Educator. Keynote Speaker.
Bestselling Author.

I'm Cyndie Spiegel, a builder of community, (influential) proponent of personal leadership, author of (insightful) books, sharer of collective wisdom and an all-around speaker of truths, especially the hard ones.

I teach personal leadership, the human skills that make everything else work: communication, integrity, mindfulness, realistic optimism, authenticity (the real kind) and critical thinking. They're the skills everyone assumes we picked up somewhere along the way, and very few of us were ever formally taught. I teach them through candid storytelling, including the chapters of my own life I wouldn't have chosen, because an audience can tell when the person speaking has done the work she's asking of them. I've been told I'm a compelling, irreverent speaker and teacher. I'm definitely biased, but hell, I agree.

My very candid approach ignites powerful conversation because it strips away the ideas that we’ve been taught about how we should show up in the world.

Formally, I'm an educator, a transformational speaker and a two-time bestselling author. My work has been featured on the Today Show and in ENTREPRENEUR and TIME magazine. For more than a decade, I've written and taught about emotional complexity, specifically how people stay steady, stay true to themselves and still find joy when life gets hard. I bring that work to organizations and conference stages as a keynote speaker, and I advise a select group of leaders and creatives privately through my Strategic Sessions.

I grew up on public assistance in a small town in New Jersey, in a house that was short on money and never short on love. That childhood shapes my work as much as anything I've done since. I've lived on the margins as a kid and with real privilege as an adult, and I try to hold both honestly without ranking one above the other.

I spent 15 years in NYC fashion leadership at Coach and Narciso Rodriguez, where my work was developing product. At 35, I left to build my career around developing people, and I taught at Parsons and FIT for seven years as I made that move. I've also been an ISHTA-certified yoga and meditation teacher for nearly 20 years, and I've spent most of my life reading my way through different philosophies to understand why people are the way they are. Since leaving fashion, I've become certified in Applied Positive Psychology, written a bestselling book on the topic that has sold more than 500,000 copies, graduated as a scholar from the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program, and in 2023 published my second book, Microjoys: Finding Hope (Especially) When Life Is Not Okay, with Penguin Random House.

I think the word "should" is bullshit.

In 2019, I founded Dear Grown Ass Women®, an inclusive platform and community for women 35 and up. Women our age have experiences that most personal development and community spaces overlook, so I built a place where we could keep figuring ourselves out alongside friends who didn't all look or live alike. Most things are better with friends, and growing up (again) was no exception.

What I've learned is that knowing yourself well takes real commitment, and the payoff is integrity, which is where lasting confidence comes from. The route rarely goes as planned, and people will have opinions about how you got wherever you're going. Nearly every good thing in my life has come from ignoring at least one "should," and I don't plan to stop now.

Start here to learn about corporate or speaking options.

A bit of backstory about my books.

Fourteen years ago, I left a 15-year career in corporate fashion to build my work around developing people. Since then, I've become certified in Applied Positive Psychology and written a bestselling book on the topic, A Year of Positive Thinking: Daily Inspiration, Wisdom & Courage (2018), which has sold more than 500,000 copies and been published in multiple languages.

A few years later the pandemic arrived, and while the world grieved collectively, the losses in my own life kept coming. On an ordinary Friday evening, my 32-year-old nephew was killed, and only months later my beloved mother died unexpectedly. Soon after, one of my siblings nearly died, and not long after that, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

During the hardest stretch of my life, I coped by deliberately looking for what I came to call microjoys. That practice became the subject of my most recent book, Microjoys: Finding Hope (Especially) When Life Is Not Okay, published by Penguin Random House.