Ivy Cohen | SpeakerHub

Personal Details

Bio

Ivy’s career has taken her down an unconventional path, with leadership roles in the corporate world, as an entrepreneur, as CEO of a major national non-profit and as a public policy advocate in our nation’s capital. Along the way, she has cultivated a unique perspective on how organizations work, leaders think, and successful managers mobilize others. She has helped organizations and their leaders develop compelling narratives, and she’s known for a professional style that engages, inspires and guides leaders to deliver high-impact results.

Ivy’s boutique corporate communications agency has been advising companies and executives for nearly 20 years, crafting big ideas and delivering outsized results for her clients. As a sought-after speaker and moderator, Ivy has addressed audiences at the White House, the National Football League, at rallies with 10,000 young people, and before business and civic audiences of all sizes all over the world. She has moderated programs on such diverse topics as business strategy, technology trends, corporate social responsibility, crisis communications, investment and entrepreneurship – even mayoral debates.

She has worked with companies such as Procter & Gamble, DHL, KEEN, the National Football League, Western Union, J.D. Power, MasterCard, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Digitas Health, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, and Wells Fargo. For 10 years Ivy served as CEO of the nation’s most prominent youth empowerment and drug abuse prevention organization.

Current position (1)

Strategic Communications Expert

Entrepreneur, Innovator and Brand Builder

Degrees (2)

MBA

Georgetown University

1984 to 1986

Education Policy, Political Science

University of California, Berkeley

1980 to 1982

Presentations

Presentations (3)

Get the CEO out of the Shadows and into the Spotlight

CEOs today have gone in two completely different directions when it comes to building their reputations. On the one hand, many have gone media-shy and avoid speaking with reporters beyond their obligatory quarterly earnings calls. In contrast, others have established a robust social media presence, with some becoming iconic personalities attracting many thousands of followers among their customers and others who are interested in what they have to say. Those who avoid attention may be leaving their reputations in the hands of strangers and antagonists, while those who seek the limelight may not always be enhancing their corporate brands. This talk gets to strategies for how CEOs can avoid media mistakes, and shares examples of who’s doing it right…and how.

Effective vs. Right!

Ivy’s mantra as a communicator is that "it is often more important to be effective than to be right." She has been involved in countless situations where decision-makers and influencers passionately insist on including specific facts and stories to make their case. Because of their deep personal attachment to an issue, they sometimes forget about what their audience needs or wants from them. In this talk, we discuss numerous scenarios that demonstrate what stakeholders from a variety of roles and sectors are looking to accomplish and how their adamant commitment to communicating specific information sometimes gets in their own way. We’ll then look at strategies for thinking differently about these situations in order to get better and more effective results.

What KIDS Teach Us About Communicating

We've seen a wave of advertising using children to entice adults to make purchases and rethink grown-up decisions. The wise-cracking E*TRADE baby grabbed our attention with straight talk about financial decisions, and the totally sensible kids of MasterCard's "just one more day" ads appealed to adults’ common sense, convincing us that more vacation could be beneficial for our well-being and our families. Children create that "aha" moment, reminding us that many will assuredly prefer things that are truly better instead of just good enough.

Adults have communications habits developed over years of social and cultural shaping. Each of us operates within a code of societal norms and expectations that drives how we handle various situations. Some of these lead to misunderstandings or take an enormous amount of time to get results. In this session we talk through 8 lessons communicators and thought leaders can learn from kids in order to be better – and more effective – communicators.