Most organizations don't have a culture problem.

Organizations have a power problem.

I help progressive leaders name it - and build something better.

Keynote speaker, workshop facilitator, and leadership retreat designer. I work with HR conferences, philanthropic foundations, and Fortune 1000 leadership teams who are done decorating broken workplaces and ready to build democratic ones.

Let's Chat

A New Conversation About Work, Power, and What's Possible

The workplace is in crisis and not for the reasons most conference panels want to discuss. Burnout, the DEI rollback, quiet quitting, the return-to-office battles: these aren't separate problems. They're symptoms of a single structural failure. Workers have been cut out of the conversation about work itself.

I've spent 15 years at the intersection of equity, data, and organizational change — founding three companies, building a movement of 20,000 women of color, and helping organizations understand what it actually costs when you treat people as resources instead of humans. My work draws on the research, not the rhetoric. When I walk off a stage, people leave with a framework they can use on Monday morning, not just a feeling.

Audiences leave knowing:

  • Worker solidarity isn't a threat to organizational health - it is organizational health.

  • The future of work is not an abstract trend. It's something workers, leaders, and institutions can actively shape, right now.

  • Workplaces that operate as autocracies don't produce democratic citizens. The stakes extend far beyond the office.

  • There are concrete, immediate actions every person in the room can take - regardless of their title.

Keynote Topics & Workshop Themes

  • A half-day or full-day offsite experience for senior leadership teams

    Most leadership retreats produce a slide deck and a values poster. This one produces a different kind of leadership team. Over a half or full day, we do the structural work most organizations avoid: naming the actual power dynamics in the room, examining what the unwritten rules of this team actually are, and building the shared language and practice that makes real change possible when everyone goes back to their desks.

    This is not a team-building exercise. It's a reckoning — and a blueprint.

    Format: Half-day (3.5 hrs) or full-day (6 hrs) | maximum 20 participants | available remotely or in person

    Designed for: Senior leadership teams at foundations, nonprofits, and mission-driven organizations navigating culture challenges, leadership transitions, or strategic inflection points.

  • A keynote on worker power, solidarity, and the future of organizing

    We don't have a workforce problem. We have a power problem. CEOs meet at Davos. They're in the same golf clubs, on the same boards, in the same group chats. They are deeply, deliberately organized — and they move in lockstep. Meanwhile, workers have been told that looking out for themselves means going it alone. This talk dismantles that myth and makes the case for a new kind of solidarity: one that lives inside Fortune 500 companies, inside ERGs, inside HR departments, and inside every worker who has ever been told their concerns are a "culture fit" issue.

    Format: 45–60 min keynote | available as half-day workshop

  • A keynote on organizational power, civic health, and why what happens at work doesn't stay at work

    You cannot build an autocracy in the workplace and a pluralistic democracy outside of it. The way organizations treat workers — the concentration of power, the suppression of dissent, the punishment of collective action — is not just a business ethics issue. It is a civic one. This talk connects the dots between workplace power structures, democratic participation, and the kind of society we're building, one org chart at a time. It's the talk that HR professionals won't hear anywhere else — and that foundations investing in democracy, civic health, and economic equity have been waiting for.

    Format: 30–45 min keynote | available as workshop with structured dialogue

  • A keynote on structural equity, worker agency, and what real inclusion requires

    Women of color are not a pipeline problem, a representation metric, or a CSR talking point. They are the most educated, fastest-growing, and chronically undervalued segment of the American workforce. This talk draws on Aparna's decade of building platforms and communities for women of color at work — including Future for Us, which grew to 20,000 members in 18 months — to show what happens when organizations stop performing inclusion and start practicing it. Candid, data-grounded, and unapologetically direct.

    Format: 30–60 min keynote | workshop + facilitation available

LET'S TALK

Leadership Retreats & Off-sites

If you're planning a leadership retreat or offsite for Q3 or Q4 2026, I have a small number of spots available. Every retreat is designed from scratch for the specific team — there's no slide deck I pull from a drawer.

What I bring: a structural analysis of your team's power dynamics, a facilitation practice grounded in dignity and real accountability, and the kind of honest conversation that most leadership teams haven't had in years.

Interested? Tell me what you're building and when. I'll tell you if I can help.

Who Aparna Speaks With

HR & People Conferences

Your attendees are exhausted from being handed frameworks. They want a speaker who will be honest about what's actually happening in organizations - and what leaders can do about it. Aparna brings the rare combination of operator credibility (she's built companies), data fluency, and the kind of candor that fills post-keynote hallways with the conversations that should have been happening on stage.

She's spoken on platforms including SXSW, and been featured in the publications your attendees read: Forbes, Inc, Geekwire, Business Insider, Inside Philanthropy.

Employee Resource Groups at Fortune 1000 Companies

ERG members don't need another motivational talk. They need a framework, a vocabulary, and the kind of urgency that turns a lunch-and-learn into a movement inside their organization. Aparna has spent years building community with and for women of color in corporate environments - she knows what ERG members are navigating, and she meets them there.

Her sessions are interactive, honest, and leave participants with both a new way of seeing their situation and a specific set of actions they can take this week.

Foundations & Social Impact Organizations

If your foundation works on economic equity, democracy, worker rights, gender justice, or the future of work - Aparna's thinking belongs in your convenings. She speaks the language of systems change without losing the urgency of immediate action. She connects structural analysis to practical intervention. And she does it in a way that energizes rooms full of people who have heard every version of this conversation and are hungry for a new one.

Her work has been featured in Inside Philanthropy, SOCAP, and she has built organizations that operationalize the very frameworks she speaks about.

Let’s Connect.

I work closely with every organizer and team before we step into the room together. No plug-and-play talks — every session is built for the specific audience, moment, and room it's going into.

If you're booking for a conference, foundation convening, or leadership retreat — tell me what you're building. I'll respond within 48 hours.

hello@aparnarae.com or use the form.

Seattle, WA | Global

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