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Dima Ghawi

Developing Leaders To Meet The Demands Of the Global Workforce And Helping Organizations Engage Diverse Teams

Topic Categories:

Fee Range: 10000-19999
  • International Keynote speaker
  • Award Winning author of Breaking Vases: Shattering Limitations and Daring to Thrive
  • 20+ Years of corporate experience leading diverse teams at Fortune 500 companies like IBM and Merril Lynch

*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 with one goal in mind: motivate and activate those around her to reimagine their potential and grow into leaders.

 

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 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.

Shattering Limitations & Daring to Thrive

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 sparks light for attendees’ own journey of self-discovery.

Dima dares individuals to examine at their own internal limitations, such as the pursuit of perfection, the fear of failure or being judged. 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 the 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.
The Misfit Advantage – Liberate Your Inner Misfit & Thrive

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.
How to Future-Proof Your Company: Engaging Gen Y to Z (tm)

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.

Inspiring Bold Leadership & Creating Engaged Employees

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
Harnessing The Power of an Inclusive Work Culture

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.
CT Bankers Association
Dima was AWESOME! Her presentation knocked it out of the park with our attendees. We could not have asked for a more perfect presenter.
HR Director, Postlethwaite & Netherville
I can't say enough about Dima's stage presence and her ability to command the attention of her audience whether it is with the information, stories, or just the manner in which she shares information. She makes the audience think about things that are probably not typically comfortable for them and that it always a good thing, in my mind.
A.G., Marketing, Hyster-Yale Group
MAGICAL. Dima has an incredible ability to light up a room and captivate everyone in it. She is genuine, inspirational and exudes positivity. She has brilliant business acumen and has aided our team in tremendous development both collectively and individually.
Greater Baton Rouge Society for Human Resource Management (GBR SHRM)
The feedback from our members and attendees was excellent! Even while discussing important leadership topics, the presentation was delivered in an engaging way that kept the attendees interested. While inspirational, the audience was motivated to take action to be great leaders for their organizations.
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