Some women build a voice over decades. Natalie Turner spent eleven years finding a deeper one.
Natalie is an innovation strategist, creator of the Six I’s® methodology, and award-winning author of Yes You Can Innovate. She knows how to hold a room, command a stage, and speak with authority.
And yet, quietly alongside all of that, she was writing something else entirely.
Her debut novel, The Red Silk Dress, took eleven years to complete. What began as a creative undertaking became something far more personal, an excavation of identity, longing, and what it means to stop performing your story and start living it.
Last week, Natalie brought that journey into an exclusive KeyNote Women Skill Share session, open only to members of our speaker directory and alumni.
She read a passage from the book. She walked the room through her own journey, from a writing retreat in the temples of Angkor Wat in 2015, where her protagonist first appeared to her, to the moment she finally saw the threads of her work come together.
Then she asked the room three questions:
Where in your life are you being invited to stand more fully at the centre of your own story? What part of your identity or voice has become quieter than you would like? What would it mean for you to author the next chapter more consciously, rather than continuing as you are?
What followed was one of those conversations that professional settings rarely make room for. Women who had spent decades being highly competent found themselves asking whether that competence was still fully theirs. Women who had built careers around their voice began to wonder whether that voice was still speaking from the right place.
Natalie’s message to the room was quietly powerful:
“The question is not whether we can show up. Most of us have spent years learning how to do that. The deeper question is whether we are showing up from habit, or from authorship.”
Try Natalie’s reflection: The next time you prepare for a talk, a meeting, or any moment where your voice matters, ask yourself not just what you are going to say, but where you are saying it from.
