GDA Speakers
153 episodes listed below
Speaker insight from just offstage.
Backstage Pass Podcast sits close to the speaking business, where keynote stories are weighed for audience impact, logistics, and practical value. Gail Davis guides warm interviews with speakers and event planners, keeping the focus on what planners can actually use.
PRESS PLAY
Backstage Pass Podcast looks at the speaking industry from the side of the stage where relationships, audience needs, and event pressure meet. It is not just a showcase for impressive resumes. Gail Davis often begins with a personal connection, a booking history, or a client memory, then lets guests explain the story behind the program they bring to audiences. The tone is warm and direct. The questions are practical. Episodes move between big human material and the smaller details that decide whether a keynote works in a real room. Nando Parrado’s episode centers survival, friendship, trust, and the way audiences translate an extraordinary Andes story into their own private hardships. Ron White’s conversation highlights interactive memory work, from remembering names to turning a room exercise into business value. Sandra Joseph and Ron Bohmer bring Broadway, partnership, vulnerability, and performance into the frame. Heather Davis gives the planner’s side of the equation, including compliance, slide review, company culture, and why last-minute speaker changes can create real problems. Lisa Bodell’s episode turns simplification into a workplace and wellness issue, not just a productivity slogan. John Register connects Paralympic competition, injury, military service, and leadership through the language of adapting and committing. Erica Dhawan brings digital culture down to daily habits, including reply-all overload, hybrid office hours, and clearer communication norms. Across the run, the show keeps asking what an audience receives beyond applause. It cares about message fit. It cares about delivery. It cares about the backstage partnership between speaker, bureau, planner, and client. The interviews rarely feel rushed, which gives guests room to tell the polished story and then the more useful version behind it. That patience is the point. Backstage Pass Podcast is for people who want to understand why certain speakers are brought back again, how topics land in corporate rooms, and what planners are really trying to avoid or create.
Made for: Built for event planners, speaker buyers, corporate leaders, and professional development teams who care about keynote fit, audience value, and backstage execution. It also suits listeners interested in how speakers turn personal stories into useful live experiences.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its working knowledge of bookings, clients, and room dynamics. Instead of treating guests only as inspirational figures, it connects their stories to event strategy, audience response, compliance needs, and long-term speaker relationships.
Welcome to Backstage Pass with GDA Speakers, hosted by Gail Davis – your invitation into the world of keynote speaking and event planning expertise! Join us as we pull back the curtain and dive into exclusive interviews with speaking industry experts.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Backstage Pass connects leadership ideas to the practical decisions behind keynote bookings, corporate events, and audience engagement.
Backstage Pass turns keynote speaking and event production into a practical conversation about how professional presentations work. Gail Davis draws on established relationships with speakers and planners, asking questions shaped by real bookings, client constraints, and her own…
A speaker's slide deck meets compliance review; Gail Davis makes you care why.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A survival story opens into a thoughtful look at trust, audience connection, and how people keep going.
Backstage Pass frames Nando's survival story as more than a keynote account, using it to explore speaking, event planning, and what helps people keep going.
Memory is cast as a business tool, with live audience work carrying the hour.
This Backstage Pass installment treats memory as a practical business tool, with Gail Davis drawing a clear line between names, faces, and the value of getting them right.
A Broadway partnership becomes a grounded conversation about authenticity, keynote audiences, and the masks business leaders carry.
Sandra Joseph and Ron Boehmer turn a long Broadway partnership into a focused discussion of authenticity, public presence, and the masks leaders learn to wear.
A clear look at the compliance work that shapes corporate events before anyone reaches the stage.
Backstage Pass shifts from speaker interviews to a client-side view, with Gail Davis speaking to Heather Davis, a top event strategist, about what it takes to keep a corporate program aligned inside a highly regulated financial services setting.
A grounded case for treating simplicity as culture work, stress relief, and a retention lever.
Complexity is framed here as a workplace issue with a real human cost. Gail Davis and Lisa Vidal start with the awkwardness of even saying "simplification," then move toward a clearer point: the everyday shape of work is part of culture.
An injury story that becomes a practical case for commitment, trust, and growth after change.
Backstage Pass centers on John Register, a two-time Paralympian, Army Combat Veteran, TEDx Motivational Speaker, author, and newly named CPAE, and it follows how an injury during training for the 1996 Olympic Games forced a new normal.
A futures strategist connects human psychology and business strategy with the visual and verbal craft of a keynote.
A futures strategist anchors this Backstage Pass episode with a wide lens on psychology, neuroscience, and business strategy, but the strongest thread is practical: how future-facing ideas become a keynote that works in the room.
A business-focused AI keynote discussion centered on revenue impact, preparation, and practical use cases.
Tim Sanders frames AI as a business decision first and a keynote theme second, pushing companies to weigh likely revenue impact against the investment required.
Range trade talk for firearm instructors.
Clinical CE for busy veterinary teams.
Gail Davis starts personally, framing Nando as the speaker who helped get GDA moving: one first booking, then 25 years and over 321 bookings.
Gail Davis welcomes Ron White to Backstage Pass.
Broadway performers Sandra Joseph and Ron Boehmer, who met playing Christine and the Phantom at the Kennedy Center in 1997, appear on Backstage Pass with host Gail Davis to discuss how their stage experience translates into keynote speaking.
Gail Davis opens the episode by bringing Heather Davis onto Backstage Pass.
Lisa Bodell, a futurist and bestselling author who has spoken at Google, Pfizer, Novartis, and the Department of National Intelligence, joins Backstage Pass host Gail Davis to discuss eliminating complexity through simplicity — arguing that the problem is not a lack of productivity but a culture of addition rather than subtraction.
John Register's story starts with a hard change.
Gail Davis welcomes Erica Dewan back to Backstage Pass.
Tim Sanders, vice president of Customer Insights at Upwork and a New York Times bestselling author with five books, joins Gail Davis on Backstage Pass to discuss applying AI through a business return-on-investment lens after receiving an executive fellowship from Harvard Business School's Digital Data Design Institute.
Backstage Pass host Gail Davis interviews John Sanei, a South African-based futures strategist and five-time bestselling author affiliated with Singularity University and the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, discussing how neuroscience and AI research inform his keynote practice.
Host Gail Davis interviews Leslie Morgan Steiner about her career as a speaker and author, discussing event planning and speaking industry insights.
Sally Hogshead joins Gail and Kyle Davis for a conversation about fascination and personal brand.