Bestselling Author, Raising Our Hands; Activist, Nat’l Organizer of the Women’s March; Education & Media Specialist at the United Nations
Jenna Arnold: Biography at a Glance
- Jenna Arnold is an educator, entrepreneur & activist known for her work as a National Organizer for the Women's March on Washington.
- She has been called a “disruptor” in every industry in which she has dabbled from elementary school classrooms to the halls of the United Nations, MTV, and the White House.
- Oprah named Jenna one of her “100 Awakened Leaders who are using their voice and talent to elevate humanity.”
- Her bestselling book that calls American women to task, Raising Our Hands, was lauded as “one of the few privileged voices we should be reading right now” by Porchlight.
- The New York Times called her work as co-founder at ORGANIZE, a non-profit focused on increasing organ transplant equity in the US one of the “Biggest Ideas in Social Change”. Their work has spanned three administrations and increased transplants by more than 10,000 a year.
- Jenna is a frequent contributor to CNN, MSNBC, and FOX as well as international outlets including BBC & Al Jazeera.
- She is a sought-after speaker on allyship, courageous conversations, leadership, and women's empowerment.
Videos
Biography
Jenna Arnold is an activist, best-selling author, political contributor & 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 & 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 minor in astro-physics 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.
Topics
Raise Your Hand (and Your Bottom Line)
Jenna Arnold, author of Raising Our Hand: How White Women Can Stop Avoiding Hard Conversations, Start Accepting Responsibility, and Find Our Place on the New Frontlines, shares her personal journey and proprietary research to help women understand what holds them back and how to navigate their insecurities.
With audiences, she examines the sources of American women’s belief in perfection, their role in society, and how they can create more meaningful lives and careers.
She also dives into the many contradictions of ourselves. Because of a fear of “getting it wrong,” and “avoiding the tension” or “maintaining the peace,” women regularly table their power and influence on the sidelines — when it could be used to save lives, including their own. These same women often want to step in, to be heard, and to help. But they don’t know how. The result? They opt out of taking action altogether.
Geared towards women throughout the corporate spectrum, this talk is a call-to-action for upper management to learn how to tap into the extraordinary pools of talent they likely have on their payroll who are just too insecure to raise their hands. She helps leaders and audiences understand how their influence, power, and voice can better serve those most in need, and how they can take an active role in creating a better future.
*This speech is suited for corporations, high school, and university audiences, and particularly women. This can also be customized and structured as a workshop.
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, 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.
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:
- Developing healthy symbiotic mentor/mentee relationships
- Identify the barriers to authentic relationships in the workplace
- How to build and sustain spaces where everyone feels seen
- Increase your, and other’s, resilience when messages of unworthiness surface
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:
- Identify the specific conversations you need to have, and with whom
- What is getting in your way of engaging in the conversation
- 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: Building a Caring Economy
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 re-defining 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 out-put 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.
This 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, planet and profit.
