About Jennie Eriksen

A lifelong love of performance

Jennie has loved all things performance for as long as she can remember, and she has spent years treading the boards in local theatre. That love has followed her everywhere: from helping children step onto a stage with confidence to helping experts find their voice on camera and in front of an audience. Once you've caught the bug, it never really leaves you.

Where it all began…

Jennie and Steve have been partners in life and in business from the very start, and it's always been a true partnership. They bring different strengths, and both are integral to everything they build. In 1996, they launched a UK internet service provider together with a small team.

Next came the local directories: magazines of local business advertising that helped small businesses be seen and known for what they do. The magazines were Jennie's idea, and she was the one who made them happen. Together they sold the advertising and delivered the magazines, come rain or shine. Jennie did most of the proofreading, while Steve wrote ads that brought real results for the businesses featured. Getting people seen quickly became their shared expertise, and together they grew from one directory to four, reaching around 8,500 households. They did absolutely everything themselves.

Selling that advertising is what led Jennie to networking. In 2004, she walked into her first networking meeting as a small business owner who needed new connections and, if she's honest, advertisers. She learned pretty quickly that real networking isn't about selling your stuff. It's about building know, like and trust.

She loved it. She showed up every week, helped fellow business owners, and they supported her in return. That same year, she was appointed regional director for a UK networking organisation for women in business. More than 20 years later, she's still showing up at networking events, only now it's all over the world, online.

A do-over in the sun…

As the magazines became all-consuming and their children were growing up fast, Jennie and Steve knew they wanted a different life for their family. So they decided on a do-over. They stepped back and moved to Tenerife, where Jennie returned to her first love, theatre. As a performing arts teacher at the local drama school, she prepared children for their LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art) exams. She calls it her dream job.

She then founded and built LovelyVoice, a British English voiceover business narrating e-learning, corporate, phone system, children's and dubbing work for clients in more than 60 countries. When family reasons took them to Norway, she continued her voiceover work and also became a UK Customer Care Trainer for Teknosell, a global training organisation.

Stepping back into the spotlight

This is the part of Jennie's story she no longer hides.

While she and Steve were running the magazines, she developed hemifacial spasm, a neurological disorder that caused rapid, jerking movements on the right side of her face. It knocked her confidence for six.

Voiceover became the perfect hiding place. You stand in a small space, talking to yourself, and nobody sees you. For more than ten years, she hid her face whenever and wherever she could and stayed well away from anything that meant being on camera.

The only real hope of a cure was specialised brain surgery. It wasn't available in Tenerife, but it was an option in Norway, and despite the risks, she chose to go ahead.

The treatment wasn't an immediate success, but over the following months her condition improved dramatically, and she went on to experience a 98% improvement in her symptoms.

Then came the harder part. After years of being heard but rarely seen, she had to learn to use her face again (you really do forget how to smile and show your teeth!) and to feel comfortable being seen.

It didn't happen overnight. It took years, one small, brave step at a time. But momentum is everything, and the more she showed up, the more her confidence grew, until she was ready to step back into the spotlight.

That journey is at the heart of everything she teaches today, and she shares it with real compassion. If you hide and make yourself invisible, the people who need you simply won't find you. Whatever is holding you back, it comes down to working through your own feelings and showing up anyway. Jennie knows just how hard that is, and she's living proof that it can be done.

Master Your Messaging

Then came 2020, and what Jennie calls "the global interrupt". Almost overnight, the whole world moved online.

Jennie could see that people suddenly had an amazing opportunity to network with the whole world, yet so many were struggling. They lacked confidence on camera, and they found it hard to create a message and presence that others understood. Having been there herself, she knew exactly how that felt. So she created Master Your Messaging, her own workshop programme.

Her workshops covered camera confidence and presentation skills, the foundations of networking, and life as a virtual networker. Each one was a safe yet brave space to practise showing up, with one aim: helping people feel confident and clear when connecting with others online.

In her own words: "I know what it's like to hide from the camera… and I know the way back. If I can rebuild my confidence, so can you."

From herding kittens to EventRaptor

As Jennie likes to say, putting on a virtual summit is like herding kittens! So in 2021, Jennie, Steve and Jake sat down together as a family and asked how they could help other people run virtual summits. Their answer was to build the platform themselves, and off they jolly well went. Together, they co-founded EventRaptor.

In February 2022, Jennie and Steve hosted the first Own Your Stage Summit, the first summit they ran on their own platform. That same month, Jennie launched Speaker Connections, an idea that was entirely her own.

In October 2023, Jennie and Jake championed expanding the business's services, and EventRaptor began building funnels and marketing automation for clients, alongside coaching and implementation programmes. A month later, in November 2023, Jennie and Steve acquired VirtualSummits.com.

Jennie's role at EventRaptor

As co-founder, Jennie drives much of EventRaptor's growth through the relationships she builds. She's the face of the company at its virtual events, co-hosting every one of them with Steve, from summits to networking events and masterclasses. She opens the virtual stage for each speaker, brings the audience's questions from the chat into the conversation, and makes every speaker and guest feel welcome from the moment they arrive.

Speaker Connections is Jennie's creation, and she's been its heart and soul since day one. Twice a month, this free networking event brings speakers looking for all kinds of stages, from summits to podcasts, together with the hosts who have them. It's one of the main ways new speakers and hosts find their way into the EventRaptor ecosystem. Every week, she's also out networking, opening doors for EventRaptor and for the experts she meets along the way.

She's a natural interviewer, too. She thrives on the spontaneity of a good back-and-forth conversation, drawing out the stories and insights that make each guest shine.

Jennie also coaches EventRaptor's done-for-you clients on their messaging and how they deliver their talks, so their message truly lands. Her mantra has been the same for years: "We're all about community over competition."

Jennie is an introvert who calls herself a "situational extrovert", and anyone who has seen her host will recognise it: "When I'm on, I'm on." After an event, Jennie and Steve usually power down with an ice cream, completely peopled out. But before long, they're chatting away about the connections they saw being made and the all-important conversations that continue afterwards. For Jennie, that's the best bit.

Speaking

Jennie's message to experts is "Visibility is YOUR Responsibility!" She brings high energy, practical ideas and a touch of inspiration to every stage. Her talks include:

• How to Be a Nifty Networker
• Why Visibility is Your Responsibility
• Digital Dream Years: Reinventing Midlife on Your Terms

She has spoken at events including the Confident on Camera Summit 2025, Voices of Women 2026, The Aligned Entrepreneur, Why Audiobooks Work, and Ask the Experts: Speaking, To Pay or To Be Paid. In April 2025, she was a guest on the Maturepreneur Podcast.

See Jennie's speaker profile →

The Digital Dream Years

So where has it all led? Jennie and Steve call this chapter of their lives their Digital Dream Years: reinventing midlife on their own terms, travelling the world while continuing to serve their clients online. While people their age talk about retiring, Jennie and Steve talk about "refiring". For them, that means living life on their own terms and taking their global business on the road, where all you really need is good internet, good coffee and, of course, great ice cream. Jennie loves sharing what life as a digital nomad is really like.

Their two children are each on their own journeys in different countries. When Jennie and Steve aren't working, you'll find them travelling to see them and soaking up the local food, culture and nature wherever they land. And when the family's all together, out come the board games, because being together really is the very best thing.