The rooms that decide careers are rarely the rooms where anyone is comfortable. Steering committees, board presentations, deal reviews, the meeting where a program is in trouble and everyone is looking for someone to trust. Michele Grant has spent 20+ years in those rooms, leading enterprise transformation and M&A integration for Fortune 500 companies, including the $30 billion ViacomCBS merger and NBCUniversal's $39 billion Sky acquisition. This talk is about what she learned there about presence when the stakes are real: how credibility is established before you speak, how to hold composure and authority when the news is bad, how to be direct without being dismissed, and how the way you show up, in what you wear, how you carry yourself, and how you handle the first two minutes, shapes whether a room follows you. It connects the practical style framework of The Power Dressers™ to the moments that matter most, so that presence becomes something a leader can prepare for rather than hope for.

Format: keynote or fireside chat (30 to 45 minutes); also works as a panel topic. Virtual or in person. Audience: women in senior and rising leadership roles, executive women's networks, leadership summits, corporate women's conferences, professional associations, MBA and executive education programs. Michele is a Cornell Johnson Executive MBA candidate (Class of 2027) and delivered the May 2026 Cornell Tech Business Network Forum keynote.