Brooke Axtell

Brooke Axtell is the Founder and Director of She is Rising, a healing community for women and girls overcoming rape, abuse and sex-trafficking. Through her mentorship programs, retreats and workshops, Brooke helps survivors become leaders. She is passionate about inspiring young women to reclaim their worth and express their power to create a more compassionate world.

She served as Contributing Writer for Forbes for two years and recently joined the Huffington Post to cover international human rights issues, healing through creative expression, women’s leadership and gender equality. She is also a Contributing Editor for The Feminist Wire.

Her powerful speech on domestic violence at the 2015 Grammy Awards reached over 25 million people. She has spoken at The United Nations and the U.S. Institute for Peace.

She continues to speak on human rights issues around the world. She recently gave a keynote address to world leaders at the Asian Parliamentarians Population and Development Conference in Bangkok (sponsored by The United Nations) where she shared strategies for ending gender based violence through Survivor Leadership to members of parliament from over 30 Asia-Pacific Countries.

Her commitment to international women’s rights issues has led her to serve on The Gender Equality Impact Panel for Katerva, a community that identifies and funds the world’s leading sustainability initiatives. She is a member of the Speaker’s Bureau for Rape, Abuse, Incest, National Network (R.A.I.N.N.), the largest anti-sexual assault organization in the U.S. Brooke also serves as a consultant for Thorn (Digital Defenders of Children) founded by Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher.

Her work as a writer, speaker, performing artist and activist has been featured in many media outlets, including the New York Times, LA Times, Rolling Stone, Time Magazine, Wall Street Journal, CNN and The Steve Harvey Show. Brooke has published several award-winning poetry books and released three CDs of original music to critical acclaim.