Rashmi Airan

Rashmi Airan has a unique and vulnerable story that she shares as a corporate and motivational speaker that will be a game-changer for your audience. Rashmi is a “recovering lawyer and investment banker” and a female leader and entrepreneur in her community.

Rashmi Airan, a first-generation immigrant of Indian parents and the oldest of three daughters, was raised with high expectations to achieve. She had both professional and personal pressures due to her family background.

In addition to being a mother of two, Rashmi is a successful lawyer who graduated with honors from Columbia Law School. After working for several major corporations, she launched an independent law practice in Miami, Florida. During the housing boom, she was recruited to work with a local real-estate developer who later engaged in questionable business practices. Rashmi’s drive to succeed financially and to give her children the best life possible created an ethical blind spot. She chose not to question her client’s behavior despite her inner voice screaming “ask questions!” Her involvement resulted in a six-month sentence to Federal prison for bank fraud, alongside a multi-million dollar judgment against future earnings, required community service hours, and 3 years supervised release.

Before beginning her sentence, Rashmi’s community of friends and family embraced her. Though previously believing only a high level of success would make them proud, she now felt for the first time the true power of what building strong relationships meant. A close family friend remarked quietly “You will eventually learn that this is not happening to you, it is happening for you.”

In prison, Rashmi felt shame and remorse for her decisions. Taking in six months of federal prison life, Rashmi came to a place of peace and self-forgiveness. While being immensely humbled by this life-changing experience, she emerged with invaluable lessons learned both personally and professionally. Rashmi shares her emotional development of living with remorse, but not letting it define you. She is determined to create a culture of conversation around ethics, human performance, and reputational risk into all aspects of our lives.

Rashmi is now an internationally recognized keynote and motivational speaker and consultant, sharing her story to illustrate the multitude of factors that influenced her decision-making, to embed organizational cultures with integrity, to harness the power of vulnerability, to ensure our corporations create strategies that are risk-informed, and to empower women to be leaders in the face of adversity and challenges, among other topics. She mines her vast legal, business, and community expertise and tells her powerful story to deliver pivotal messages to universities, law firms, corporations, global multi-nationals, and trade associations. Rashmi redefines what it means to be successful and the need for integrity and emotional intelligence in a continually evolving global culture.