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Anjali Kumar  

Advisor, Author, Attorney, Angel Investor & Idea Acupuncturist; Former General Counsel at Cheddar, Warby Parker, Acumen & Google

Anjali Kumar is an advisor, author, attorney, speaker, angel investor, idea acupuncturist. She works with entrepreneurs and C-level executives in all stages of business, focusing on early-stage tech, consumer products, and luxury fashion companies with a social conscience. She recently founded an advisory firm focusing on legal counsel and business strategy for entrepreneurs, executives, talent, and brands.

Prior to that, Kumar was the Founding Chief People Officer and General Counsel at Cheddar, the Founding Head of Social Innovation and Founding General Counsel at Warby Parker, Founding General Counsel at Acumen, and Senior Counsel at Google.

While at Google, she curated and hosted the @Google Speaker Series on the NYC campus, bringing Googlers from around the globe face-to-face with today’s most prominent and innovative thought leaders including Anthony Bourdain, Questlove, and Jacques Pépin and hosted a YouTube interview series “Lunchtime at Google.”

Her 2017 TED Talk based on her book "Stalking God: My Unorthodox Search For Something To Believe In," has been watched by over 4 million people around the world and translated into over twenty languages.

She earned her BA in Biomedical Ethics from Brown University and a JD from Boston University School of Law. She is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School and Fordham University and continues to advise non-profit organizations including Malala Fund and IDEO.org.

In 2016, she was appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio to join the NYC Children’s Cabinet Advisory Board and the board of directors of GrowNYC. Anjali currently serves on the board of directors of Happy Money, IFundWomen, Women's World Banking, Amplifier, Edible Schoolyard NYC, POV, GloScience Professional, and the Guggenheim Museum’s Global Innovation Council.

Speech Topics

Anjali’s lectures often deal with question around innovation and diversity. As an “idea acupuncturist” Anjali brings a spiritual approach to the business world. She doesn’t give black or white answers to businesses or problems, she looks at a se of issues and works on pressure points using different interventions to help keep the energy flowing into an idea or business. Anjali had been featured as a keynote speaker at TEDX, Seattle Interactive Conference, The Connecticut Forum, and Diane von Furstenberg’s International Women’s Day Speaker Series. She has participated in fireside chats with Danny Meyer (Union Square Hospitality Forum), Ezra Klein (Washington Post), and Neil Blumenthal (Co-CEO/Founder of Warby Parker). In November 2017 she spoke at TEDWomen. Her “beautiful inspiring, and funny” talk “My Failed Mission To Find God - And What I Found Instead”, based on her book Stalking God: My Unorthodox Search For Something To Believe In, has been watched by over 2 million people around the world and translated into over a dozen languages.

Anjali’s talks also deal with redirecting the conversation around diversity and gender equality in the workplace by embracing ideas of non-absolutism. Anjali wants to stop framing diversity in the business from a moral obligation and start thinking about diversity as an untapped and proven means for businesses to increase creativity, jumpstart innovation, and produce higher revenues.

News

A Tale of Two New Yorks: Those Who Left During the Pandemic ...
Anjali Kumar was in New York on September 11, 2001. The adviser to tech start- ups and her husband, a doctor, lived right next to the World Trade Center on ...

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