Netta Dobbins-Cunningham

Being in
the room
isn't the
same as
being heard
in it.

I'm a marketer, entrepreneur, strategist, and speaker who helps leaders — and the organizations they lead — show up with clarity, visibility, and purpose. For more than a decade, I've helped the world's biggest brands, and the leaders behind them, say what they actually mean and reach the people they've been missing.

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The story

The short version

My career began in brand-building, working alongside some of the most recognizable names in sports, technology, retail, and media. The work was about making institutions sound like they meant it and helping them reach the audiences they had never quite figured out how to speak to.

Then I built something of my own. For eight years I founded and led a company connecting underrepresented talent to the media industry. That work earned an Adweek Women Trailblazer honor and a feature in Forbes, with coverage across Teen Vogue, BET, The Tennessean, and Nashville Business Journal. I closed it on my own terms, on a high note, having learned what I came to learn: the same instincts that build a brand can build a person.

These days I teach emerging leaders how to own their executive presence. How they show up, how they are perceived, and how they get believed. I speak to audiences about entrepreneurship, executive presence, and leadership rooted in more than a decade of real experience. I hold an Executive MBA from Vanderbilt and have served as a Grow with Google Digital Coach across Tennessee.

I am a Nashville native, raised here and building here. I am also a new mother, which has only sharpened what I have always believed: you do not have to choose between the ambition and the life. You are allowed to build both.

Speaking

Book me to speak

Every room has a right way to be entered. My sessions are designed to move audiences beyond inspiration and into the kind of clarity that changes how they lead, speak, and show up. The content is equal parts story and strategy, rooted in real experience and built to stay with you long after the event ends.

Executive Presence and Personal Brand for Women Leaders

What does it mean to own your leadership signature? Rooted in years of building visible brands and teaching women to lead from the inside out, this session explores what it looks like to show up with authority and build a professional presence that opens doors before you walk through them.

Storytelling as a Business and Fundraising Tool

The organizations that move people are the ones that know how to tell a story. Drawing from more than a decade of work with nonprofits, cultural institutions, and major brands, this session teaches mission-driven leaders how to use narrative to motivate donors, partners, and communities rather than simply inform them.

Building a Full Life as an Entrepreneur or Executive and Woman

The Yes, And ethos in full. This conversation meets ambition where it actually lives: alongside motherhood, identity, reinvention, and the everyday negotiation between who you are and who you are becoming. It is a keynote and a permission slip, all at once.

New Audience Development and Next-Generation Engagement

Bringing new people into a mission is not a marketing problem. It is a leadership and vision problem. Drawing from specific experience helping arts organizations, nonprofits, and major brands reach audiences they have never traditionally reached, this session offers a framework for expanding who belongs in your room.

Career Reinvention and Knowing When to Let Go

Closing an eight-year company with intentionality. Pivoting an agency. Navigating high-stakes professional transitions. This session offers a real and nuanced perspective on choosing alignment over attachment, and what it looks like to begin again from a place of clarity rather than crisis.

Marketing Strategy for Mission-Driven Organizations

Purpose without a plan is just a statement. This workshop session gives nonprofit leaders, community foundations, and social sector professionals a practical marketing framework grounded in the reality of constrained budgets, high stakes, and audiences that deserve to be reached.

Keynotes·Workshops·Fireside Chats·Panels·Corporate & ERG Events

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The Program

Executive Presence
for Women

Cynthia Whitfield-Story and I met at Vanderbilt, when I was a graduate student and she was my executive coach. We kept returning to the same conversation: about the women we both knew who were overqualified, overlooked, and waiting for a program that would meet them where they actually were.

Today we have built that program. It is a cohort experience for women who are ready to be seen the way they deserve to be seen. In the meeting. On the stage. At the table where decisions are made.

This is not a confidence pep talk. It is structured, serious work on the things that actually move careers forward. How you communicate. How you carry authority. How you tell the story of your own value without shrinking or overselling it.

Apply for the next cohort →

Who it's for

  • Women stepping into bigger rooms than they're used to
  • Leaders who do the work but don't always get the credit
  • High-performers ready to match their presence to their ambition

What you leave with

  • A clearer, sharper way of showing up as a leader
  • Language for your own value you can actually use
  • A cohort of women who have your back long after it ends
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