Clare Bowditch's Biography
Clare Bowditch is a best-selling ARIA Award Winning musician (Best Female), Logie Nominated actor (for TV Show Offspring), experienced speaker, M.C., broadcaster, and mother of three (including identical twin boys), and soon to be author.
As she works on her first book, and her eighth album (for release through Universal Music in 2018), she also hosts the QANTAS Radio’s Australian Music Show.
As a musician, she’s toured extensively with musicians such Leonard Cohen, Paul Kelly, John Butler, Cat Power, and Gotye, to name just a few.
As the beloved host of the “Afternoons” radio show on ABC Melbourne, she spoke and made friends with over 250,000 listeners daily.
She has researched and presented thousands of interviews with luminaries such as musician Linda Ronstadt, authors Jeanette Winterson, Liane Moriarty and Zoe Foster-Blake, spiritual gurus Marianne Williamson and Danielle LaPorte, business billionaires like Lawrence Levy (Pixar), human rights activist such as Dr Kumi Naidoo and Moira Kelly, comedians Jenny Éclair, Tim Minchin and Ronnie Chieng, as well as world-famous sports-people, politicians and neuroscientists, to name a few.
She is also an Ambassador for Smiling Mind, APRA, and The Stella Prize.
Speaking Topics Include
Although flexible in her choice of topics and combination of offerings, Clare currently has two popular Keynote Presentations and one Leadership Workshop (for both small and large groups).
Self Leadership: How to count yourself in, for life.
This talk is about counting yourself, warts and all, and living a life of purpose and joy.
Using stories from her own struggles and triumphs, Clare teaches us to face and name our inner critics. In doing so, we tap in to our ability to live full, amazing lives.
During her “Self-Leadership” talk, Clare discusses;
· The myth of motivation; how to get stuff done regardless of whether you “feel like it” or not
· How to recognise and tame your inner-critic
· Her personal journey from working in a call-centre to being an ARIA Award Winning Musician; one which very nearly didn’t happen thanks to her fierce inner-critic.
· How to transform personal struggles and turn them into fierce strengths.
· How to stop caring about what other people think of you.
· How to develop our own inner-champion.
In this keynote, she also plays guitar and sings her song “Amazing Life” (see link below).
The Day The Diet Died: How to celebrate your wobbly bits.
A deeply personal keynote about coming out from the shadows of our body-shame and learning to own our so-called ‘imperfections’ so that we can get on with the business of living full, glorious, brilliant lives.
In this keynote, Clare will:
· Crack open the secret stories so many of us tell ourselves about how our bodies aren’t good enough yet (and how our real lives will begin once we hit that “perfect size”).
· Tell personal stories from her own “wobbly bits”, including;
o her early experience of being a fat kid, then a skinny kid, then a fat kid again, and what it taught her about human nature.
o Her experience of being a curvy woman making her living in high-pressure, male-dominated, image-conscious industries (media, popular music and acting), and the power of being an anomaly.
· Simplify the complex relationship between our body-size and our sense of worth by explaining;
o How our “diet failures” are actually “evolutionary wins”.
o That we have a choice about whether buy in to the inherited cultural and societal narratives that lead smart people to waste so much time on trying to change their bodies
o A technique for separating our body size from our sense of self-worth.
· Give you the chance to reflect on the true gifts of so-called “imperfection”.
· Conclude by giving a powerful frame-work for self-care and wellbeing that does not include dieting or body shaming.
In this keynote Clare also plays guitar and sings Amazing Life and/or Woman. She may also teach the audience a part to sing with her.
Workshop: Singing for People who Say They Cant Sing. Lessons for leadership.
This interactive workshop/key-note offers something incredibly unique to the world of public speaking, and is the perfect point of difference for any conference or team-building event.
Clare is a highly skilled group facilitator who, for the past sixteen years, has used humour and the power of story telling to encourage small and large groups of “non-professional-sings” to get over themselves and SING. The twist: her special gift is teaching people who say they can’t sing… to prove themselves wrong.
In 2001, Clare completed her initial training - “Singing and Community Leadership” - with Vic Health (who believed then, and have now proven that singing is not only good for your physical health, it’s also incredibly good for your emotional and mental health). She has been honing and perfecting her techniques ever since.
To date, every one of her public ‘singing and self-leadership’ workshops (‘Sing Song Showtime’) have sold out thanks to word of mouth referral from participants.
Whether in a group of ten, or an arena of 10,000, Clare uses the metaphor of singing (and the stories we tell ourselves about how we can’t sing) as a method of teaching people the true power of saying “YES” to life, and how to overcome their limiting stories.