VM
Vernā Myers
Founder and CEO of The Vernā Myers Company and Former VP of Inclusion Strategy at Netflix
Risha Grant
Founder and CEO of Risha Grant LLC and Author of Be Better Than Your BS
Bias · Radical Acceptance · Workplace Culture
Speaking Fee
Fee on request
Based In
United States
Signature Topic
Radical Acceptance
Format
Keynote and Workshop
About Risha
Risha Grant is the most direct speaker on this roster, and that is the reason to book her rather than a caveat about her.
Be Better Than Your BS, a Wall Street Journal bestseller published in 2023, is built on the premise that the belief systems people carry into work are not neutral, were mostly inherited rather than chosen, and quietly decide who gets hired, promoted, interrupted and believed. Her argument is that these cannot be trained away by a session on definitions, because they are not an information problem. What she teaches instead is radical acceptance, which starts with an honest inventory of one's own inherited assumptions rather than an audit of everyone else's.
She has spent twenty-five years doing this work and runs Risha Grant LLC, an award-winning diversity consulting, communications and speaking firm. Her clients include Google, Levi Strauss and Harvard University, and her work has been covered by Forbes, Harvard Business Review and Bloomberg Media. She has been named one of the ten most powerful women in human resources.
She draws openly on her own life in the sessions, which is what keeps the material from becoming an abstraction and what gives an audience permission to be equally unguarded.
The register is the differentiator. Where a research-led session suits an analytical room and a journalistic one suits a room that wants to listen, hers suits an organization that has already had the polite version of this conversation several times and has nothing to show for it. It is delivered as a keynote and frequently as a keynote plus a workshop, since the inventory she asks for takes longer than a stage session allows.
Keynote Topics
Be Better Than Your BS: Confronting Inherited Bias
Radical Acceptance as a Workplace Practice
Why Diversity Training Keeps Failing
Building a Culture Where People Stop Performing
Best For
- Organizations whose previous inclusion efforts stalled
- Company-wide culture and belonging events
- Leadership and manager development programs
- HR, talent and people function conferences
- Employee resource group and ERG summits
Booking Risha Grant: Frequently Asked Questions
What is Risha Grant's speaking fee?
Risha Grant's fee is not published here and is quoted per event. It is driven by event date, location and travel, session length, and whether a workshop, leader session or consulting follow-up is added to the keynote. Submit an inquiry with your date and audience size for a current quote and availability.
What is radical acceptance?
A practice that starts with an honest inventory of the beliefs a person carries into work, most of which were inherited rather than chosen, before any attempt to change how they treat others. The order matters: an audit of everyone else's assumptions is the version that changes nothing.
Is the session confrontational?
It is direct, and that is deliberate. Organizations tend to book it after the polite version of the conversation has been held several times without result. The directness is aimed at the ideas people are carrying rather than at individuals in the room.
Is a workshop needed or is the keynote enough?
The keynote works on its own to change the terms of the conversation. The inventory the material asks for takes longer than a stage session allows, so a keynote plus a workshop is the more common booking where the goal is behavior rather than a shared vocabulary.
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Risha Grant
Founder and CEO of Risha Grant LLC and Author of Be Better Than Your BS
Fee on request
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