Meet Jess Ekstrom – 2022 ALC Keynote Speaker

About Jess Ekstrom

Jess Ekstrom helps women tell and sell their stories. As the bestselling author of Chasing the Bright Side, host of the Business on the Bright Side podcast and creator of guided online journaling service, Bright Pages, Jess has been featured in major media outlets such as the Today Show, Good Morning America, The View, Vanity Fair, Seventeen Magazine, Huffington Post and Forbes. After starting and growing her multi-million dollar company, Headbands of Hope, in her dorm room, her speaking and writing career took off. But Jess realized that her success wasn’t about how far she can reach—but how far she can help other women reach.

Today, through her book, podcast, the Bright Pages journaling service and her uber popular Mic Drop and Book Pop Workshops, she helps women uncover the value in their story so they can make a living and a difference at the same time. Jess spent 2 years living in an Airstream, traveling America with her husband and their 70-pound poodle, Ollie. While she still regularly travels in her beloved Airstream, she, her husband, and her poodle have settled down in Raleigh, NC.

Headbands For Hope

Jess Ekstrom founded Headbands of Hope—a highly lauded company that donates one headband to a child with cancer for every hair accessory sold—as a college sophomore who believed that good could be done in the face of heartbreak, “and maybe I can be the one to create it.”

She had no college degree (yet), no business degree and no business plan. Just an idea borne of a passion to see children with cancer who’d lost their hair feeling confident again. She’d met some of these children during a summer internship with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and she felt like she was being dragged down a river by the sadness of it all. But this seed of an idea to do something to make things better for these kids gave her a branch to grab onto to help her stay afloat. It was the activism of optimism.

Ekstrom’s willingness to “start where she was” turned out to be the only impetus she needed. Everything else, she learned along the way. Headbands of Hope has since donated one million headbands to every children’s hospital in America plus hospitals in 15 other countries, is carried in thousands of stories across the world and has been featured all over the national media. Their work has also garnered the support of many celebrities, including Khloe Kardashian, Lea Michele and Lauren Conrad.