- After Dinner Speakers
- Conference Speakers
Topics:
- Humorist
- Motivation & Teamwork
Frances Edmonds
Frances Edmonds is a truly international expert in the business of communication and specialises in working with multinational and multi-cultural groups as either a keynote speaker or facilitator. A gifted entrepreneur who genuinely understands how to create excellent teams, she helped create and run a successful building business which she sold in 2004. In addition, Frances was voted Britain’s most amusing and entertaining after-dinner speaker in a recent survey by The Times.
Communications
After graduating with a Masters Degree in Modern Languages from Cambridge University, Frances joined the Commission of the European Union in Brussels as an international conference interpreter.
For over a decade, she worked to facilitate communication and cooperation within all the major international organisations and between the heads of state and government at their annual World Economic Summits. Her years spent negotiating at the highest level fostered her expertise in cross-cultural communication and consensus creation.
Writing and Cricket
In 1986, her first book, Another Bloody Tour (an outrageously funny and highly controversial account of the England cricket team’s tour of the West Indies) became an overnight international No 1 best-seller and shook England’s male-dominated sporting establishments to their foundations.
In 1987, she covered the Ashes series in Australia and wrote another No 1 best-seller, Cricket XXXX Cricket, which again created uproar. Whilst in Australia, she covered the America’s Cup for The Times and hosted Good Morning Australia, the country’s most popular breakfast TV show.
Further books, Members Only (an irreverent search for signs of independent intelligent life in Westminster- she found few), Samson & Delilah, Star of Heaven and Games all met with critical acclaim. In 2001 she released her book 'Winning the Game of Life', which was based on three years of research and interviews and suggest tools for personal and business success and embraces techniques employed by many of the UK’s foremost captains of industry and top sportsmen and women.
Speaking, Journalism and other interests
Her understanding of business issues, gleaned from her own experience in creating a specialised construction company led to her election as an Honorary Fellow of the British Association of Women Entrepreneurs. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Founder Member and Fellow of the Professional Speakers Association.
Frances contributes to a wide range of publications, including The Times and The Evening Standard, and appears regularly on radio and television, frequently as a news reviewer for the BBC. Together with the celebrated cartoonist, Bill Tidy, she is currently working on a series of short stories about a beleaguered marketing executive. She spends her time between her homes in Notting Hill, London, and Biarritz, France.
“Incroyable! What else can one say? Your contribution to the evening was quite outstanding.
Not only your speech, but also for the manner in which you interacted with our group both before and after dinner. You had clearly “done your homework” and your delivery beautifully reinforced the messages that we had been sending. The use of your obviously remarkable gifts as a linguist with our Arjo Wiggins colleagues from Belgium achieved everything we had hoped for and more. Some were blown away by your lack of an accent when speaking French – by that I mean an English accent! – great praise indeed.”
WT Consulting, Executive Search and Selection
“The topics covered (in your motivational speech) were so appropriate for the group it was uncanny and I thank you for the thought and preparation you obviously put into it.”
Barclays Life Assurance
