Tina Opie
Tina Opie on Racist Messages Resurfacing
Tina Opie
Keynote Speaker
Founder, Shared Sisterhood; Visiting Scholar, Harvard Business School
Dr. Tina Opie is catalyzing organizational change through authentic, personal connections. Her unique approach and expertise provides strategic direction on how to effectively lead change management creating a more inclusive, diverse, and equitable workplace. She tackles tough subjects with high-energy, warmth, and humor. Her expertise is highly sought-out by top executives and Fortune 500 companies.
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Tina Opie'S SPEAKING FEE $25K - $40K
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, sisterhood and collective action that crosses historical boundaries of racioethnicity, socio-economics, age, and 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 (2019-2021). 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 she has been published in multiple top academic journals. 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.
Featured Videos
Tina Opie
Tina Opie on Her Research on Race and Appearance in the Workplace
Tina Opie
Tina Opie on Shared Sisterhood
Tina Opie
Tina Opie on Professionalism in the Workplace
Tina Opie
Tina Opie and Beth Livingston on Being Ready to Challenge Racism
Tina Opie
Tina Opie on the Tactics of Empathy and Cancel Culture
Tina Opie
Tina Opie on Racist Messages Resurfacing
Tina Opie’s Speech Topics
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Shared Sisterhood Is All-Inclusive—That’s What Makes It All-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, Dr. Tina Opie will provide the framework and, importantly, effective ways for galvanizing all in the organization to become part of the effort. This is the ideal exchange for exploring ways to navigate employees’ desire to become stronger allies to their underrepresented colleagues.
Best for (Audience):
- General – employees committed to an inclusive culture
- Leaders and organizations invested in gender and equity initiatives
- Leadership and development professionals
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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/orgs invested in gender/equity initiatives who feel like they’ve plateaued
- Leadership and development professionals
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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 engrained 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
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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):
- Senior leaders, Women in leadership events, ERGs
- Leaders/orgs invested in gender/equity initiatives who feel like they’ve plateaued
- Leadership and development professionals
Works by Tina Opie
Speaker Topics & Types
- Activist Speakers
- Black Female Speakers
- Black History Month Speakers
- Black Motivational Speakers
- Business Speakers
- Business Consulting Speakers
- Change Management Speakers
- Communication Speakers
- Corporate Culture Speakers
- Diversity & Inclusion Speakers
- Education Speakers
- Gender Equality Speakers
- Human Resources (HR) Speakers
- Leadership Speakers
- Motivational Speakers
- Overcoming Adversity Speakers
- Professors
- Public Speakers
- Teamwork Speakers
- Virtual Speakers
- Motivational Women Speakers
- Women Leadership Speakers
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