Testimonials

“Gilda is an effective and engaging speaker and trainer. She has presented several workshops for the Women’s Business Development Center over the past three years, including Public Speaking: How to Talk to Strangers, Presenting Your Best Self: Communicating & Advocating for Success, and Grow Your Career With Networking Savvy. Gilda is well organized and prepared for every workshop. She does her homework on fine tuning her presentation for her audience. She is easy to work with and very supportive to participants.



Whether she is helping aspiring women entrepreneurs learn how to speak effectively about their businesses or teaching Hispanic business owners how to network with their colleagues, Gilda provides practical exercises and techniques that empower people to build self-confidence and develop bold communication skills. Gilda cares about her audiences and is able to make a real connection with them. I highly recommend her.”

“I recently attended Gilda’s Bold Presentation Skills and I’m so happy I did! Gilda provided some really great tips on how to utilize story telling within a presentation that I will put into use immediately. I’m looking forward to practicing her “easy-to-implement” insights and guidelines with my next presentation. Thanks Gilda!”

“I want to thank you for sharing your insights with me at yesterday’s Women Architects Event. I was especially inspired by the recommendation that we ‘take up more space at the table.’ That we speak up, speak with clarity and confidence, and literally put our elbows out. Especially as women in a male-dominated construction industry, we must be proud and strong and make our voices heard! I will be paying attention to how I present myself: am I clear and confident? Or am I asking permission with my tone of voice? I will make an effort to leave out the ‘umms’ and ‘uhhs’ and other filler words that take away from the directness of my intended statement. I appreciate your advice and will put it to work!!” –

“If you want a good presentation and you need to start from zero, get Gilda as your coach. She talks you through it, gets you into the process and helps you see the LIGHT. As I begin my fourth semester of Columbia University›s Master›s program, I still get butterflies, but I know I can get through it by engaging in the process of learning how to do things the right way and getting better at them. Practice, practice, practice - that was the key that Gilda taught me.”

“It was great to meet you and thanks so much for presenting at the National Speakers Association 2015 Convention! You workshop and your presentation skills were excellent. Yours was one of my favorite workshops. You were fun and engaging and put the audience at ease. You also demonstrated to us how improv exercises can enhance our presentations. And the exercises you led enabled me to make great connections with my two partners. Well done!"

“We invited Gilda to present “Bold Presentation Skills for Women in Business” for our Women’s Leadership Council event. She did a fantastic job! Her energy, enthusiasm and humor engaged the audience and she provided coaching tips that are easy to incorporate into our presentations. The feedback from the attendees was very positive — each woman walked away with specific ideas to make her presentations more confident, memorable and powerful. We look forward to inviting Gilda back to speak to us again."

“We had asked Gilda to provide an inspirational and motivational talk for our group of over 50 administrative associates on Administrative Associates Appreciation Day. Gilda did an outstanding job of engaging, entertaining, and enlightening the audience with stories and exercises regarding trust, fear, aspirations, and success stories. The audience was very appreciative of her talk and left feeling invigorated and motivated."

“It was a pleasure to meet and hear you speak about schmoozing skills. I consider myself a pretty outgoing person that usually doesn’t have trouble talking to strangers. However, your pointers still helped a lot, especially when I am in situations where I might feel that I have nothing in common with anyone in the room. I learned about how to gracefully break into a conversation and how to exit one.”

“I have attended Gilda’s presentations for the past three years at the annual Southern New England Chapter of the Project Management Institute’s conference. She is a polished speaker who always has an upbeat professional message to deliver. This year’s presentation, “Presenting with Power and Passion,” was of particular importance and timing for me. We are currently training our newer Project Managers and technical staff to prepare and deliver presentations to Senior Management. I picked up some new tips from her presentation and also confirmed some of the things that I had been doing correctly. I was so impressed by her presentation that we invited her to speak at our company’s next Project Manager’s Forum. I highly recommend Gilda’s presentations.”

“As the closing keynote speaker for the 2011 Conference of the Southern New England Chapter of PMI, Gilda demonstrated her best practices by showing her confidence, influence and successful methodology for her session on “How Will You Spend Your 28,000 Days?” She provided real life experiences of techniques she has used and provided actions that the attendees could use. It was a very inventive and engrossing presentation.”

“The exercises were fun and interactive while still delivering a very important message. And Thank you for your time and energy in, once again, delivering a top notch presentation & If there ever is a time I can recommend you and your incredible ability to speak to, train and motivate a group, please feel free to have your client contact me.”

“The Office of Alumni Relations at Marist College was thrilled to work with Gilda Bonanno to offer a ‘How to Schmooze’ workshop for our alumni. She provided practical and hands-on advice for putting your best foot forward and building bigger and stronger networks. We look forward to the opportunity to work with Gilda again in the future!”