About Michelle

Michelle E. Dickinson doesn't talk about mental health from a stage above her audience. She talks about it from inside her own life.

A TED speaker and bestselling author of the memoir “Breaking into My Life”, Michelle has worked with more than 15,000 people across education and Fortune 500 companies. For six years she built "Resilience as a Lifestyle," a data-backed coaching formula with real results.

Then life tested the formula.

Over the past two years she walked away from work she loved, took part-time jobs to stay afloat, rebuilt a corporate career, and ultimately closed the business she had poured herself into. It was humbling, and it taught her more about mental health than any framework she ever designed.

Now, Michelle is returning to where her work began: mental health advocacy. She speaks honestly about what resilience looks like when nothing is going to plan. That means the unglamorous daily work of showing up when quitting would be easier, the grief of losing an identity you built, and the quiet strength it takes to stay steady when there's no finish line in sight. She challenges the idea that being okay means looking like you have it together, and she makes room for the conversations most people are only having in their own heads.

She doesn't offer six steps to fix your life. She offers honesty, practical tools that work on hard days, and proof that you can come through a season you didn't choose and still find meaning in it.

Speaking Topics

• What Mental Health Looks Like in Real Life: Resilience Without the Highlight Reel:
• Mental Health Myth-Busting
• When What Defined You Is Gone: Identity, Loss, and Starting Over
• Bringing Self-Help Back to the Self
• Mind Management and Personal Agency for Hard Days
• Workplace Mental Health

10 Interview Questions You Can Ask Me

1. You built a business teaching resilience, then closed it. What happened?
2. What did the last two years teach you that your own framework didn't?
3. Why return to mental health advocacy now?
4. What's the biggest mental health myth you'd like to retire?
5. What does resilience look like on a day when you don't feel resilient at all?
6. How do you cope when you lose an identity you worked hard to build?
7. What does burnout feel like from the inside, and how early can we catch it?
8. What's one mind-management tool you use yourself on hard days?
9. What should workplaces understand about people who are quietly struggling?
10. What would you say to someone living through a season they didn't choose?

Previous Podcast and Media Appearances

Talking Back 2 Suicide - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y42D9GGbBRA