Dima Ghawi
Inspiring leaders to give voice to those excluded within corporate cultures across the globe.
Topic Categories:
- Business, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I), Human Resources, Inspirational, Leadership, Management, Motivational, Resilience, Teamwork, TED, Virtual Presentations, Women
Fee Range: Contact Speaker Exchange Agency
- International Keynote Speaker
- Global Leadership Consultant
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Influencer
*Fee ranges are presented as a guideline only. Speaker fees are subject to change without notice. For an exact quote, please contact your Speaker Exchange Agency representative.
Dima is Middle Eastern in her genes, American in her heart, and a global citizen in her spirit. She ignites the untapped potential in individuals across the globe, empowering them to shatter limitations and become courageous, purpose driven leaders. Her own journey is one of escaping confinement, crossing continents, and transforming her life’s purpose. Harnessing the power of her story, Dima is committed to inspiring individuals to attain personal and professional growth.
Through keynote speeches, workshops, and executive coaching, Dima shares her unique leadership transformation journey to motivate and activate those around her to reimagine their potential, grow into leaders, and create inclusive corporate cultures.
Dima draws from two decades of corporate experience leading global teams and developing future leaders worldwide. She has worked across the United States, Europe, Asia, Middle East, and Africa for several Fortune 100 companies including IBM, Merrill Lynch, and Intuit. She has honed a keen expertise in developing leaders to meet the demands of the global workforce.
Dima’s memoir Breaking Vases received many awards, including Writer’s Digest 2018 Grand Prize Award, Best Indie Book Award, Readers’ Favorite Award, National Indie Excellence Award, and Nautilus Book Award.
She has been recognized for her services with the 2014 President of the United States Bronze Volunteer Service Award, the 2023 American Advertising Federation Mosaic Champion Award, 2022 International Women’s Entrepreneurial Challenge Award (IWEC), 2019 Baton Rouge Business Report “Influential Women in Business,” 2014 Baton Rouge Business Report’s “Forty Under 40” Award, and the 2016 Louisiana State University “Esprit de Femme Award.” She has been featured in numerous publications for her professional and philanthropic work.
Dima’s life’s mission is to give voice to those that are excluded within corporate cultures and their communities. Through her personal and professional experiences, she inspires, educates, and empowers everyone who crosses her path.
Inspired by her TEDx talk, Dima Ghawi’s story of personal transformation encourages audiences to confront and conquer internal limitations. As she recounts her own struggles and triumphs, her vulnerability and insight resonate with audiences, sparking a guiding light for attendees’ own journeys of self-discovery and leadership growth.
Dima dares individuals to examine at their own internal limitations, such as the pursuit of perfection and the fear of failure or judgment. She then equips audience members with the tools and courage it takes to shatter those limitations and emerge as empowered individuals.
Audiences will learn:
- The importance of self-awareness and how effective personal leadership starts from within.
- How conscious professionals lead to better teamwork, enhanced communication, and an improvement in overall organizational culture.
- How internal limitations inhibit individuals from performing at their best and advancing professionally.
Key attendee takeaways:
- Elevate employee engagement and team morale by encouraging risk-taking and increasing individual self-awareness.
- Shattering internal limitations creates more confident and conscious leaders.
- By increasing courage in organizations, creativity and innovation also increases, improving the bottom-line results.
Employees in healthy cultures thrive. These cultures are created and passed down, inherited by the next generation of employees. The strongest leaders know to focus on a long-term strategy with an emphasis on corporate culture health for future generations to sustain.
For decades Dima Ghawi worked with Fortune 20 corporations and diverse teams around the world. Through her work in 19 countries with IBM in Leadership Training and Development, she gained critical insights into leading across global teams. She recognized that bold leadership, employee engagement, and DEI were not only inextricably linked, but they were also important across cultures.
Her experience has given her deep insights in how to be an effective leader in the global age:
- START WITH TRUST TO BUILD RELATIONSHIPS: Trust is the basis for nearly all healthy relationships, and getting it starts with giving it.
- HIGHLIGHT SIMILARITIES: It’s easy to focus on cultural differences, but leaders must understand their team and pay attention to universal similarities.
- BE ADAPTABLE: Leaders must be able to adapt quickly to their team’s cultures and find what they value.
Audiences will learn:
- The wisest leaders recognize that corporate culture is learned and passed down to the next group of employees.
- The strongest leaders prioritize healthy employer/employee connection, and healthy, connected cultures produce connected, engaged employees.
- That inspired, courageous leadership involves assuming the responsibility of modeling and teaching healthy culture to create their organization’s next generation.
Key attendee takeaways:
- Disconnected employees diminish productivity and innovation, and this disconnection can be a significant factor in their leaving an organization – or worse yet, staying.
- Incorporating long-term strategies for the next generation of employees to adopt healthy culture is critical for sustained growth
- Creating a shared confidence in the future and a culture of belonging, connection, and inclusion are key to employee engagement
In this keynote, Dima Ghawi shares findings gathered over decades of conducting hundreds of interviews and workplace surveys on how to create a welcoming and inclusive workforce. Dima’s real-life experiences with organizations around the world, as well as her unique and fascinating upbringing in the Middle East, bring to life for audiences the critical importance of diversity and inclusion.
Through powerful storytelling and personal narratives, she deconstructs conscious and unconscious biases, guiding attendees to address common workplace resistance to DEI. She teaches leaders that increasing inclusion creates a safe and healthy culture. More than picture-perfect diversity, this presentation shows audience members how to foster a sense of inclusion within their workspace.
Audiences will learn:
- How to create a safe and inclusive workplace culture
- The meaning of unconscious bias and its effect in the workplace
- What diverse employees are looking for and how to integrate these needs into management styles
Key attendee takeaways:
- The insight of a bottom-up approach, the influence of courageous office culture, and the power of affinity groups.
- What diverse employees are looking for and receive actionable tips to create a courageous and integrative workplace culture.
- How to create a more productive, engaging, and inclusive workplace for all.
In this keynote, Dima Ghawi guides attendees to acknowledge and appreciate what makes them different, demonstrating the advantages acquired when people embrace their individuality. Through humorous narratives and personal stories drawn from her experiences as a Middle Eastern woman in America, she reveals to participants the incalculable value gained in both professional and social environments when individuals challenge conformity. By the end of this presentation, Dima’s actionable tips and engaging examples leave audiences prepared to liberate, appreciate, and celebrate their inner misfit.
Audiences will learn:
- How to encourage a mindset that appreciates one’s personal uniqueness.
- How conformity stifles individuals and negatively impacts their mental well-being.
- How to liberate one’s inner misfit and embrace that advantage in the social and professional environments.
- Best practices for facilitating and embracing one’s individuality.
- Actionable tips for creating a culture of belonging.
- The practical and emotional benefits of letting one’s differences shine in all environments.
Key Kattendee takeaways:
- Best practices for facilitating and embracing one’s individuality.
- Actionable tips for creating a culture of belonging.
- The practical and emotional benefits of letting one’s differences shine in all environments.
In this keynote, Dima shares lessons derived from her experience globally training, developing, and engaging over 500 millennials for Fortune 100 companies. She explores the keys to unlocking the millennial mind in order to better engage them in the workplace, give them the purpose they crave in their work, and inspire them to overachieve. Dima guides the audience members through a shift in perception that is essential in order to prepare companies for Gen Z. By bridging the disconnect between generations, companies will be able to harness the creative and innovative talents of their employees while keeping them dedicated to the company’s mission.
Dima Ghawi Sizzle Reel from Dima Ghawi on Vimeo.
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