About Us

Karen Locke-Leto is the Creator/ Founder of High Heels Speaking, a company founded to help women achieve their highest professional goals. She is a results-oriented leader, an award winning facilitator, speaker, mediator, life-coach and author and is currently the Chief Operating Officer of a 40 year old award winning non-profit agency. She
is responsible for providing oversight to all of the agency’s child welfare and juvenile justice programming. She has a proven track record in performance outcomes, employee development & retention, external relations, and growth & development of services. Karen has over 20 years experience serving in management and leadership positions.

She has understood the difficulty women face in the workplace. At 26 her successful husband, who worked on Wall Street died leaving her to raise 17-month-old twins with no job history of her own and a GED. With the help of mentors, she attended college and obtained her graduate degree. She has spent her professional life mentoring other women and developing tools and trainings to help level the playing field. Her journey has brought her to High Heels Speaking.

Over 20 years ago while serving in a middle management position Karen was about to present a strategic plan to several male managers. Her boss introduced her and during the introduction he did not call her by name but instead said, “High Heels Speaking.” At the moment Karen took this as a negative but in time she came to recognize that her boss remark maybe have not been an insult but just ignorance. She eventually came to appreciate the “power of highheels. “Karen’s workshops and keynotes are geared toward the unique challenges of women in the workplace. She believes, the playing field may not be level as yet but with the right tools women can achieve at the same degree as men.