Council of Peers Award for Excellence (CPAE)®
CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame®
The Top Echelons of
Speaking Excellence
In February 1977, the National Speakers Association (NSA) established the Council of Peers Award for Excellence (CPAE)® Speaker Hall of Fame to honor professional speakers who have reached the top echelon of platform excellence.
Admission into the CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame is a lifetime award for speaking excellence and professionalism. Inductees are evaluated by their peers through a rigorous and demanding process. Each candidate must excel in the following five categories1.
Message
Presentation & Delivery
Experience
Professionalism
Collateral Material
1The award is not based on celebrity status, number of speeches, or amount of income.
50 Years of Speaking Advice
As we celebrate 50 years of speaking excellence, we have embarked on a quest to gather the wisdom and experiences of the most exceptional communicators in history. Prepare to be inspired as you hear from a diverse group of individuals including business owners, healthcare professionals, magicians, comedians, military officers and Miss America contestants.
Each Hall of Fame Speaker is dedicated to honing their skills to the highest level, with a common goal of informing, entertaining, and making a positive impact across the globe. Get ready for a journey of motivation, laughter, and empowerment as their unique talents come together to make a difference in the world. Each chapter in this book is penned by a distinguished member of the Hall of Fame Speakers, individuals whose names have become synonymous with inspiration, transformation, and the power of words. Download your copy today and prepare to be inspired!
2024 CPAE
Speaker Hall of Fame Inductees
John Register, CSP, CPAE
John Register is a force of nature. An esteemed keynote speaker renowned for his expertise in helping companies embrace change. John doesn’t just tell a story—he ignites a fire in the hearts of his audience. When you book John, you’re not just getting a keynote speaker; you’re bringing in a catalyst for change who will challenge your audience to think bigger, push harder, and transform their setbacks into powerful comebacks.
When John faced the unimaginable—losing his leg in a life-altering accident—the real battle wasn’t against his physical loss. The true monster was the mindset that threatened to hold him back. John crushed the limitations others placed on him and, more importantly, the ones he placed on himself. He’ll show your audience how to break through their own mental barriers, proving that the toughest battles are won not on the field, but in the mind. Read More.
Linda Swindling, CSP, CPAE
Linda helps leaders enhance business relationships; improve sales opportunities; communicate more effectively so they are heard and understood; and to have the courage and confidence to ask outrageously to get what they really want.
Linda learned first-hand how to negotiate results from her experiences in the courtroom and the boardroom. During her 10 years practicing law, Linda became a partner, had several successes negotiating multimillion-dollar deals, and resolved cases that “couldn’t be settled.” She also became a respected mediator in the Texas legal community. In addition to earning her law degree, Linda received advanced negotiation training through the Attorney-Mediators Institute, Harvard/MIT’s Program on Negotiation, and The University of Houston’s A.A. White Dispute Resolution Center. Read More.
Jon Petz, CSP, CPAE
Jon Petz is the founder and CEO of Bore No More LLC, a firm whose mission is to increase people’s value at work and their enthusiasm for life. As an opening keynote speaker and conference emcee, Jon has presented at over 1,500 events, to more than 1,000,000 audience members, in over 200 industries. From soft goods to hard goods to services to advanced technology to digital to manufacturing to mining, there isn’t a sector of the international economy that Jon’s work hasn’t touched.
Before founding Bore No More, Jon was a tech-industry sales-and-marketing senior executive. As a member of a 15-person start-up, he helped build the company to 1,500 team members. As the organization’s leading salesperson, he was instrumental in helping it acquire over $300M+ in VC funding. Read More.
Cy Wakeman, CSP, CPAE
Cy Wakeman is a drama researcher, international leadership speaker, and consultant. In 2001 she founded Reality-Based Leadership. She is the author of four books: Reality-Based Leadership: Ditch the Drama, Restore Sanity to the Workplace and Turn Excuses Into Results (2010), NY Times Bestseller, The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace: Know What Boosts Your Value, Kills Your Chances, and Will Make You Happier (2013), No Ego: How Leaders Can Cut the Cost of Workplace Drama, End Entitlement, and Drive Big Results (2017), and her newest release, Life’s Messy, Live Happy. Deemed as “the secret weapon to restoring sanity to the workplace,” Cy Wakeman was voted in the top 100 leadership professionals to follow on twitter for 7 years in a row. In 2021, 2022, and 2023 she topped the Global Gurus list of Top 30 Leadership Professionals across the globe, coming in at #1. Read More.
Don Yaeger CSP, CPAE
As an award-winning keynote speaker, business leadership coach, a twelve-time New York Times Best-selling author, host of the top-rated Corporate Competitor Podcast, National Geographic’s “Storyteller in Residence,” and longtime Associate Editor for Sports Illustrated, Don Yaeger has fashioned a career as one of America’s most provocative thought leaders. As a speaker, he has worked with audiences as diverse as Fortune 500 companies and cancer survivor groups, where he shares his personal story.
He is primarily sought to discuss lessons on achieving greatness, learned from first-hand experiences with some of the greatest sports and business legends in the world. Additionally, Don has been retained by companies and organizations to coach their leaders on building a culture of greatness by looking at Great Teams in sports and discerning the business lessons we can learn from them. Read More.
