Sharifah Hardie is an entrepreneur, business consultant, author, media personality, and former political candidate. She is the founder of The People’s Chamber of Commerce, Sharifah.ai, and Ask Sharifah, where she helps entrepreneurs and organizations identify opportunities, secure funding, develop strategic partnerships, and build sustainable businesses.
With decades of experience spanning business development, technology, media, marketing, fundraising, politics, and entrepreneurship, Ms. Hardie brings a rare combination of business acumen, public leadership, resilience, innovation, and lived experience to the stage. She has raised millions of dollars, helped businesses pursue and secure funding, built companies and organizations, published multiple books, and spoken before audiences of thousands.
Persistence and reinvention
Ms. Hardie’s journey is also a story of persistence and reinvention. She became a mother as a teenager and was laid off more than eight times throughout her career. Each time circumstances forced her to confront the unknown, she found a way to adapt, reinvent herself, and keep moving forward. Those experiences helped shape the philosophy that would ultimately become central to her work.
Ms. Hardie was also an early adopter of technology. She built her first website in the early 1990s, years before having an online presence became standard for businesses and professionals. In 2009, she launched her first podcast, embracing digital broadcasting well before podcasting became the mainstream medium it is today. Her willingness to recognize emerging opportunities, move early, and adapt to change has remained a defining characteristic throughout her career.
That same willingness to step into unfamiliar territory eventually took Ms. Hardie into politics. As a political candidate, she took her ideas directly to voters and inspired thousands of people to go to the polls and support her candidacy. Her political endeavors added another dimension to a career already rooted in public communication, community engagement, leadership, entrepreneurship, and the ability to bring people together around ideas and opportunity.
Experience that informs the work
Throughout her career, Ms. Hardie has experienced many of the realities entrepreneurs and professionals face but rarely hear discussed candidly from the stage. She knows what it means to start over, lose a job, hear no, take a risk, pursue an opportunity without knowing how it will turn out, build with limited resources, raise capital, reinvent yourself, and continue moving forward when the expected path disappears.
Those experiences inform how Ms. Hardie approaches business today. She understands that a great idea alone is rarely enough. Capital matters. Relationships matter. Positioning matters. Communication matters. And knowing when, where, how, and whom to ask can change everything.
Let’s Go Get the Money
Through her signature “Let’s Go Get the Money” approach, Ms. Hardie speaks candidly about entrepreneurship, access to capital, business growth, technology, leadership, resilience, reinvention, overcoming setbacks, and creating opportunities when none appear to exist. She does more than motivate audiences. She gives people practical strategies they can use to identify opportunities, position themselves for funding, build valuable relationships, make stronger asks, and turn ideas into action.
Whether speaking to entrepreneurs, executives, women in business, emerging leaders, community organizations, aspiring changemakers, or people standing at a crossroads in their lives or careers, Ms. Hardie challenges audiences to stop waiting for permission, perfect circumstances, the right connection, or someone else to create the opportunity for them.
Her own life is evidence that the road does not have to be straight to lead somewhere extraordinary. From teenage motherhood and repeated layoffs to entrepreneurship, technology, media, publishing, fundraising, politics, and business leadership, Ms. Hardie has continually answered uncertainty by asking one question:
What is the next move?
It is the philosophy behind Ask Sharifah and the message Ms. Hardie brings to audiences:
“Do not face the unknown alone. Ask Sharifah.”
Make the ask. Create the opportunity. Let’s go get the money.