Rayona Sharpnack

Rayona Sharpnack is the founder ad CEO of the Institute for Women's Leadership, a renowned organization known for spearheading initiatives in leadership and organizational effectiveness for the past 25 years. Drawing from successful careers in education, professional sports, and business, Rayona is an inspirational teacher, coach, and mentor to senior executives across industries. She is also the founder of the Institute for Gender Partnership™, an organization that works with top-level executives to bring the substantial benefits of full Gender Partnership™ to their organizations—financially and beyond.

Rayona's clientele is comprised of government agencies, universities, nonprofits, and Fortune 500 companies, including Pfizer, Gap Inc., Hertz, Cardinal Health, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Microsoft, Proctor & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard, and World Pulse. Her masterful approach takes complex theoretical concepts and distills them into accessible education and training. Through their dedicated guidance, Rayona and her team have helped more than 20,000 women and men, ranging from mid-level managers to C-suite executives, to realize groundbreaking results and renewed potential in both their professional and personal lives.

Her pioneering work has garnered widespread recognition, including showcases of her leadership model by The New York Times and Fast Company, as well as her appointment as Chairwoman of Leadership Development on the Women's Leadership Board of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

She has presented her outstanding achievements in advancing women leaders and building high-performance teams to prestigious institutions such as:

Harvard University

Stanford Business School

U.C. Berkeley's Haas School of Business

State of the World Forum

Canadian Federal Government

Australian Federal Government

Leadership America

Professional and Business Women of California