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.
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.
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 in Marketing spanning media, technology, and high-growth companies, Kathryn has led large teams, guided organizational transformation, and advised leaders through some of their most critical moments.
She is the creator of Presence by Design™, a proven 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.
Executive presence isn't something you're born with. It's something you design.
Presence by Design™ is the definitive framework for executives who want to influence with greater confidence, communicate with conviction, and lead in a way that earns trust before they say a word.
- Self-paced executive presence curriculum
- Executive workbook and implementation exercises
- Personalized Presence by Design Diagnostic™ results
- One live 45-minute Executive Coaching Session with Kathryn Ficarra
- Lifetime access to course updates
"Unpacking of something we all feel but struggle to name."