From navigating campus leadership roles at Slippery Rock University to launching an innovative coaching consultancy, Sammie Walker Herrera ’18 has dedicated her career to helping others find their voice. Through her business Speak Y’all, Walker Herrera draws on her coaching and psychology background, as well as her personal journey as a neurodivergent professional, to provide tailored, neuro-inclusive public speaking and career development training for professionals and students alike.
Walker Herrera credits her time at SRU for giving her the tools, environment and confidence necessary to connect with clients on a deeply personal level and build a thriving enterprise from the ground up.
“One thing that helped prepare me for my career was being able to connect with different types of people,” she said. “It was extremely helpful for building my confidence as a graduate student, and that lends into the work I’m doing now.”
Through Speak Y’all, Walker Herrera continues to embody the spirit of SRU empowering individuals, promoting neuro-inclusivity and turning personal insight into transformative professional success.
“Public speaking feels so much less intimidating when you realize that you’re doing it all the time.” Walker Herrera said.
Speak Y’all, created by Walker Herrera in 2020, is a public speaking and ADHD coaching consultancy. At Speak Y’all, Walker Herrera works to improve individuals’ long-term confidence and comfortability when speaking, with a foundation centered around practice, personal empowerment, feedback and accountability.
“I first started the business in 2020, a couple years after graduating from SRU,” Walker Herrera said. “My business has evolved from just career coaching and career development into public speaking, confidence training and ADHD and neurodivergent informed public speaking training.”
As the founder of Speak Y’all, Walker Herrera works personally with clients to develop their ability to communicate effectively, in both their professional and personal lives.
“Most clients come in with the goal of not only speaking better at work or coming across as the experts that they are, but they also realize that there are areas of their personal lives that they want to develop too.”
Before attending SRU, Walker Herrera earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and Hispanic studies from Carnegie Mellon University, where she also worked as a peer career mentor during her time as an undergraduate. After graduation, she made her mark at SRU, earning a master’s degree in student affairs in higher education and graduating from a nationally accredited counseling-based program.
What she learned at SRU and Walker Herrera’s strong passion for understanding the mind and behaviors of people would eventually prove to be a crucial foundation for Speak Y’all.
“I knew that any master’s program I was going to go into had to have a strong psychology background to it,” Walker Herrera said. “One of my biggest interests is learning about how people understand the world around them and how people grow and develop over time. You can view this through different perspectives, like behaviorally or socially. But for me, it was adult developmental psychology that really supported me in gaining a better understanding of how people not only change, but how they create the will to change over time.”
Walker Herrera was highly engaged in campus life at SRU. She worked as a graduate assistant in the Office for Inclusive Excellence and was a member of the Student Affairs Graduate Association; the Student Organization of Latinos, Hispanics and Allies; and the Social Justice Committee of the Student Government Association, while also serving as an ambassador of the Counseling and Development Department.
Speak Y’all started as an idea founded upon years of coaching experience collected over Walker Herrera’s career. Since earning her bachelor’s degree, Walker Herrera has worked in various capacities for NAPSA, Washington & Jefferson College, The University of Florida, and Carnegie Mellon University, and she has earned certifications from the National Career Development Association and the International Coaching Federation.
“I had been a career consultant in higher education for a number of years, even before I did my master’s at SRU,” Walker Herrera said. “One day, while working as a Career Consultant at the University of Florida, I thought, ‘You know what? I wonder what it would look like if I tried to do this on my own?’”
Branching out to create something fully independent required a high level of understanding, confidence and the will to bring about change, all of which are at the forefront of Speak Y’all’s service. Walker Herrera now works with professionals across various industries, encouraging individual growth through personalized learning.
“I love working with students, but I also wondered what it looked like working with professionals, especially professionals who are senior leaders that are trying to pivot into new roles and into new industries,” Walker Herrera said. “Oftentimes, those types of people have transferrable skills, but it’s hard to imagine what the future can look like. We work quite a bit on learning what brings people pride, delight and how they can reinvent their careers later in life.”
Walker Herrera also specializes in supporting neurodivergent individuals and non-native English speakers, both of whom navigate unique challenges when communicating publicly.
“ADHD is like a second language for many of my clients,” Walker Herrera said. “So, what I see for both ADHD clients as well as our multilingual, international and (English as a second language) clients, is that oftentimes, whether someone is translating what they’re saying in English or they’re filtering a bunch of information, one of the biggest struggles is ‘How do I get organized?’ We have so much information flowing in our heads and it feels distracting, noisy or stressful.”
This deep understanding stems not just from her academic background, but from Walker Herrera’s own lived experiences as a neurodivergent professional navigating ADHD and autism in the workplace.
“Sometimes it was my ADHD, sometimes it was this urge to give every single detail so that people had every piece of information,” Walker Herrera said. “That can be extremely confusing for people, and one of our jobs as leaders is to filter what we know, to give the best pieces of information that can help people move forward.”
More information on SRU’s student affairs in higher education program can be found on the program’s webpage, and more information on Speak Y’all can be found on the service’s webpage.
