Risha Grant
Inclusion has become harder to talk about than at any point in the last decade. Programmes are being cut, language is being policed, and senior teams are unsure what to say to their workforce or their customers. The organisations still making progress are the ones treating inclusion as a behavioural and commercial question, not a compliance exercise or a political statement.
Risha Grant is a diversity and inclusion specialist who helps organisations confront the personal belief systems and unconscious bias that quietly undermine culture, talent retention, and commercial performance.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Risha Grant
- A direct, behaviour-first approach to inclusion that holds up when the political climate around DEI is hostile, because the work targets individual bias and culture, not slogans or programmes.
- The BiaSphere framework, drawn from her book Be Better Than Your BS, gives leaders and employees a shared vocabulary for the belief systems that shape how they hire, promote, sell, and lead.
- More than twenty five years operating her own diversity consulting firm, which means the perspective in the room is that of a practitioner who has rebuilt cultures, not a commentator describing them.
- Credibility with both senior executives and broad employee audiences, evidenced by engagements at Google, Samsung, Procter and Gamble, the US Air Force, and Harvard University.
- A commercial frame on inclusion, connecting culture work to talent retention and to the customer markets organisations are otherwise leaving on the table.
Biography highlights
- Founder and CEO of Risha Grant LLC, founded in 1998 as the first diversity communications firm in Oklahoma.
- Author of Be Better Than Your BS: How Radical Acceptance Empowers Authenticity and Creates a Workplace Culture of Inclusion (Hay House, 2023), and of That’s BS! How Bias Synapse Disrupts Inclusive Cultures.
- Creator of DiversityConneX.com, a recruitment platform connecting diverse professionals to corporate roles, internships, and board seats.
- Named one of the Top 10 Most Powerful Women Leaders in HR (PeopleHum), NBA OKC Thunder Changemaker, and one of Real Leaders’ 40 Top Women Keynote Speakers.
- Featured in Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Glamour UK, and Black Enterprise.
- Client engagements include Google, Levi Strauss, Samsung Electronics, Procter and Gamble, Intuit, Nestle Purina, the US Air Force, and Harvard University.
Biography
Most inclusion work fails for the same reason. It tries to change behaviour without ever touching the belief systems underneath it. Grant’s career has been a sustained argument that bias lives in personal stories before it lives in policies, and that organisations cannot get culture right until people are willing to examine the BS they bring to work.
She built Risha Grant LLC in 1998, the first diversity communications firm in Oklahoma, and has run it ever since. That longevity matters. It means her view of what works in inclusion has been tested across more than two decades of changing political conditions, from the early diversity training era to the post 2020 acceleration and the current backlash. The framework she now teaches, the BiaSphere, came out of that long arc of practical work, not academic theory.
Her 2023 book Be Better Than Your BS, published by Hay House and a Wall Street Journal bestseller per her publisher, set out the BiaSphere thesis in full: the subconscious beliefs that drive judgement of self and others, and the inner work required to dismantle them before any culture programme can stick. The book has anchored a speaking practice that reaches Google, Samsung, Procter and Gamble, the US Air Force, and Harvard University, and a media presence across Forbes, Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, and Bloomberg.
What separates her in the current climate is the refusal to soften the work or dress it in safer language. The premise is that inclusion is a behavioural and commercial capability, that organisations leave talent and customer revenue on the table when they get it wrong, and that the route to getting it right runs through individual honesty before it runs through policy. That is a harder message to sell now than it was five years ago, which is precisely why the organisations still serious about culture keep buying it.
Key speaking topics
- Inclusive culture and belonging
- Unconscious bias and the BiaSphere
- Radical acceptance and authenticity at work
- Inclusive leadership behaviour
- Talent attraction and retention through inclusion
- Diverse customer markets and commercial inclusion
- Psychological safety in mixed teams
Ideal for
- CHROs, chief diversity officers, and heads of talent rebuilding inclusion strategy after recent rollbacks
- Executive teams and boards under pressure to articulate a defensible position on culture and inclusion
- Senior leadership offsites where the brief is honest conversation about bias, not a training exercise
- All-employee and ERG audiences where credibility with both sceptics and advocates matters
Audience outcomes
- A shared vocabulary, drawn from the BiaSphere framework, for the personal belief systems that drive bias at work
- A clearer view of where unconscious bias is costing the organisation in hiring, promotion, retention, and customer reach
- Permission and a method to have direct conversations about inclusion without defaulting to compliance language
- A behavioural starting point for leaders who want to model inclusive practice rather than delegate it to a function
- A reframing of inclusion as a commercial capability tied to talent and market access, not a values statement
Talks
A keynote built on Grant’s book of the same name, examining how personal belief systems and unconscious bias drive workplace behaviour and what individuals and organisations can do about them.
Key takeaways:
- The BiaSphere model and how it explains bias at the individual level
- How authenticity functions as a competitive advantage rather than a personal preference
- Practical steps for leaders to model inclusion without defaulting to compliance language
A keynote focused on the internal organisational work, addressing bias as it shows up in hiring, promotion, daily team behaviour, and leadership decisions.
Key takeaways:
- Where bias most commonly costs organisations in talent decisions
- How psychological safety and authenticity reinforce each other
- A behavioural standard for inclusive leadership that survives political headwinds
A keynote connecting inclusion to commercial performance, examining how bias narrows customer reach and how more inclusive organisations capture markets others overlook.
Key takeaways:
- The commercial cost of bias in marketing, product, and customer experience decisions
- How inclusive cultures build credibility with diverse customer segments
- The link between internal inclusion practice and external market growth