Congratulations
2024 Winners
Life Member Award
Paul ter Wal
Educator Award for Excellence
Sally Foley-Lewis
President’s Award
Olga Geidane
Life Member Award
Lindsay Adams OAM
Keynote Presenter Award for Excellence
CJ Ng
President’s Award
Liz Hardwick
Founders' Award
Jonathan Low
Breakthrough Speaker Award
Julia Grace
Emcee Appreciation
Claire Boscq
Awards & Recognition
We Celebrate Excellence
From our VSAI Awards to Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) recognition, we honour the individuals who lead with impact and inspire through voice.
Life
Member
Award
Purpose
Life Member status is bestowed on Virtual Speakers Association International (VSAI) members who have given their life to VSAI over a period of time in a range of selfless ways, sometimes involving personal sacrifice.
Their service to VSAI has been above and beyond the call of duty, benefited the membership internationally and contributed to the foundation and the evolution of the speaking profession. It is awarded when someone stands out on an exceptional basis for recognition of this type. It is awarded on an irregular basis when it occurs to a member that it is deserved.
Keynote Presenter Award for Excellence
Award Overview
This Award acknowledges professional speakers who have the capacity to engage a diverse variety of audiences, captivate them with their style, delivery and humour and deliver a message that conveys their expertise. Being a professional keynote speaker means to be able to sound the ‘keynote’. This means they deliver a message that engages an audience at an emotional level, but which is built around the broader theme of the event and the client’s objectives of content and outcomes.
Nominees and awardees are people who have been speaking for a sufficient amount of time to have reached a significant number of audiences. Often there is a breadth of experience demonstrated as they present to varied cultures and demographics.
Nominees have a broad experience and can perform with excellence regardless of the nature of the audience. They can often accommodate a varied audience including those who are highly educated and are high achievers as well as those who are found on the frontline of business and service industries, school students or volunteers. They may have a niche specialty and will deliver their message in such a way as to make it highly memorable.
The Keynote Presenter Award of Excellence recipient can teach, entertain and create an original message which is delivered in a unique way. However, this award also encompasses those who also educate, challenge people’s thinking or inspire predominantly through humour or music but are booked in the Keynote Speaker position.
Educator Award for Excellence
Award Overview
This award acknowledges presenters who have continued to educate groups with deep content through diverse methodology over many years in presentations, large and small group training. Their knowledge and expertise is used to facilitate thinking and to stimulate ideas.
In a professional speaking context, an educator is a presenter who involves the audience members as active participants in a learning experience that brings out the individual and collective knowledge of the group. They also help the individuals and group understand the knowledge in a new way or at a deeper level. This is often called training or facilitation.
Nominees and Awardees play a variety of roles with a wide range of clients. Often there is a breadth of experience of presenting to different cultures and demographics. Nominees have a broad experience and can work equally as w
ell with top-level corporate groups, education groups and community groups.
The Educator Award of Excellence recipient is a learner, teacher, designer, and deliverer of educational experiences of consistently high quality and originality for audiences across all platforms. They display the ability to work across a broad range of delivery mediums and modalities to ensure learning occurs.
Breakthrough Speaker of the Year
Award Overview
This award is designed to recognise and identify emerging speakers who have achieved recent extraordinary prominence, and/or major transformation and success.
Nominees and Awardees are individuals who have captured the attention and fascination of the marketplace. More than simply an overnight success or flavour of the moment, the winning speaker may well have been speaking for an extended period of time but has recently gained traction or achieved a breakthrough. Alternatively, they may be a new-comer emerging in the industry who displays great potential as a future thought-leader/influencer.