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Hello {{ first name | friends}},
I am delighted to introduce Ekua Cant, whom I first met within a coaching space. I was immediately drawn to her unwavering purpose. Later, I joined one of her challenges, with excellent results, as she mentions below. Please meet Ekua.
Ekua, tell me briefly about your background prior to founding the Get Paid to Speak global movement
There are some things you simply can’t unsee.
When I woke up on 6th November 2024 and saw that Kamala had lost and Trump had been elected, it was a difficult moment. But it was also a moment of calling.
Because I knew in that moment people would be afraid to speak up and share their truth. And when that happens, the voices most likely to disappear first are those from the global majority.
At that point I made a decision to pivot my business.
Until then I had been working broadly as a LinkedIn coach for professionals and business owners. But I realised I wanted to focus my work where I could make the biggest and greatest impact.
Today I support diverse speakers globally to build visibility, develop their speaker brands and get paid to speak on stages around the world.
My work sits at the intersection of visibility, advocacy and what I call speaker equity.
Speaker equity simply means that the people who bring expertise, insight and lived experience to stages are both represented and fairly paid for their contribution.
Because events don’t run on a lack of organisation!
They run on spreadsheets.
And when speaker budgets quietly disappear, the people most likely to be asked to work for free are emerging voices, women and speakers from the global majority.
This movement is not only for diverse speakers.
It is also for our allies. Because systems don’t change in isolation, and we cannot do this work alone.
Give me the elevator pitch for this movement
I run a global movement focused on speaker equity. My work helps diverse speakers become visible, build strong speaker brands on LinkedIn and adopt what I call the Paid Speaker Mindset. The Paid Speaker Mindset means treating speaking as professional work rather than a favour or an opportunity for exposure. It means negotiating opportunities like a lawyer and asking a very simple but often avoided question: “What’s the budget?”