Presenting in industry as an academic | Taivanbat Badamdorj (TK)

Introduction

In academia, I was used to presenting to technical audiences—fellow researchers and engineers who spoke the same language. A typical talk would start with background, walk through methodology, and build up to a result.

That approach didn’t carry over when I transitioned into industry as a machine learning research engineer at RBC (Canada’s biggest bank 🇨🇦). Now, I often present to senior executives, product managers, and business stakeholders—people who are sharp and curious, but not necessarily fluent in the language of AI.

Presenting technical work in industry is a different skill entirely. Over the past year, I’ve spoken to a cumulative audience of ~500 people across various roles, and here are the most important lessons I’ve learned:

Presentations matter more than you think
Know who you’re talking to—and why
Start with the conclusion
Storyboard early, get feedback often
Use diagrams generously
Make complexity feel simple
Have your appendix ready

These weren’t things I figured out on my own. I learned them through lots of iteration—and lots of feedback from senior colleagues who had sat through far more of these presentations than I had. Their advice helped me completely rethink how I communicate technical work in a business context.

1. Presentations Matter More Than You Think

I remember a time when I was really frustrated by how much of my time was going into preparing and delivering presentations. It didn’t feel like “real” work. Real work, to me, was technical: I made something 10x faster, I improved a model’s accuracy, I shipped something into production.

But then I had a conversation with a director at our company who gave me a perspective that really stuck with me.

The higher up your audience is—say, a senior vice president—the less time they have. Their decisions impact teams, budgets, and priorities. So when you present to them, you need to make sure they understand everything they need to know, as efficiently and clearly as possible. That’s what enables them to make decisions that benefit your project or your team.

It completely reframed how I saw presentation work. Even if you don’t always see a direct, measurable result, it’s often the thing that determines whether your project gets funded, gets prioritized, or gains trust. You can have perfect machine learning results—but if no one understands the impact, or gets excited about it, then it doesn’t matter.

Presentations aren’t just slides—they’re how we advocate for our work.

2. Know Who You’re Talking To—and Why

Before building any slides, ask yourself:

Who’s in the room?
What do they care about?
What do you want from the presentation?

Executives want to know how your work moves the needle. Product managers care about timelines, constraints, and user impact. Engineers may be interested in design decisions and edge cases.

Just as important: be clear on your goal. Are you looking for buy-in? Do you need feedback? Are you bridging a knowledge gap?

When you know both your audience and your objective, everything else—your tone, structure, level of detail—becomes easier to calibrate.

3. Start With the Conclusion

In research presentations, we often build up to the result. In business, you have to lead with it.

Start with what you built, why it matters, and what impact it has. That gets everyone aligned early. You can go deeper into the how later—but only if people understand why they should care in the first place. This should be the first thing you present.

A simple framing I like to use:

“We built X to solve Y. Here’s what it does, and here’s why it matters.”

This helps anchor the presentation and gives context for every slide that follows.

4. Storyboard Early, Get Feedback Often

I never jump straight into polishing slides. The first version of any deck I make is just:

Slide titles that capture the main idea
Rough diagrams to sketch out the story

Think of it like storyboarding a film. You’re figuring out the flow and logic of the presentation before getting bogged down in visuals or bullet points.

Once that’s in place, I ask for feedback—early and often. This helps avoid wasting time polishing a version of the story that doesn’t quite land.

5. Use Diagrams Generously

Text-heavy slides dilute your message. A good diagram, on the other hand, communicates ideas clearly and quickly.

Use diagrams to illustrate systems, pipelines, or relationships
Aim for one key idea per slide
Let visuals guide your narrative

If a slide has too much text, the audience reads it instead of listening. A well-designed diagram keeps them with you and helps ground complex ideas in something concrete.

6. Make Complexity Feel Simple

Even if what you built is deeply technical, your audience doesn’t need every detail—they need to understand the essence.

A few techniques that have worked well for me:

Use relatable examples.
For example: “Imagine a customer normally spends $50 a week. One day they spend $5,000. That’s the kind of anomaly we want to detect.”
Walk through the logic step by step.
When we built a model to translate business requirements into predictions, we broke it into digestible pieces:
1. What’s the business goal?
2. How does it become a dataset?
3. How did we model it?
4. What decisions are enabled by the output?

This approach shows that the system isn’t magic—it’s grounded in logic, and every component exists for a reason.

7. Have Your Appendix Ready

Even if your main talk stays high-level, someone will want to know:

What model you used
How you evaluated it
What tradeoffs you considered
How it handles edge cases

That’s where your appendix comes in. I often include backup slides (or keep notes handy) with architecture diagrams, experimental results, or deeper technical detail.

This way, the core presentation stays focused—but when someone wants to go deeper, you’re ready. It shows credibility without overwhelming the broader audience.

Closing Thoughts

Presenting technical work to a non-technical audience is a skill—and like any skill, it gets better with practice.

For me, the shift from academic-style talks to business-focused presentations has made my work more visible, more understandable, and more actionable.

If you lead with clarity, focus on what matters, and meet your audience where they are, you can make complex ideas resonate far beyond the research lab.

Thanks for reading! If you found this helpful or have tips of your own, I’d love to hear from you.