Sometimes change happens gradually, bit by bit, until your world is different. Other times, moments collide and push change into your lap.
In those moments, you may choose to meet the moment or let it pass you by.
Public speaker, author, academic, and senior executive Daniel Leger experienced two such moments in 2019. After 25 years in asset management and leadership roles, Leger uses public speaking as a core professional skill.
He didn’t anticipate how that skill would carry into his personal life.
In his book, Meet The Moment: How Great Speeches Can Impact Business, Life, and Loss, he chronicles his public-speaking journey and the events that pushed him into moments of change.
He hopes to guide others to become better public speakers and communicators, especially in an era of increased isolation due to COVID, social media, and AI, in the hope of helping people manage their innate fear of public speaking
He says, “Meet the Moment is about what happens when words are no longer optional.”
Why Meet The Moment
Leger shares that 2019 was an especially challenging year for him, professionally and personally.
He was the lead speaker at his firm's 30th-anniversary investor conference, where hundreds of clients needed more than information. They needed confidence, clarity, and conviction about the future of the business.
Simultaneously, his wife was in the final months of a long battle with an aggressive cancer. He would deliver her eulogy just weeks after their twin daughter’s thirteenth birthday. He explains that the speech he gave could not be a list of her virtues or a catalog of shared memories.
Leger shares, “It had to hold the grief of our daughters, her mother, and her many friends. It had to make room for devastation, laughter, and love. It had to capture the full force of a life well lived.”
Eulogizing his wife in front of his daughters and their family made speaking with care and empathy not a choice for him. He shares the experience as a seminal moment in addressing his family’s tragedy.
“I had to meet the moment,” Leger explains.
About the Book
Meet The Moment developed from his wife’s eulogy and the investor conference speech. Leger weaves these separate addresses, one in the language of business and the other in the language of love, into a story about how public speaking is more than just talking to people.
The book is part memoir, practical guide, and meditation on human connection. He argues in it that what makes a speech great is the service behind it.
By combining his academic, professional, and personal experience, Leger wants his audience to know that, no matter the speaking engagement, connecting with others is what makes a speech great.
In Future
Daniel Leger embarks on a journey into grief, love, and public speaking with Meet The Moment: How Great Speeches Can Impact Business, Life, and Loss. The title is not currently available, but the book will be published in November 2026.
Leger hopes to write a series of Meet The Moment books, drawing from the professional and personal adversities others have faced and how they rose to meet their moments.
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