ROCHELLE ED­WARDS

Saman­tha John Best, the well-known for­mer news an­chor, is us­ing her ex­pe­ri­ence to help oth­ers con­quer one of the most com­mon fears—pub­lic speak­ing.

Her lat­est ini­tia­tive, a class called Sip and Speak, saw a di­verse group of in­di­vid­u­als ea­ger to tack­le the chal­lenges that come with pub­lic speak­ing, net­work with like-mind­ed peo­ple, and gain prac­ti­cal in­sights from Saman­tha her­self.

The event, which was held at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, St Ann’s in ear­ly April, drew in­ter­est not on­ly be­cause of Best’s pop­u­lar­i­ty but be­cause of its unique ap­proach to ad­dress­ing a uni­ver­sal is­sue: speak­ing in front of an au­di­ence.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Best shared that the idea for the class came nat­u­ral­ly to her.

“I was al­ready do­ing pri­vate coach­ing, and I no­ticed that a lot of peo­ple were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the same thing—the fear of pub­lic speak­ing,” she ex­plained.

“They thought they were alone in it, and I want­ed to show them that they weren’t. We all go through it, and to­geth­er, we can over­come it. The aim was to bring peo­ple to­geth­er, help them grow, and give them the tools they need to seize op­por­tu­ni­ties,” she said.

Best, who was a for­mer news an­chor at TV6 and TTT, was al­so a pop­u­lar ra­dio an­nounc­er known by the moniker Sam­my Jo. Af­ter al­most two decades in me­dia, she is now in the in­sur­ance in­dus­try and al­so con­ducts pub­lic speak­ing coach­ing and mas­ter­class­es.

The event was de­signed to help par­tic­i­pants break through their fears and de­vel­op the con­fi­dence need­ed to speak in pub­lic. The class kicked off with a warm wel­come from Best, who shared her per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ences with stage fright and how she over­came it through­out her broad­cast­ing ca­reer. Her sto­ry al­lowed some of the at­ten­dees to find com­fort as they learnt that even some­one as ac­com­plished as Best once strug­gled with the same chal­lenges.

Best em­pha­sised that con­fi­dence can be built through sim­ple, yet ef­fec­tive, prac­tices.

“It’s all about your mind­set,” she said. “Your body lan­guage, the way you car­ry your­self, and your breath can all make a huge dif­fer­ence in how you feel and how oth­ers per­ceive you.”

Par­tic­i­pants were asked to come up on stage, read from a pre­pared script, and show­case their speak­ing abil­i­ties. Best and mas­ter of cer­e­monies, Ja­son Williams, pro­vid­ed in­stant feed­back, of­fer­ing cor­rec­tions on every­thing from pos­ture to vo­cal de­liv­ery, en­sur­ing each in­di­vid­ual re­ceived per­son­alised guid­ance to im­prove their stage pres­ence. The re­al-time coach­ing helped par­tic­i­pants iden­ti­fy ar­eas of im­prove­ment and pro­vid­ed them with the con­fi­dence to con­tin­ue hon­ing their skills.

“Some­times, you don’t re­alise what you’re do­ing wrong un­til some­one points it out,” one par­tic­i­pant shared. “It was so help­ful to get feed­back right away, and the pos­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment made it eas­i­er to re­ceive the cor­rec­tions.”

She ex­pressed her sat­is­fac­tion with the turnout and the suc­cess of the event.

“I’m hap­py to give back to the com­mu­ni­ty, es­pe­cial­ly be­cause many peo­ple grew up watch­ing me on the news,” she said.