The Women’s Leadership Institute Student Cohort gathered for a skill building session led by WLI Executive Board member Kristen Barnow on October 8. The workshop, titled “Communicate with Confidence: Speaking with Clarity, Purpose and Influence,” kicked off a year of programming for the WLI that is guided by the unifying theme, “From Presence to Impact.”
Kristen Barnow (‘90) is a longtime supporter of the WLI and joined its Executive Board in 2024. She is the Senior Vice President of Orion Talent, an acquisition and recruitment firm that is widely known as one of the nation’s largest military and veteran career placement services. Barnow has extensive experience in talent acquisition, management solutions, and leadership roles within the recruiting industry, and participates in a number of women’s leadership groups in addition to the WLI. In 2024, she established the Barnow Empowering Leadership Award, a scholarship open to all members of the WLI Student Cohort.
Barnow led an interactive discussion with the cohort that focused on becoming a stronger communicator both in intimidating group settings and challenging one-on-one conversations. “The big statement of today is that you don’t necessarily have to feel confident to communicate with confidence,” she said.
Barnow explained that confident communication is accomplished through combining clarity, purpose and courage. “Clarity is when you think about the message that you want to convey- you need to know that message before you start to speak out loud,” she said. “Purpose is the ‘why’ behind the message you are sharing and its importance. And courage is the resolve that you feel when you get ready to stand up in front of a group and convince someone of your position.”
She also shared tips on combining strong messaging with confidence demonstrated by presence and delivery. “People remember what you say, but they also remember how you said it,” she explained. Her recommendations included thinking about tone, pace, posture and eye contact, in addition to resisting the urge to soften opinions with apologies and phrases like ‘I think this could work’ or ‘This might be dumb idea, but…’
The group ended the afternoon with a discussion about tackling difficult conversations. “Difficult conversations can create change,” Barnow said. “They can create emotion. They can take you down a path of learning, and keep teaching you. They can teach you that there's two sides to a conversation and there is someone else's opinion that needs to be heard.”
Students drew a card with an example of a difficult conversation topic and practiced the advice Barnow gave them on how to approach a difficult conversation- identifying the desired outcome of the conversation, planning out what to say, and being prepared to listen to the other person’s perspective.
“The most important part is listening and making sure that you are open to hearing that other person's perspective, and not thinking ‘It’s my way or the highway,’” Barnow explained.
Next up for the WLI is a student cohort field trip on October 16 to the Stryker Corporation in Kalamazoo led by Rebecca Paalman, Senior Director of Finance Transformation at Stryker and a longtime WLI supporter who joined the executive board in August 2026. Later this fall, the group invites Executive Board members, alumni and supporters to campus for its official fall kickoff on November 11 inside the MSU Union.