The question is no longer whether to use AI for executive communication, speechwriting and other types of leadership communication. It’s how to use it best.
And that’s up to you and the communication colleagues you work with every day. Your intelligence, thoughtfulness and deep sense of ethics will help AI enhance the work you do, rather than detract.
But you need to understand the relevant AI tools and techniques first—from basic, to advanced. And you need to understand them not just as individuals, but as a team, determined to make them work for your leaders, and your organization.
We’ve created this course with one goal in mind: to help leadership communication professionals gain a hands-on, practical, shirtsleeve understanding of AI’s role in our work and how to use it ethically, effectively and strategically.
We’ll tailor it to your organization’s needs—the technology you use, the skillsets your team possesses and the communication problems you’re trying to solve, for the leaders you work for every day.
Together, you and your team will come away AI-aligned, with a toolbox of prompts and approaches that you can apply immediately to strengthen your research, enhance your messaging, drill down on fact-checking and refine your communication strategies. You will learn how to use generative AI, make the leap into agentic AI, and understand the (important) difference. Just as important, you’ll see how AI can help boost your value as individuals and as a team—by making you faster, more adaptive and more confident in the services you provide.
You’ll all return to your work less ambivalent about AI and more enthusiastic—clearer-minded about how it can help and how it can’t, and confident in your own ability to make AI work: for organization and its leaders, and the communicators they rely on.
Suggested Course Agenda (All Matters Open to Discussion and Customization)
(All sessions in 90-minute sections as conveniently timed for host organization as possible.)
Session 1: Generative AI in Speechwriting and Other Leadership Communications (Research, Structure and Composition)
After a non-technical explanation of what AI is—and isn’t—as far as communicators are concerned, this session focuses on using AI to support the early and middle stages of your writing process. We begin with foundational generative AI techniques and strategic prompt development, giving you the essential skills to build better workflows, conduct fast and thorough speech research, and turn briefing notes into clear building blocks for your drafts.
The key takeaway of this session: AI won’t write your speech—but it can make you faster, sharper and more confident in how you shape it. You’ll walk away with tested prompts and techniques that strengthen your early-stage workflow and increase your value as a strategic communicator.
You will learn:
- How to conduct faster, more comprehensive information-gathering through customized and strategic prompts.
- How to extract more specific details from briefings and event descriptions than you ever could without AI.
- How to use AI to explore different speech structures and ID the right one for the occasion.
- How to use AI to assess strengths and weaknesses of your arguments, clarify numbers and stats and generate more compelling metaphors and similes.
Session 2: AI in Editing, Fact-checking, and Coaching (Advanced & Agentic Workflows)
This session focuses on using AI to support the later stages of creating speeches and other leadership communications. It builds on Day 1 by introducing more advanced and agentic AI tools that help refine drafts, prepare them for delivery and ensure they resonate. You’ll learn how to use the very latest AI agents and build multi-step workflows to test for clarity, tone, cultural sensitivity and flow. As with research and drafting, the goal here isn’t replacement. It’s refinement and enhancement. You will also learn how agentic AI can automate quality checks, strengthen late-stage revisions and support speech coaching sessions with your speaker. When used well, these tools can make you a more responsive, confident and more valuable partner to your speaker. You will learn how to use AI and agentic systems to:
- Build simple, task-specific AI agents that support speechwriting work—such as agents for structure analysis, fact-flagging or style review.
- Create multi-step workflows that help you move from outline to refined draft more efficiently and consistently.
- Test the readability of the speech—and the listenability, too.
- Deepen your knowledge of the subject and improve your application of rhetorical devices.
Session 3: AI in Executive Communications
In this session, we show you how to use AI to become more than a better writer—but a better communication strategist, too. Participants will learn how to build strategic communications objectives and outline tactics. You’ll also see how AI can assist with stakeholder mapping and tightening your narrative across formats—from press releases to talking points. The session includes live demos, use-case walkthroughs, and a review of risks and red flags when using AI in high-stakes strategic work.
You’ll learn how to use AI for:
- Strengthening communications strategies and making messaging plans.
- Stakeholder mapping.
- Scenario planning for real-world situations.
- Spotting potential missteps and blind spots.
- Tightening your narrative across formats.
Session 4: Office Hours, with Brent Kerrigan
This is the time to discuss everything your team has learned, and how it will apply to your work for your leaders at your institution. Lead instructor Brent Kerrigan will answer your questions and facilitate a conversation with your team, so that you leave this session on the same page, with a plan to adopt AI productively, ethically and humanely—together.
Course Logistics and FAQ
Q. Not everyone on our team is solely dedicated to “leadership communication” as it’s traditionally defined—e.g. speechwriting, exec comms, etc. Is this course truly applicable to our whole team?
A. Yes. It is our experience that communicators of every sub-discipline—internal comms, corporate comms, public relations—find this course to be a perfect focus and foundation for how to think about and use AI tools. Whatever techniques you can use to help your leaders communicate effectively, efficiently and responsibly, you can use for virtually every task a communication team performs. This course will help your whole communication team become an AI-savvy communication unit.
Q: When you say “hands on”: Do we need to actually subscribe to an AI platform to take this course?
A: We can work this out with your group, but we recommend everyone has a paid subscription to at least one common model for the purposes of this training. Depending on the host organization’s needs and institutional rules, the instructor will likely be using Gemini Pro and ChatGPT during the sessions. A one-month “Pro” subscription is approximately $20 (each AI model is the same price) and you can cancel afterwards. As the webinar approaches, we’ll send you easy instructions on how to subscribe.
Q: What exactly will I take away?
A: You and your whole team will walk away with a PDF book full of thoroughly tested, universally useful (and customizable) AI prompts developed for executive communications, speechwriting, executive briefs and other leadership communications. Each session also includes live demonstrations, real-time exercises using ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot. And participants will receive a set of practical checklists and frameworks to apply immediately in their work. Your team will come away not only with profoundly more AI savvy and comfort as individuals—but a common understanding of AI as a team.
Q: Do we need any prior experience with AI to take this course?
A: No; the course is designed to serve absolute beginners as well as folks who have some experience with AI. We will begin the first day with the absolute basics. You need only an open mind, a willingness to understand new approaches and an appetite for increasing your value to your principal, and to your organization. This is not a technical session. Advanced AI users may not find it as useful as those with only limited AI experience.
Q: I have taken the public webinar “AI for Speechwriting & Executive Communication” from the Professional Speechwriters Association. Will this course feel redundant?
A: AI evolves quickly, and uses for it grow fast too. And of course, this is a chance to bring new questions (and insights) from your work. In short: If you think you could might benefit from taking the course one more time—this time, with a group of your colleagues—you’re probably right.
Q: How long does each webinar last?
A: Generally, each session consists of four 90-minute sessions. This is adjustable to the client’s needs.
Q: Some of our people may miss some of the sessions. Will they be able to view a recording of the webinar?
A: Yes, each session will be recorded and provided for participants to review by weblink, and available for viewing for one month after the course ends.
Q. We use a bespoke AI model in our company: would the prompts still work and would the course still make sense for us?
A: Almost certainly yes—and it’s one of the first things we’ll discuss before we design your course. The prompts and frameworks we teach are built around sound communication thinking first and AI second, which means they transfer across models. The underlying logic of how you brief an AI, structure a research request or test a draft doesn’t change because the model does. Every bespoke system has its own quirks, though, so a short conversation before we finalise your agenda lets us tailor the demonstrations to what your team is actually working with. That’s exactly what the initial consultation is for.
Q. What makes this any different than other AI courses?
A. We’re not aware of any other program that walks a team through the complete workflow—from first research prompt to final delivery, including communications strategy, stakeholder messaging and media preparation—as a single connected chain. We’ve been refining this approach for over a year for individuals and organizations globally. It’s comprehensive by design, because the work itself is comprehensive.
Faculty
Brent Kerrigan
Brent Kerrigan is an executive speechwriter and communications strategist with more than two decades of experience writing for UN leaders, heads of government and Fortune 500 CEOs. He served for six years as Head Speechwriter at UN Climate Change (UNFCCC), supporting three Executive Secretaries through some of the most high-profile moments in global climate diplomacy. Today, Brent writes speeches and strategic communications for global leaders and international organizations at www.brentkerrigan.com — and leads AI training workshops for communications professionals for the Professional Speechwriters Association. He’s the founder of Global Speechwriter and is based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Testimonials
“This workshop was extremely beneficial for someone like me who is new to generative AI.” —Joe Myers, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
“This was an incredibly information-rich presentation.” —Meike Kaan, Chief Communications Officer, Williams College
“The prompt guide was worth every penny.”
“This workshop is the difference between using AI to do a meek summary and really utilizing it as a tool to fully realize YOUR potential, knowledge and skills. Highly recommended.” —Miriam Medel Garcia, Mexican diplomat
Customization & Pricing
The first step in engaging with this course is a conversation with Brent Kerrigan to get a candid sense of you and your team’s needs: Your team’s current level and range of AI familiarity, your leadership’s requests and attitudes about AI, specific issues your team hopes to solve with AI—and anything else you think Brent ought to know, going in.
Price is a flat $15K, plus an additional $1K for every participant over 15. Reach out to Mike King, at [email protected], or 312-919-7384 to work out scheduling and other details.
Event registration is not anymore available.