About
I help people get heard in the moments that matter.
Matt Boardman — communication coach for executives, founders, and research leaders who have important things to say and limited time to say them.
Matt Boardman — communication coach for executives, founders, and research leaders who have important things to say and limited time to say them.
My first job out of university was as an actor. I spent a decade learning what happens in the twelve seconds after the lights come up: how the room settles, what audiences give you, what they take away, and how the difference between landing a scene and losing one lives in choices most performers never notice they're making.
That training turned into coaching almost by accident. A founder friend asked me to sit in on a pitch rehearsal. The deck was fine. The content was fine. But he was losing the room in the first thirty seconds — and every fix I'd learned from theatre applied. The audience wasn't the problem. The opening was.
Fifteen years later, I coach people for a living — and the same principle keeps showing up. Communication isn't a soft skill; it's a series of specific, trainable choices. Most professionals are making those choices unconsciously, and most of the damage they do to their own message is invisible to them.
I work mostly with executives and founders in Madrid, with distributed leadership teams across Europe, and increasingly with research scientists preparing for ERC panels, grant defences, and public-facing work. The common thread: high-stakes conversations where the content is already strong and the delivery is doing the damage.
I run workshops, 1:1 coaching, and longer engagements that combine the two. Most of my work happens in a mix of English and Spanish — often in the same sentence.
Most people walking into a meeting want you to do well. They also have six other things on their mind. Your job isn't to impress them. It's to make their life easier in the time you have.
If the first ninety seconds don't land, the rest is an uphill walk. Most of my coaching time goes into openings — because that's where most of the damage happens and where most of the fixes compound.
I'm not here to turn you into a TED-style performer. I'm here to remove the things that are quietly costing you credibility and leave the parts of you that are already working.
Real communication change happens in practice, not in theory. Every workshop, every session, every engagement is built around actually saying the thing — out loud, in front of people, with feedback in the moment.
C-suite leaders, senior executives, and corporate L&D teams across Spain and Europe — board presentations, quarterly town halls, investor updates, leadership transitions.
Early- and growth-stage founders preparing for investor pitches, board meetings, all-hands, and the conversations that set the company's direction. Madrid, Barcelona, and portfolio-wide programmes.
Research leaders, ERC grant applicants, and academic teams preparing for panel interviews, public-facing lectures, and the increasingly communications-heavy demands of modern research.
Send a short note about what's coming up and what the stakes look like. I'll come back with a short, honest read: whether I can help, and if so, what I'd recommend as the next step.