The other suggestions provide great starting places for public speaking. Toastmasters and the like are very good. (Personally I took several college speaking cl

The other suggestions provide great starting places for public speaking. Toastmasters and the like are very good. (Personally I took several college speaking classes, but I have a number of friends who attended toastmasters) I will add a different idea: Improv Acting classes. Toastmasters and speech classes gets you comfortable in front of an audience and how to prepare for various forms of presentational public speaking. Improv gets you comfortable with FAILING in front of people AND recovering from that failure. You learn to think on your feet and keep going. I believe I went from a competent public speaker to a much more engaging speaker due to Improv.