Eliza VanCort

Categories: Motivation | Diversity & Inclusion | Women's Spotlight | Communication | Leadership

Eliza VanCort is a top empowerment keynote speaker, author, and advisory board member for Performing Arts for Social Change. 

Eliza VanCort is the author of the #1 Bestseller A WOMAN’S GUIDE TO CLAIMING SPACE: Stand Tall. Raise Your Voice. Be Heard, which published by Berrett Koehler in May 2021. A student of the arts and political science, Eliza is a Cook House Fellow at Cornell University, member of Govern For America’s League of Innovators, and a Diversity Crew partner. Creator of highly regarded talks and workshops, she educates about universal/women’s empowerment and DEI.

Her talk on anti-racist communication was originally commissioned by MIT’s Office of Minority Education. Eliza VanCort gives back to her community with extensive volunteer work and by offering New York City quality acting training locally. The acting studio she founded twenty years ago, The Actor’s Workshop of Ithaca (AWI), offers Central New York’s preeminent Meisner Technique training. AWI has a special focus on communication, emotional intelligence, and personal empowerment through arts education.

Eliza VanCort has led a life that any Hollywood studio would immediately dismiss as being too-hard-to-believe. This incredible journey inspired Eliza to dedicate her life to helping people of all races, genders, and backgrounds empower themselves to claim space. She has joined the chorus of women fiercely proclaiming #MeToo. 

In 2018, Eliza VanCort gave a TEDx talk on Women, Power and Revolutionizing Speech in which she shared her harrowing, yet uplifting, personal story while offering actionable, transformative tools for meaningful personal and social change. Also she is the parent of four incredible humans, a classically trained singer, unrepentant sci-fi, and musical theater nerd, and still hopes one day she’ll move things with The Force. She never turns down dark chocolate.

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