KEYNOTE SPEAKER:

Jan Harrison– Biographical Sketch

Jan Harrison started her career in broadcast journalism, where she was a news reporter and anchor. She was a pioneer in crisis management. Throughout her career she has worked in hospitality, commercial real estate, urban planning, health care; with government, non-profits, and corporations. For the past ten years she has worked with Rockhurst University/National Seminars Group as a trainer, conference leader, and featured speaker nationally and in Canada.

Jan takes public speaking very seriously, but she stands before her audiences to entertain. She prepares, practices, then practices some more. She is at ease in front of audiences from six to 600. (She once spoke to an audience of 1200.) She is organized, animated, and energetic. Attendees say Jan is funny; she makes material interesting and memorable; she answers questions thoroughly; and she comfortably admits to what she doesn’t know. Many who hear Jan suggest she be invited back again.

Jan likes to surprise her audiences and she wants them to enjoy their time with her more than they expected they would. She wants her audience to learn something new and useful, and to resolve to practice something of what she has communicated (not just consider time together a break from her audiences’ real lives). Jan Morrison agrees with a publisher friend of Mark Twain: “A bad half-hour speech is a waste of the speakers’ time. But for the 50 men in the audience, it’s a full day, gone. And that ought to be a hangin’ offense.”