Unlock your potential.
Ellie Shoja is an award-winning writer, mindset expert, and motivational speaker with a passion for inspiring personal transformation that creates positive, lasting impact in the world.
“We really liked Ellie’s commencement speech at our graduation ceremony. The content was strong and her takeaway points will help our graduates be more courageous to seek help if they need it. Ellie was dynamic and her speech kept our attention and interest throughout.”
Your Purpose Is To Thrive
Adversity is your launching pad to success.
Ellie Shoja moved over thirty times, lived in refugee camps in Germany, and spoke three languages before immigrating to the United States at the age of fifteen. She overcame isolation, poverty, severe nervous tics, and suicidal ideation to build her dream life, surrounded by abundance, joy, and creativity.
Today, Ellie is a sought-after motivational speaker and celebrity ghostwriter. She’s passionate about sharing the mindset tools and strategies that gave her the courage to seize and create countless opportunities.
Adversity leads to expansion. This is what every highly resilient person understands. Ellie helps her audience unlock personal power, inspiration, creativity, and self-confidence in any situation regardless of the odds, so they can turn setbacks into opportunities.
A dynamic and inspiring storyteller, motivational speaker, and educator, Ellie strives to understand the specific needs and challenges of every audience in order to deliver an impactful message that inspires positive mindset shifts and rewrites limiting beliefs. She can create personalized experiences that are right for you and your team.
Ellie’s powerful talks create immediate and lasting mindset shifts, provide practical, life-changing tools, and leave audiences feeling inspired to live their highest potential.
Appearances + Features
Transformative Keynotes
Tech Gen to the Rescue: Why Gen Z is Uniquely Equipped to Save Humanity
Gen Z gets a bad wrap with its technology dependence, desire for instant gratification, seemingly unrealistic workplace expectations, and many cultural differences. But what if this young generation holds the very key to addressing some of humanity’s most pressing issues? In this thought-provoking talk, Ellie Shoja delves into recent scientific and social studies to unveil the distinct characteristics that set Gen Z apart. She challenges conventional perception of this generation and explores how their unique qualities can serve as a powerful force for positive change. This talk challenges preconceptions about Gen Z and inspires her audience to recognize and leverage the unique qualities of this generation for positive societal impact.Setback to Comeback: How to Cultivating Resilience + Turn Adversity Into Advantage
What do Apple, Amazon, Disney, and Microsoft have in common? All faced periods of adversity and financial strain before using their setbacks as launching pads to create massive growth. Adversity always leads to expansion. This is true for companies as well as individuals. When everything is falling apart, the atmosphere is ripe for new ideas, new possibilities, and new gains. In this captivating talk, Ellie shares the three keys that can unlock the potential of any adverse situation. Using science, anecdotes, insights, and mindset strategies, she inspires her audience to reclaim responsibility and power during difficult times, and to turn the uncertainty that surrounds them into ripe potential.Inspiration to Impact: How to Unlock Creativity + Find Innovative Solutions That Defy the Odds
In our fast-paced, ever-changing world, it’s all too easy to get stuck iterating on old solutions instead of finding new, innovative answers to modern-day problems. To make matters worse, often an instant feedback loop of rejection and criticism is created when new, unfinished, or out-of-the-box ideas are shared. This creates a slew of fears and ignites insecurities that can push individuals and companies into a stress response where creative solutioning becomes difficult (if not impossible). But those who achieve the greatest successes are the ones who are fearless and agile enough to use their challenges as launching pads to blaze new trails and experiment with unconventional ideas. In this captivating talk, Ellie Shoja shares her LEAP Method, which breaks down the process of innovative solutioning into four actionable steps that help audiences turn inspiration into impact.Navigating Integrity and Commitment: Cultivating A Culture Of Accountability That Sticks
According to a 2009 study by Social Science Research Network (SSRN), when a policy of 100% integrity is adopted within an organization, productivity increases between 100 - 500%. There is, however, an often-inverse relationship between integrity and commitment, where many high-integrity individuals struggle with committing to projects, and those who commit with ease are unable to follow through on their commitments. This can break down morale, ultimately compromising the project’s scope while derailing the project off budget or off schedule. In this insightful talk about the mechanics of integrity, Ellie helps your team identify the hidden cracks in a project’s foundation, and provide practical, actionable tools they can adopt right away to inspire cooperation, increase accountability and optimize performance. This talk can be presented as a keynote or as an interactive training session. “Ellie’s messages are empowering and the stories she shares stay with you for a long time. I was uplifted and energized by her talk.”
— Krystal Chryssomallis, Chief Marketing Officer, Yanni Works
“Whether Ellie is speaking to a room of young adults about forging their paths or to C-Suite executives on how to maximize professional potential, you feel like she is talking to you—the individual. Her words stay with youbeyond a speaking engagement and guide your thoughts and next steps. She’s truly a gem whose wisdom shines!”
— Angie Englebert, Art and Design Learning Manager,Blizzard Entertainment
“You are only as resilient as your ability to ignore the nay-sayers. If you want to become all that you are meant to be, you must learn to ignore the voices that say, you can’t. Even if one of those voices is your own.”
Ellie Shoja