Your purpose has an origin story.
Discover where that story begins.
You didn’t write the first draft of your life.
Someone handed it to you before you were old enough to question it. For years, maybe decades, you performed it so well you forgot it wasn’t yours. This is your inherited story.
Jennifer Griffith believes in taking conscious authorship of our inherited stories. Her work helps audiences understand both how the story they’ve been living has shaped their views on life so far, and how to reframe that story deliberately so the next chapter belongs to them.
Jennifer’s work begins with a single premise:
We can’t let go of what we don’t acknowledge.
Jennifer speaks to audiences who are ready to stop shrinking from their story and start leading with it.
Speaking availability
- Literary Festivals & Book Gatherings
- Universities & Academic Conferences
- Corporate Keynotes & Leadership Events
- Publishing Conferences & Writing Retreats
- Wellness Retreats & Women’s Events
- Men’s Leadership Conferences
- Grief Circles and Events
- Book Clubs
Rewrite the story you inherited using a different LENS.
Jennifer Griffith’s LENS framework gives us the tools for narrative excavation and personal empowerment. Starting with the question: “Who wrote the story I inherited?”
Listen to the story underneath the one you tell out loud. Before anything changes, you have to hear what you’ve been repeating.
Engage with the person who emerges, not the role they got compressed into. They had a self before the role arrived: wants, contradictions, a whole life that wasn’t about you.
Narrate the story on your own terms. The same facts, told by an author instead of an inheritor, produce a different life.
Step out of the draft you were handed. Conscious authorship is a practice, not a single decision.
Select a letter to read the step.
Speaking topics
Becoming the author of your own story is the most underrated form of leadership.
Jennifer offers a range of signature keynotes and workshops for personal growth, author retreats, and corporate development. Custom topics for your event or organization are available upon request.
The Story You Were Born With
What becomes possible when you uncover your untold narrative?
On inherited narratives, the question nobody taught us to ask, and what becomes possible when we finally ask it.
Jennifer Griffith’s signature talk takes audiences through the moment they first recognize the story they’ve been living isn’t entirely their own. Drawing on her book Both Sides of Then, her LENS methodology, and the growing field of narrative identity research, she walks every person in the room through a practice for tracing where their story came from, and what it takes to begin writing a truer version of their past, present, and future.
Audiences leave with a working framework, a new relationship to the stories they’ve been carrying, and the recognition that the most underrated form of courage is deciding to pick up the pen.
Ideal for: Retreats, wellness gatherings, literary festivals, university programs, book clubs, personal growth conferences, and philanthropic events.
Dreams Don’t Have an Expiration Date
Mastering the art of reinvention. On reinvention, the story you’ve been performing, and the courage to begin again at any stage of a career.
Jennifer Griffith spent eighteen years in technology sales, including a decade at Salesforce, before following a deathbed conversation with her father into the work she was always meant to do. She left because the story she’d been living had stopped being hers, and she finally had the language to say so.
This talk is for the high achievers in the room who have checked every professional box and still feel like something is missing. For the leaders who have built remarkable careers inside a story they inherited from a mentor, a culture, or a version of success that no longer fits. Jennifer’s path from technology executive to published author and speaker is not a story about following a passion. It’s a story about the courage to examine the narrative driving your choices, as well as what becomes possible when you decide to author the next chapter deliberately.
Practical, personal, and grounded in both lived experience and the framework of narrative identity, this talk ends with a clear-eyed look at what conscious reinvention actually looks like: not as a dramatic leap, but as a series of intentional choices to begin pursuing something truer.
Ideal for: ERG keynotes, women’s career development programs, reinvention and transitions programming, midlife leadership events, conference general sessions, corporate retreats.
What You Hand Down: On LENS, Leadership, and Legacy
On leadership legacy, inherited culture, and the most consequential act of authorship.
The inherited story doesn’t stop with you. It passes on: into the teams you lead, the culture you build, the patterns your colleagues absorb without ever recognizing their origin. Most leaders think of legacy as something that happens at the end. This talk reframes legacy as something happening right now, in every room you walk into and every story you tell about what’s possible.
Drawing on her LENS methodology and nearly two decades of experience in technology sales leadership, Jennifer examines how inherited narratives drive the culture of high-performing teams. What beliefs about authority, worth, and performance were passed down to you, and are now being passed on? What stories are running your organization’s decision-making without anyone having consciously chosen them? And what would it look like to become intentional about the narrative your leadership is writing for the people coming up behind you?
The most consequential act of leadership is being conscious enough about your own story that the people who follow you get a first draft that actually belongs to them. This talk gives leaders the framework to begin that work, as well as the language to bring it back to the teams they lead.
Ideal for: Leadership conferences, executive teams, association keynotes, high-potential leadership development programs, ERG keynotes, men’s events.
Getting Published
Title:“From Vision to Action: Creating a Business Plan for Your Creative Career” OR “Your Purpose Is Your Platform”
On following your creative ache, building on what you already know, and making time to pursue your dreams.
After spending nearly twenty years in technology, Jennifer leaned in to her long-held passion to write. Thinking she was starting from scratch, she soon realized that technology sales and writing were intrinsically linked. Once she married her previous career to her creative aspirations, doors began to open, and she gained a new level of clarity on her purpose and her platform.
These days, people hear “platform” and don’t know where to begin. This comprehensive talk helps others listen to their inner voice, create a plan for their creative dreams, and lean into their strengths — while making connections in their life they didn’t expect.
Practical, action-oriented, honest, and reflective, this talk will provide attendees with inspiration and a clear plan.
Ideal for: Writing retreats, women’s career development programs, reinvention and transitions programming, midlife leadership events, conference general sessions, personal growth conferences, and philanthropic events
Recent audience praise
Jennifer Griffith gave our audience something rare: permission to seek reinvention at any stage of life. Her message on reinvention landed even more deeply as she shared her own journey of walking away from a hard-won career in tech to consciously author a new one, which felt less like a keynote and more like a conversation among friends. It resonated across our audience, in an industry that asks everyone to reinvent themselves again and again, not once, but continually, with every market shift and every new chapter. People left energized, reflective, and already rethinking how they might begin writing something truer for themselves.
In the nearly ten years that we’ve been offering events to our members, Jennifer’s talk stood out as a defining moment in our programming. I believe it is the rare combination of her years as an executive and her extraordinary gift for storytelling that struck such a chord. What we found most valuable was how Jennifer deepened connections among our members, inviting them to open up authentically by sharing her own story, and in that very moment equipping them with the tools to do the same. Investing in our members’ relationships in this way not only strengthened our community as a whole but also led to raving reviews thanks to the deeply personal and powerful impact it created.
The response to Jennifer’s talk was overwhelmingly positive, with many people saying she was the best guest speaker we’ve ever had. The connection and relatability for everyone was incredible. Jennifer spoke to a large room full of mothers and their teenage daughters, no easy task. The line in her speech, ‘Your mom had another life before you were born,’ brought people to tears. Her work shines a light into families and their stories. Her booklet of questions to ask your mother will help foster deeper connections. One mom is taking the leaflet to her mother’s 85th birthday party. Jennifer is clearly changing lives.
Jennifer has proven to be a tremendous asset to the Jackson Hole Writing Community. We often refer to her efforts as the ‘Jen Effect,’ as she brings her enthusiasm, business acumen, and love for the craft to all our creative and organizational initiatives. Her course, ‘From Vision to Action: Creating a Business Plan for Your Writing Career,’ brings a fresh perspective to creativity.
Jennifer delivered the BEST MEETING we’ve ever had!!! She is natural, compelling, and relatable. Her words resonated with everyone sitting in that room.
Super informative and great presenter. More presentations like this for our organization, please! I also loved that Jennifer was genuinely sharing her knowledge vs. pitching or making the course feel like a fluffy masterclass.
More about Jennifer
Jennifer Griffith spent eighteen years in technology sales before following a deathbed conversation with her father into the work she was always meant to do. She spent a decade writing, rewriting, navigating rejection, and building a platform from scratch before landing her debut book, Both Sides of Then, with Regalo Press. In doing so, she discovered that the skill that made her exceptional at helping her team develop their sales careers was exactly the skill driving her work as an author and speaker: the ability to find the real story underneath the one someone is presenting. She brings that discovery to every stage she steps onto.
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