Priya Sam

Founder, Unleash Your Voice

Master of Journalism, 2014

Human connection is founded on stories, and so this is something I'm constantly reminding my clients and the women I work with in workshops—your story is what will connect you to other people…. So, whether you're using it in a job interview or even just socially, as you're meeting new people, it is what is going to allow you to make real, authentic connections…

Priya Sam, MJ’14, has always had a passion for storytelling. While completing her master’s degree at King’s, Priya worked part-time at CTV Atlantic, where she compiled the day’s top stories and wrote compelling scripts that brought those stories to viewers across the Maritimes. Before long, Priya landed a full-time position as an anchor and co-host at CTV and eventually worked as a reporter at Global News. Priya enjoyed research and reporting, but after six years working in TV journalism, she pivoted into technology sales, where she used her writing skills strategically to build relationships with clients. She noticed that many of her female colleagues missed opportunities to communicate their skills, experience and value in the corporate world. Here, Priya shares how this inspired her to create her own company, Unleash Your Voice, where she works with clients to help them demonstrate their professional worth through stories. 

 

How did your time at King’s influence your perspective on the applicability of your skills? 

I felt inspired by what was possible being at King’s. We had guest speakers; we had some sessional instructors come in. Everyone had a different experience of the work in the actual real world of journalism. I went into the program thinking, TV reporter, radio reporter, print reporter, and then, you know, we had one professor who worked on an investigative program. We had another professor who worked at a few different stations, but she also would do some panels and commentary. I realized, oh, there aren’t just, you know, three or four jobs you can have in this industry. I felt really inspired by the breadth of opportunities that we could do with our journalism degrees.  

What inspired your move from TV journalism to founding Unleash Your Voice? 

I’ll be honest—I didn’t have the best experiences when it came to the workplaces I worked in when I was in television. I found a lot of them to be challenging places for women, for people of colour, and I definitely faced some racism and discrimination and was struggling with my mental health towards the end of my time in television. So, I knew I needed to find a work environment where I could do some healing, focus on my mental health and find my confidence again, because I did feel like I’d lost some of my passion.  

I started doing a podcast in 2020, and that’s when I started missing some of the elements of journalism, but I knew I didn’t want to go back to the work environments I had been in. With this podcast, I realized that, through doing the interviews, I was helping people to unleash their voices. A lot of these guests had incredible stories, but they needed someone to ask the right questions—they were almost uncovering some of their stories during these interviews, so I knew there was something more there, but it took me a few years until I realized what I could do with it. 

I had this “aha moment” when I was working at a company called Salesforce, where I got to bring in my presentation skills and do more speaking on behalf of the company at conferences and events. I saw the women around me, and when executives would ask them about themselves, a lot of them just weren’t leveraging this opportunity to share their stories. So, I had this moment of “Oh, this is where I can help people find their stories and learn how to use them in professional environments to get the opportunities they deserve.” 

How do the skills you gleaned at King’s apply in your current role as founder of Unleash Your Voice? 

I definitely learned the value of storytelling at King’s, and that’s something I talk about every day with the clients I work with in the workshops that I’m doing. I think the other piece is just creativity because, I mean, I’m a founder without a business background. I have to learn new things all the time. How do I do my accounting? How do I file my expenses? How do I put captions on this social media video? And at King’s, I learned how to be resourceful because the journalism industry is changing so rapidly. So, I think learning how to be really adaptable and resourceful is something … that I use and do as a founder all the time.   

How can honing storytelling skills help empower people, whether they’re looking for help with presentations or a job interview? 

I think that so many people feel like they don’t have a story or they don’t have stories to tell, and we all do. I mean, at this point, I’ve worked with hundreds of people. I’ve never met a person who I thought, “yeah, you don’t really have anything to say.” No, I mean, we all do.

Human connection is founded on stories, and so this is something I’m constantly reminding my clients and the women I work with in workshops—your story is what will connect you to other people. Your story’s the one thing you have that no one else has. So whether you’re using it in a job interview or even just socially, as you’re meeting new people, it is what is going to allow you to make real, authentic connections because your story is the core of who you are.

And I think that also is a good reminder of why we shouldn’t just keep our stories in, because if you don’t share your story, it actually prevents you from connecting with other people; it can inhibit you from building professional and personal relationships. 

When you really believe in your own story and what you have to offer, you’re just able to talk about yourself and share that story with more confidence. So, understanding your story and then learning the storytelling frameworks and mastering how to deliver this information in a presentation and in a job interview—it is empowering and it builds a lot of confidence.