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Rashmi Airan      

AdaptAgility™ & Leadership Speaker; Former Attorney, Finance & Sales Professional, and Felon; Expert on Change, Transformation, Agility, and Dharma Leadership™ to Accelerate Productivity and Competitive Advantage with Resilience

Rashmi Airan is a captivating speaker and consultant with a mission to foster organizational cultures centered around authentic agility. She's an inspirational and motivational keynote speaker with an unparalleled journey that is relatable and deeply applicable to business audiences, who also delivers practical breakouts for leaders on increasing agility, driving accountability, and helping organizations respond to change. Her story transcends the pitfalls of unknowingly making a life-altering decision; it's a tale of leadership, core values, and decision-making, capable of creating a safe haven for courageous and often challenging conversations.

As a first-generation immigrant of Indian descent and the eldest of three daughters, Airan was raised with lofty expectations for achievement. Besides being a devoted mother of two, she excelled as a lawyer, graduating with honors from Columbia Law School. After gaining experience at several major corporations, she embarked on an independent law practice in Miami, Florida. During the housing boom, she was drawn into collaboration with a local real estate developer who later engaged in questionable business practices.

Driven by her desire for financial success and to provide the best life for her children, she developed an ethical blind spot and refrained from questioning her client's actions, despite her inner voice urging her to do so. Her involvement led to a federal prison sentence for bank fraud, along with a multi-million dollar judgment against her future earnings, mandated community service hours, and three years of supervised release.

During her six months in federal prison, Airan found inner peace and self-forgiveness. This life-changing experience humbled her greatly but also imparted invaluable personal and professional lessons. She realized that living with remorse is one thing, but allowing it to define one's identity is another.

Now a "recovering lawyer and investment banker," a female leader, and a community entrepreneur, Airan is an internationally recognized keynote speaker and TEDx presenter. Her clients include prominent organizations such as Coca-Cola, Medtronic, Brown University, Hershey's, the FBI, Sotheby's, MGM Resorts, and Columbia Law School.

Drawing from her extensive legal, business, and community expertise, she shares her compelling story to deliver impactful messages to universities, law firms, corporations, global multinationals, and trade associations. She is determined to use her story as a lens through which to showcase the myriad factors that influence our choices and to advocate for the business discipline essential for sound decision-making. In doing so, she redefines the meaning of success and underscores the importance of agility, human power skills, and authenticity in an ever-evolving global culture.

Airan serves on the Board of Directors for the Overtown Youth Center/Alonzo Mourning Foundation, is an Ambassador for The Key Clubhouse and is a mother of two teenagers. Her inspiring journey instills in each of us the power of radical authentic agility to overcome any obstacle and unleash our human potential.

Speech Topics


RISE Through It™: Thriving in uncertainty through vulnerability

  • Explores how embracing vulnerability can lead to personal and professional growth
  • Teaches strategies for navigating uncertain environments with resilience
  • Demonstrates how to turn challenges into opportunities for innovation and success
  • Shares practical tools from the RISE THROUGH IT Process™ for adapting to change
  • Emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and emotional intelligence in leadership

Unlock Your Competitive Edge with ADAPTAGILITY™

Harness the power of authentic agility

Are you controlled by fear during uncertainty? DON’T JUST REACT TO CHANGE - GET AHEAD OF IT!

Organizations that prioritize agility for inevitable changes experience a 30% increase in productivity and speed leading to a competitive advantage. In today's fast-paced world, being adaptable and agile is crucial for leaders aiming to succeed. With technology advancements, shifting customer expectations, globalization, and more, leaders face a myriad of challenges.

Join Rashmi Airan for an inspirational and thought-provoking speech. Rashmi was an Ivy League-educated attorney whose unexpected journey led her to federal prison after almost 20 years in the finance and legal professional industry. Having conducted years of research and uncovering pivotal points in her career, Rashmi has collaborated with Fortune 100 and 500 companies including Comcast, Coca-Cola, Cardinal Health, Hershey’s, Sotheby’s, and Merck.

Airan sheds light on the transformative power of agility. She explores how embracing change requires a conscious effort to remain present, open-minded, and energized in the face of uncertainty. Through her narrative, she humanizes the struggles we all face, emphasizing the importance of empathy, resilience, and self-reflection. Don't miss this exclusive opportunity to glean wisdom from Airan's extraordinary journey. Join Rashmi as she dismantles barriers and judgments, challenges preconceptions, and fosters a culture of grit and acceptance in the corporate sphere.

With AdaptAgility™, each person will be equipped to embrace change as opportunities, not threats. Airan's A.G.I.L.I.T.Y.™ framework is ideal for future-proofing your people and organization.

AUDIENCE OUTCOMES:

  • Develop an AdaptAgility™ Mindset - Overcome the tendency to cling to the status quo and get blindsided by disruption. An AdaptAgility™ mindset prevents being made obsolete by change.
  • Build Cognitive Flexibility - Combat siloed thinking and unlock new innovative solutions when faced with complex, unprecedented challenges that require creative problem-solving.
  • Cultivate Resilience Capacity - Prevent burnout and retain top talent by equipping people with resilience skills to thrive amidst constant flux without compromising wellbeing.
  • Embed Agile Behaviors - Increase speed-to-market and reduce overhead by eliminating bureaucracy and waterfall processes that can't keep up with evolving customer needs.
  • Create an A.G.I.L.I.T.Y. Action Plan - Translate agility from just a buzzword to operationalizing concrete habits organization-wide to futureproof your competitive fitness.

DHARMA Leadership™: Aligning Your Actions with Your Core

Foster impact authentically

In a world where we are all silently struggling with the evolution of technology and disruption, today's top talents are grappling with issues of identity, purpose, and relevance affecting employee engagement, impacting turnover, and lowering the overall performance of the business.

Drawing from almost 20 years as a finance and legal professional and years of research in behavioral psychology combined with collaborations with renowned companies like Coca-Cola, Cardinal Health, Sotheby’s, and Hershey’s, Airan has dug deep into the complexities of this challenge. Deloitte has even highlighted the transformative power and relatability of her journey. Airan's life-changing adversity from an Ivy League education to federal prison led her to develop her framework for Dharma Leadership™.

Airan fuses courageous candor with tangible insights and inspiring stories to help leaders and teams transcend the technologically siloed world and emerge as teams empowered for business growth.

Creating Awareness helps us get clear about “WHO we are” not “WHAT we do.” Awareness is the foundation of leadership, igniting change, fostering inclusivity, and unlocking thriving, top-talent communities. It is the linchpin for achieving a better quality of life and a competitive edge in business performance and sales.

Each participant will be inspired and acutely aware of how to unlock the Power of Awareness, not Achievement, catalyzing collaboration, and exponential business growth.

AUDIENCE OUTCOMES

  • Cultivate culture: Bolster employee engagement for improved business performance with a competitive advantage.
  • Maximize Individual Potential: Discover techniques to enhance your team or organization's performance through awareness, empowering members to realize their utmost potential and achieve superior outcomes.
  • Shift Towards Dharma Leadership™ focused on Awareness: Pinpoint the critical adjustments needed in your leadership style to adopt a more people-focused approach, meeting the evolving demands of employees and knowledge workers.
  • Shape and Influence Organizational Culture: Investigate ways to mold and steer the culture within your organization, creating coherence and securing emotional investment in a shared, forward-looking vision.
  • Strengthen Empowerment and Collective Ambition: Grasp the importance of empowering team members towards a collective goal. Learn techniques to instill a sense of shared mission, fostering dedication to a unified objective.
  • Define Your Leadership Vision and Strategy: Craft a personalized Dharma Leadership™ Vision and Strategy, providing a distinct framework for proactive leadership and purpose-driven action.

Opposites Attract: The Power of Turning Enemies into Allies

Driving Sales and Growth through Relationships

Customers and employees are struggling with the prevalence of technology and the lack of the human touch, leading to worsening turnover, and lower sales affecting business performance entirely. Establishing relationships is a cornerstone of sales and business growth, reflecting the fundamental principle that people prefer to do business with those they know, like, and trust. This concept underscores not just a transactional interaction but a relational dynamic that can significantly impact the bottom line and long-term success of a business.

Join us for an extraordinary presentation where Rashmi Airan, a former federal defendant, and Joseph Capone, the former federal prosecutor who investigated her case, come together to share their incredible journey. Airan's transformative experience has inspired her to become a corporate motivational speaker, fearlessly spreading wisdom about decision-making and leadership. Despite their past adversities, Rashmi and Joe have developed a unique bond built on mutual respect and continuous growth.

Get ready for an engaging discussion as Joe provides his prosecutorial perspective on the case, focusing on key moments of decision-making. Collaborating now as allies, Joe and Rashmi will lead an interactive conversation, offering valuable insights into how adversaries can become allies. Their story is living proof that transformation and reconciliation are possible, leading to a relationship unimaginable several years ago.

The importance of establishing relationships in sales and business cannot be overstated. It's a strategy that pays dividends not just in increased sales and business growth, but in building a sustainable, reputable, and resilient business that stands the test of time.

AUDIENCE OUTCOMES:

  1. Embrace Transformation: Learn from Airan's journey from attorney to federal defendant to motivational speaker.
  2. Foster Understanding: Discover how adversarial relationships can evolve into alliances.
  3. Empower Change: Gain insights on decision-making and leadership from the collaboration between former adversaries.
  4. Establish the power of relationships and drive sales and growth through specific skills.

News


Deloitte | A Cautionary Tale on Ethics
Rashmi Airan graduated from Columbia Law School with honors, worked for several major law firms and corporations, and by 2004, was the managing partner of the law firm she founded. On December 19, 2014, she pled guilty to a general conspiracy count in federal court.
The Washington Post | I was a wealthy suburban woman. Then I went to federal prison for bank fraud.
In prison, I learned this very basic fact: I am human. Humans make mistakes. It’s through my mistakes and losing my freedom, I found the courage to be vulnerable and real. I shifted my definition of success from accolades, grades and status to creating authentic relationships and helping others. I’m no longer scared to show my true self. I’m raw all the time.

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