Alexis Hughes Is Teaching People How to Live With Fewer Regrets—By Facing the One Thing We Avoid Most

Most life coaches focus on optimization. Alexis Hughes-Bakjian focuses on something far more confronting—and far more powerful: mortality.

Based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Hughes is the founder of Without Fear Strategic Coaching, a strategic life coaching and end-of-life support practice launched in 2021. Her work blends leadership strategy, grief literacy, and legacy planning to help people live with intention rather than arrive at the end carrying regret.

Strategy Rooted in Impermanence

Hughes’ approach is shaped by lived experience. After walking closely with death—both professionally and personally—she recognised a recurring truth: people often wait until crisis to ask the questions that should shape their lives much earlier. Without Fear was built to move those conversations forward.

Her practice integrates strategic life coaching with end-of-life wisdom, guiding individuals, leaders, and families through transitions with clarity and emotional honesty. Clients work through identifying limiting beliefs, building resilience, and creating practical action plans grounded in what they would regret not doing.

“When people understand what would matter at the end of their lives,” Hughes has said, “they make braver, clearer choices in the present.”

At the centre of her work is the 3 M’s of Mastery, a framework she designed to move clients from self-awareness to meaningful, sustained action—without bypassing grief, fear, or complexity.

Expanding Impact Beyond One-on-One Work

Over the past year, Hughes’ influence has grown nationally. She was accepted into a Doctor of Business Administration program in Organizational Leadership, reflecting her commitment to evidence-based leadership and systems thinking. She also successfully guided a national nonprofit through a year of transition and growth, strengthening operations and long-term stability.

In parallel, she has played a key role in advancing education within the end-of-life field—teaching the first accredited End-of-Life Doula cohort at a community college with a 100 percent proficiency exam pass rate, and developing new resources for families, caregivers, and professionals.

Her leadership extends to governance. Hughes serves as Executive Director of the National Home Funeral Alliance and sits on the Board of the National End of Life Doula Alliance, where she was appointed Co-Chair for Events and Education.

A Different Definition of Success

Hughes has been recognised as a featured speaker for domestic violence awareness, a national educator in grief and deathcare, and host of the podcast Without Fear: Life, Death, and Everything In Between. Yet her work resists spectacle.

Without Fear is not about romanticising death. It is about using its certainty as a strategic lens—one that brings focus, honesty, and urgency to how people live.

In a culture obsessed with productivity and avoidance, Alexis Hughes is building something quietly radical: a practice that teaches courage by reminding us that time is finite—and that the best lives are designed before it’s too late.

Company Name: Without Fear Strategic Coaching

Founded: 2021

Industry: Life Coaching · End-of-Life Support · Leadership & Legacy Strategy

Website: withoutfeardoula.com

LinkedIn Profile URL:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/withoutfear/