Kavya Krishna

Kavya Krishna is a female motivational keynote speaker whose work sits at the crossroads of leadership, technology and female empowerment. Growing up in rural Rajasthan, India, she experienced first-hand how limited access to education shapes confidence, ambition and opportunity. That early reality informs everything she does today, from building global programmes to delivering keynote talks that centre resilience, agency and practical leadership. Kavya speaks with clarity and calm authority, drawing on lived experience rather than theory, and connects powerfully with audiences navigating uncertainty, change and responsibility.

She is the Founder and CEO of Society of Women Coders, a global nonprofit that has delivered coding and digital literacy education to more than 40,000 girls across 57 countries and 423 schools. Kavya has personally worked in classrooms across Africa, Central America and South Asia, often in regions where infrastructure, resources and political stability were uncertain. These experiences shaped her leadership style, grounded, adaptive and focused on people. Alongside fieldwork, she has built partnerships with organisations including the Malala Fund and US Embassies, enabling programmes to scale while remaining locally relevant. Her organisation has been supported by Harvard Innovation Labs, reflecting the strength of its mission and execution.

Alongside her social impact work, Kavya brings deep technical and analytical credibility. She spent over four years as a Data Engineer and Senior Analyst at SiriusXM, working on subscriber analytics for a 30 million plus user base. Her work supported forecasting models that drove 27 percent year-on-year growth, giving her a strong commercial understanding of data-led decision-making. More recently, she has completed investment roles with the HBS Impact Investment Fund and LearnLaunch Fund, leading portfolio analysis, due diligence and impact measurement frameworks. Academically, she is a Harvard Graduate School of Education alumna and Oxford MBA candidate, specialising in education entrepreneurship, leadership and systems change.

As a keynote speaker, Kavya focuses on leadership under pressure, ethical influence without authority, women and power in technology, and decision-making when certainty is unavailable. Her talks blend global field experience with practical frameworks leaders can apply immediately. One example she often shares is delivering coding programmes in rural classrooms where electricity was unreliable, showing how motivation and structure can sustain progress when plans fail. Event organisers book Kavya for leadership conferences, women’s empowerment events and technology forums because she leaves audiences inspired, grounded and equipped to act.