English as a Second Language · Executive Communication
Your leader is impressive in their first language and diminished in English. That gap is not fluency. It is structure, pace and presence, and it is trainable.
It is coaching for leaders who already speak English well enough to do the job, but who lose authority when they speak it. The work is not grammar, vocabulary or accent reduction. It is structure, pace, emphasis and presence, so that a leader's experience and judgment reach the room intact. Knowing a subject deeply does not automatically mean being able to communicate it with authority in another language. Those are two different skills, and only one of them is usually trained.
This is the leader who is fluent on paper and flattened in the room. Usually one of these six situations.
This is the part most training misses, because most training treats the language as the problem. These are the things that actually decide whether a leader sounds authoritative or sounds like they are working too hard.
Audiences accept accents easily. What they struggle with is hesitation, a sentence that loses its thread, or an answer that takes too long to arrive. We do not touch the accent. We work on everything that actually costs a leader credibility, which is usually pace and structure.
Composing in one language and delivering in another adds a delay before every sentence. The room reads that pause as uncertainty about the content, not about the word. The fix is not faster translation. It is building the answer directly in English, from a structure you already own.
Everyone uses filler. In a second language it roughly doubles, because the filler buys time to retrieve a word. The result is a leader who sounds tentative while saying something they are completely sure of. Controlled silence replaces it, and silence reads as authority.
In your first language you stress the word that matters without thinking. In a second language that instinct goes to the back of the queue behind grammar and vocabulary, so every word arrives at the same weight. A flat line makes a strong point sound routine. Emphasis is trainable separately from fluency.
Words that look the same across two languages and mean something different are a standing risk, and business vocabulary is where they cluster. Register is the same trap at sentence level: a phrasing that feels neutral to you can land as blunt or as oddly formal to a native ear.
Prepared remarks are rehearsed, so they go well and everyone relaxes. Then the unscripted question arrives and the leader has to think, structure and translate at once, in front of the people they most wanted to impress. This is the part worth rehearsing, and it is the part almost nobody rehearses.
| Language or accent training | Executive communication coaching | |
|---|---|---|
| The goal | Speak more correct English | Communicate with authority in English |
| What gets worked on | Grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary | Structure, pace, emphasis, presence, message |
| The accent | Treated as a defect to reduce | Left alone. It was never the problem |
| How you practice | Language exercises | Recorded practice of the real situation, with playback |
| Who teaches it | A language instructor | A coach who ran a newsroom and has coached executives for 15 years |
| How you know it worked | Fluency improves | The room believes you |
Format follows the situation. Most engagements are one of these three.
Bilingual executive coach · High-impact communication · Media training and executive presence
Pilar Ortiz combines more than 25 years in television and media with more than 15 years of executive coaching, media training and public speaking for executives, business leaders and high-performing teams.
Her work in front of and behind the camera includes Univision, Telemundo, CNN, ABC and NBC. She began her career in Colombia before building most of it in the United States. At Univision Tampa Bay she was anchor and news director for more than a decade, which gave her a rare view of what happens when a leader has to think fast, speak clearly and hold presence under pressure.
She coaches across both languages, which is why this work exists. She knows what it is to move between languages in front of a camera, a journalist or a room, and she does not treat the second language as a deficiency to be corrected.
She is the creator of the Influence Accelerator and Speak Easy programs, and the author of Reinventing Yourself in English and El Genio de la Botella in Spanish. She was the first Hispanic co-host of Voices of Experience, the National Speakers Association podcast.
The program runs on the same method Jess Todtfeld has used to train more than 100,000 people on six continents. He is a former NBC, ABC and Fox television producer of 13 years, a Certified Speaking Professional, author of the international bestseller Media Secrets, and a Guinness World Record holder for most media interviews given in 24 hours. Pilar brings that method into the executive and bilingual context. The result is real practice, recorded, reviewed and coached, in whichever language the leader actually has to perform in.
“Being in front of the camera and watching the evolution from the initial take to the last take, especially under heavy questioning, was very helpful to me.”Max A. StempelGerente General, AIG Panamá
“This has helped us greatly in improving our speaking skills. In this business, improving these type of skills really matters for your career.”Ed MenaGerente General, AIU Chile
“Jess' Media Training workshop helped me reduce nervousness and deliver messages that people can remember.”Pedro ArtanaGerente General, AIG El Salvador
No, and we would talk you out of it. An accent is rarely what costs a leader authority. Speed, filler, long sentences and flat emphasis are. We leave the accent alone and work on the things the room actually reacts to.
Good enough to do their job in it. This is not language instruction. If a leader is still building working fluency, a language program serves them better first, and we are happy to say so.
Yes, in what gets attention. A second language changes where the effort goes: composing while speaking, retrieving words under pressure, and losing natural emphasis. Standard presentation training assumes those are free.
Yes. Small groups of two to eight work well, so everyone gets recorded practice and individual feedback. Teams at multinationals often share the same second-language challenge, which makes the group format efficient.
Yes. Pilar is a native Spanish speaker and coaches fully in either language, or switches deliberately inside a session to rehearse a bilingual event. Some clients start in Spanish and move to English as confidence builds.
The work transfers. The mechanics of composing in one language and delivering in another are similar across first languages. The regional and cultural coaching is strongest for Spanish speakers, because that is where the deepest experience sits.
Both. Virtual works well, since most of these presentations happen on video anyway and the practice matches the medium. On-site is available for full-day programs and team sessions.
A single focused session is often enough for one event that is already scheduled, and we book those on short notice where possible. A sustained global role is better served by ongoing coaching.
It depends on format, length and how many people are being coached. Ongoing one-on-one executive coaching runs as a monthly program. Tell us the situation and we will send a specific number rather than a range.
Tell us who is presenting, to whom, and in which language. We will tell you what the preparation should look like.
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