She Didn't Wait for Permission. She Built the Door Herself.

Kiersten Hathcock | Keynote Speaker for Women's Leadership & Empowerment Events

There is a particular kind of courage required of women who decide to do things their own way.

To leave the safe path. To enter a room where no one looks like you. To build something from nothing with your own two hands while everyone around you quietly, or not so quietly, wonders if you know what you're doing. To survive things that would have stopped most people entirely. And then to get back up, dust off, and build something even bigger.

Kiersten Hathcock has done all of it.

She left a successful television marketing career at A&E and The History Channel — a career most people would have been grateful to keep — because something inside her said it was time to go. She taught herself carpentry. She built a furniture company in her Los Angeles garage. She entered one of the most male-dominated industries in America with no formal training, no industry connections, and no one telling her she belonged there.

Then she went on national television and outmaneuvered the Sharks.

Then she wrote a book about everything she survived along the way — and Post Hill Press (in partnership with Simon and Schuster) published it.

Kiersten doesn't just talk about what's possible for women who refuse to accept the limits placed on them. She is living proof of it. And when she stands on your stage, every woman in the room feels it.

Who Books Kiersten for Women's Events

Event planners and program directors book Kiersten when they need a keynote that does more than inspire — one that genuinely moves people. One that meets women exactly where they are, whether they are just beginning to trust themselves or have been leading for decades and need to be reminded why it matters.

She has spoken to:

Women's Leadership Conferences — delivering keynotes that redefine what leadership looks like when it comes from a place of authenticity, instinct, and hard-won experience rather than a traditional playbook.

NAWBO & Business Women's Organizations — speaking peer-to-peer as a fellow entrepreneur who has navigated the real, unglamorous, often lonely reality of building a business as a woman — and found her way through.

University Women's Programs — connecting with students at the exact moment they are deciding what kind of woman, leader, and builder they want to become, and giving them permission to trust what they already know.

Empowerment & Women's Summits — bringing a rare combination of professional credibility and raw personal honesty that creates the kind of room where women feel safe to be fully seen.

Women in Male-Dominated Industries — speaking with specific, hard-earned authority about what it actually takes to earn respect, command a room, and build a legacy in a space that wasn't designed to include you.

Her Women's Leadership Keynotes

"Build Anyway"

For the woman who is waiting for the right moment, the right credentials, or the right person to tell her she's ready.

The right moment is not coming. The credentials will never feel sufficient. And no one is coming to tell you that you're ready because readiness is not something that happens to you—it’s something you decide.

Kiersten knows this not because she read it in a book. She knows it because she lived it—building a company, a brand, and a life through circumstances that gave her every reason to stop and not a single guarantee that continuing would work.

This keynote is for every woman in your audience who has a dream she hasn't started yet, a business she hasn't launched, a voice she hasn't fully used, or a chapter she hasn't been brave enough to begin. Kiersten doesn't cheerlead from a distance. She sits down next to your audience, tells the truth about what building actually costs, and then shows them exactly how to do it anyway.

Ideal for: Women's leadership conferences, empowerment summits, university women's programs, entrepreneurship events, professional women's associations

Your audience will leave with:

• The specific mindset shift that separates women who begin from women who keep waiting

• A practical framework for moving forward without perfect information or perfect confidence

• The deep, bone-level conviction that they are already more ready than they think

"The Gut Knows First"

Why women's intuition isn't a soft skill — it's your sharpest competitive edge. And it's time to stop apologizing for it.

Women are told, in ways both explicit and invisible, to distrust their instincts. To defer to data. To wait for consensus. To make sure they can defend every decision with logic before they dare to voice it out loud.

Kiersten has spent twenty years doing the opposite — and building something extraordinary as a result.

This keynote makes an urgent, evidence-backed, and deeply personal case for why the instinct you have been trained to second-guess is actually the most powerful leadership tool in the room. Drawing on her own experience—the gut calls that built her company, the moments she ignored her instincts and paid for it, and the intuitive clarity that helped her survive things she never saw coming—Kiersten shows your audience how to stop overriding the voice that has been right all along.

Ideal for: Women's leadership summits, executive women's conferences, wellness-integrated leadership events, women in business programs

Your audience will leave with:

• A completely reframed relationship with their own intuition as a professional asset

• Concrete techniques for accessing instinctive intelligence under pressure

• The courage to lead from what they know — not just what they can prove

"Beating the Odds"

What it actually takes to succeed as a woman in a room that wasn't built for you.

Kiersten did not enter a welcoming industry. Carpentry and furniture design in the early 2000s was — and in many ways remains — a world built by men, for men, with rules written by men and gatekeepers who had no particular interest in making room for a woman who taught herself with YouTube videos and sheer determination.

She didn't wait for the room to change. She changed the room.

This keynote is an honest, funny, and fiercely practical account of what it actually takes — not what the inspirational posters say it takes, but what it actually, practically, “unglamorously” takes — to build credibility, command respect, and create lasting success in a space that starts out skeptical of you. Kiersten shares the specific strategies, the hard lessons, and the moments of grace that got her through, and translates all of it into tools your audience can use starting the moment they leave the room.

Ideal for: Women in STEM events, women in trades and manufacturing, women in finance, law, or other male-dominated professional fields, women's business associations

Your audience will leave with:

• Specific, tactical strategies for building credibility in skeptical environments

• A framework for navigating bias without losing yourself or your momentum

• Hard-won wisdom on when to fight, when to pivot, and when to simply outbuild everyone in the room

"Surviving and Thriving"

The keynote for women who have been through something — and are ready to talk about what comes next.

Not every woman in your audience is at the beginning of her story. Some of them have already survived the thing that was supposed to stop them. Some of them are still in the middle of it. Some of them are standing on the other side, wondering how to take what nearly broke them and turn it into the most powerful chapter of their lives.

This is the keynote for those women.

Drawing on her own experience of surviving, healing, and ultimately transforming the most painful parts of her story into her most meaningful work, Kiersten speaks with rare vulnerability and hard-earned authority about what it means to not just survive difficulty — but to let it become the thing that makes you undeniable.

This is not a talk about toxic positivity or silver linings. It is a talk about the real, nonlinear, often messy work of rebuilding — and the extraordinary life that becomes possible on the other side of it.

Ideal for: Women's empowerment summits, survivor-focused events, wellness conferences, women's retreat programming, organizations supporting women through transition or adversity

Your audience will leave with:

• A new framework for understanding their own story as a source of strength rather than shame

• Practical tools for moving through difficulty without bypassing the grief it requires

• The lived-in, hard-won conviction that what they have survived has made them — not diminished them

What Women Say After They Hear Kiersten Speak

"Very inspirational. My students were impressed and learned some valuable lessons." — Kris Jolma, Operations Manager, Business Week Program, Centralia, WA

"We can't get over how many students asked questions. They are never this engaged with a speaker. Thank you so much for inspiring them." — Amanda Hubbert, Director, Business Week Program, Lewis County, WA

"Kiersten is a superb speaker with the ability to connect with an audience and deliver a meaningful message. The students said they were persuaded and inspired by her message and her positive energy." — Theresa Bierer, Professor of Practice, MBA Program, Northern Arizona University

"Kiersten delivered a keynote that was very well prepared, well spoken, genuine, and inspiring. The topic was tailored to our specific audience, engrossing, and provided actionable advice." — Katie Hatch, VP, Rooms to Go · Former VP, American Society of Furniture Designers

“Your Shark Tank experience was truly an inspiration for me.  You tell your amazing story with authenticity, humor, and confidence.  There's something about your energy that lends the idea to others that they truly can get up there, do the thing, stay true to themselves - and their instincts - and create success. I'm still working on stepping into my voice as an entrepreneur, and I took a lot away from your presentation.”— Ashley Darling, Photographer

What It Feels Like to Be in the Room

Kiersten does not perform inspiration. She does not deliver polished platitudes from a careful distance. She tells the truth — about what building costs, what surviving requires, and what becomes possible when a woman decides to stop waiting for conditions to be perfect and start moving anyway.

Women consistently describe her keynotes as the rare kind of experience where you laugh, you tear up, you furiously take notes, and you leave feeling like something has genuinely shifted — not just in how you think, but in how you see yourself.

That is what she will bring to your stage.

What to Expect When You Book Kiersten

Kiersten approaches every women's event with the same care she brings to the stage itself. She takes time before every engagement to understand who is in the room — their industry, their challenges, their specific moment — and she shapes her content accordingly. Your audience will never feel like they received a talk that was meant for someone else.

She is known for lingering after keynotes, for the conversations that continue at the book table, for the emails that arrive weeks later from women who are still thinking about something she said. The impact of a Kiersten Hathcock keynote does not end when she leaves the stage.

Speaking fees for women's leadership and empowerment engagements begin at $7,500.

Ready to Bring Kiersten to Your Event?

Kiersten is selectively booking women's leadership and empowerment keynotes for 2026 and 2027.

→ Submit a Booking Inquiry

Not sure which talk is the right fit for your audience? Reach out — Kiersten's team will help you find it.