Your facilitator: Helene Banner

As the founder of “Let’s Just Be Imperfect, Ladies” Helene accompanies women from across Europe to speak and lead with confidence in their high-level work environments. For her work, Helene has travelled Europe’s conferences as a Keynote Speaker, moderator, trainer and consultant for organisations ranging from the Oxford Union Society, the German and Belgian government, European institutions, law firms, banks, universities and industry champions.

Her approach: she supports women to grow their confidence in the strong leadership qualities they already have: their warmth, their empathy, their sense for collaboration - in short: to shine in their authentic power, instead of “fitting in”. Together with the recipes to deal with “alpha power” situations from her own experience as a young female leader and manager, these tools have already helped more than 500 women who work in male-dominated corridors of power.

Helene is a trained political communication expert with a 10-year experience of advising decision-makers at the European Commission: at 29 years old she was the spokesperson of a European Commissioner in Brussels and she later headed the Communication Department at the Berlin Representation of the European Commission. In 2019 she became the speechwriter of Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission. In summer 2019 she also advised and accompanied now-President Ursula von der Leyen in the weeks when she became the first woman in this office. Her today’s work is inspired by all of these experiences that she now brings to women working with her in her trainings, mentorings and group programmes.