Dr. Pardis Mahdavi: Anthropologist
Anthropologist, geopolitics expert, and future of work keynote speaker Pardis Mahdavi helps leaders navigate global change, AI disruption, and human adaptation.
Quick Facts:
- Former President of University of La Verne
- Former Provost of University of Montana
- Former Dean at Arizona State University
- Director of the Executive Leadership Academy at University of California, Berkeley
- Formats:
- Keynote Speaker | Anthropologist | Geopolitics Expert
- Audiences:
- Corporate leaders, executive teams, policymakers, higher education institutions, global organizations, technology leaders, entrepreneurs, and audiences seeking a deeper understanding of human behavior and societal change.
- Outcomes:
- Understand how cultural and geopolitical shifts shape organizations, markets, and communities.
- Learn anthropological frameworks for navigating uncertainty and leading through change.
- Develop strategies for resilience, adaptation, and innovation in an AI-driven world.
- Travels from: Scottsdale, AZ
- **US Fee range: $10,001 - $20,000
Talent Services
Keynote Topics:
Mapping the Journey
Finding Your Path, Passion, and Purpose
In a world obsessed with achievement, many people find themselves asking a difficult question: “What now?”
Whether navigating a career transition, leading through uncertainty, stepping into a new chapter of life, or searching for deeper meaning, it’s easy to mistake periods of change for being lost. Dr. Pardis Mahdavi believes something very different.
Drawing on more than twenty-five years of global research, leadership experience in higher education, and her own remarkable personal journey, Dr. Mahdavi introduces audiences to the powerful concept of wayfinding—the ability to navigate uncertainty with courage, curiosity, and purpose.
From conducting fieldwork across the Middle East and Africa to serving as a university president and rebuilding her life after political exile, Dr. Mahdavi has learned that the most transformative moments often happen between destinations. The people we think are lost are often simply standing between one map and the next.
This keynote challenges audiences to rethink how they approach change, uncertainty, and personal growth. Rather than searching for a fixed destination, participants learn how to create meaning through movement, adaptability, and intentional action.
Audience Takeaways
Attendees will leave with
- A practical framework for identifying where they are in their own personal or professional journey.
- Three powerful questions that help establish a clear sense of direction and purpose.
- A new understanding of transition periods as opportunities for growth rather than signs of failure.
- Proven wayfinding tools built around courage, curiosity, and creativity.
- Greater confidence in navigating uncertainty and embracing change.
Key Stories Featured in This Presentation
The Three Calls
The unexpected conversations with highly accomplished individuals who, despite their success, found themselves disconnected from their own sense of purpose.
The Quiet After Achievement
The story of students who achieved everything they had worked towards, only to discover that uncertainty still awaited them on the other side of success.
From Exile to Reinvention
Dr. Mahdavi’s personal journey—from being forced to leave Iran following her work on women’s rights to stepping away from a university presidency and discovering that purpose is not a destination, but a continual process of becoming.
Key Message
The most important journeys are rarely mapped in advance. Purpose is not something we find—it is something we create through the choices we make, the challenges we embrace, and the paths we are willing to walk.
You are not lost. You are between maps.
Creativity as Power
How we navigate Chaosmosis without losing ourselves to it
We file creativity under leisure, the reward once the real work is done. We have it backwards. Creativity is the oldest survival technology our species owns, and the most underrated power in any room.
Drawing on twenty-five years of fieldwork from Tehran to Dubai to New York, Dr. Mahdavi traces the same reflex in people facing impossible odds. Iranian women who turned a police crackdown into satire through lipstick and jazz. Trafficked women in the Gulf who turned shipping containers into galleries and safehouses. Immigrant New Yorkers who keep rebuilding the city that tries to push them to its margins through an underground art scene. When systems break, people do not save themselves by bracing. They save themselves by making. This talk moves from creativity as resistance to creativity as the life force that pulls individuals, companies, and whole societies forward.
WHAT YOUR AUDIENCE LEAVES WITH
- A reframe they can use Monday- stop asking what you are doing, start asking what you are making.
- Language for this moment of Chaosmosis, and why a creative practice is what keeps chaos from curdling into burnout and paralysis.
- Permission to treat creativity as serious power, not a guilty pleasure.
Talent Short Bio
Pardis Mahdavi is an Iranian-American anthropologist, author, educator, and keynote speaker whose work explores how people, organizations, and societies adapt during periods of profound change. As a leading anthropologist studying power, culture, migration, identity, and resilience, she brings a uniquely human perspective to conversations about geopolitics, artificial intelligence, leadership, and the future of work.
Born in the United States to parents who fled Iran before the revolution, Pardis has spent her career examining how individuals and communities respond when political, social, and economic systems are disrupted. She earned her PhD and multiple master’s degrees from Columbia University and has become internationally recognized for translating complex global issues into actionable insights for leaders and organizations.
Her distinguished academic leadership includes serving as President of University of La Verne, Provost of University of Montana, and Dean at Arizona State University. She currently serves as Director of the Executive Leadership Academy at University of California, Berkeley and Founder of MyUni Education.
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