Women's Leadership Keynote Speaking

Rayona talks Gender Partnership during a December 2014 keynote speech to a gathering of Diversity and Inclusion managers: “It’s really important for us to see that in 30,000 years of human history, to be at this moment makes what you’re doing the most important work on the planet.” (4 minutes)

Rayona Sharpnack brings passion, business experience, prodigious energy, and humor to every keynote she gives. She can awaken and enliven an audience like no one else, while educating them on issues that stand in their way of leadership, breakthrough change, and Gender Partnership.

Her positivity and intelligence keep listeners engaged while she shares best practices in building Gender Partnership at more than 100 Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and nonprofits over the past 20-plus years.

A natural storyteller, Sharpnack has keynoted over 100 conferences held at venues as various as Harvard, Oracle, Freddie Mac, Canadian and Australian government agencies, Diversity Best Practices, National Association of Female Executives, and Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association.

She adapts each keynote to the needs, profile and industry of her specific audience while educating them about one or more of what she calls “the three legs of the stool,” the elements essential for creating true Gender Partnership in your organization:

Empowering Women For and With Each Other — Addressing gender bias between women and how they can support each other up the leadership ladder

Engaging Men to Advance Women — How men can help women work to their full capacity as leaders — and why they would want to

Removing Institutional Barriers and Blind Spots — Whether gender bias is subtly build into the system or does its damage unconsciously, there is clear path to eliminating it

To book Rayona Sharpnack as your keynote speaker, please contact The Creative Promotions Agency: www.creativepromotionsagency.com
Brian Brady, Agent at 631.335.5470 or brian2527@gmail.com
Mailing Address: 550 W. 45th Street – Suite 2416 – New York, NY 10036

NOTE: Our custom-designed ribbons (left) and buttons (above right) may be ordered for attendees of all Rayona’s keynote events.

In Her Own Words

“Engaging men in the fight for gender equality is the single biggest leverage women have. Men control the power in government, commerce, and academia. When we stop blaming them and start engaging them, we have taken the single biggest step toward full Gender Partnership!”

"Trust is absolutely fundamental to getting anything done. And in organizations, it's one of the biggest issues that people don't talk about, but that impedes progress."

"All our work at IWL is based on enabling breakthrough change, rather than incremental change. We can't just be satisfied with women crawling up the ladder one by one, and saying, 'Well, we got one more woman to the top, working side by side with men.' Give me a break! “We've got millions of transistors on a little piece of silicon you can barely even see. We've got people living on a space station in the distant sky. There's absolutely no reason we can't achieve breakthroughs in the work of Gender Partnership."

"We have a love-hate relationship with success and failure – that is, we love success and we hate failure. We have almost no tolerance for it. But the only way to learn is through failure. That's another one of those 'aha' moments: when you realize people work in organizations that religiously try to reduce the risk of failure, when the only way to grow is through experimentation, practice, and risk."

“For every one courageous female leader who is willing to fight for retribution [for unfair treatment] in the courts, there are a thousand more who walk away in silence. It seems insane that we as a nation are still struggling with the inability to surface and remove both conscious and unconscious forms of discrimination like the ones Ellen Pao revealed at Kleiner Perkins.”