Ipseity: Academy of the Self is an education venture founded by 📝Cynthia Johnson that teaches selfhood as the foundation of a personal brand. 📝Ipseity is a term from philosophy meaning selfhood, or individual identity — the core sense of being oneself. The academy teaches people to understand and operate the self as a system, so that identity emerges consciously through the self rather than unconsciously through the systems around them.
The name revives the one Johnson first used for the company that became 📝Bell+Ivy, originally incorporated as Ipseity, Inc. in 2016. The academy began as a way to teach the principles of personal branding as an expression of identity, then moved deeper as it became clear that the real challenge was self-identity rather than branding alone. It maintains two web surfaces: a main site at ipseity.com (with Academyoftheself.com redirecting there), and a separate resources-and-tools dashboard at ipseity.academy. As of 2026 Johnson is building it toward a fuller institution — a core curriculum, cohorts, workshops, and licensing, and the long-term intention of a university.
Ipseity is where my work was always heading. Branding was never the real subject. The self was.