Our iSpeak Facilitators
Facilitator
Gaye Stratton
Gaye runs Speak Confidently Limited providing speaking skills workshops for organisations and individuals. An experienced presenter and Toastmaster, Gaye has been an Executive member and Course Coordinator for a Community based Toastmasters Club in Auckland, running non-profit courses.
Gaye is very passionate about helping young people gain confidence and self-belief. Gaye is the Lead Facilitator for iSpeak Trust.
Dr Mark Hamilton
Facilitator
Dr Mark Hamilton trained in theatre and has been involved with creative and innovative education for the past three decades. His key focus is addressing students’ interests and needs through experiential active learning. His early career in Edinburgh included work on city-wide creative programmes for youth development. In Tāmaki Makaurau, in the early 2000s, he worked with an arts charity providing rangatahi Māori and Pasifika youth with access to extra-curricular learning opportunities and career development.
In his university role in Central London, his role included sharing skills in presentation and public speaking to nurture these capacities in international university students from diverse disciplines, aiding their holistic growth. Since his return to Aotearoa in 2020, Mark has worked in vocational education — as a teaching specialist and academic director — and is now working with several charities to advance kaupapa for individual and collective growth and change. Mark says, “I am inspired by the iSpeak mission and our work using speaking skills education to empower young people in their interactions with others and their knowledge of themselves.”
Catherine Syme
Facilitator
Catherine Syme, of Fear-less Public Speaking, specialises in working with people who are being held back in their careers or other aspects of the lives because they are extremely anxious about public speaking. She has been a Toastmaster for more than ten years and she has a lot of experience presenting to professional and political audiences. Catherine is passionate about the workshops iSpeak Trust deliver in schools. Catherine is a Facilitator for iSpeak Trust.
Liz Callaghan
Facilitator
Liz Callaghan has been involved in speech making and teaching of speaking skills for over 40 years. Originally Liz taught Speech and Drama following the Trinity Guildhall syllabus for both speech and drama.
As a teacher aid at Sunnyhills she was involved in judging and facilitating both school wide and area competitions. Liz then went to the University of Auckland in 2006 and embarked on Bachelor of Education graduating in 2009. Liz taught at Baverstok Oaks School in Flatbush Auckland and quickly become involved in the school wide speech competitions, moving on to organising and facilitating area wide competitions in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese.
Liz is passionate about helping students gain confidence in public speaking. Liz says that “speaking is a life skill and one that many people struggle with but once gained is invaluable for the rest of their lives. By sharing simple strategies students quickly employ the ideas and find themselves presenting a speech in a confident, clear and interesting manner”.
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Rochelle Tietze
Facilitator
Rochelle, from a young age, built a strong foundation in speech competitions and professional theatre. In Europe/Germany, she founded a groundbreaking English language educational service that catered to a diverse range of ages, from young children to adults. Her innovative training methods were blended with theatre, movement, and hands-on practice, focusing on building confidence. This approach not only made learning engaging but also highly effective, leading to significant client satisfaction.
Rochelle's expertise is complemented by her experience in Business, also training in organisational leadership and strategy, which she pursued during her postgraduate studies. Her years research study on the long-term effectiveness of training within a large corporate organisation and her endorsement as a Super Coach, have equipped her to integrate these methodologies into her workshops. This blend of leadership and educational strategies enhances her ability to create impactful and lasting learning experiences.