Crystal Kadakia

Crystal Kadakia is a two-time TEDx speaker, bestselling author, and trusted advisor to mission-driven and STEM organizations navigating the complexities of culture change. With over 15 years of experience partnering with private sector and nonprofit executive teams, Kadakia brings a rare combination of systems thinking, strategic rigor and emotional intelligence —grounded in a cross-disciplinary education and a multidimensional identity.

As a South Asian woman raised in Texas, and as someone who bridges right-brain empathy with left-brain logic through her background in chemical engineering and organization development, Kadakia draws on the tensions and wisdom of both worlds. These lived and learned perspectives have driven her success in helping legacy organizations modernize their cultures, speak truth to power, and redesign status quo systems that stand in the way of today’s work.

Through her bestselling book, "The Millennial Myth," she began her work by debunking generational change and instead, doubling down on integrating digital ways of working. She advised C-suite leaders across a wide range of industries on how to build a resilient and relevant company culture for the digital age. She continued to deepen her work as a consultant in driving organization transformation, by especially helping to evolve power and structure. Recently, she led the Sierra Club’s most expansive stakeholder engagement process to date for a new structural vision, resulting in ten unanimously approved board resolutions. Today, her consulting work is focused on empowering healthy and resilient org capacity and culture in the sustainability sector.

Kadakia’s talks draw from her consulting experience and drive culture-forward transformation by growing audiences’ capability to work together.

She speaks to a wide range of audiences with tailored outcomes:

• For STEM professionals, she demystifies social dynamics and leadership through frameworks rooted in her book Social Equations, equipping technical minds with the relational tools their education often overlooked.
• For leadership development audiences, she reframes emotional intelligence as a core operational skill, showing how to work with—not around—emotion in the pursuit of progress and performance.
• For C-suite leaders, she delivers bold, unorthodox human insights from the front lines of change, challenging the usual prescriptions and assumptions about what drives genuine cultural transformation.

These talks address tough challenges like inclusion, power dynamics, and the role of emotions in a can-do way for organizations big and small. In particular, she brings insights in from her work in the sustainability movement, including lessons learned from the manufacturing and tech sector, energy and utilities sector, and conservation nonprofits.

Kadakia is the author of four books, and her keynotes are known for blending transformative “aha” moments with opportunities to process the message into practical individualized takeaways. She has been recognized with honors such as Power 30 Under 30, ATD’s One to Watch, and CLO’s Learning in Practice award.

Born and raised in Austin, Texas, she is the daughter of Indian immigrants with roots in Gujarat from the village of Balasinor. She now lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband Jeremy and their two children.