As Partner, AJ Harper champions HEROIC’s thought leadership in the art and business of writing. AJ is the multi-award- winning author of Write a Must-Read: Craft a Book That Changes Lives—Including Your Own. A key leader in our programming, she guides students through developing and writing their speeches, and she uses her decades of experience in publishing to help them develop book projects.

As a ghostwriter and developmental editor, AJ has worked with newbies to New York Times-bestselling authors with millions of books sold. As co-founder and senior editor for a small, award-winning LGBTQ-focused press, she acquired and edited novels that helped change the publishing landscape for LGBTQ fiction and launched the careers of several bestselling Young Adult authors.  AJ and her co-founders sold the company to Chicago Review Press in 2021.

Apart from her extraordinary professional accomplishments, what makes AJ so darn special is her ability to empathize. She has an amazing ability to see the world through the eyes of others. It's why she is remarkably effective when helping our students turn their ideas into intellectual property.