Jess Pettitt

Jess Pettitt works with businesses, nonprofits, first responders, healthcare organizations, associations, and federal offices on problems leaders do not put on the agenda: the culture that no longer matches the values statement, the team afraid to tell the truth upward, the manager everyone works around rather than with. She has reached more than half a million people across North America under a banner she has carried for two decades: Tough Subjects. Better Connections.
She came to the work sideways. Before the keynotes, Pettitt was a stand-up comic in New York City. The drunken nights are long gone (sober for 20 years). The timing stayed. So did her willingness to say what the room is already thinking, which is what her clients actually hire her for. Visit https://jesspettitt.com/advisory-services/ to get started!
Pettitt is the author of Good Enough Now (2017) and Almost Doing Good (2025). Her third book, Doing Good Better, is forthcoming, completing a trilogy whose through line she states plainly: doing the best you can with what you have some of the time, because it is better than nothing never.
The CPAE joins her Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation, held by a small fraction of professional speakers worldwide. Fewer than one percent of speakers hold both.