Bring Morra to Your Organization

Morra helps leaders transform stress and anxiety into strategic advantages, offering research-backed tools to reframe mindset, enhance decision-making, and boost team effectiveness during times of uncertainty.

Her sessions cultivate emotional intelligence and resilience, equipping participants to lead with greater authenticity, clarity, and capacity in high-pressure environments.

Rethink what strong leadership looks like.

Keynotes, workshops, executive education, and fireside chat formats available.

  • How Leaders Can Manage AI Anxiety

  • “Anxiety Is My Superpower:” How to Build a Better Relationship With the Most Misunderstood Emotion at Work

  • Healthy High Achieving: How Top Performers Sustain Excellence Without Burning Out

  • Mental Health at Work: Real Talk Beyond Benefits and Buzzwords

  • What Introverts Can Teach All Of Us About Becoming Phenomenal At Our Jobs

Who Is Morra?

Morra Aarons-Mele is a researcher, author, and leadership trainer. Her mission is to help people rethink the relationship between mental health and leadership at work.

  • Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education instructor

  • Contributor to Harvard Business Review, featured in 3 HBR leadership anthologies

  • 2x HBR Press author including The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears Into Your Leadership Superpower and the forthcoming Neurostrong: Leading and Thriving When Your Brain Is Wired Differently

  • Contributor to the New York Times, Fortune, Fast Company, and Wall Street Journal

  • Shortlisted for “Distinguished Achievement in Leadership” award, Thinkers50

  • Advisor to 3 presidential candidates, the world’s leading NGOs, and Fortune 500 companies

"The best session of the whole two weeks."

- Harvard Executive Education

The Inner Game Of Leadership Workshop: Reclaiming Your Attention In Uncertain Times

Available as a 75-minute intensive, half-day, or two-day retreat

Leadership today is defined by constant change, digital overload and emotional intensity. Many leaders feel reactive, distracted, and drained as they struggle to focus on what truly matters while navigating ambiguity and pressure.

 “The Inner Game of Leadership” is an experiential program designed to help leaders move from surviving chaos to leading with agency. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology and Morra Aarons-Mele’s executive education work at Harvard, this workshop focuses on the internal operating system beneath performance: attention, stress response and emotional regulation.

Participants learn to:

  • Reclaim attention as a strategic leadership resource

  • Recognize stress responses and build the capacity to pause before reacting

  • Distinguish between productive stress and what Aarons-Mele calls “stupid stress:” the unnecessary pressure that exhausts individuals and systems 

  • Cultivate spaciousness and joy as performance assets

  • Integrate attention and intention into daily leadership practice

When presented as a multi-day retreat, Day 1 centers on reclaiming attention and understanding how anxiety quietly drains cognitive and emotional bandwidth. Day 2 expands into intentional leadership under stress to explore how safety, clarity and emotional steadiness drive better team performance.

Leaders leave with practical tools, shared language, and concrete shifts they can implement immediately to lead and live with greater clarity, steadiness and purpose.

Featured Speaking Engagements

Bring a Workshop to Your Company

Custom sessions for teams of any size.

Most Requested Keynotes and Workshops

  • While most organizations are spending time focusing on technology strategy, human emotions are quickly proving to be the real determinant of successful AI transformation. Fear, resistance and uncertainty about the future are quietly shaping adoption far more than capability does. In interactive sessions, Morra Aarons-Mele reveals that AI anxiety isn’t a weakness to suppress and reframes it as a powerful leadership signal. Drawing on deep expertise in psychology, neuroscience and organizational behavior, she shows leaders how emotional flexibility, more than technical fluency, drives effective transformation. Audiences learn to recognize how AI anxiety shows up in teams, build psychological safety during rapid change, and have more productive, human conversations about the future of work. Leaders leave equipped to guide AI adoption with steadiness, clarity and trust while ensuring innovation strengthens their workforce.

  • Anxiety comes with the job of leadership. But what if stress and worry weren’t liabilities, but sources of foresight, preparation, and resilience? Drawing on nearly two decades of research and her book “The Anxious Achiever,” Morra Aarons-Mele shines a light on the reasons behind why many high performers credit anxiety with their greatest successes. She explains the science behind anxiety and decision-making, why we are evolutionarily wired for uncertainty and how leaders can channel anxiety into clarity, instead of control or micromanagement. Compelling and highly relatable, this session provides practical tools for noticing emotional triggers, interrogating their root causes, and reframing stress as useful data. Leaders leave with a healthier, more strategic relationship to anxiety that will fuel better judgment, stronger teams, and steadier leadership in uncertain times.

  • High performance has a hidden cost: the same drive that fuels excellence can quietly sap judgment, creativity and wellbeing long before anyone uses the word “burnout.” In this powerful session, Morra Aarons-Mele reframes mental and emotional wellbeing as a strategic performance advantage. Drawing on research in neuroscience and performance psychology, she explains why burnout is a lagging indicator and how stress can either sharpen leadership or silently drain it. Leaders learn to distinguish between productive stress and what Aarons-Mele calls “stupid stress:” the unnecessary pressure that exhausts individuals and systems. Audiences walk away with tactical behavioral shifts they can immediately put into practice for consistently sustaining attention, protecting energy and building the internal capacity to reliably perform under pressure.

  • “Always say yes.” “Get out there.” “Crush it.” For many leaders, conventional advice about visibility and influence can feel exhausting, repetitive and ineffective. In engaging, research-backed sessions, Morra Aarons-Mele challenges the myth that extroversion is the key to success. Drawing on two decades of interviews and data, she reveals the hidden advantages of introverted leadership, from deep listening to thoughtful decision-making, and shows how both introverts and extroverts can communicate and influence more effectively by working with, not against, their natural wiring. Audiences gain practical strategies for confident communication, smarter networking, and authentic leadership presence without faking extroversion. Leaders leave equipped to define success on their own terms and build cultures where different brains thrive.

  • Workplace mental health conversations can feel like an unending cycle. Management may be aware that stress and disengagement are rising on their teams, but unsure what will move the needle on worker performance and retention. In this candid, solutions-oriented session, Morra Aarons-Mele cuts through performative wellness language to focus on what truly helps leaders and teams operate under stress. Drawing on research and real-world organizational and behavioral expertise, she explains why traditional approaches often fall short and how real life, from domestic concerns to caregiving to health challenges, inevitably collides with work. Leaders learn practical, credible approaches to supporting performance during uncertain times without lowering production standards. Audiences exit with new, no-nonsense well-being strategies that strengthen resilience, judgment, and results across all layers of an organization.

Audiences Weigh In:

  • “Morra really helped the PhD students in the audience understand where their drives for perfectionism are coming from, and why it's so important to understand what triggers them throughout the day. She offered useful and simple advice that advanced our students' self-knowledge and ability to manage their own anxiety and energy.”

    –MIT

  • "Morra helped us create a truly memorable event that brought essential skills for better mental health and leadership to Googlers and guests. Together we created an engaging and groundbreaking day."

    –Google

  • “We’re fans. The participation number was the highest we’ve seen. Morra covered a ton of information in a limited window, without while still creating space for breath and stillness.”

    –National Geographic

  • “I've never felt so seen before. All of a sudden, I understood I'm not alone in how I feel.”

    –Workshop participant, Private Equity

  • “AMAZING! So powerful. We can’t wait to have you talk to more of our audiences.”

    –Forte Foundation

  • “The single best motivational talk I’ve heard in my entire career.”

    –Senior Partner, PWC

  • Your talk on emotional resilience and leadership was important and especially relevant in this moment. Our members gained so much from your insights and real-world perspective, and several shared how meaningful it was to reflect on these themes alongside peers who are navigating similar pressures. The guidance you offered sparked thoughtful conversation and provided takeaways that participants are already carrying back to their organizations and teams.

    - National Social Services Organization

  • “Morra brought inspiring and practical life skills. She left students empowered as they navigate the complex world.”

    –Brown University

  • "Morra killed it, she nailed it, she transcended it, she reinvented it..."

    –Harvard Medical School Teaching Hospital