Ben Haworth, a California Best Buddies Ambassador, speech coach, and advisory board member, is passionate about empowering individuals with IDD to share their stories and advocate for inclusion. Through his work, Ben helps Ambassadors develop essential skills like public speaking and networking, ensuring they’re ready to champion the Best Buddies mission. In this piece, Ben highlights the transformative impact of “Elevator Pitch” training within the Ambassador program.

“As a California Best Buddies Ambassador, I have had the privilege of working with other Ambassadors who are equally passionate about strengthening their networking skills and becoming stronger leaders within the Best Buddies community. ‘Elevator Pitch’ training is just one of the many ways that Best Buddies builds up the Ambassador program to make a lasting impact in our communities.

An ‘Elevator Pitch’ is a short, pre-prepared speech that explains what your organization does, clearly and concisely. The pitch should last no longer than a short elevator ride, around 20 to 30 seconds, hence the name. Elevator pitches should be interesting, memorable, and succinct. They also need to explain what makes you—or your organization, like Best Buddies—unique.

A Best Buddies Ambassador needs to be prepared to share the mission of Best Buddies with the community. With a coach as a guide, Ambassadors discover during these ‘Elevator Pitch’ sessions how to highlight the Best Buddies message, ways to incorporate an audience, and include their personal call to action. Training sessions are open to all new and experienced Ambassadors. By the end of the session, Ambassadors learn how to put together a pitch that makes a lasting impact, as well as the important skill of effective networking.

My role as a coach is to guide Ambassadors to identify the goal and objective of their pitch, followed by outlining the messages that are important to share with an audience. Finally, we work on why the audience should care. It is important that they take our message with them into the world, working towards the goal of a more inclusive place for us all to live—following the call to action to motivate them to join in our mission. Once the Ambassadors create their own ‘Elevator Pitch,’ we practice until they feel comfortable enough to share with the group. After the session, we encourage Ambassadors to practice, practice, practice and join future sessions. Having an ‘Elevator Pitch’ ready to go at any time is a great tool to have in your back pocket. You never know when you might have a brief moment to share the mission of Best Buddies.

Overall, being a Best Buddies coach has been one of the most rewarding experiences I have had as a volunteer. Having been on both sides of the process, I never thought I would have a 30-second speech ready to go at any moment, eventually assisting individuals to experience and share the same feelings of empowerment, inclusion, and self-advocacy.” – Ben Haworth