Carol Kent is a popular international public speaker best known for being dynamic, humorous, encouraging, and biblical. Founder of Speak Up With Confidence (a communications training seminar), Speak Up Speaker Services (a speakers bureau), and Speak Up for Hope (a prison ministry), Carol is an expert on public speaking, on writing, and on encouraging people to hold on to hope when life’s circumstances turn out differently from their dreams.

Carol has spoken internationally in South Africa, Germany, Bulgaria, China, Korea, Hong Kong, Guatemala, Mexico, and Canada. She regularly appears on a wide variety of nationally syndicated radio and television broadcasts.

She entered the public eye with the story of her only son’s imprisonment for murder, a journey she shared in the powerful book, When I Lay My Isaac Down. This painful experience has led Carol and her husband, Gene, down a long road of sacrifice and redemption.

Carol holds a master’s degree in communication arts and a bachelor’s degree in speech education. Her bestselling books include: A New Kind of Normal (starred review in Publishers Weekly), When I Lay My Isaac Down (winner of Christian Retailers Choice Award), Becoming a Woman of Influence, Mothers Have Angel Wings, Secret Longings of the Heart, Tame Your Fears, Speak Up With Confidence, and Detours, Tow Trucks, and Angels in Disguise. She has also co-written with Karen Lee-Thorp the Designed for Influence Bible Studies. Carol was the co-author and general editor of the Kisses of Sunshine Series. Her articles have been published in a wide variety of magazines and in on-line resources.

Her book, Between a Rock and a Grace Place, is the ongoing story of her journey with her son and it includes riveting letters he wrote from behind the razor wire of a maximum security prison. It also addresses the felt needs of people who hurt, and instills a surprisingly new way of thinking, leaving readers irresistibly drawn to see God’s astonishing “grace places” in the middle of their roadblocks.