Signature talks

Four talks. One core conviction.

The leadership skills that matter most aren't in any MBA program. They show up in how we raise children, run Scout troops, and show up for our communities — and we've been dismissing them as "soft" when they're actually the hardest and most powerful ones.

Talk A · Anchor Keynote

"Leadership from the Ground Up"

Women's conferences · Corporate teams · Mixed leadership audiences · 20–60 min

Leadership doesn't start with a title, a degree, or a corner office. It starts with a feeling in your stomach — the discomfort that points you toward growth. This is Anne Marie's origin story: from a teenager with a nervous stomach walking into her first leadership conference, through thirty years of watching leaders succeed and fail in the workplace, to raising her own children and leading a Girl Scout troop.

The talk lands a simple but powerful truth — Discomfort = Growth — not as a motivational slogan, but as something Anne Marie discovered by living it, and something every person in the audience has already experienced without knowing what to call it.

"That feeling in your stomach? That's the compass pointing straight toward growth."

Talk B · Corporate Bridge Talk

"The Leadership Nobody Taught You"

Corporate teams · Managers · HR & L&D · Educators · 30–45 min

The most effective leadership skills aren't in any MBA program or management training. They show up in how we raise children, run Scout troops, and show up for our communities — and we've been dismissing them as "soft" when they're actually the hardest and most powerful ones.

The four essentials Anne Marie returns to — genuine respect, consistent support, follow-through, and starting now rather than waiting — apply with equal force to a direct report as they do to a ten-year-old. Most managers know this instinctively. This talk gives them permission to trust it.

"You can't lead a team well if you haven't examined how you lead at home. And you can't raise a strong, confident child if you haven't done the work to become a leader yourself."

Talk C · Specialty Keynote

"Raising Young Girl Leaders"

Girl Scout organizations · Women's leadership programs · Schools · 30–45 min

There is a specific and largely unspoken set of challenges that comes with raising girls to lead — not just the external obstacles, but the internal ones: the ways girls are socialized to shrink, to defer, to ask permission before taking up space. This talk names those challenges directly and gives parents, educators, and youth leaders practical tools for raising girls who trust their own voice before the world tries to talk them out of it.

Anne Marie speaks from experience — as a mother, as a Girl Scout troop leader, and as a woman who was shaped by early leadership experiences that weren't always designed with girls in mind.

"We're not raising girls who need permission to lead. We're raising girls who don't know they need to ask."

Talk D · Women's Conference Specialty

"Permission to Pause"

Women in leadership · Women's conferences · Professional women's groups · 20–45 min

What happens when a high-achieving woman stops — not because she burned out, but because she listened to something louder than her resume? This is Anne Marie's most personal talk. The sabbatical, the book, the pivot, the moment she bet on herself in a culture that rewards constant motion.

This talk gives women in the room permission to want something different — and more importantly, a framework for acting on it without waiting until they have no other choice. It's the talk for the woman who is accomplished, stretched thin, and quietly wondering if there's another way.

"The most countercultural thing a high-achieving woman can do right now is stop. Not forever. Just long enough to hear herself think."

"Anne Marie is a mother of two and a Girl Scout troop leader. She lives what she teaches."

Speaker bio

Anne Marie Klein

Anne Marie Klein has spent thirty years watching leaders at their best and their worst. As a senior professional across multiple industries, she had a front-row seat to the management styles that built people up and the ones that quietly dismantled them.

What she noticed: the qualities that defined the best leaders she worked with were the same qualities she was trying to build in her own children. That observation became a conviction, and that conviction became a body of work.

Anne Marie is the author of Growing Tomorrow's Leaders and the founder of Raising Leaders HQ, where she works with both parents and managers on the skills that connect these two worlds: the Gardener's Mindset, coaching over commanding, staying grounded when the pressure is on, setting balanced boundaries, and modeling the leadership you want to see.

Her message cuts across boardrooms and living rooms because the fundamentals are the same. You can't lead a team well if you've never examined how you lead at home. And you can't raise a strong, confident child if you haven't done the work to become a leader yourself.

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