Opening Keynote Speaker

Minal Bopaiah

“Money, Mission and Mindset”

For too long, the business side of public media has been treated like “a necessary evil,” creating an us vs. them dynamic between content and business teams. But finance and HR professionals have a vital role to play in advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in organizations. In this eye-opening talk, award-wining author and equity strategist Minal Bopaiah will help you rethink you and your station’s relationship with money and how you use it. Attendees will gain an understanding of power dynamics around money and leave inspired to create a money blueprint for their organizations.

About Minal:

Minal Bopaiah is a strategic consultant with nearly 20 years of professional experience. Her areas of expertise include human-centered design, behavior change psychology, and the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion as they relate to media, marketing and communications. As the Founder of Brevity & Wit, Minal is passionate about designing for equity. Her work includes a holistic rebranding of Evans Consulting, a management consulting firm, and working with NPR’s news managers to design a system for diversifying news sources. As a marketing strategist, she is responsible for a 1450% increase in website traffic and 50% increase in event revenues for Cook Ross, a diversity and inclusion consulting firm. Her clients also include PBS Kids, the International Center for Research on Women, and EngenderHealth.

Thursday Keynote Speaker

Will Lee, COO

“The Next 100: What we need to do today to build the sustainable business future for public media for the next 100 years”

Will Lee will talk about NPR’s business and how business practices are changing to adapt to the near-term and more crucially longer term environment.

About Will:

Will Lee is NPR’s Chief Operating Officer. In this role, he oversees the Technology; Audience Technology; Product; Content Operations; Research, Archives & Data Strategy; Member Partnership; and Change Management & Transformation teams. This portfolio brings together the teams that are leading the way in how NPR reaches and serves audiences now and into the future.

Lee believes that NPR is a media force and a news institution like no other in the world and that its journalistic mission is more essential and critical to the American public than ever before. He is excited to work closely with NPR’s network of Member stations to ignite and drive continued growth, transformation, and brand momentum to reach new and more diverse audiences everywhere they encounter NPR.

Lee is an experienced media executive with a strong track record of digital innovations and brand transformation. He brings to this role more than two decades of experience in content creation, audience expansion, brand development, and commitment to and evolution of DEI in organizations.