Emily Donahoe-O'Keefe
Founder | Principal
WOMENSPEAK Training
Emily Donahoe O'Keefe has trained thousands of executives to communicate with clarity, presence, and conviction. She is the founder of WOMENSPEAK Training (WST) and its sister consultancy Talk Shop Training (TST) .
Emily Donahoe is the founder of WOMENSPEAK Training (WST), a public communications training company. WST offerings work to build female+ share of voice and visibility in public spaces by giving individuals and organizations tools to drive organizational performance. Clients have included Saatchi & Saatchi, Team One Advertising, Publicis Groupe, Goldman Sachs, RPA, The Estee Lauder Companies, MacMillan Publishing, Willis / Willis Towers Watson, Amazon, and Expedia.
WST’s sister consultancy Talk Shop Training specializes in executive presence, "in the room" communication, and storytelling architecture for pitches. Clients have won over $1 billion in new business through TST's work. Recent clients include Publicis Groupe, Universal McCann, IPG/Mediabrands, AstraZeneca, Goldman Sachs, and The Estée Lauder Companies.
Emily is a frequent speaker at leadership and industry events. She has been a featured speaker for the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation's Global Conference, Goldman Sachs's Women's Career Strategies Initiative, the Sarah Turvill Women's Leadership Symposium in London, and the RIMS Risk Management Society's Conference — the largest trade show in North America. She has also spoken at events for The Women's Campaign School at Yale, The Bella Abzug Leadership Institute, LiveGirl, and 72andSunny in Los Angeles, and as a guest speaker at Yale University, NYU, UCSD, and the Colin Powell School at City College of New York. She taught public speaking at UC San Diego and is currently on faculty at the Women's Campaign School at Yale.
As an actor, Emily has performed on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in regional theaters across the country. She is the recipient of the Obie Award and the Helen Hayes Award, with past nominations including the Fox Foundation Fellowship (Extraordinary Potential) and the Connecticut Outer Critics Circle Award. She was a 2017 Beinecke Fellow at the Yale School of Drama. Film and television credits include Homeland, Bull, Law & Order SVU, FBI's Most Wanted, American Rust, and Amazon's Dead Ringers with Rachel Weisz. Her most recent film, Our Son with Luke Evans, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Her production company, Exposition Girlfriend Productions, is based in upstate New York. Recent projects include the award-winning short film Draw Up and Stare, starring Academy Award winner Melissa Leo and Academy Award nominee Michael O'Keefe.
Emily holds an MFA from UC San Diego, an AB in Drama and Psychology from Vassar College, and a post-graduate certificate in Women and Leadership from Cornell University.