Executive Presence,
By Design.
A six-minute diagnostic reveals the one leadership behavior quietly limiting your influence, credibility, and executive impact.
For executives, founders, and senior leaders who refuse to leave the way they are perceived to chance.
Executive presence is not charisma.
It is the combination of identity, awareness, emotional stability, communication, trust, and influence, the six forces that determine how others experience your leadership.
The Presence by Design Diagnostic™ evaluates all six pillars in about six minutes, then shows you exactly where your presence is strongest, and the one behavior standing between you and the impact you're capable of.
Become the leader people already trust, follow, and remember.
Executive presence isn't about becoming someone else. It's about becoming the leader people already trust, follow, and remember.
Presence by Design™ helps you communicate with greater conviction, remain composed under pressure, influence high-stakes conversations, and build the kind of credibility that opens doors to larger opportunities.
When you strengthen your executive presence, you don't just change how you speak. You change how you're perceived.
You stop second-guessing your ideas before sharing them.
You stop over-explaining to prove your value.
You stop shrinking in rooms where your voice matters.
You communicate with clarity, lead with confidence, earn trust more quickly, and create influence that extends far beyond your title.
Whether you're preparing for your next promotion, leading a team, presenting to executives, growing your business, or navigating pivotal career moments, Presence by Design™ gives you a practical framework to become the leader others naturally look to.
The architecture of executive presence.
Identity
The leader you believe you are determines the leader everyone else experiences.
Your internal narrative sets the ceiling for how you show up. When your identity is unclear, your presence becomes inconsistent.
Awareness
You can't change what you can't see.
Executive presence begins with the ability to observe yourself in real time: your patterns, your triggers, your impact on the room.
Stability
Pressure doesn't create your leadership. It reveals it.
The most powerful leaders regulate before they respond. Emotional stability is the foundation of trust under pressure.
Communication
People don't remember every word. They remember how you made them feel.
Clarity, conviction, and cadence. How you communicate shapes how you're remembered long after the meeting ends.
Trust
Influence is earned long before you ask someone to follow you.
Trust is the currency of leadership. It compounds when you are consistent, and collapses in a single moment of misalignment.
Influence
Presence isn't about being noticed. It's about changing outcomes.
Influence is the measurable result of everything else: the ability to move ideas, decisions, and people forward.
By the end of this program, you will:
- Understand the leadership behaviors that are quietly limiting your influence.
- Develop a stronger executive identity that aligns with how you want to lead.
- Stay composed and intentional during high-pressure conversations.
- Communicate with greater clarity, confidence, and conviction.
- Build trust faster with executives, clients, colleagues, and teams.
- Increase your influence without relying on authority or title.
- Leave every important conversation knowing you showed up as your best leader.
This isn't about becoming more charismatic. It's about becoming more trusted, more influential, and more effective every time you walk into a room.
Kathryn Ficarra
Executive Presence Strategist · Leadership Advisor · Speaker
Kathryn Ficarra is an executive presence strategist, leadership advisor, and speaker who helps leaders elevate the way they communicate, influence, and lead under pressure.
With more than 20 years of executive leadership experience across media, technology, marketing, and high-growth companies, Kathryn has led large teams, guided organizational transformation, and advised leaders through pivotal moments.
She is the creator of Presence by Design™, a proprietary framework that helps professionals strengthen their identity, communicate with greater conviction, build trust, and increase their influence in every room they enter.
Today, Kathryn works with executives, emerging leaders, and organizations that want to develop confident, credible leaders who create lasting impact.
The Presence by Design Method™
Every module, worksheet, and coaching session maps back to the six pillars of executive presence — Identity, Awareness, Stability, Communication, Trust, and Influence. A complete system for how you are experienced as a leader.
Not sure where to begin? Take the complimentary diagnostic first. Your results will reveal which pillar deserves your attention now.
- Presence by Design™ Curriculum
- Executive Presence Diagnostic™
- Executive Workbook
- One 45-minute Live Executive Presence Coaching Lab with Kathryn Ficarra
Apply the framework to a real leadership challenge, high-stakes conversation, presentation, or influence opportunity.
- Lifetime Access
- Founding Member Pricing
"Kathryn has a rare ability to unpack something leaders often feel but struggle to name. Her approach gave me a clearer understanding of how I was being experienced and what needed to change."