Jenna Arnold Profile Photo

Jenna Arnold

Keynote Speaker

Bestselling Author, Raising Our Hands ; Activist, Nat’l Organizer of the Women’s March; Education and Media Specialist at the United Nations

Jenna Arnold was named by Oprah as one of her “100 Awakened Leaders who are using their voice and talent to elevate humanity.”

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Jenna Arnold'S SPEAKING FEE Under $25,000

Jenna Arnold Profile Photo

Jenna Arnold is an activist, best-selling author, political contributor, and entrepreneur… but prefers her favorite former title: first-grade teacher.

Though her platform has transitioned from the classroom to national news as a cultural and political contributor on CNN, MSNBC, and FOX, Jenna is often asked to escort audiences through the most intimidating and controversial subjects of our time. Her ability to simplify complexity lures audiences to her social media feeds and places her on the world’s most influential stages as she seamlessly connects all that’s happening in the world with the insecure dialogue folks seem to constantly have with themselves.

She is known in newsrooms, classrooms, and back-back rooms of government buildings as the cultural interpreter who can gently crystalize exactly what’s happening for all invested stakeholders.

Jenna has her finger on the pulse of the American identity and is not shy to tell you where and how we can snap out of our current apathy toward the headlines and find our way back to each other. She is one of the few voices publicly forcing the overdue paradigm shift around economic theory, geopolitics, and globalization. For this exact reason, Oprah named Jenna as one of her “100 Awakened Leaders who are using their voice and talent to elevate humanity”. She has been called a “disruptor” in every industry in which she has dabbled from elementary school classrooms to halls of the United Nations, MTV, and the White House. Her recent book, Raising Our Hands was released on a number of best seller lists and was lauded as “one of the few privileged voices we should be reading right now” by Porchlight.

For her work as one of the Nat’l Organizers of the 2017 Women’s March, Jenna was recognized with a Glamour Women of the Year Award. Jenna is an impact investment analyst at ClimateAlpha, an AI-powered analytics forecasting platform, and was the Chief Impact Officer at Rethink Capital Partners where she developed and launched innovative strategies related to social and environmental solutions.

She is the Co-Founder of ORGANIZE, a non-profit focused on increasing organ transplant equity in the US. Their work has spanned three administrations and most recently led to a $67M modernization of the outdated system increasing transplants by more than 10,000 a year and saving Medicare at least $1 billion in dialysis costs annually. Under Jenna’s direction, ORGANIZE produced advocacy campaigns which the New York Times called one of the year’s “Biggest Ideas in Social Change”, built the first centralized organ donor registry, and was an Innovator in Residence in the Office of the Secretary in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which led to groundbreaking research. 

Previously, Jenna was the Executive Producer and Creator of one of MTV’s hit TV shows, ‘Exiled!’ which took privileged American teenagers to live with indigenous cultures around the world. While at the United Nations she helped create multi-platform programming for MTV and Showtime with A-list celebrities like Jay-Z and Angelina Jolie.

Jenna received a graduate degree from Columbia University’s Teachers College in International Education Development and BS.Edu and a minor in astrophysics from the University of Miami. She has taught in many countries with a laser focus on citizenship education and has authored more than a dozen different curricula on the subject.

Jenna sits on a number of boards, including the Sesame Workshop Leadership Council and the Africa Mission Hospital Foundation. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is an emeritus World Economic Forum’s Global Shaper.

She lives between the swing-county suburbs of Philadelphia and New York City with her husband and two children…who are anti-sleep.

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Jenna Arnold’s Speech Topics

  • Workshop: Navigating Difficult & Courageous Conversations

    This presentation is for anybody who has been avoiding a hard, complicated, but oh-so-urgent conversation. The world we live in seems to be increasingly focused on the things that divide us. Many of us find ourselves either arguing unproductively or completely avoiding issues that deeply impact ourselves and our companies. We are more informed and technologically connected now than ever before, yet our ability to have open, honest, and respectful dialogue across differing perspectives and opinions seems increasingly more at risk.


    In this interactive discussion, participants will:

    1. Identify the specific conversations you need to have, and with whom
    2. What is getting in your way of engaging in the conversation and
    3. The turn key tools to have those conversations PRODUCTIVELY


    This session will be the first step in navigating confrontation, defusing defensiveness, and finding common ground in shared values for a lifelong practice of courage and skill to get you to a place of deeper meaning and performance. As Margaret Wheatly says, “Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters”…and that’s you and this is how.

  • Workshop: Make Space for Everyone: Building Community and Channeling Allyship

    Everyone is longing to be a part of a community, yet, we’re all largely existing in a culture of distrust. We’re told we have to meet certain thresholds to “fit in” or be qualified to be considered for inclusion. Consequently, companies and people miss huge opportunities to maximize potential without the training to conquer the “not good enough” messages we constantly receive.


    The emphasis on “individualism” vs the reward of “collectivism” is a myth that keeps so many on the sidelines and silenced.


    In this workshop we’ll create strategies to create authentic communities:

    1. Developing healthy symbiotic mentor/mentee relationships
    2. Identify the barriers to authentic relationships in the workplace
    3. How to build and sustain spaces where everyone feels seen
    4. Increase your, and other’s, resilience when messages of unworthiness surface
  • Activate Your Power: How to Be Allies to Ourselves and Others

    Jenna shares her personal journey and proprietary research to help women, and their allies, understand what holds them back & how to navigate their insecurities. Women across the corporate spectrum are eager to find their unique lane as the world is calling for them to reach even higher, but many aren’t quite sure how to show up for themselves & others. 


    We’ll closely explore American patterns that continue to get in our way: the belief that we’re supposed to know how to navigate complexity, chasing the “have it all” ghost, and the desperation to find, build & maintain authentic relationships. Women regularly table their power and influence out of fear of “getting it wrong” and “avoiding tension” despite their desire to step up to be heard in more meaningful ways.


    Geared towards women throughout the corporate spectrum, this speech is a call to action for team members eager to participate in more meaningful ways and for upper management to learn how to tap into the extraordinary pools of talent they already have on their payroll whose talents are not being fully optimized. 

  • Building a Caring Economy — A Paradigm Shift for a New Economic Road Map

    To build an economic system that can effectively meet our challenges we need a new economic map that takes into account the economic contributions beyond GDP.


    The key to success in a post-industrial age is redefining how to use and reward “human capital”. Both Capitalism and Socialism came out of the 1700s…that was 500 years ago; it’s time for a new operating system not based on a distorted view of what is “valuable”. Reconsidering corporate org charts, social movements & individual thought patterns away from the “dominance-based” to a “hierarchy of actualization” model increases output across the board. 


    In a “hierarchies of actualization”, accountability and respect flow both ways yet most of our structures – be it in the home or the workplace are still based on the normative ideals for power, often backed by fear and force. This workshop looks at the historical structures we’ve inherited, explores their inefficiency today, and provides clear road maps for moving forward.  


    A four-part interactive workshop explores how to adjust the paradigm to see new economic and social opportunities.


    Cultural change starts with individuals changing their own thinking and then modeling new priorities and actions. Rather than relying on the old extractive, domineering, power-hoarding models of the past – we’ll dive into a new paradigm oriented toward productivity on behalf of people, the planet, and profit. 

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