Writing about yourself in the third person

Read the "Speakers" page of almost any conference site and every bio does the same odd thing: it talks about the person as though someone else wrote it. "Maria leads the platform team at..." "David has spent the last decade building..." Nobody in that room talks about themselves that way, and everyone reading it knows the person probably wrote every word. It is a strange little fiction, and it is completely correct in that context — which is exactly why so many people copy the same voice onto their own homepage, where it stops being correct and becomes the one thing on the page that sounds like nobody is home.

The instinct to copy it isn't stupidity. Third person is what a bio is supposed to sound like, so you reach for the pattern already in your head. The question worth asking before you write one more sentence is not "does this sound like a bio," it's "who is speaking, and to whom." That answers it almost every time.

Before getting into where each voice belongs, it's worth naming the practical version of this problem: if you're building the site this bio is going to live on rather than editing an existing one, the slow part was never the voice — it's getting from a blank page to something to react to. reach solves that: you upload a CV and a photo, answer a short form, and it composes a complete page from your actual history, generated in about twenty seconds, live at a free yourname.joinreach.app subdomain in under two minutes. The copy defaults to first person, correctly, since there's no host standing behind the page — and you edit from there rather than from nothing.

Worth knowing before you lean on it for this specific job: there's no version history in the editor. Saving overwrites the page, so if you want a first-person and a third-person paragraph both on hand — one for the site, one for the next conference that asks for a bio — save the third-person version somewhere else entirely. The page can only ever hold the one you're currently showing.

With that out of the way, back to the question of voice.

Where the third person actually belongs

Third person is correct wherever the words will be read, printed or spoken by someone who is not you. A conference programme is compiled by an organiser who lifts your paragraph next to forty other speakers' paragraphs, under a heading that already says your name — "I lead the platform team" in that slot reads like you elbowed your way onto a page that belongs to the event, not you. A press kit exists so a journalist can paste your background into an article without calling you first; it has to survive being quoted by someone else. A panel moderator reads your bio aloud before you speak, and "please welcome David, who has spent the last decade building..." works as spoken introduction in a way "please welcome David, I have spent..." does not.

The common thread is a host. Somewhere between you and the reader sits a programme committee, a journalist, a moderator — a third party whose job is to introduce you, and whose voice the bio has to be written in because it is, in a real sense, their sentence to say. Third person here is not a style choice. It describes who is talking.

Why it reads as distancing on your own domain

Your personal site has no host. There is no press officer standing between you and the reader, no moderator introducing you before you speak — the person who wrote the "About" section and the person it's about are, visibly, the same person, and everyone landing on the page knows it. Writing "Maria specialises in..." on a domain that is unmistakably Maria's own is not neutral. It implies a spokesperson who does not exist, and the effect is the opposite of the confidence it's reaching for: instead of sounding established, it sounds like someone invented a narrator rather than speak plainly.

There is a simple tell that exposes this the moment you look for it: nobody writes their own contact line in the third person. No site's footer reads "David can be reached at [address]." The moment the copy turns practical — a phone number, an email link, a calendar booking — everyone drops straight back into first person without thinking about it, because there is no host fiction left to maintain once you're telling someone how to actually reach you. If first person is the only voice you'd trust for the sentence that matters most on the page, it was probably the right voice for the rest of it too. The same tell shows up in a newsletter: nobody opens an issue with "David has been thinking about..." — it's "I've been thinking about...", every time, for the same reason.

The "we" problem for a one-person business

There's an adjacent trap that isn't really about person at all — it's about number, and causes the same discomfort for a different reason. A solo consultant or one-person studio writes "we build," "our approach," "the team at [name] believes," when the team is one person and a laptop. "We" sounds more substantial than "I." But the fiction lasts exactly until a client's first real interaction, when they discover one person is answering every email, and the "we" reads, in hindsight, as a small lie told before the relationship started. For a genuine team of two or more, "we" is accurate and should stay. For everyone else, "I" is the true claim, and clients hiring an individual specialist generally want the individual, not the impression of a department.

Keeping two bios, and where each one lives

The practical fix is keeping both, on purpose, and sending each to the place that needs it. A first-person version lives on your own site, your email signature, anything you write yourself — the About page, the contact section, the paragraph under your photo. A third-person version lives where a host is needed: a conference submission form, a press kit, a guest byline, a panel introduction sent to the moderator in advance. Keep both current, because being asked for a bio by an organiser with only the first-person one on hand means a rushed rewrite exactly when you'd rather look prepared. We cover writing the About page itself, not just the bio buried in it, in how to write an about page, and the broader question of which parts of a personal presence need updating versus which can be written once in personal branding without the cringe.

It helps to keep three lengths of each on file rather than writing each one from scratch. About fifty words covers a programme slot or a byline line. About a hundred covers an About page or a LinkedIn summary. About two hundred covers the fuller version a publication sometimes asks for. Here is the same person, same facts, at both lengths and in both voices:

First person, about fifty words

I'm a structural engineer focused on seismic retrofits for mid-rise commercial buildings in the Bay Area. Before going independent I spent six years at a firm doing the same work at larger scale. I write occasionally about retrofit codes and take on a small number of consulting projects each year.

Third person, about fifty words

Maria Chen is a structural engineer specialising in seismic retrofits for mid-rise commercial buildings in the Bay Area. She spent six years at [firm] before going independent, writes occasionally about retrofit codes, and consults on a small number of projects each year.

Notice how little actually changes — the facts, the length, the order. Only the pronoun and the verb agreement move. Write it once in first person, then produce the third-person version by changing what a copy edit would change, not by writing a different, more impressive person.

Whichever tool builds the page, the question stays the same: who is talking. On a form that asks an organiser to introduce you, let it sound like someone else wrote it, because someone else, in a sense, did. On the page with your own name on the address bar, write it the way you'd actually say it out loud, because that's exactly who's there.