ABOUT KATIE
MEET KATIE HORWITCH: AUTHOR, SPEAKER, & SELF-TALK SHIFTER
“Where to start with Katie - she’s one of the most powerful speakers, writers, and thought leaders on all things SELF that I’ve heard from in a while.”
KATIE HORWITCH is a writer, speaker, mindset coach, artist, and self-talk activist. She is the founder of WANT: Women Against Negative Talk, a global platform helping people shift negative self-talk into powerful forward momentum.
Praised by CNN as “a woman empowering others around the world,” Katie has spent nearly two decades studying the conversations we have about ourselves — and how they shape the way we lead, create, and live. She has spoken on stages from SXSW to SHRM, partnered with brands like Lululemon and DreamWorks, and coached executives and teams at companies including Google, Salesforce, Morgan Stanley, Equinox, and Whole30 on confidence, communication, and impact.
Katie is a regular mindset expert on NBC News Daily’s “Mental Health Check” and has been featured by The Cut, SUCCESS Magazine, Insider, ABC, CNN, and more. She is the host of the long-running podcast WANTcast: The Women Against Negative Talk Podcast, where she explores self-worth, comparison, and emotional resilience in conversations with visionary voices shaping a more human-centered world.
Her debut book, Want Your Self: Shift Your Self-Talk and Unearth The Strength In Who You Were All Along (Sounds True, 2023), is available wherever books are sold, with a second book forthcoming Fall 2027.
As a mindset coach, Katie specializes in helping people move through shame, doubt, overwhelm, and fear so they can lead their lives and work with clarity and agency. She is a certified NLP Practitioner and blends evidence-based mindset tools with deeply personalized strategy and support.
Katie’s background as a performer and educator informs her dynamic presence across mediums. She is a longtime fitness professional and has been an instructor with Equinox for over 15 years, where she helped launch their signature beat-based, emotion-driven cycling format, ANTHEM. She is also a top trainer on the digital fitness platform Aaptiv, reaching more than one million users per month with her distinctive blend of motivational coaching and performance-driven programming. She has performed on network television, in feature films, and on stages from regional theatre to Off-Broadway. Her solo cabaret series, WANT YOUR SELF Cabarets, have played to sold-out audiences in Los Angeles and New York City.
She holds a BA in Drama from the University of California, Irvine, where she also studied sociocultural anthropology and creative writing. Katie lives in New York City with her husband and their dog, Frankie, and continues to create work that helps people change the way they speak to themselves — and, in turn, the way they show up in the world.
Her middle name is Joy. Literally.
Short bio:
Katie Horwitch is a nationally recognized author, speaker, mindset coach, and self-talk activist. She is the founder of WANT: Women Against Negative Talk, a global platform helping people shift negative self-talk into powerful forward momentum. Katie is a mindset expert on NBC News Daily’s “Mental Health Check.” She has spoken on stages from SXSW to SHRM, partnered with brands like Lululemon and DreamWorks, and been featured by SUCCESS Magazine, The Cut, and more. Praised by CNN as “a woman empowering others around the world,” she has spent two decades coaching leading brands and executives on confidence, communication, and impact. She hosts the long-running podcast WANTcast: The Women Against Negative Talk Podcast, where she explores self-worth, comparison, and emotional resilience in conversations with visionary voices shaping a more human-centered world. Her debut book, Want Your Self: Shift Your Self-Talk and Unearth The Strength In Who You Were All Along (Sounds True, 2023), is available wherever books are sold, with a second book forthcoming Fall 2027.
“I don’t believe it’s the big things that tell our story. It’s the small, everyday occurrences that create our sense of Self. It’s in the tiny micro-moments that we’re presented with the biggest life choices,and in our interpretation of them that we decide who we are.”
HI, I’M KATIE.
I’M HERE TO HELP YOU FIND, BE, STAY, AND WANT YOUR SELF.
Here’s the deal: for most of my life, I had a crap-tastic self image.
Self confidence? Loads of it. But the lens I VIEWED that confidence through – the opinions I formed around it, the things I did to “keep myself in check,” the image of myself I saw in my internal mirror –was all scratchy and blurry, and made me believe that self-confidence was synonymous with narcissism and vanity.
Negative talk was the norm in my life when it came to the women around me. I thought it was normal to bash your body, downplay your intelligence, and tuck your talents far, far away. And even though it felt vaguely wrong, I joinined in just to connect – just to fit in. I wanted to change the world but would never admit it. That was way too ambitious, and ambition wasn’t relatable. I just wanted to relate. How else would I find my people?
But I wasn’t a cynic and I didn’t loathe myself. I just felt like my brightness was blinding to others. So I stored it away. That way, other people could turn my brightness and off at their own will - whenever THEY needed it (and me) most.
When I was a kid, I told myself that I was the “loyal” friend, the one who you could fall back on when the other kids weren’t available (or were just being plain cruel). As I got older, I developed a Hero complex that made me OBSESSED with saving the day. If I could just rescue someone, anyone, from sadness or trouble, I’d be in.
The cost was my confidence.
I studied musical theatre in high school and college; I’d go to my voice lessons and cry half the time, because being alone with my voice was one of the only times I felt completely full, confident, and fearless. Then I’d leave the room and it was back to being the Katie who downplayed her strengths so that no one would feel uncomfortable or threatened.
It’s ironic that the more I bonded with others over negativity - the more I beat myself down with the “selfless” goal of lifting someone else up by showing them I really wasn’t all that great - the more alone I felt. I was fab at faking a smile and winning people over with my generosity, but ended up feeling even lonelier than before when I gave everyone my all, tried to be like them, spoke their language….and still faded into the background. What was wrong with me?
My self image, internal and external, fluctuated up and down throughout my teens, hitting an all-time low in college when I developed Orthorexia – a form of disordered eating and lifestyle in which a hyper-focus on extreme “health” before all else overtakes your life and dictates your every decision. When I look back on it now, I know I was just doing what I thought was right: being the person who had her shit together like “real” adults do, while simultaneously taking control of my unbridled ambition and fire so that who I WAS wouldn’t get in the way of who others WANTED me to be.
Usually when you hit this point in someone’s self-written bio, it’s when you get the Oprah-style A-HA moment. But my “story” isn’t about one rock-bottom moment (even though I had a lot) and it’s not about a clearly defined before-and-after shot (those never tell the whole story, anyway). It IS about continuously choosing to be proactive over being reactive, over and over again. And in order to do that, I needed to come squeaky-clean with myself about the language I was thinking and speaking, to myself and with others. I needed to find a way to break out of the cage I’d put myself in…without forgetting about the other people who were still behind bars. I needed to lean into my hyper sensitivity and eerily spot-on self awareness WITHOUT judging others or isolating myself in the process.
People always ask me what “negative self-talk sounds like.” And I totally get where that question comes from… But it’s the wrong question to be asking. It’s not about what it sounds like that matters most: it’s about what it FEELS like. Because negative self-talk starts out as a feeling. A STRONG feeling. So strong we don’t have words, and so we attach the words that seem like a good fit.
Those words are usually the heaviest, nastiest ones we can think of.
Hate. Ugly. Stupid. Terrible.
Used over and over again, they become the fluent language we speak but never intended to learn.
Self-talk isn’t good or bad: it’s information. It’s not inherently positive or negative: it’s proactive or reactive. And in order to shift our self-talk in a real, lasting way, we MUST be brave enough to dive in, dig deep, and move forward fearlessly no matter what we find out about ourselves along the way. To be fearless isn’t the lack of fear, it’s when the fear is less than the faith. And we’ve got to have faith that once we sift through the harmful patterns and misaligned words, we’ll uncover the person we know in our core we’re meant to be.
I used to be obsessed with being the hero.
Now I’m obsessed with the idea that we can all be our own heroes.
I used to dream about changing the world.
Now I know that changing the world can only begin when you change YOUR world.
