Kahlil Greene

Kahlil Greene is a DEI strategist, culture leader, and Gen Z thought leader who brings a fresh, forward-looking perspective to the work of building genuinely inclusive organizations. His approach cuts through performative diversity initiatives to focus on the intentional systems and behaviors that allow every person to contribute fully.

A New Generation of DEI Leadership

Greene has authored op-eds on organizational equity in the Los Angeles Times and other publications, and his youthful perspective provides a much-needed intervention to commonplace and outdated DEI strategies. He has worked with organizations across industries to help leaders examine their blind spots, confront uncomfortable truths, and commit to the sustained effort required to create workplaces where equity and belonging are daily realities rather than aspirational statements.

Moving Past Performative Diversity to Real Inclusion

Greene’s approach is grounded in the belief that diversity alone means nothing without the intentional leadership, systems, and accountability that create genuine inclusion. His keynotes deliver actionable strategies for building genuinely inclusive organizational cultures, moving past performative DEI to systemic change, Gen Z perspectives on equity, belonging, and workplace expectations, and the leadership practices that create environments where every person can do their best work.

Be the Change

If you had a deep concern with your workplace’s management, culture, or impact and had a great idea for improvement–would you voice this to your boss? If they shot the idea down, but you still believed in it, what would you do next? As the poet, Langston Hughes asked, “What happens to a dream deferred?”

In this talk/breakout, Greene will use successes from his time as student body president at Yale, an institution older than America itself, to illustrate how one individual can disturb the inertia of a workplace set in its ways by rallying coworkers and taking the action needed for a proposal to come to life. With his expertise studying the History of Social Change and Social Movements and as a member of Yale’s prestigious Grand Strategy Program, he provides a framework for action-oriented change and leadership that worked for some of the most impactful figures in history. The same framework guided him as he pushed Yale to remove grades for the first time in its history, dedicate $100,000 to student-led environmental projects, permanently provide menstrual products in all residential buildings, and so much more during his tenure.

DEI in the New Decade

After the summer of 2020, the nation manifested a heightened awareness of the societal impact of corporations. Now, students across colleges and universities are collectively blacklisting, or “canceling”, certain companies for insufficient support of underrepresented and marginalized communities that exist both inside and outside of the organization. This causes firms to lose talent and public image, and because this happens through social media and informal networks, they don’t even know. In this keynote/breakout, Greene will discuss young people’s expectations for diversity, equity, and inclusion across institutions and how organizations can live up to the DEI standards of this new decade.