Minal Bopaiah is an author, speaker, and strategist committed to designing a more equitable world. With degrees in English, psychology, and organizational development, and a lifelong passion for diversity and inclusion, Minal has spent her career cross-pollinating ideas in service of greater social justice for all.
After acquiring a BA in English from Bowdoin College, Minal began her career in publishing and journalism, first as a production assistant in McGraw-Hill’s Medical Publishing Group and then as the international and features editor of Boston Metro. She was the first press intern for Doctors Without Borders’ New York office. And for three years, she served as the executive editor of Subscription Insider, an online business publication for digital marketers and information publishers.
She then used her knowledge of communications and marketing in the service of nongovernmental organizations dedicated to global development. In 2016, Minal was selected as a Digital Production Fellow by Organizing for Action, the nonprofit advocacy group started by President Barack Obama. Eventually, she became the marketing and brand manager for Cook Ross, a diversity and inclusion consulting firm founded by DEI leader Howard Ross. There, she led a marketing team of two, creating a strategic plan that led to a 1,450 percent increase in website traffic, a 30 percent increase in inbound leads, a 120 percent increase in social media impressions, a 50 percent increase in event revenue, and 1,800 opt-ins to the company’s email list in one year. During this time, she further developed her knowledge of the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion, which she had primarily learned through her experience in graduate school and self-study. It was also at Cook Ross that Minal met her mentor, Johnnetta Betsch Cole.
Minal spent five years studying clinical psychology in New York. She was a student at Columbia’s postbaccalaureate program, City University of New York’s Master’s degree program, and finally a PhD student at Fordham University. While fascinated by research on implicit bias, gender differences, and behavioral change, Minal decided to discontinue her PhD studies after acquiring a master’s degree (her thesis examined psychosocial differences in reactions to torture among Punjabi Sikhs and Tibetan Buddhists) because of the field’s inability to account for systemic sources of pathology. However, during this time, she was also working as an educational content specialist at Sesame Workshop—the nonprofit behind Sesame Street and its international co-productions—where she saw how social science research could be used to inform media programming and affect systemic inequality in countries around the world.
Minal’s interest in system-level change led her to undergo a nine-month certification program at Georgetown University in organizational development and change leadership. It was in this program that she was first exposed to human-centered design. Given her background in psychology, she saw the wisdom of designing for how humans think and behave and began incorporating it into her work.
Minal founded Brevity & Wit in 2016 as a means of combining her experiences and interests in human-centered design, IDEA, psychology, organizational development, and strategic communications and marketing so that she could better help organizations achieve the change they wish to see in the world. Since its founding, Brevity & Wit has worked with numerous clients in the media, international nonprofit, and professional services spaces, including NPR, Slate, the International Center for Research on Women, Amnesty International, Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Communications Programs, and Evans Consulting.
Minal’s thought leadership has been published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review and The Hill, and she has been a guest on several podcasts and radio shows, including The Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU. She has been an invited speaker at many conferences, including the Forum for Workplace Inclusion and the Public Media Development and Marketing Conference.
Minal currently serves on advisory boards for Dent Education, a nonprofit that teaches design thinking, entrepreneurship, and making to Baltimore students, and for Bring Change 2 Mind, a San Francisco-based nonprofit founded by actor Glenn Close and her sister, Jessie Close, to end mental health stigma.
Minal lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her family.
www.brevityandwit.com
www.TheEquityBook.com
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