Alexa Bigwarfe
The Speaker Reel
A glimpse at the energy she brings to the room.
Your audience doesn’t need more confidence. They need to know what’s actually stopping them.
Every room has the woman with a finished manuscript in a drawer and the one who’s been “about to” start for three years. Alexa gives them a one-minute test, the data that ends “I’m too late,” and a decision they make before they leave the building.
Alexa Bigwarfe is a USA Today best-selling author of 12+ books, a combat veteran, an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at the University of South Carolina, a mom of three, and the founder of Write|Publish|Sell and the Women in Publishing Summit, the largest virtual community for women authors and publishing professionals in the world.
She built four companies while being told she was playing on the internet, through the loss of her infant daughter Kathryn, her father, and her closest friend, and through a 2024 health crisis that put her in a hospital bed for three weeks. Every time she got knocked down she got back up, and somewhere along the way the thing nobody believed in became the thing that supported her and her three children. That financial independence is what turned her belief into actual choices about her own life.
She is a 2025 Celine Aziz Legacy Award recipient, and her forthcoming podcast, Betting on WE, argue that self-belief gets a woman started, her own money makes her choices real, and her community is what keeps her going.
Nobody leaves with a feeling. Everybody leaves with a bet that has a date on it.
Talks that land. Frameworks that travel home with them.
Every self-belief keynote has the same problem at its center: everybody on the slide won. This one doesn’t. Alexa tells the story of a client who became one of her closest friends, bet on herself, and ran out of time, and then the year Alexa nearly did too. Around that she builds the case that belief is not a feeling you wait for but something you manufacture by acting, that the average founder of a top-growth company is forty-five, and that community is a balance-sheet item with numbers behind it.
- True, or a story you’re telling yourself? A one-minute test that separates a real constraint from a story
- Why belief is built by acting, not felt first
- The data that ends “I’m too late.” Forty-five is the average founder
- Community as a balance-sheet item, with the numbers
- Every attendee leaves with a bet, named, dated, and witnessed
Between 43 and 48 percent of employers run software that automatically rejects any résumé with a gap longer than six months. Not a recruiter, software. Alexa hired one of those women: dozens of applications, one interview, seventeen years of “just a mom” on paper, two businesses and published books underneath it. She now runs program development.
- Why the résumé gap is a filter error, not a talent error
- The overlooked talent hiding in “just a mom” résumés, and how to read one
- What to change in your own screening before the next req opens
Most entrepreneurship advice assumes you have nothing else going on. This keynote gives women with real responsibilities a working playbook for a business that fits the life they’re actually living.
- The Life-First Business framework
- A realistic revenue model, no unlimited runway required
- A next-90-days plan they can start Monday
She doesn’t ask a room to take her word for it.
Average age of the founder of a top-growth companyMIT / U.S. Census, via HBR
More likely to reach top leadership with a female inner circlePNAS, 2019
Of new U.S. businesses started by women in 2024, up from 29% in 2019Gusto
Sales lift for women with female mentors. Male mentors: no significant gainUniversity of Chicago
The receipts behind the keynote.
Author of 12+ books including Sunshine After the Storm and the Sparks in Paris romantic comedy series, written as Lexi Haddock.
Honored for tireless work elevating women's voices through accessible publishing education and advocacy.
Teaches entrepreneurship at the University of South Carolina and through her own business growth programs.
Built the largest virtual community for women authors and publishing professionals, plus the Top 5% ranked Alexa's Publishing Chat podcast.
The short version, for the busy programmer.
Custom programming available on request
This isn’t a talk for every room. It’s a talk for the right one.
Alexa’s keynotes are designed for organizations and events where the audience is ready to stop waiting for permission and start building. She is a strong fit for:
Recent shows where Alexa has been a guest
A glimpse at where audiences have heard her. The full list is longer.
Download what you need
Speaker one-sheet, bios in multiple lengths, high-resolution photos, and more. If you need anything else, email alexa@alexabigwarfe.com.
Ready to give your audience a talk they’ll quote on Monday?
Alexa is based in South Carolina and available globally for keynote speaking, workshops, panels, virtual summits, podcast guesting, and university lectures.