Minal Bopaiah is an author and strategic consultant with nearly 20 years of professional experience. Her areas of expertise include human-centered design, behavior change psychology, and the principles of inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA) as they relate to media, marketing, communications and organizational design.
As the Founder and Principal Consultant of Brevity & Wit, Minal is passionate about designing for equity. Her work includes working with NPR’s news managers to design a system for diversifying news sources. She is also the creator and facilitator for the DEI Executive Forum, a six-month cohort learning experience for general managers in public media that helps them become more equitable leaders and develop a strategic plan to accomplish their IDEA goals.
Minal’s previous work includes being an educational content specialist for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind Sesame Street and its international co-productions, where she was first exposed to the power of media to promote social and cultural change. She also served as a press intern for Doctors Without Borders and the Executive Editor of a B2B subscription website.
Minal is a sought-after speaker, and has delivered memorable talks at numerous conferences and companies, including Salesforce, NPR, and SXSW. Her thought leadership has been published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review and TheHill.com, and she has been a guest on several podcasts and radio shows. Her first book Equity: How to Design Organizations Where Everyone Thrives (Berrett-Koehler, 2021) was hailed as “a succinct jewel” by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams and won the 2022 Terry McAdam Book Award. Minal is also collaborating with Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole to publish a non-fiction book on leadership and social justice.
Minal has a B.A. in English from Bowdoin College, a Master’s degree in clinical psychology from Fordham University, and was formally trained in organizational development and change leadership at Georgetown University. She is an Advisory Board member for Dent Education, a nonprofit teaching entrepreneurship, design thinking and making to Baltimore high school students, and for Bring Change to Mind, the nonprofit started by the actress Glenn Close and her sister Jessie Close to end mental health stigma. She lives with her family in Silver Spring, MD.
