Keynote Presentations: Revolutionizing History, Branding, & Travel
A Virtual and Live Keynote Speaker to Inspire!
Your conference or event needs a keynote that is truly an American experience. And your desire to build an enduring brand is truly an American Inheritance. It’s been handed down to us from the moment we declared independence, through the Revolutionary War, and over the years since our founding.
When we look back at our origins, we find examples to help us better understand the components that make enduring American brands. We can learn how we and our brands can be:
Unique. Consistent. Authentic.
With my proven history of building brands, coupled with my passion for American history, I make deepening your brand and story downright fun. I’ve given hundreds of presentations—both virtual and in person—to book clubs, corporations, and organizations across the US and Canada. I can’t wait to share my enthusiasm, joy, and downright practical advice with corporations, nonprofits, start-ups, entrepreneurs, and government and tourism entities.
Presentations, plus additional packages, help you simplify your brand. You’ll learn how to do less, while inspiring teams, leaders, and even yourself. To learn more about schedules and pricing for keynote presentations and packages listed below, contact me directly.
Keynote Speaker & Event Presentation Topics & Takeaways
1: Forgotten Female Travelers Who Shaped America
Two decades before Lewis & Clark, Eliza House Trist traveled west from Philadelphia through dangerous frontier territory—alone and keeping meticulous journals for Thomas Jefferson. She is one of many forgotten women who explored, traded, fought, and documented early America while history celebrated only the men. This talk resurrects their stories: camp followers who kept armies alive, tradeswomen who crossed continents, orators who defied expectations, and explorers we need again.
Audience: Women’s history conferences, travel industry events, historical societies, DAR chapters, women’s empowerment summits, heritage tourism organizations, academic symposia.
How: Stories of unique, well-known, and lesser-known female founders are tied to modern women who are reclaiming their own adventures, offering both inspiration and permission to travel boldly.
Key Takeaways:
- Untold stories of women explorers
- What modern travelers can learn about courage, resilience, and agency
- How women’s contributions to early American travel and exploration were overlooked
- Why reclaiming forgotten women’s stories matters for all of us today
2: The Storyteller’s Lens: Finding Magic in the Mainstream
You don’t need exotic destinations to have profound travel experiences. When we travel with the eyes of a designer and historical novelist—with the intent to absorb details, connections, and truly experience a locale—we come home with a deeper sense of reality. Both our own and the one we’ve visited. Real-travel examples, curiosity, research, and learning how to view a trip with a photographer’s eye can reveal hidden narratives in the most visited places, turning tourists into storytellers.
Audience: Travel conferences, photography groups, women’s travel events, cruise industry seminars, cultural heritage tourism panels, lifelong learning programs.
How: This presentation teaches observation techniques, historical context-building, and visual storytelling skills that transform mainstream itineraries into meaningful journeys.
Key Takeaways:
- Pre-travel methods to deepen connections during your journey
- Methods for staying in the moment and documenting sensory travel details
- Tools to help record daily excursions & impressions
- Three small things to do post-journey to remember this trip & plan for the next
3: Revolutionize Your Brand: A Leadership Lesson in History
A company’s or and individual’s desire to build an enduring brand is not just an American experience. It is truly an American Inheritance. It’s been handed down to us from the moment we declared independence, through the Revolutionary War, and over the years since our founding. When we look back at our origins, and combine them with branding terms we all hear—message, leadership, influencers, and more—we find memorable examples to help us better understand the components that make enduring American brands.
Audience: For leadership and employees of corporations, nonprofits, government agencies, and grass-roots organizations determined to build, deepen, or reinvent an inspiring American brand.
How: Historical and revolutionary facts are connected to three main branding components to help leadership and teams to structure and build enduring brands.
Key Takeaways:
- A deeper understanding of brand components
- A practical approach and set of worksheets for writing a brand plan
- Tangible examples of historical events or people that inspire teams
Add-ons: Workshops, Seminars, Game Shows, & Books
Add fun to your conference or shows through my hands-on events! Deepen the discussions and post-conference/event impact through any of the following add-ons:
- Workshop—Travel or Brand: 1-2 round table consultation sessions of 45-minutes each
- Up to 15 attendees per session
- Moderated, real-world travel or brand problem solving Q&A
- Attendees provide questions, issues
- On-the-fly solutions and brainstorming + group think
- Game Show: Chasing Histories Challenge
- A 1.5-hour team building game show style event (for in person programs only)
- Teams compete for prizes to answer questions about America’s Founding documents and history, and test their American brand knowledge.
- Teams consist of 15-25 attendees each, with up to 3-5 teams
- Workbooks and books
- A minimum of 25 and a maximum of 50 copies of Brand the Author (Not the Book), and/or Carrying Independence, and/or The Travel Journal of Eliza House Trist can be included for the appropriate events. Additional copies can be added in increments of 50, 100, or 200 with discounts off retail. Shipped ahead, and you own remaining copies
All this and Book Clubs too!
In addition to keynotes, I also offer special book club packages for conferences/events—for during, before, or after the conference for Carrying Independence or Bonjour 40. This includes a 30-45 minute discussion (live at the event or Zoom), and a 10% discount on book orders (min. 25, no max for book clubs), shipped to one address. Book plates with signature will be sent separately, unless the event is live, at which time a book signing follows the book club. Reach out via the contact form to get more information about book club coupled with keynote presentations.