Creative
Lab
An immersive speaker preparation program built around your event. Before the stage, during the weekend, and after the curtain falls - this is what it looks like to bring speakers from idea to unforgettable.
Not a workshop. A whole experience built around your event.
Most speaker preparation happens in a vacuum. A coach works with a speaker in a studio. Then the speaker steps onto a stage with 500 people watching and hopes for the best.
Creative Lab does it differently. We come to your event. We build an immersive program around the days before, the event itself, and the debrief after - so your speakers are not just rehearsed. They are transformed.
We have run Creative Lab around TEDx Portland, The Moth in New York City, and speaker series for organizations across industries. Every Creative Lab is different. Every one leaves something behind.
Three moments. One through-line.
Creative Lab wraps around your event in three connected phases. They do not always take exactly three days - the format flexes around your event calendar. But the arc is always the same: activate, immerse, debrief.
Phase 01
The Day Before: Activate
We bring your speakers together before the event begins. A creative activation experience that gets ideas moving, stories loosening, and speakers genuinely ready - not just warmed up.
Phase 02
The Event: Immerse
We are there with you. SSA coaching presence runs through the event itself - supporting speakers in real time, capturing what happens, and making sure nothing lands on the floor that should be remembered.
Phase 03 • The Cherry
The Day After: The Storytelling Adventure Experience™
The signature close of every Creative Lab. We take speakers out of the conference room and into the wild - a gorge, a bridge, a main street - to debrief the event, find the story that emerged, and leave with something they can use forever.
Learn More About the Adventure →
The Storytelling Adventure Experience™
Every great Creative Lab ends here. We take your speakers outside - to a waterfall, a bridge, a forest, a main street - and do the work that stages cannot: find the story underneath the story.
The Storytelling Adventure Experience™ is not a cool add-on. It is the moment the whole weekend clicks. Speakers leave with something they cannot get from a rehearsal room.
It is also available as a standalone experience - for individuals, corporate teams, or as a gift to your speakers between events.
Meet the coach who walks beside you
Cathey Armillas
TED Speaking Coach & Co-Founder, Speaker Skills Academy
Cathey has stood on the TED stage, coached speakers onto TEDx stages worldwide, and spent 25 years helping people turn ideas into talks that change how audiences think. She created the How to Rock a TED Talk program and authored A Kids Book About Public Speaking. When she runs a Creative Lab, she does not show up with a slide deck. She shows up with a plan, a pair of trail shoes, and an eye for the story that is already in the room.
Meet the Founders →Where we have been. Where we are going.
Creative Lab travels. We have run it around marquee events and will bring it to yours. Portland hosts each Spring. New York City hosts each Fall.
Past
TEDx Portland
Columbia River Gorge, Portland, Oregon. The event that started it all. Cathey brought speakers into the Gorge the day after TEDx Portland and the Storytelling Adventure Experience™ was born.
Past
The Moth, New York City
Brooklyn Bridge. Manhattan streets. SSA brought the Creative Lab to The Moth's speaker community in New York - proving the methodology works anywhere there is a story worth telling.
Upcoming • August 2026
TEDx San Diego
Sunset Cliffs, San Diego, California. The next Creative Lab wraps around TEDx San Diego. Speaker preparation, event immersion, and a Storytelling Adventure Experience™ on the Pacific coast.
Four ways to make Creative Lab yours
You do not have to be a TEDx event to bring Creative Lab in. We have run it around corporate offsites, speaker series, and storytelling festivals. If you have speakers and a stage, we have a program.
Choose your entry point
Storytelling Adventure Experience™
$495
Per person, standalone enrollment. Come for the Adventure - the Gorge, a bridge, or your city.
- Guided storytelling walk
- Story architecture coaching
- Peer practice and feedback
- Closing story performance
Creative Lab PDX
$895
Full Creative Lab experience in Portland, Oregon. Three days, one community, one transformation.
- Creative activation experience
- Event day coaching presence
- Storytelling Adventure Experience™
- Community debrief and farewell
"The best events leave something behind.
Creative Lab makes sure it's the right thing."