Conference Diary: A Call to Humility and Authenticity

My 2025 Professional Speechwriters Association’s World Conference experience started before the conference. I landed in Washington DC the Saturday before—a habit I have developed over more than a decade attending these annual conferences. Arriving (from Europe) the week-end before allows me to absorb (part of) the time difference before the conference as well as indulge my passion for the arts in the numerous museums in town. This year, with the shutdown, most museums were closed: an opportunity to change my ritual and explore the city. 

I had never visited the National Cathedral. On Sundays, visits give way to service. I decided to attend the 11:15 service. The sermon stemmed from one of the readings, Jeremiah, and questioned God’s response in lamenting times—Jeremiah’s and today. Since lament can so easily slip into the hopelessness of despair, and despair is the soil for oppressive power, as it paralyzes us. What can we do?, asked the preacher. What is the way from lament to hope? 

She first insisted on remembering that we have been here before and telling the stories of endurance, resilience, and steadfastness, where we find guides, tools and wisdom. Telling the truth of history matters, she insisted, urging us to engage into prophetic memory. This will in turn animate us. Despair will not have the final word: she introduced prophetic joy. Which in turn calls us to be creative in our actions: prophetic imagination. 

Leading the audience to hope by recalling common stories, bringing hope, and calling to finding new ways ahead—isn’t this what speechwriting is all about?

Both in substance and in tone, this homily sounded to me like an unexpected yet masterly opening of this speechwriters world conference week.

From the cathedral, I went to Politics & Prose, one of the few DC bookstores. I like the place not only because it is owned by a former speechwriter, Lissa Muscatine (she served as chief speechwriter and senior advisor to Hillary Clinton at the White House and State Department; she also spoke at the 2015 Professional Speechwriters Association world conference) and her husband but also for their events. And while I was finding ideas and inspiration on the shelves, the place was getting ready to host the book talk of the day. That day, a focus on the legacy of the well-known and multi-prized historian, David McCullough. The title of the book, History Matters, would be one of the leading themes the conference.

Next to history, recurring themes of the conference were trust (how much it has plummeted, where it is today, how to rebuild it) and artificial intelligence (what is possible, and what is advisable).

I will not summarize the conference workshops, panels, keynote speeches. It is an experience to live. It is a call to deepen our knowledge of the discipline and become the best professionals we can be. It is the guidance younger speechwriters receive from senior and seasoned speechwriters who have been here before. It is also the joy to connect with colleagues we have met over the years. It is the excitement to learn new ways and be provided with what we should know about the latest developments and trends. It is the occasion to get a sense of where we are on our journey. It is the annual parenthesis in our everyday work when we can stop, look up, and be reminded that, when done well, our work can make a difference.

What is this job? I collected the definitions used during the conference to describe what we do. We are the ones who connect the dots, identify the signal from the noise, understand people/audiences and know how they react, help leaders think, help leaders find out if they really want to say what they thought they wanted to say, help leaders exert their freedom of thought when pressure to align mounts; we are writers-turned-thinkers-turned-advisors, advisors whose views leaders think they need, applied anthropologists, thought writers, thought provokers, meaning makers; we are the ones who are paid for the quality of their words and thinking. 

On Friday, the conference was over but my experience, not yet. Before getting back to the airport, I had a couple of hours and went for a walk along Embassy row, admiring the superb buildings on Massachussets avenue, each framed by the autumnal flamboyant foliage fireworks. It was quiet, serene and beautiful. And walking back, I stopped at the Gandhi Memorial and admired the sculpture of the Indian leader. The few words below—“My life is my message”—were the perfect closing of my 2025 speechwriters world conference experience. A call to humility and authenticity. And back to work.

Isabelle Gaudeul-Ehrhart is the founder and leader of the Speaking with impact community of practice in the  European Parliament. She is the author of Parler avec impact – Découvrir, apprendre et maîtriser l’art du discours. A member of the Advisory Board of the Professional Speechwriters Association, she is a judge for the Cicero Awards.