Sanja Hendrick (Founder) was once a professional Ballerina with the Sydney Academy of Ballet until she suffered a career-ending back injury after falling from above a dancer’s head.
Sanja then put her stage & theatre skills to work - doing comedy shows at the Adelaide Fringe. One day, a crowd member asked her: “I wish you could teach my colleagues how to present and be confident like you” - and suddenly Talent Academy was delivering communication workshops to the Defense Industry.
Meanwhile, Tom Hendrick (Co-director) was working as a Tax Lawyer and public speaking coach. Tom’s role involved understanding the most technical of content and communicating it under extreme pressures in court, in client negotiations and at large conferences. Multiple crowd members once said to Tom: “If you can make tax that interesting, you’re wasted as a lawyer”.
Tom & Sanja joined forces in 2021. Their combination of theatre & corporate communication skills elevated them to become the in-house pitch consultants for Australia’s most successful startup incubator, ThincLab (Adelaide University).
Talent Academy’s mission is to ensure that a great idea doesn’t fail for a lack of communication and courage.
Our typical client has a presentation or conversation that must not fail. We work with entrepreneurs, CEOs, PhDs & authors to ensure they can communicate the value of their idea to investors or at large conferences.
We also like working with people who are passionate about acquiring public speaking skills that will help them achieve their goals - such as students, startups, real estate agents and leaders.
We are a multi-award-winning education company. Some of our recent achievements include 4x Australian Small Business Champion Awards Finalist, Winner of Great Companies’ Woman Entrepreneur of 2021 (Sanja), and winner of a Federal Government Tender “Boosting Female Founders”.
We have helped dozens of startups win pitch competitions and investor funding to turn their dreams into reality, including coaching the winners of Adelaide University’s eChallenge competition 3 years in a row.
Most notably, we coached a PhD candidate to win the 3 Minute Thesis competition at the State and National levels, whose funding for satellite propulsion technology was arguably the catalyst for South Australia establishing a space program.
When Tom first decided to give up Commercial law and become a public speaking coach, Anton attended his pilot, public speaking boot camp/ workshop, which was carried out one night a week, over several months. From this moment, we all knew Tom was going to be a success. The way he helped us craft not only the method of speaking delivery, but he showed easy-to-use methods of writing the speeches in very little time. This was huge at the time. The lessons have been very effective in enhancing communication at all levels. Anton is looking forward to the opportunity to get involved in another boot camp to refresh his training to become better yet again with phase 2. It's so nice to see such a professional husband and wife team, work so well together and achieve such good results with a broad range of clients. and wine production, and the continual development of these methods within our day-to-day practices.
Industry: Public Speaking Coaching
Managers: Tom & Sanja Hendrick
Established: 14 February 2012
Contact: 0434 047 039
Website: https://www.talentacademy.com.au
For more information, please call us on 8367 8383 or email
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