My name is Venera Shakirova
On other pages of this site, the section about me is quite brief, mentioning things like public speaking and slide design, but my professional journey has always been, and remains, far broader. It encompasses psychology, educational projects, corporate event facilitation, visual storytelling, and working with complex professional subject matter.
In short, I help professionals communicate complex ideas clearly, confidently, and in a relatable, human way. For a bit more detail, the section below outlines the story of how I arrived at this path and the types of work I typically engage in.
Work Experience
A significant part of Venera’s professional experience is rooted in public speaking, adult education, and professional communication. Over more than a decade of practice, she has worked with speakers from a wide range of fields, including technology, science, education, entrepreneurship, media, and nonprofit initiatives.
This experience has given her a deep understanding of how people communicate complex ideas, what challenges arise during the preparation process, and why professionals from different backgrounds often struggle to understand one another despite working toward the same goals. One of Venera’s key strengths is helping experts translate specialized knowledge into clear, engaging, and audience-friendly communication.
In addition to her work with speakers, Venera has experience working with corporate teams, managers, founders, and educational organizations. This allows her to look beyond the presentation itself and take into account the broader context: organizational dynamics, team structures, business goals, and the practical challenges speakers face in their day-to-day work.
Her approach combines coaching, facilitation, adult learning, and hands-on presentation work. As a result, the preparation process focuses not only on a specific event, but also on developing communication skills that remain useful long after the presentation is over.
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Consulting and assistance to scientists, developers, designers, HR specialists, managers, entrepreneurs, and other experts in conducting professional, educational, motivational, and commercial events.
My clients are IT companies, educational organisations, science popularisation projects, and media outlets, such as Paper Texts Media, Science Slam Russia, Jetbrains, Skyeng, Funcorp, Findmykids, Elbrus Bootcamp, 2GIS Russia, Eggheads, etc.
Responsibilities and Duties:
• Immersing oneself in the speaker's area of expertise, ranging from web design to nuclear physics, and reframing complex topics into simple, engaging stories, analogies, and accessible, memorable concepts
• Developing or refining presentation slides, either independently or in collaboration with designers
• Coaching speakers on effective delivery techniques and strategies for managing stage fright
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Corporate events for retrospectives, planning, team building, and feedback sessions.
I conducted stakeholder interviews, scheduled events, and served as a moderator. My clients include Skyeng, Fashion Factory, Mishka AI (Smart Teddy in USA).
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My responsibilities included implementing measures to boost sales performance, budgeting, marketing initiatives, and team motivation.
I learned to manage a team of over 30 people, utilized storytelling to entertain and educate audiences, organized dozens of events, and led three advertising campaigns.
(unium.ru)
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Conducting soft skills development training for advertising agents:
Sales
Negotiation
Presentation skills
Self-management and planning techniques
Team building
(unium.ru)
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Conducting soft skills development workshops for teenagers.
Working as a group leader, event organizer, and manager at educational summer camps, including an international camp in Malta.
Education
Venera's educational background combines psychology, adult learning, visual communication, film studies, and cultural research. At first glance, these fields may seem unrelated, but together they have shaped her approach to working with speakers.
During her psychology studies, she explored human behavior, group dynamics, stress, skill development, and training methodologies. Her undergraduate thesis focused on charismatic leadership. She also developed a strong interest in organizational development and how companies function—knowledge that later proved especially valuable when working with corporate clients. Her studies also included philosophy, logic, and soft skills training, including public speaking.
Over time, it became clear that public speaking is about much more than rhetoric and traditional presentation skills. This led Venera to explore related disciplines that help address different aspects of speaker preparation. Acting training provided deeper insight into voice, attention, and stage presence. Studies in screenwriting, film history, and directing offered new perspectives on storytelling, audience engagement, and narrative structure. Courses in graphic design provided practical tools for working with the visual side of presentations and a better understanding of how people process information on screen.
Today, Venera continues her education through a master's program in Visual and Media Anthropology. This interest grew from a broader question that has followed her throughout her career: how people tell stories, make sense of their experiences, share knowledge, and build understanding with one another. This curiosity continues to shape both her research work and her approach to preparing speakers for public communication.
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The program is designed to explore the general principles governing the functioning of the psyche, psychological phenomena, research methodologies, and approaches to psychological assessment, counseling, and intervention at the individual, group, and community levels.
A distinctive feature of the program was its combination of fundamental academic training with practical skills: psychological assessment, counseling, emotional stress prevention, the evaluation of personal competencies, and work involving communication, training, and group processes.
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The introductory acting course for non-professionals focused on developing skills in stage communication, improvisation, and engaging an audience. The curriculum covered the fundamentals of interacting with a scene partner, working with narrative and script material, and exercises designed to enhance memory, reaction time, and emotional expressiveness.
Particular attention was devoted to voice and non-verbal communication—specifically, controlling timbre, speech rate, and intonation—as well as working with facial expressions, gestures, and movement within a performance space. The course aimed not only to cultivate acting skills but also to foster self-confidence, expressiveness, and the ability to feel at ease when performing in front of an audience.
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The training program involves an immersive dive into the filmmaking process, from preparation and scriptwriting through to editing. It features masterclasses led by leading film industry professionals covering directing, screenwriting, cinematography, acting, editing, and sound design.
Theoretical Masterclasses
Collaborative Script Development
Pre-production
Filming
Post-production
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This course covers the fundamentals of visual communication, graphic design, and digital design tools. It explored the principles of composition, typography, color theory, visual storytelling, and the creation of graphic solutions for various formats and platforms.
The program also included work with conceptual and digital design, the fundamentals of brand communication, interface, editorial, and motion design, as well as project work and design review practices. Special attention was paid to developing visual thinking and the ability to convey ideas through image, structure, and typography.
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This three-year Master’s program trains students in the theory and practice of visual anthropology, documentary arts (film, photography, and installation), as well as media culture and media anthropology.
The conceptual and practical knowledge gained in these fields can be applied within academia, the arts, the cultural and media industries, as well as in social, applied, or educational media projects.
Students explore the theoretical and practical foundations of visual anthropology and gain experience in filmmaking, project development, and (audio)visual installations.
Side Projects
Not all of Venera’s projects are directly related to public speaking. Some focus on science communication, visual storytelling, photography, and creating materials that help explain complex topics to a broader audience.
What these projects have in common is the same core challenge: understanding a complex subject, identifying the key ideas, and explaining them in a clear and accessible way. Much of this work is done in collaboration with experts who have deep knowledge of their fields, while Venera’s role is to help transform that expertise into materials that can be understood by people without a specialized background.
For this reason, these projects can be seen as practical examples of the same skills used in speaker coaching: working with complex information, finding clear explanations, and using visual tools to make ideas easier to understand and more engaging for an audience.
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In collaboration with experts, I create and publish explanatory illustrations, postcards, comics, and photo-explanations on various topics (science, ecology, feminism, and politics).
I also publish photo portraits and other creative exercises.
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It was created during the Pandemic in cooperation with an infectionist, a biologist and a haematologist.
English translation: shakirova.space/texts#viruses
To book a meeting, you can use the Calendly scheduler located further down the page. If using the calendar is inconvenient for you, you can contact me directly via the contact form or by email.
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