Public Speaking

I help leaders understand why things should work but don’t.

My keynotes help leaders recognize the patterns shaping leadership, organizational change, and execution.

Audiences leave seeing their organizations differently, with language they can use the very next day.

Current Talks

Nobody Asked Us
Making AI Legible

Indra On Stage

Invite Me to Speak
Title slide for a presentation: "Nobody Asked Us" by Indra Klavins, with a subtitle "Recognizing the Patterns That Shape Organizational Change," on a dark background with orange circle lines design on the right.

Nobody Asked Us

Recognizing the Patterns That Shape Organizational Change

Organizations are always sending signals. The challenge isn't seeing them. It's knowing what they mean.

For nearly twenty years, Indra Klavins has helped leaders navigate growth, restructuring, integration, and transformation. Across organizations of every size, she's observed the same thing: the patterns shaping behavior are often hiding in plain sight.

In this keynote, audiences learn to recognize those patterns before they become expensive, giving leaders a practical framework for interpreting the human signals that dashboards can't capture.

Audience members leave with practical ways to recognize when:

  • Silence signals problems, not progress.

  • Resistance is often unacknowledged uncertainty.

  • Seemingly irrational behavior is a rational response to the system people are operating within.

  • Unacknowledged loss becomes organizational friction.

  • Invisible work becomes organizational risk.

Whether your organization is restructuring, scaling, adopting AI, or navigating another period of significant change, this keynote gives leaders the language to recognize emerging patterns and intervene before small signals become expensive problems.

Title slide of a presentation titled 'Making AI Legible' with the subtitle 'Bridging the Gaps Between AI and Practical Application'. The presenter is Indra Klavins, with the handle '@themessymiddlematters'. The slide has a dark background with curved orange lines on the right side.

Making AI Legible

Bridging the Gaps Between AI and Practical Application

Work people can’t see becomes work they don’t trust.

That creates a significant challenge for organizations adopting AI. The tools are changing quickly, the vocabulary keeps expanding, and even technologically confident people can struggle to understand what AI can actually do and where it belongs in their work.

Without that understanding, people start talking past one another. Technical experts, organizational leaders, and the people expected to use AI may all be discussing the same technology while operating from very different assumptions.

In this talk, audiences learn to recognize when:

  • Different levels of understanding are preventing meaningful conversation.

  • People lack the shared understanding needed to move from possibility to practical application.

  • AI adoption is being treated as a one-time rollout rather than a continuous process of learning and adaptation.

Drawing on more than twenty years of experience helping people navigate complex technological and organizational change, Indra offers a practical approach to bridging the distance between those closest to AI and the people being asked to use it.

As AI continues to evolve, the organizations that benefit from it will not simply be the ones with access to the best tools. They will be the ones that help people understand what those tools can do, how they affect their work, and where they can be meaningfully applied.

Invite Me to speak
A woman in a red dress giving a presentation on stage at a conference, with a large audience seated in front of her and a big screen displaying the event behind her. There are banners on either side of the stage that read "DesignOps Summit."
A woman giving a presentation at a conference, standing behind a green podium with the text 'HS Events Design Operations New York May 25, 2023' and a hashtag #DesignOpsNY. She is wearing glasses, a denim jacket, and gold hoop earrings, and is gesturing with her hand.
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Select Past Talks

Title slide for a presentation titled "Creating Equity & Cross-Organizational Connection Through Talent Calibration" by Indra Klavins.

Creating Equity & Cross-Organizational Connection Through Talent Calibration

Strong design organizations have well-defined career ladders that help team members understand what success looks like for their role. The best design organizations operationalize their ladders to help people navigate their careers and ensure that leaders evaluate their talent equitably and consistently across the entire organization, not just within a specific team.

In this talk, we will learn how blind calibration sessions conducted semi-annually can break down geographic and organizational siloes for the betterment of individuals, teams, and the organization. 

Recap on Substack

Slide with title 'Expensive Routers Create Connections' in brown and yellow text.

Expensive Routers Create Connections: A DesignOps Girl in a DevOps World

DevOps has spent a decade focused on tooling that allows developers to code, deploy, monitor, and optimize quickly and efficiently. Along the way, many within that community forget that the people within that community and the developers that they serve are, first and foremost, people. Hear what happens when a Design Ops professional finds herself embedded in a DevOps team, helps them see each other as people, and applies a bit of design thinking, tools and techniques to help them learn the skills necessary as the people they serve move from the information age to the conceptual age.

Watch the Full Talk

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Select Podcasts & Panel Discussions

Promotional poster for a LinkedIn Live event featuring Indra Klavins, scheduled for December 12th at 12 PM EST, with the theme 'Startup Baddie'.
Promotional slide for a webinar titled 'Women in Engineering Leadership Panel' eatures photos and names of three women: Debra Brucato from SessionM, Sarojini Tati from DemandTec by Acoustic, and Indra Klavins from Automox. The background has wave patterns with a dark purple and blue color scheme, and logo of Jellyfish.
Slide from a presentation titled "Stepping Into the Void" at the DesignOps Summit 2020. Features photos and names of four speakers, including Indra Klavins, Markus Hohl, and Jose Coronado, with their titles and affiliations
A black and white photo of a woman with glasses and hoop earrings against a colorful striped background. The text on the image reads, 'The Messy Middle Matters' with a microphone icon.
A black and white photo of a woman with glasses and hoop earrings against a colorful striped background. The text on the image reads, 'The Messy Middle Matters' with a microphone icon.
A panel discussion titled "Design Systems in the Enterprise" featuring five speakers sitting on stools on a stage, with a large digital screen behind them displaying their names and social media handles.
Presentation slide titled "Design Systems in the Enterprise" featuring headshots of five speakers: Adekunle Oduye, Talia Fisher, Chris Fahey, Indra Klavins, and Jose Coronado. The slide includes details about the event, and logos for Lions and ADP against a black background with a city skyline at night.

As Seen In

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