because you get not only the
quantitative data like the 54321 rankings,
but also a lot of times people in the
audience will leave testimonials and
reactions and let me share one of them,
because you you sent this to me as well.
Here's what one person said.
Thank you for providing the most valuable
session at AFP Icon Seattle.
You validated what I know,
ignited new ideas that I can act on and
re-inspired me in the work we do in
philanthropy. I work with two billionaires.
Thank you for the invitation to keep in touch
on success stories.
Amazing, right? The most valuable
presentation at the conference.
I love you said validation,
new ideas and inspiration.
So why do you think this presentation that
you delivered, Karen, was such a success?
Karen Cochran: So, you know, having worked with you,
I can tell you that one of the things I
received through not just the day long series
that I went through, but also the coaching
call that we had beforehand,
was help with the structure.
This was a story.
It was a story about $1 billion donor who was
a very unlikely billion dollar donor.
And the woman's name is Ruth Gottesman.
She gave $1 billion to Albert Einstein
Medical Center in the Bronx,
but she never expected she could do a gift of
that size. And what happened was through a
series of connections,
right? Much like storytelling,
fundraising is all about connection,
right? Her connection was with a gentleman by
the name of Doctor Azahar,
who runs Albert Einstein.
She became close, even closer than she
already was as a faculty member to the
institution.
The piece that she had no knowledge of was
when her husband passed away.
He had left her a portfolio of Berkshire
Berkshire Hathaway stock and he had been at
one of the early salon dinners in the 1960s
and met Warren Buffett personally.
And it's likely that he invested somewhere
around 10 to $20,000, which back then was a
lot of money. And he had kept that as at the
side, as a secret portfolio.
And upon his death a couple of years ago,
the valuation was more than $1 billion.
Wow. And he left her one note and it said,
do what you think is right.
Carol Cox: Well, no pressure, right?
Karen Cochran: No pressure. And when she started processing
and thinking about what could I really do,
she turned to her family.
But she also turned to people she trusted.
And Doctor Azahar was one of those people.
And when she asked the question,
you know, what would you do with,
you know, a transformational gift.
I don't think she put a dollar figure on it.
He said I'd make tuition free and that was
it. That was what she wanted her legacy to
be. All at once, everything just lined up
beautifully. And for me,
reading the story in the New York Times,
I instantly thought, oh my gosh,
what a really great story to tell others
about how gifts happen.
And so I think that one of the things that's
reflected in that feedback is the fact that I
told the story all the way through.
And honestly, Carol, that would not have been
possible before me coming and being part of
the session with you all and then following
up via coaching because they were minor
tweaks, but they were they made a big
difference in the presentation,
in the engagement of the audience and how the
message was received.
Carol Cox: All right. Well, I want to dig into a little
bit more about storytelling in general in
just a moment. But before we do that,
I remember when you were at our one day
in-person workshop, and then you got up on
our practice stage and you delivered a
portion of your talk with the story and and
your framework. I think you were also
practicing your framework at the same time.
And you did such a beautiful job,
you would have thought you had notes or a
teleprompter in front of you,
but you did not, because we do not allow that
for good reason.
But you did such a great job doing that.
And then I remember in the coaching session
that we did on zoom after the workshop to
help you prepare for this conference,
you had sent me your slide deck in advance,
and your slides are beautiful,
like beautifully designed so they look great.
And I agree with you. It wasn't like you
didn't need a wholesale change in your
presentation slide deck.
It was just these minor things with where to
start the story, where to pause it,
and then come back to it later.
So the audience is kind of waiting to hear
and see what happens.
So first tell me about your experience being
on our practice stage at the workshop.
And basically we're like, okay,
here you go. Get up there and tell us
something.
Karen Cochran: Well, I think one of the most important
things was from the minute I walked in the
room, I realized I was not alone.
And I think so often when you are presenting,
whether it's for a even a panel or if you're
facilitating or you're the keynote,
like I was, uh, out at Icon,
it's really important to understand that
going through a process can strengthen your
ability to deliver the message.
And that was so evident not not in a scripted
kind of way, but in a welcoming kind of way,
because from the very beginning of that day,
I was with it happened to be a room of women,
but women who were at similar pivot points in
terms of their speaking journey and the
support I felt and my ability to really learn
and grow from them can't be underestimated.
It was really, really transformational for
me.
Carol Cox: Well, I love hearing that, Karen, because so
much of the work that we do is one on one,
because that's where we can really, you know,
dig deep and ask you questions and kind of
pull out those different ideas and stories.
But we also see such a benefit of bringing
women together literally into the same room,
whether it's in person or even if it's in
zoom, because of that sense of,
like you said, I'm not alone.
Everyone's on this journey and on a similar
point in the journey, and you do get so much
energy and support and a sense of community.
And I think momentum coming out of something
like that?
Karen Cochran: Absolutely. The connections I made there are
still very, very much alive.
Um, I've seen a number of women outside
because there was a wasn't exclusively
Central Floridians, but I've seen a number of
people in the community and we've connected,
you know, and stayed in touch as supportive
members and interested in one another's
speaking journey.
Carol Cox: Oh, I love that. Yeah. It's interesting. We
do get about half and half half from Central
Florida. You know, Orlando, Central Florida
driving distance and about half who fly in
from Washington state, California,
Texas, Boston from all over the place.
So it is a lot of fun to expand your network
in that way. All right.
So I mentioned that you had sent me your
slide deck. And so we were just making some
adjustments to how you were telling the story
and how you were bringing in the lessons that
you learned from that story that you wanted
to share with the audience.
Before we dig into those details,
I want, as I promised,
to talk about storytelling in general because
we know how important storytelling is during
public speaking to make that connection with
the audience. But in philanthropy,
you know, like nonprofits know how important
storytelling is.
There's a very well known kind of,
um, thing saying that,
you know, a million people is a statistic,
but one person is a story,
and that one person is how you get someone to
connect to a cause.
So I guess, Karen, tell me a little bit about
how you learned the importance of
storytelling in the work that you do,
and how that has translated into the talks.
Karen Cochran: So I think you're absolutely right,
Carol, in that, you know,
philanthropy is about storytelling at its
essence. If someone is going to give you if
it's their time, which is highly valuable,
or their money, obviously another resource,
right? It's about making that connection.
And I learned a long time ago.
It's about going in and listening to the
donor. Not going in with just a menu in your
head of how they can help you.
So one of the things that I do,
not just in philanthropy,
but in as I prepare to speak anywhere,
is to do my research to understand who the
audience is, whether that's a donor audience
of one, or whether it's an audience of
several hundred.
Right. The message is not going to be
received if you don't understand who you're
trying to communicate to.
So I see a lot of parallels between
fundraising and speaking.
And these days I.
I can't emphasize enough to young
fundraisers.
Storytelling is a critical,
lifelong skill that you need to focus on and
continue to develop because that is what
helps you connect to the donor and engage
them at a level that actually makes them want
to learn more.
Carol Cox: Yes, because then so have you had this
experience with donors?
Where do they see themselves sometimes in the
people that they're going to be helping,
in the sense that maybe that's where they
were at at some point in their life or just
or what? How does the storytelling help them
to decide that this is this is the work that
they want to support?
Karen Cochran: So sometimes it is, um,
you know, I think of a scholarship,
right? Uh, in a higher education setting,
someone who was a first generation student,
um, and how that scholarship not just
transformed their life.
Life, but will transform the lives that come
after it because of the percentage of
individuals who will continue to go to higher
education. Right?
But oftentimes it is about some other
experience they've had in life,
or an experience they wanted to have that
they felt they missed out on.
So the storytelling for me is about learning
what's most meaningful for them in terms of
the organization you serve and connecting
them to the part that's going to resonate
most strongly.
Carol Cox: Um, yeah, the listening is key because it's
what is most meaningful to them.
And then reflecting that back to them,
that's so important. So Karen,
let's talk about some of the specifics of the
presentation that we worked on together.
As you mentioned a little bit ago, you were
focusing on this, this story of the woman,
Ruth, who ended up donating $1 billion to
this, uh, the Albert Einstein College of
Medicine. And I remember when we were I was
having you practice it that I,
I suggested that you foreshadow a little bit
and add some suspense to the story to kind of
keep the audience wanting to know what
happened instead of kind of delivering it
like all at one time.
And so I'm such a big believer,
the more that I do this work,
and the more that I work with clients like
you, is, is the power of going deep within a
story rather than going broad?
So a lot of times as presenters,
we think that sharing with our audience 10 or
15 different examples like boom,
boom, boom, boom, boom. Like here's all these
quick highlights is the way to do it.
But I have found and even as myself as a as
someone in the audience,
I like the depth because I really want to get
inside the person's head,
like who is the story is about whether it's
you as the speaker or someone you're talking
about. Because I want to know,
maybe this is just me.
Like what makes them tick?
How did they decide this?
What led them to do this?
What happened afterwards versus kind of that?
That broad brush where I don't really get
those those details that help me to
understand myself better.
And after all, that's what audiences want to
do, is understand themselves better.
Karen Cochran: Absolutely.
So I would say to your point,
the foreshadowing.
Foreshadowing was key.
I think one of the things you told me that I
have come back to a number of times,
not just in that presentation,
is that there's a difference between how we
speak and how we write.
Carol Cox: Yes.
Karen Cochran: And having spent a large part of my career in
higher education and academe,
I can be a very cerebral writer and part of
as I go to this next level,
part of what I need to in many ways unlearn,
right, is that simplicity is best.
Simplicity is going to enable me to make the
most connections in the room,
and to then build off of that simplicity in a
way that makes sense for the audience.
So one of the things you told me is don't
tell them in the beginning about where the
billion dollars came from,
because I think I had that early on in almost
the introduction, you were like, no, no, no,
you can say, I'll tell you later,
which is exactly what I did.
And then about, you know,
five minutes towards the end,
I shared what I shared with you earlier,
which is where the money came from,
to enable Ruth to actually make tuition free
at Albert Einstein Medical Center.
Carol Cox: It's almost like a big reveal.
Yeah, yeah.
Karen Cochran: A little bit of theater.
Carol Cox: Yes. Right. It makes it fun.
And to your point about the difference
between writing and speaking,
and I know, again, so many of the clients we
work with, they have their authors,
they've written books, they enjoy writing,
they like writing. A lot of them come from
academia or spent time in academia.
And I remember when I was I was working on a
PhD in history.
And of course, that writing is very,
very different than how I had to train myself
to write as a marketer.
And it took a while for like the old writing
muscles to switch over to the marketing style
writing muscles. But now my challenge is,
as I'm working on my book,
I need to kind of unpack some of the
marketing muscles because it's very short,
pithy, right?
Like and then and instead books tend to be
longer, like I need to fill out more content.
So it's kind of you, you find that balance.
But to your point about the difference
between speaking and writing,
and you probably have found this, Karen too,
is that when we write,
we tend to use larger vocabulary words with
more syllables, a lot more commas,
a lot longer sentences.
But when we talk, we generally do not do that
because it is it feels so much more fluid.
And we're waiting also for the audience to
react.
Karen Cochran: Exactly.
Carol Cox: All right. So I'm.
Karen Cochran: Better myself.
Carol Cox: Okay, well, I think you did.
All right. So I'm so glad that this
presentation was so successful for you.
I also, and I see in my notes from our that
coaching session that we also talked about
adding humor, because I very intentionally
always make sure to add humor to my talks
because yes, usually something off the cuff
will happen and I'll maybe make a,
you know, a joke. That's kind of makes sense
in the moment. But I also like to plan the
humor because it's good to have some some
moments where the audience can kind of
chuckle to themselves or smile to themselves.
So do you remember what you did in your
presentation for humor?
Karen Cochran: I don't remember what I wrote into my script.
I do remember what happened,
which was, after all of this preparation,
the actual slide deck that had my,
you know, your Presentation mode notes in it
didn't come up.
Carol Cox: Which I think is a good thing.
I.
Karen Cochran: Well, in many ways it might have been the
best thing because I in the moment had to
rely on all of the preparation I'd done.
But I did make a joke about it.
Carol Cox: Oh, well, there.
Karen Cochran: You go, audience. Yeah.
Right up, right away.
The audience cracked up,
so.
Carol Cox: That is good. Whenever technology doesn't
work, the best thing to do is,
number one, you just have to go with the
flow. And then number two, just laugh about
it because the audience will totally
understand.
Karen Cochran: Absolutely.
Carol Cox: What that's like. All right,
Karen, so you have obviously done a lot of
work in philanthropy. You've had a long
career in it.
So what advice do you have for whether it's
speakers or leaders, whether they work in
philanthropy or any type of industry,
if they want to have the the kind of,
you know, success and presence and An impact
that you're having with the talks and the
workshops that you're doing.
Karen Cochran: So I would say one of the things I've learned
the most, um, through my engagement with you,
but also over the last three years,
is give it the time it deserves.
It's so easy when you're in a leadership role
or you're in, um, you know,
your young fundraiser and you're going from
project to project to donor to donor to not
give it the time it deserves.
You are the expert and you deserve to show up
as the expert, which is usually not the
issue. It goes back to the communication,
right? Thinking through how can I be most
effective in communicating this message?
How can I express it in a simplistic way that
the majority of the people will understand?
How can I listen to my audience and connect?
So I would say when you have those
opportunities, because they will be given to
you if you are a leader in the field,
make sure that you give it the time it
deserves so that you get the maximum learning
out of it, but also you get the maximum ROI
out of your investment.
Carol Cox: Thank you for that advice, Karen. That's
really helpful. What is next for you?
What are you working on?
Karen Cochran: I'm working on a number of fun things.
I'm continuing to grow the business beyond
Central Florida in my three verticals,
which are philanthropic strategy,
executive coaching, and interim leadership.
And I've recently made a connection with
center for Creative Leadership,
where in 2026, I hope to be in,
uh, whether it's on the stage,
facilitating a panel or co-presenting with a
woman by the name of Jean Leslie,
uh, about her research on Poly crisis,
which expands.
Carol Cox: Not.
Karen Cochran: Just. Yeah, well, it's about how we are now
at a time where there are a number of crises
that happen simultaneously.
We can no longer just address one crisis at a
time. So her work has been ongoing for the
last several years on this subject,
and we connected over the summer and really
had a wonderful dialogue about not just how
it impacts people in the philanthropic
sector, but how it impacts people more
broadly. So I'm really looking forward to
finding that stage and sharing that passion
with her.
Carol Cox: Oh that's lovely. We'll definitely keep me
updated on that.
I love to see these collaborations.
And where's the best place for listeners to
connect with you.
Karen Cochran: On my website?
That's w-w-w.
And there will be a link to directly access
me there and you can sign up for my for my
monthly newsletter as well if you'd like.
Carol Cox: Okay, great. I'll make sure to include a link
to that in the show notes,
as well as a link to connect with you on
LinkedIn, because I know that's where both of
us tend to hang out and and spend our time as
far as social media.
Well, Karen, thank you so much for coming on
the podcast and for sharing your experience
working with us, but also your experience
presenting and your experience with
storytelling in philanthropy.
I know that listeners have gained a lot from
hearing you.
Karen Cochran: Carol. It's genuine pleasure,
and I always am more than happy to talk with
anyone about your support and the experience
I had as, um, a coachee and a participant.
Carol Cox: Oh well, thank you so much.
For those of you listening,
if you would like to join us at our next one
day in-person Speaking Accelerator workshop
in Orlando, Florida.
We host them in during the early part of the
year and in the fall.
So our next one as of right now is coming up
on February 19th, 2026.
And you can get all of the details and
register now at speaking your Brand.com
again, that's speaking your brand.com. And if
it's better for you to work virtually with
us, we also offer presentation makeover
packages. So we'll take your existing slide
deck outline presentation that you have and
we'll give it a complete makeover,
similar to what Karen and I talked about.
Or we can start from scratch in a one on one
VIP day. Whatever is the best fit for you.
And the best thing to do is to schedule a
consultation call with us so that we can talk
about what you need and the best options for
you. You can do that at speaking your
Brand.com. Until next time,
thanks for listening.