Business Writing

Whether I’m writing for the ear (speeches) or for the eye, I create business writing audiences will remember, and act on.

Barry Salzberg

CEO, Deloitte LLP

The Sound of Leadership:
What women know and businesses need to hear

  • Speech for The Conference Board Women’s Leadership Conference, April 2010
  • Winner – 2011 Cicero Speechwriting Award: Best-Written Speech on Diversity

Not every client would be comfortable delivering this speech, but I’d been working with Deloitte and Mr. Salzberg for nearly six years so I knew that even if they thought I was crazy for proposing it, they’d give me a mulligan on the first draft. Fortunately, they trusted me—and an award-winning speech was born. This excerpt comes from the opening of the speech.

Contents Under Pressure:
Managing talent in a high-performance culture

  • Speech at Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, October 2007

I forged a theme that allowed Mr. Salzberg to pose a challenging, and not often asked, question: Is it possible to sustain a high-performance culture without a traditional high-pressure work environment? This excerpt comes from the opening of the speech.

Michael Zychinski

Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer, Deloitte, LLP

Excerpts from various speeches

After I found the story of the Boston flood for him (the first excerpt), Mike always wanted to open his speeches with historical trivia from wherever he was speaking. Of course, I tied whatever story I found firmly to his message. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—people do shady and unethical things everywhere. It was a challenge for me to narrow these selections down to my favorite four stories.

Leo Corbett

Sr. VP of Marketing, Prudential Insurance

Prudential Insurance: A Whole New Ballgame

  • Speech to Prudential employees at the company’s International Business Conference, June 1997

I’d worked with Leo before, at Salomon Brothers, but we found that the insurance industry required a different idiom. This speech served both to introduce him to the company and to rally the troops. At the end of the speech, Leo threw a baseball into the audience. Then everyone at the conference received baseballs imprinted with the company’s logo and the tagline “A whole new ballgame.” For the rest of his tenure at the company, people recognized him as “the baseball guy.” It was a great for him to make an impact with Prudential’s very large workforce.

Milton Irvin

Financial Services Executive

Congress, Baseball and the Financial Industry: African Americans changing the majority culture

  • A speech for the National Black MBA Association, September 1993

In the second speech I wrote for Mr. Irvin, I was able to blend the personal and the political into a strong piece of oratory. It turned out to be one of the highlights of the conference. I think because it takes a stand and tells its story directly. I’ve been writing speeches for over a decade and this is one of my favorites. Enjoy.

What Can Whitney M. Young Jr. Teach Businesses in the 21st Century?

  • Speech for the Wharton School’s Whitney M. Young, Jr. Memorial Conference, November 2004

Eleven years after I wrote his powerful speech to the National Black MBA Association (above), Mr. Irvin tracked me down and asked me to write for him again. He was speaking at the 31st anniversary of a conference he had helped to organize when he was a student at Wharton Business School in the 1970s. The conference was named after civil rights leader Whitney M. Young, Jr.—who was quite a speaker himself. I found a speech Mr. Young had given to the American Institute of Architects in 1968 and was so impressed with it that I used it as the backbone of this speech. (If you’d like to read Mr. Young’s speech, email me and I’ll send you a copy.) Here are three excerpts from the speech I wrote.

Governor Howard Dean

The Next Hundred Years

  • Presidential Primary Campaign Speech, July 2003

I had written two previous speeches for Gov. Dean when the campaign’s Policy Director called me up and asked me to write this one—practically from scratch—in four hours. I told him I could do it in eight. And I did.

Joseph Benincasa

CEO, The Actors’ Fund

The Art of Collaboration

  • Commencement Address, Centenary College, 2011

I came to this project late in the process, after the client, the CEO of a nonprofit, had already completed a draft of his commencement speech. It was a good start, but I saw that it could be even better.

When I asked Mr. Benincasa if I could release this side-by-side comparison of his draft and mine, he replied: “Absolutely. You have my permission (and eternal gratitude)” and added that I “helped turn a sleeper speech into a great speech.”

Under my clients' by-lines

Barry Salzberg

CEO, Deloitte LLP

Where are America’s high-performing students?

  • Op-Ed for Forbes.com, September 2007

To shape Mr. Salzberg’s passion about access to higher education into a call to action for other corporate CEOs.

John H. Gutfreund

Chairman & CEO, Salomon Brothers Inc

Let’s not forget the countries of the East

  • Article for a French publication, La Cote Desfossés—L’Année Financière, January 1991

Working with Mr. Gutfreund, I wrote the article—in English. (Someone else translated it!)

Under my by-lines

The Stock Market

  • Client: Samsung
  • Article for Samsung Magazine, October 1997

Great Speech for “The Greatest:" Louisville Mayor Greg Fisher’s Tribute to Muhammad Ali

  • a LinkedIn “Editor’s Pick”

“Gloria Steinem: On Thirty-Five Years of Magazine Publishing, Activism and Joy”

  • Client: New York Women in Communications
  • Article for The Matrix Times, April 2005

To celebrate the 35th anniversary of its Matrix Awards for outstanding women in communications, New York Women in Communications decided to highlight the accomplishments of the women who had won the first awards, in 1971. I pitched the idea to Gloria Steinem, and won an interview with the legendary writer and activist. Some excerpts…

Awards & Fellowships:

 
 
Mass Cultural Council Grant, 2023
 
Queer-Writers’ Fellowship, 2021 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing
Finalist 2021 Brooklyn Non-Fiction Prize