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Dr Tina Opie Featured Professor Author DEI
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Available for

Keynotes, Workshops and Trainings, Virtual Presentations, Webinars, Fireside Chats, Panelist, Moderator

Fee Ranges

Domestic In-Person (USA): $30,000 – $35,000*
International In-Person: $50,000*
Virtual: $25,000*

* Ranges are presented as a guideline only. Speaker fees vary by engagement type and are subject to change without notice. For an exact quote, please contact Gravity Speakers.


Traveling From

Massachussets, USA

Tags: Communication / Diversity & Inclusion / Education / Emcees & Moderators / Team Building / Leadership / Motivational / Social Change & Issues

About

Dr. Tina Opie is a voice for change—and coalition building— fostering a sense of inclusion in society, communities, and organizations. As a thought leader and provoker, she combines practice and theory, an approach that ensures engagement, deep thinking, and action.

Using her trademarked Shared Sisterhood framework, she helps individuals and organizations “dig in” and unearth our blind spots, providing a catalyst for new thinking—and needed change. In developing Shared Sisterhood, Opie has created more than a powerful approach for connecting and supporting each other, she’s fostering a new way of navigating the world by staying true to ourselves while working together. It’s a modern-day movement of individuality and sisterhood that crosses traditional boundaries of ethnicity, socio-economics, age, even gender.

An Associate Professor of Management at Babson College, Opie has been recently named a visiting scholar at Harvard Business School following her MLK Visiting Professor/Scholar position at MIT (2020-2021). Her speaking and consulting work has helped organizations including American Express, Hulu, the NFL and dozens more navigate forward toward more inclusive organizations. She is a regular commentator on Harvard Business Review’s Women at Work podcast and Greater Boston’s NPR affiliate television station WGBH. Her work has appeared in top national publications, from the Harvard Business Review and O Magazine to The Washington Post, Boston Globe and more. Look for Tina’s book, Shared Sisterhood, co-authored with Dr. Beth Livingston and published by Harvard Business Press, in Fall 2022. Opie obtained her Ph.D. in Management (with a concentration in organizational behavior) in 2010 from New York University’s Stern School of Business; she earned her MBA from the Darden School of Business in 1999.

Topics

Shared Siterhood is All-Inclusive; That's What Makes It Powerful

Shared Sisterhood is not just the business of women. It’s for all of us. When organizations or teams narrow the conversation, they are limiting the potential of what Shared Sisterhood offers. In this “All-Inclusive” session, Tina provides the Shared Sisterhood framework and, importantly, shares effective ways for galvanizing all in the organization to become part of the effort. With a deeper understanding and appreciation for foundational elements, she identifies specific ways to foster them, ensuring leaders and their organizations are poised to move forward faster together.

BEST FOR (Audience):

  • General audience – employees/talent committed to an inclusive culture
  • Leaders/organizations invested in gender/equity initiatives
  • Leadership and development professionals

She Will Need Her Sisterhood; Start with These Building Blocks

Shared Sisterhood is about coalition-building, a potentially powerful remedy for workplace gender inequity. Too often, “women’s issues” and efforts around gender equity are conflated as if all within the cohort face identical challenges. This is a false premise—but holds the hope. Uniting women across their differences, including the very salient racio-ethnic differences that exist among women within diverse companies, can be a powerful and attainable way to collectively drive change. For the process (and promise) of Shared Sisterhood to take hold, trust, vulnerability, empathy and risk-taking, both individually and collectively are required. Understanding these essential building blocks and being intentional about them is a critical, often overlooked step. Even the most inclusive organizations miss it. Tina takes you through the process of starting and building toward a culture of inclusion that is more sustainable for all.

BEST FOR (Audience):

  • Women in leadership events, ERGs
  • Leaders/organizations invested in gender/equity initiatives who feel like they’ve reached a plateau
  • Leadership and development professionals

Bias & Blind Spots; Helping Even the Most Inclusive organizations Tackle What’s in Plain Sight

While no leader sets out to marginalize or disenfranchise a member of the team, the truth is it happens. Often, the reason is right there, in plain sight. Identifying the patterns and processes within organizations that undermine inclusion efforts is Tina’s focus. She’ll walk you through key areas to examine—observing power patterns, considerations of “fit”, appearance policies and norms, definitions of “difficult” and more. And help you focus on the areas that too often undermine your efforts, including performance management metrics and HR policies encouraging competitiveness and aggression versus teamwork and cooperation. You’ll emerge with a lens for identifying potential issues before they become ingrained practices, along with ways to address and dismantle processes that may be in place.

BEST FOR (Audience):

  • Senior leaders in all industries
  • Diversity and inclusion committees, leaders
  • Leadership and development professionals​

Mind & Muscle; Thinking Deeply, Acting with Intent, Fostering Connections

This is a very personal journey—digging into individual thoughts and actions. Tina’s starting point is trust and empathy. Trust is focused on how confident we are with the words, actions, and decisions of another person; for it to deepen it is grounded in reciprocated interpersonal care. Empathy focuses on “other-oriented” or feelings of concern for others. Vulnerability and risk come next. How susceptible are you willing to be for the negative consequences of actions you undertake on behalf of another? Are others willing to take a chance on failure or rejection on your behalf? Together, these four elements are the foundation for authentic emotional interactions. Instead of competition in which individuals seek to maximize their own utility, Tina helps foster a climate for cooperation and co-empowerment. In “Mind & Muscle” she helps tune both our minds and muscles to be open to connections and community.

BEST FOR (Audience):

  • Women in leadership events, ERGs
  • Leaders/organizations invested in gender/equity initiatives who feel like they’ve reached a plateau
  • Leadership and development professionals

Dr. Opie’s Shared Sisterhood framework provides the “scaffolding” many people require to reflect, dig deeper, and connect.

In the classroom inspiring future leaders, in the board room as a trusted C-suite advisor, onstage, the “Opie difference” is clear.

Tina will meet with you to dive into your goals and audience profile, to discover what’s truly needed. And then she’ll tailor her remarks to hit your mark.

Videos

Articles

Books

Testimonials

  • Dr. Opie—Tina—opened our first Annual Women’s Leadership conference with extraordinary energy, honesty, humor and realness. Tina’s deeply personal, authoritative, lets-be-straight-here stance captivated our audience and set the tone for the day, of personal sharing, of vulnerability, and of combining heart, mind, and spirit to solve deeply intractable problems in new ways. Tina is a brilliant speaker: profoundly knowledgeable, personal, captivating, and truly engaging with audiences. Our group of over 400 wished for more, and we are inviting her back to open our conference again this year. Any group will be lucky to have Dr. Opie speak to them. Dr. Kisten Olson Conference Planner & Sister of Ceremonies
  • I garnered the most information from Dr. Opie's discussion. What really stood out to me, and something I actually repeated to one of my colleagues that day was the action item where she stated that we should write down what we're going to let go of and walk towards what we're going to do. I feel that in my current situation, professionally, I've been holding on to a lot of things that I need to let go, and help the organization walk towards what we need to do next. I think its critical that in a fight or flight situation, you pick the side and stick to it. I've often waivered in that arena. Dr. Opie's words resonated with me, whereby I was able to put that phrase into action with my strategic planner the next morning. Workshop Attendee Executive Leadership Academy

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