Melinda Briana Epler
TED speaker, diversity and inclusion advocate, and leader building inclusive innovation around the world.
Melinda Briana Epler has over 25 years of experience elevating brands and developing business innovation strategies for startups, Fortune 500 companies, and global NGOs. As CEO of Empovia (formerly Change Catalyst), Melinda is a strategic diversity, equity, and inclusion advisor for executives, entrepreneurs, investors, and activists around the world. Her popular TED talk “3 Ways to Be a Better Ally in the Workplace” reached one million views in the first 24 days of its release. She is also the host of the popular podcast series “Leading With Empathy & Allyship.”
Melinda’s Speaking Topics
Melinda Briana Epler has spoken on hundreds of stages globally. She speaks at all-hands events, executive and leadership retreats, team offsites, industry conferences, and startup programs. Whether in-person or remote, her keynote sessions are informative and interactive. Melinda’s speaking topics include:
2 Leading With Empathy & Allyship
3 Leading With Empathy
4 Becoming an Inclusive Leader
5 How to Build Allies
6 Deepening Allyship Actions Through Microaffirmations
7 Recognizing & Interrupting Microaggressions
8 How to Be an Ally for LGBTQIA+ Folks
9 How to Be an Ally for Women in the Workplace
10 Custom topics: I’m happy to create a custom keynote
We design customized learning and development solutions that integrate with your current strategy and culture and meet people where they are to drive individual and organizational change.
Click the + on the headings below to view our training offerings.
- Leading With Empathy & Allyship for Executives
- Inclusive Leadership Skills: Understanding the Stages of Inclusion and a leader’s role in building psychological safety, fostering engagement, and creating a culture where everyone is supported and feels they belong.
- Inclusive Leadership Series: A series of workshops built for executives to deepen their understanding of their role in diversity, equity, and inclusion and put inclusive leadership skills into practice. Building self-awareness, curiosity, courage, cultural intelligence, collaboration, and mutual accountability for creating an inclusive organization.
- Custom Workshops: We often create custom learning experiences for executive teams based on specific topics leaders are interested in exploring.
- Leading With Empathy & Allyship for People Leaders (Top Request)
- Building Inclusive Teams (Top Request)
- Cultural Intelligence for Leaders
- Creating an Inclusive Hiring Experience
- Building Psychological Safety on Your Team
- Strengthening Engagement & Belonging on Your Team
- DEI Foundations for Supervisors
- Running Inclusive Meetings
- A Leader’s Role in Understanding & Correcting Biases
- Recognizing & Overcoming Microaggressions for Leaders
- Interrupting Microaggressions for Leaders
- Custom Workshops
- How to Be an Ally (Top Request)
- Recognizing & Overcoming Microaggressions (Top Request)
- Interrupting Microaggressions
- Understanding & Correcting Biases
- Building Cultural Intelligence
- Custom Workshops
- Leading With Empathy & Allyship for Investors
- Supporting Founders With Underrepresented Identities
Work With Melinda
Melinda leads an intersectionally diverse team that works with our clients to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion across all genders, races, ethnicities, LGBTQIA+, disabilities, ages, religions, regions, and intersectionalities. Our goal is to help you create a welcoming and psychologically safe company for people of all backgrounds and identities, where diverse teams feel engaged, committed, and work together to build a sense of belonging for all.
Our work is data- and research-based, combining behavioral science, organizational change management, systems design, and radical inclusion. Rather than out-of-the-box solutions, we develop customized programming that integrates with your current strategy and culture and meets people where they are.
person at a time, one
act at a time, one
word at a time.
“How To Be An Ally” Available to Purchase
