I recently decided to add an official Speaking page to my website. It felt overdue, not because I’ve suddenly become braver, but because a life spent saying yes — haltingly, tremblingly, and sometimes blindly — deserves space.

Long before there was a page there were years of rooms. I’ve spoken at school graduations, executive retreats, company functions, PTA meetings; I’ve stood before teachers in primary and secondary schools, been interviewed on radio and television, and written columns — one for Express Woman’s Magazine, another for Business Newsday — where I pushed at possibility and practical change.

From 2009 until around 2011, I co-hosted a bi-weekly women’s radio show on 103.5 FM with Marcia Miranda. Week after week we opened the phone lines to lively, unscripted conversations about possibility, resilience, women in business, money, and everyday leadership.

Those live broadcasts—no edits, just presence—demanded clarity and quick thinking and gave me a deep well of experience to draw on when speaking to any audience. When the show eventually wound down, it created space for a new kind of stage and a different scale of conversation.

That space opened just as 2011 arrived and everything stretched. On Monday, May 23, 2011, I opened at the Trinidad Hilton for Robin Sharma at a Growing Leaders event—2,000 people in the room, a roar of expectation, a lesson in scale and ritual. My heart hammered so hard it felt like someone else’s drum keeping time inside my chest. Here I was on stage with the author of a book I loved ‘The Monk who Sold his Ferrari.’ I survived it. I learned from it.

A few weeks later I did the thing that would become one of my proudest acts: I self-financed and hosted my own women-only event, A World of Possibilities™, an evening at Joseph’s Restaurant in Maraval built with the stubbornness of someone who refused to wait for permission. Sponsors didn’t believe in me or the work I wanted to do. I believed anyway. I paid for everything myself and invited the voices I wanted in the room.

There is no neat origin story that reads like a find-and-discover. I didn’t stumble upon people and pluck them from obscurity. I invited people I knew, admired, and wanted to work with — and the way they showed up that night is a testament to how relationships, clarity, and stubborn faith attract the right company.

There was Marcia. What drew me to her then — and still does — was the way she talks about the brain: how we get hijacked by emotion, how we can outsmart the parts of ourselves that sabotage what we most want. That line of thinking — practical, humane, neuroscience-lit — felt like medicine. I invited Marcia to keynote because I wanted the women in that room to understand that courage wasn’t only moral; it was physiological, teachable. She accepted and said she would bring a friend. I had no idea who that friend would be.

There was Karen. I found Karen not by chance but by following a thread: I was on Brené Brown’s site, clicked a link, and then another, and then landed on a space that felt unmistakably Trinidadian — Chookooloonks. With a name like that, I thought, she has to be Trini. I read, I listened, and I reached out. Karen’s voice — photographic, tender, precise, brave — felt like a kindred invitation to a different way of living and leading. I asked her to come and she said yes. I remember thinking: this is exactly the kind of energy I wanted in the room.

And then, Marcia arrived with her friend Vickie Sullivan, a strategist I had followed from afar for years. I had admired Vickie’s work; I had wanted her to coach me but couldn’t afford her then. So when I went to the airport to collect Marcia, and realized it was Vickie next to her, I felt the kind of private, slightly giddy victory you don’t always get to name. On the boat en route to Tobago a few days later, Vickie, on her own initiative, gave me guidance—unsolicited and generous—and told me, with that calm precision the great ones have, that my event was world class. I still carry that sentence like a small benediction. To have someone whose work I had admired tell me I had done something worthy was a strange and wondrous confirmation.

That night was more than a program. It was sisterhood, a bit of singing, a room full of women who wanted to be seen. Josie-Ann Richards held the evening with grace as Mistress of Ceremonies and Marcia Miranda filled it with music — their presence made the whole thing feel held. Best of all, my mother sat at a table not far from mine, with my bestie Roxanne Skeene, radiant and proud — proof that the work you do gets witnessed by the people who matter most.

What most people never see is the small, private fight that lives behind every stage smile. I am, at my core, an introvert who lives with social anxiety so strong it often prevents me from signing my name consistently and legibly. Banks and ID offices now accept my thumbprint, because what used to be a simple signature can become an ordeal when my hands tremble.

Before I reach for a flip chart marker I pause, because the tremor will make the writing unreadable. I learned to use humor as an armor and preparation as a ritual. I stopped feeling ashamed about my intense nervousness, and I learned to begin with what I’m most fierce about — people-potential, alignment, storytelling — because once I’m in the work I love, the tremble becomes a rhythm and the room answers.

My friend and client Allison Demas gave me language for this when she wrote:

Most people think that if you love public speaking, you don’t get nervous. I still do. Every single time.… But the moment I start speaking… it all shifts. Nerves don’t mean you’re not a good speaker. They mean you care.

That line is truth. It encourages me to bring my whole, trembling self to the mic.

There were practical ripples from those yeses in 2011.

Invitations came that I couldn’t have scripted: a board retreat for Habitat for Humanity through Jennifer Massiah; a project with CWSL; more rooms that needed my facilitation and heart. Over time I watched people I had coached, and people who first encountered me through my writing, evolve into voices I’m proud to have crossed paths with.

Many began as readers: someone would read a column, feel something spark, and reach out – some I actually met in person. One such person is Dr. Phyllis Moreau, now widely respected in organizational change and leadership. Encounters like these remind me how a single sentence or conversation can quietly redirect a life.

It was in that same spirit of kindred orbits that I reached out to Karen Walrond and Dr. Marcia Reynolds for A World of Possibilities™. Their presence that evening wasn’t random; it was the natural pull of shared vision.

Karen’s luminous storytelling and insistence that joy and dignity are central to leadership have since unfolded into internationally acclaimed books—The Beauty of Different, The Lightmaker’s Manifesto, Radiant Rebellion, and more—each inviting people to live bravely and beautifully.

Marcia’s fascination with how the brain shapes emotion and conversation, which first drew me to her, has grown into a global practice that equips leaders and transforms organizational cultures. The ideas that captured me in 2011 are reflected and expanded in her influential books: Wander Woman, Outsmart Your Brain, The Discomfort Zone, Coach the Person, Not the Problem, and Breakthrough Coaching. Each one deepens her mission to help leaders turn even difficult conversations into opportunities for breakthrough.

Sharing space with Karen and Marcia was never about discovery; it was about alignment—recognizing brilliance, inviting it in, and trusting that the right voices amplify one another in ways that keep rippling outward.

Adding a Speaking page is not a vanity move; it’s a witness to a practice. It’s the record of years spent learning how to move with fear instead of waiting for it to pass. It’s a reminder that sponsors don’t always see the thing you’re building and that sometimes you’ll have to pay your own way, carry your own tables, and trust the room will fill. It’s an admission that you can be nervous and necessary at the same time.

So this is what I’m recommitting to: to clarify before I amplify, to choose the rooms that ask the most of me, and to say yes—even when my hands tremble. Do it even if your hands tremble, because the trembling is proof the moment matters. And as someone once told me with a smile, those shaking hands may simply mean you’re exceedingly excited – which I am!

Excited to keep sharing The Hudson Alignment Framework™, helping clients answer The One Question Every Business Must Answer™, guiding leaders and teams to uncover their Zone of Genius, and helping businesses become sustainably profitable by leveraging client retention and referrals.
This is the work that lights me up and the reason I’ll keep stepping onto new stages, trembling hands and all.

Strategic reflection prompt: Where is fear asking you to say yes—trembling hands and all—and what small step will you take this week to honor that call?

About Giselle

Giselle Hudson is a writer, possibility thinker, speaker, Strategic Alignment Facilitator™, and MCODE Legacy Coach. She helps solo professionals, non and for profit organizations identify where focus and learning need to occur to stay aligned and achieve real results — all beginning with The One Question Every Business Must Answer™.