C.J. Hayden, MCC, CPCC, is the best-selling author of Get Clients Now! (AMACOM, 2007), Get Hired Now! (Bay Tree, 2005), and The One-Person Marketing Plan Workbook. C.J. is a business coach and consultant who helps her clients achieve their right livelihood through building enterprises that make a difference. She is a former management consultant with over 30 years of business experience, including marketing, product development, finance, human resources, and information systems. C.J. has been speaking and training professionally since 1978, consulting since 1982, and coaching since 1992.

C.J. has taught entrepreneurship, marketing, and career development skills for hundreds of organizations, including John F. Kennedy University, Mills College, The Coaches Training Institute, Leaderspring, Chevron, Federal Express, Marriott, Wells Fargo, SCORE, and the U.S. Small Business Administration.

As one of the leaders in the emerging profession of coaching, C.J. was a founding director of the worldwide Professional & Personal Coaches Association (now part of the International Coach Federation). She also founded and served as editor of Being in Action: The Journal of Professional & Personal Coaching. She holds the credentials of Master Certified Coach and Certified Professional Co-Active Coach.

C.J. is the founder of the education and advocacy project Send Girls to School, and authors the blog How to Become a Hero. She previously founded the social entrepreneurship venture Women's Economic Network. Some of the many organizations where C.J. has volunteered her time include Accelerating Women Entrepreneurs, International Coach Federation, LifePlan Center, Northern California Human Resources Council, San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, Volunteers for Careers, Women in Business Mentoring Circles, and Women's Initiative for Self-Employment. She received the "Woman of Achievement" award from San Francisco Business and Professional Women for her tireless work in their Entrepreneurial Development Program. C.J. currently serves on the boards of Grameen Shakti, Global Initiative to Advance Entrepreneurship, Coaches Make a Difference Initiative and Choice: The Magazine of Professional Coaching, and as an organizer for Conscious Capitalism in San Francisco.

A popular speaker and workshop leader, C.J. has presented hundreds of programs on marketing and sales, purposeful careers, and social entrepreneurship to corporate clients, professional associations, and small businesses. Her articles have been published internationally in Home Business, Insight, Choice, and CareerSource magazines, and in numerous regional publications, including California Job Journal and Bay Area BusinessWoman. She contributes regularly to dozens of websites, including About.com, Principled Profit, and Self Growth.

C.J. has been featured in Investor's Business Daily, Working Woman, Home Office Computing, and Costco Connection, and in numerous books, including Get Slightly Famous, Take Back Your Time, and The Business and Practice of Coaching. She has been widely profiled internationally by newspapers, radio, and TV.

C.J. was born in Westchester County, New York, but left almost immediately. Before settling in San Francisco as a young adult, she had lived in sixteen cities, eight states, and two Canadian provinces. At the age of 15, C.J. dropped out of high school and ran away from home. Living on the street for more than two years in several U.S. and Canadian cities, she became addicted to drugs and alcohol, and was a victim of crime and assault.

Overcoming homelessness, addiction, and her lack of education, C.J. eventually earned her way off the street with a series of minimum wage jobs. She put herself through college at night over a period of ten years. C.J. held over fifty jobs before she turned 30, including carhop, bank teller, computer programmer, surveyor, product manager, and planetary geologist. Her first entrepreneurial venture was making jewelry in a logging cabin on Vancouver Island, and she has been self-employed as a technical writer, corporate trainer, seminar producer, software developer, and management consultant.

In 1992, C.J. finally found her mission in life when she began helping others find theirs. She has since turned her passion for making a difference in how people earn their living into a thriving coaching and training business and three books. An instinctive gate-crasher and determined survivor, C.J. has created her own path to success by applying her special blend of persistence, resourcefulness, and an ability to relate to just about anyone.