Meet Morra
Designing Work, So You Can Be Great
Morra Aarons-Mele helps high-intensity leaders and teams design work that lets their minds thrive, so they can do great things. She teaches Mentally Healthy Leadership: the practice of understanding how your personal story, emotions, stress, and neurotype intersect with your goals and job demands, and redesigning work to fit.
Through advocacy, storytelling, and research, Morra has changed how we think about mental health challenges and neurodivergence in leadership, showing that they are common among high achievers and can be a source of strength. She is the author of two Harvard Business Review Press books: The Anxious Achiever, named a Top 10 Management Book of 2024 by Thinkers50 and winner of the Axiom Award for Best Leadership Book, and the forthcoming The Atypical Achiever (2027), built on her Neurostrength Survey of 1,286 professionals. Her podcast, The Anxious Achiever, is in its ninth year with more than 10 million downloads. Morra teaches Executive Education at Harvard Kennedy School and advises executives and teams from Fortune 500 companies to U.S. government agencies. Her consulting career began in politics and advocacy, where she advised four presidential campaigns, founded and sold the digital consultancy Women Online, and served on the founding team of #GivingTuesday. A LinkedIn Top Voice in Mental Health, she holds degrees from Brown and Harvard.
Morra is a passionate multi-hyphenate. After more than two decades helping the world‘s largest organizations, political campaigns, and NGOs create narrative and behavioral change, Morra sold her consulting business and turned to her first and enduring love: helping leaders and team design their work around the conditions that actually help them excel, a passion that had been her “side hustle” since 2006.
In 2009, Aarons-Mele founded the public health and issue advocacy consultancy Women Online and created its database of female influencers, the Mission List, which she sold in 2021. Morra was named 2020 Entrepreneur of the Year at the Iris Awards, created to recognize excellence among digital content creators. She has helped US presidential candidates and a range of global organizations create communications, marketing, and fundraising campaigns. Morra was on the founding team of #GivingTuesday and has launched campaigns for the United Nations, CDC, P&G, Harvard University, President Obama, and more. Her work has won the Halo Award for best American cause marketing campaign of the year, the Webby Award for best parenting site, the Iris Award for best sponsored content campaign, and the Silver Anvil for branding, PR’s highest honor, all for different projects and clients.
Morra is a prolific writer. Since 2004 she has covered beats as diverse as campaign trails, the White House, the lactation room, and the office cubicle. She is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review. She has written for The New York Times, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Slate, InStyle, O, The Wall Street Journal, and the Guardian. Her first book, Hiding in the Bathroom: How to Get Out There When You’d Rather Stay Home, was a bestseller (HarperCollins, 2017). Her second book, The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears into Your Leadership Superpower, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in April 2023 and won the bronze medal for Best Leadership Book at the 2024 Axiom Awards. Her toolkit, book, podcast and training materials are used by leading organizations and business schools around the world. Her forthcoming HBR book, The Atypical Achiever: Leading and Thriving When Your Brain is Wired Differently contains groundbreaking research on how neurodivergent professionals navigate work, and will be published in 2027.
Morra earned degrees from the Harvard Kennedy School and Brown University, and is working through her MSW. She and Nicco Mele live in Boston with their three children and menagerie.
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Specialties include:
Speaking
Workshops
Consulting