Storytelling with Nancy Duarte: How to craft compelling presentations and tell a story that sticks

Nancy Duarte, founder of the presentation design firm Duarte, discusses her decades of work crafting presentations for brands like Apple and for Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. The conversation covers empathy-first storytelling, her "what is / what could be / new bliss" contrast structure, slide-making tactics, remote presenting, managing nerves, and how story applies to product work.

01Key learnings

• Make your audience the hero of the story and approach every presentation with empathy, since the audience ultimately holds the power to accept or reject your idea.
• Position yourself as the mentor who helps the audience get unstuck, offering them a practical tool and an inner resolve for the journey ahead.
• Use the 'what is / what could be / new bliss' contrast structure to build tension and longing for a future state, even in short meetings or conversations.
• Make sure people can see what you are saying by using clear diagrams, a memorable star moment, or sketching live to align the room on the same picture.
• Give each slide one point that supports the single big idea of the talk, and make the slide title or key insight state that point clearly.
• Map every deck to the specific audience and their communication culture rather than reusing old slides from a repository.
• Plan the narrative on paper or storyboard boxes before opening presentation software, and tailor the format to whether it will be a stage talk, a meeting, or a circulated slide doc.
• For high-stakes asks, consider dropping slides entirely and using eye contact, a simple mental model, and visible passion to engage the decision maker directly.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.