Meet the Team: Strategic Account Advisor Julie Whalen on What Makes a Good Keynote Speaker

What makes a good keynote speaker? According to Julie Whalen, BigSpeak Speakers Bureau Strategic Account Advisor, it’s all about authenticity and interesting, entertaining, rich content— and Top Change and Transformation speaker Cassandra Worthy fits the bill.

Julie brings over 20 years of consultative sales experience to her role as a BigSpeak Strategic Account Advisor. Prior to BigSpeak, she worked at LinkedIn and Lynda.com providing training solutions to government clients. She is relationship-oriented and focuses on best serving every individuals’ needs. As a Strategic Account Advisor, Julie is committed to building lifelong partnerships with her clients, and keynote speakers often play a critical role in these relationships.

When she first met Cassandra Worthy, Julie was in need of a last minute keynote speaker for her client after another speaker had backed out. “Cassandra stepped up to the plate and said, ‘I’m game,’” Julie recalls. Cassandra thoroughly educated and wowed the audience, receiving rave reviews afterward.

Cassandra Worthy is the Founder & CEO of Change Enthusiasm® Global, a well-respected Growth Enablement firm serving its client base through keynote speaking, training, and consulting. She is a former Fortune 100 Innovation Leader, highly dynamic speaker & presenter, chemical engineer, but above all else the world’s leading expert on Change Enthusiasm®. Her keynote speech topics teach audiences how to face stressful change, build leadership skills and deliver rock star results in the face of their biggest emotional challenges.

What Julie found resonated most with her about Cassandra’s talks is the way she explains why we experience stress and anxiety, and how to handle those feelings like a champ. Change is known to trigger our natural fight or flight response, and Cassandra teaches her audiences how to recognize those signals and channel them to be productive. Her keynote speeches could be life changing for anyone, but especially those situated in high stress, fast-paced environments, like hospitals and major corporations.

“I can’t think of anybody in the world that wouldn’t benefit from Cassandra’s messaging— Her enthusiastic energy is contagious,” says Julie.

Before starting her diverse career in sales, Julie received a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from Pepperdine on a full ride volleyball scholarship. Julie is a Santa Barbara local through and through who loves spending time with family and friends, serving her community as a board member of the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara and (in true Santa Barbara fashion) she loves the ocean.