Vikki Maver’s Authentic Voice

Communication Skills Academy officially began in 2024, but its roots trace back 20 years earlier with the founding of Refresh Marketing, Australia’s longest-running copywriting agency. Vikki Maver, a senior marketer with a passion for words and teaching, left corporate life to start a freelance copywriting business, which grew into Refresh Marketing. With a home-based business (and two small children to raise), Vikki was itching to get out of the house. So she got a gig as a lecturer and tutor with the Department of Marketing at Monash University. A mentor’s encouragement led to delivering corporate writing workshops – sparking the seed for what would become CSA.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Running a business has always been a huge part of my identity and enormously fulfilling. I have loved the flexibility, autonomy and creative freedom it’s given me.

But first… let me transport you back to the end of 2022, when RM was at its peak with 14 staff. I had a General Manager, a Head of Copy, 11 copywriters, and a gazillion projects always on the go. It was a lot. But I was ‘happy’.

Or so I thought.

The first half of 2023 threw curveballs: the economy nosedived, the GM exited abruptly, and two senior copywriters prepared to move on. By June, Vikki was officially burnt out. Ugly cries aplenty.

At that time, the copywriting work was trickling in at a noticeably slower pace. But the training work – RM’s other main revenue stream – was still in high demand. And thank goodness for that.

The training arm had always been less resource-intensive and less stressful than the copywriting arm. But more importantly, it had come to be more rewarding personally.

After workshops, participants walk away with a spring in their step; confident and excited to put their new skills into practice. And their managers feel a huge sense of relief knowing they’ve invested wisely in their team – and that their organisation will be far better off for it.

So it’s not hard to see why, by the second half of 2023, Vikki began to daydream about a dedicated training business. Before long, those daydreams evolved into a business plan. And at that point, three critical decisions had to be made:

1. The brand: Vikki was always conscious of the disconnect between the corporate training offering and the name ‘Refresh Marketing’. Although this disconnect didn’t hinder success over the years, now was the time to resolve it. The training business would have its own name and logo (with a subtle visual link to RM).
2. The fate of RM: RM has racked up two decades of goodwill and a list of loyal, long-term clients. RM continues operating – servicing existing clients while being exceptionally discerning about new ones. As practising professional writers, the team is much more credible as writing skills trainers.
3. The leadership: Vikki wanted someone to share the ups and downs with. Someone who shared her vision – and her values. Senior Copywriter and qualified educator Veronica came on board as both the GM of the new training business and a writing skills trainer.

So, say hello to the Communication Skills Academy. Or CSA for short.

Business Writing Essentials is, and always will be, the flagship course. But CSA’s training programs stretch far beyond writing skills – with strategic partnerships delivering training in public speaking, storytelling and media skills.

The vision: for CSA to become the hub for Australia’s most exceptional communications skills trainers.

Within months of launching CSA as a standalone brand, we attracted some of the country’s most sought-after practitioners: former BBC journalists and producers, an ex-professional footballer turned business strategist, and one of Australia’s fastest-rising public speaking stars.

These aren’t trainers looking for gigs – they’re experts at the top of their fields who chose to deliver under the CSA brand because of what we stand for and how we operate.

That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when your standards, your processes and your reputation make elite facilitators want to be part of what you’re building.

I was less than an hour away from presenting a full-day copywriting workshop to the comms team of a regional council – feeling quietly confident and relaxed.

And why wouldn’t I be? I’ve been a corporate trainer for over 17 years now. And although things don’t always go 100% to plan (dodgy whiteboard markers, I’m looking at you), it’s fair to say I’ve got this schtick down pat.

Or so I thought…

Because soon after polishing off my chia delight, I headed to the workshop venue, a 3-minute stroll away… only to discover I was in the wrong place – the wrong town – entirely!

The actual venue was a solid 15-minute drive away. (And I didn’t have a car.)

So there I was, stranded on a dead-quiet side street in regional NSW, heart pounding as my Uber sat frozen ‘22 minutes away’. My 9 am start time? Not happening.

So what did I do? I called the client, fessed up and went into solution mode. (This was a workshop about communicating with humanity and clarity, after all.)

Thankfully, my client agreed to push the session out by half an hour – and I managed to arrive in time for the revised start time of 9.30 am. (This was all thanks to one of the workshop participants who kindly jumped in her car to rescue me. Shout-out to Ally!)

At 9.28 am, I charge in and race to the front to start setting up… but then the next bombshell: I had forgotten to pack a specific cable that my client had specifically asked me to bring to connect my laptop to the room’s AV.

Back into solution mode we go again. Enter Jen, yet another ever-so-kind workshop participant, who offered to race down to the nearest Officeworks – a casual 20-minute drive away – to purchase the elusive cable.

By now it was 9.35 am. So I decided enough was enough and kicked off anyway, despite the obvious absences: No cable. No slides. No Jen.

Fast forward to 10.17 am. Jen was back, the new cable was projecting my slides beautifully – and all went swimmingly from that point on.

And you know what? I honestly think I ended up delivering the best workshop of my life. (If I do say so myself.)

Key takeaways:

1. Even great systems need a tune-up – Our briefing and logistics processes have been improved. I’ve performed a post-mortem and I’m confident this type of screw-up won’t happen again.
2. Short lead times come with risks – Our 30-day buffer policy exists for a reason. In this case, we made an exception with under 7 days to pull it all together.
3. Recovery is about action, not excuses – The client LOVED the course despite the rocky start. When stuff goes sideways, owning it really matters.

Budgets are shrinking. Expectations aren’t. AI is accelerating the pace of work while quietly eroding the human parts that hold it together. Every misaligned message now costs twice as much – in trust, time and talent turnover. Executives are asking for impact while employees are asking to be heard. In the middle sits L&D, under pressure to prove ROI while culture quietly fractures.

Teams are working harder, moving faster – and understanding each other less. Budgets are tighter. Timelines are shorter. And every miscommunication now ripples further and costs more – in rework, in trust, in the talent you can’t afford to lose. Leaders feel the friction. Employees feel unheard. And L&D is caught in the middle, expected to fix culture with capability-building while proving ROI on shrinking budgets.

The truth? Communication isn’t breaking because people aren’t trying. It’s breaking because the infrastructure was never built properly in the first place. And now that AI is accelerating everything, weak communication doesn’t just slow you down – it scales the chaos.

When it breaks? You get the $1.9 trillion problem – hidden in rework, meeting bloat, misalignment, turnover and projects that take twice as long as they should.

AI might accelerate work, but it can’t fix confusion, repair trust or solve tone-deaf leadership. Every automation still depends on people who can think clearly, write with impact and speak in ways that move others.

Here’s what changes when you act now: decisions get faster, rework drops, alignment improves, and your people finally feel like they’re working with the organisation instead of despite it. CSA gives you measurable capability improvement in weeks, not quarters – because we’re not teaching theory. We’re fixing the infrastructure that makes everything else possible.

For L&D leaders: Most L&D managers are under constant pressure to prove the value of development programs – yet they’re forced to measure what’s easy, not what matters. Attendance rates. Post-session surveys. Smiley-face feedback. Meanwhile, the communication problems those programs are meant to fix – confusion, conflict, poor leadership – keep showing up. Because the training didn’t go deep enough. Because it’s not tailored to the organisation’s unique problems. Because it treated communication as a skill gap, not a system failure. The real pain isn’t that L&D teams can’t find training. It’s that most training doesn’t stick – and when it doesn’t, the blame falls on them. CSA helps L&D move from managing workshops to engineering cultural impact.

For leaders and executives: The hardest part of leadership isn’t the pressure – it’s the powerlessness. They’re accountable for outcomes they can’t fully control. They can see where strategy falters, where messages blur, where trust thins – but they can’t be in every meeting, every email, every conversation to keep it on track. So they compensate. They repeat themselves. They tighten controls. But what’s really missing isn’t discipline. It’s shared understanding. CSA helps leaders rebuild the communication infrastructure their strategy runs on – so meaning doesn’t distort as it travels through the organisation.

For L&D staff: From being seen as organisers of training to being recognised as architects of capability. From chasing attendance lists to driving measurable culture change. From ticking boxes to leading learning that actually rewires behaviour. CSA invites L&D leaders out of the cycle of generic workshops and into strategic influence – where communication training stops being a cost centre and starts becoming visible proof of organisational growth.

For leaders and executives: From being the only source of clarity to leading organisations that communicate with it at every level. From relying on constant oversight to trusting that meaning will stay intact in every meeting, message and presentation. From watching strategy stall in translation to seeing alignment, accountability and trust take root across the business. CSA enables leaders to shift from leading by force to leading with trust – built on communication that holds together when they are not in the room.

Words to Avoid: ‘unlock’, ‘transform’, ‘leverage’, ‘harness’, ‘game-changing’, ‘synergistic’