The Future of Work Isn't Happening to Us.

We Get to Build It.

You already know something is broken. I'm here to help your audience name it, claim their power, and leave ready to act.

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Featured In.

 
 

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, disengagement, the DEI rollback, the quiet quitting discourse, the return-to-office battles: these aren't separate problems. They're symptoms of a single, solvable one. Workers have been cut out of the conversation about work itself.

I've spent 15 years building at the intersection of equity, data, and organizational change. Launching companies, growing movements, and doing the unglamorous work of helping organizations understand what it actually costs to treat people as resources instead of humans. I bring that experience to every stage I step on.

My talks don't offer comfort. They offer clarity and a way forward.

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 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

Who Aparna Speaks With

For 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, Business Insider, Inside Philanthropy.

For 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.

For Philanthropic 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 speak at conferences, corporate events, foundation convenings, ERG programs, and leadership summits, and I work closely with every organizer to make sure the content lands for your specific audience and moment. No plug-and-play talks. Every session is built for the room it's going into.

If you're ready to bring a different kind of conversation to your stage, I'd love to hear from you.

Tell me about your event using the form and I'll be in touch within 48 hours.

Seattle, WA | Global

Aparna Rae giving a presentation at an event, standing in front of a large circular sign that reads 'Wohl'. She is dressed in a dark outfit, holding papers, and wearing heels. There is a small table with a vase of flowers and a chair nearby.
Aparna Rae, a woman in a black dress speaking into a microphone in a modern room with large windows, while an audience of four people sits on a white couch and a bench, listening.
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