Jane Chen

Co-Founder and CEO of Embrace, Social-Good Entrepreneur, Innovation Leader, Award Winning Keynote Speaker

Jane is a speaker, leadership coach, and best-selling author of Like A Wave We Break. She was the co-founder & former CEO of Embrace Global, which developed a ground-breaking infant incubator that has impacted over 1,000,000 babies. Jane brings personal storytelling, insights, and practical tools to help people cultivate resilience, emotional awareness, and compassion so they can create lasting impact. She is a TED speaker and Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. She has been recognized as Forbes’ Impact 30, and has also received the Economist Innovation Award, Fast Company Innovation Award, and World Economic Forum Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Jane received her MBA from Stanford and Masters in Public Administration from Harvard.

Jane Chen Keynote Speaker Fee Fee range is for U.S. events, depending on location and organization type
$40,001 - $50,000
Languages Spoken
English
Travels From
California,

Jane Chen Keynote Speaker Fee Fee range is for U.S. events, depending on location and organization type
$40,001 - $50,000
Languages Spoken
English
Travels From
California,

Keynote Speaker Topics

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Women in Business Speakers
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Suggested Keynote Speaker Programs

Using Design Thinking to Save Lives

How can you save lives? If you’re a doctor you can save one life at a time, but how can you save thousands of lives if there is just one of you? Jane Chen decided to use design thinking, a systematic process for problem-solving. By ...

How can you save lives? If you’re a doctor you can save one life at a time, but how can you save thousands of lives if there is just one of you? Jane Chen decided to use design thinking, a systematic process for problem-solving. By following a process of empathizing, defining, brainstorming, prototyping, testing, and implementing, Jane Chen plans to help the 15 million premature and low birth-weight babies born every year through a low-cost infant warmer In this talk, Jane walks through the design thinking process and illustrates how she was able to use it at Embrace to develop an innovation that has now saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

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Embracing the Entrepreneurial Journey

In this talk, she walks through the process of creating Embrace, the challenges faced along the way, and key lessons she learned as an entrepreneur.

What is the Cathedral You want to Build?

People dedicate their lives to building Cathedrals that take hundreds of years to complete. They will never see their work come to finality and celebrate their accomplishment. These people work for a cause that is greater than themselves. In this talk, she walks ...

People dedicate their lives to building Cathedrals that take hundreds of years to complete. They will never see their work come to finality and celebrate their accomplishment. These people work for a cause that is greater than themselves.

In this talk, she walks through the process of creating Embrace, how to lead with purpose, and how to think about the purpose of your work and the legacy you want to leave.

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About Keynote Speaker Jane Chen

Jane Chen is a best-selling author, leadership coach, speaker and entrepreneur. She is the co-founder and former CEO of Embrace Global, a social enterprise which has helped to save over 1 million babies with its groundbreaking portable incubator. She’s been recognized by President Obama, funded by Beyoncé, and featured in The New York Times, Forbes, Newsweek, and other global media.

In her best-selling memoir, Like a Wave We Break, Jane shares the rise of Embrace and the defining moment when its near-collapse after a decade forced her to confront the personal cost of her own relentless drive. Through this reckoning, she uncovered how self-compassion can transform the way we lead, connect, and create meaning in our lives. Her story offers a powerful message for leaders navigating uncertainty, burnout, and high-stakes environments. You can watch a short video trailer of her book here.

Adam Grant (#1 NYT Best-Selling Author, Think Again) calls it “a powerful memoir about facing fears and bouncing forward” and Bessel van der Kolk (#1 NYT Best-Selling Author, Body Keeps the Score) describes it as a “brilliant and gripping book about how resilience…can transform adversity into hope and inspiration around the world.”

Questions? Contact Us Any Time:

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Jane is a TED speaker and a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. She has been selected for Forbes’ Impact 30, and is a recipient of the Economist Innovation Award and Fast Company Innovation Award. Jane has also been recognized as Social Entrepreneur of the Year by the World Economic Forum. She received her MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, and her Masters in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

When she’s not working with leaders around the world, Jane can often be found surfing—her favorite metaphor for resilience, flow, and riding the waves of change.

Testimonials

“Jane’s story is incredibly inspiring…her message about the disconnect between external success and inner fulfillment has never been more timely.”

Marc Benioff

Ceo, Salesforce

“Jane Chen is a remarkable inventor and entrepreneur, and if you’ve ever felt like you weren’t enough, her story will move you.”

Adam Grant

#1 NYT Bestselling author

“Jane highlights how having introspection and courage helps us realize our true potential…and how resilience can help overcome what seem like insurmountable limitations.”

Vinod Khosla

Founder Khosla Ventures

“Jane was praised as ‘most inspirational’ and ‘by far the best talk I’ve ever heard.’ I strongly encourage you to listen to her story. You will undoubtedly gain a profound perspective.”

Jin Zhang

Director of Engineering, Meta

“Jane’s story is not only compelling and inspirational but also powerful in a way that makes her audience believe in something more. She is a true fighter, survivor, and innovator. Her leadership speaks for itself and her already impressive legacy is only just getting started.”

Arielle Fuller

Chief Relationship Officer, Parlay House

“Jane spoke about disruptive innovation at a leadership development conference for the emerging leaders of my organization. To say that she had the audience riveted would be an understatement. Read More

Leslie Rorhbacker

Chief Human Strategy Officer, The Medicines Company

“Jane’s story is incredibly inspiring and completely applicable to the challenging times we are living through today. Her messages of hope, tenacity and dedication to the mission over ego was inspirational. Jane would be a terrific speaker for any organization looking to elevate team commitment to achieve.”

Mark Garrett

Executive Chairman, Moors and Cabot, Inc.

“We invited Jane to speak at our Women Leaders for the World event and it was truly incredible. Jane powerfully demonstrated what it takes to be a passionate leader, providing inspiration through her story of leading Embrace and saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of babies. Read More

Claudia Searle

Women Leaders for the World Coordinator

“When Jane joined a group of 20 next-generation leaders to share her story, she modeled courage, vulnerability, and authenticity, setting the exact tone we were striving towards for our leadership development program.”

Jim Citrin

Leader, Spencer Stuart CEO Practice & Best-Selling Author

“We invited Jane to speak at our company meeting, and she had our entire team laughing, crying, and feeling grounded and inspired, all in the span of 40 minutes and over Zoom.”

Clara Shih

CEO of Hearsay and Board of Directors at Starbucks

“Leaving Jane’s speaker session last week, I, along with the rest of the 250+ attendees, had chills. The story of how Embrace came to be – and the thousands of babies’ lives they’ve impacted – was the inspiration we all needed.”

Executive Development Leader, Retail Industry

“Leaving Jane’s speaker session last week, The Design Thinking Mindset: Driving Innovation, I, along with the rest of the 250+ attendees, had chills. The story of how embrace came to be – and the thousands of babies’ lives they’ve impacted since – was the inspiration we all needed. Read More

Emily Thompson

Director - Gap Inc. Global Leadership

“Hearing Jane’s experience reminded me of what true courage is about. My team members praised Jane’s talk as ‘amazing,’ ‘‘most inspirational’ and ‘by far the best resilience-themed talks I’ve ever heard.’ Read More

Jin Zhang

Engineering Manager, Facebook

“We invited Jane to speak at our company meeting, and she had our entire team laughing, crying, and feeling grounded and inspired, all in the span of 40 minutes and over Zoom. She has a riveting personal and professional story with many important leadership lessons woven in— Read More

Clara Shih

CEO of Hearsay and Board of Directors at Starbucks

“Hearing Jane Chen’s talk reminded me of what true courage is about. My team members praised Jane’s talk as “amazing”, “most inspirational” and “by far the best resilience-themed talk I’ve ever heard”. I strongly encourage you to listen to Jane’s story — Read More

Jin Zhang

Director of Engineering, Facebook

“We were so pleased to have had the opportunity to hear Jane’s inspiring presentation. Her message thoroughly engaged our firm’s management across our 50+ international locations. Jane was also able to draw parallels to our own core values, Read More

Patrick Gallagher

Director at Fragomen

Jane Chen’s personal story of mission, vision, creativity, and grit – all in the face of repeated setbacks, gave our teams real insight into the many facets required for success in innovation. Her story is inspiring, illuminating, and practical. Read More

Michele Tapiale

Client Director, Duke Corporate Education

“Jane’s deeply moving and inspiring talk on her journey with Embrace, speaks to courage, curiosity, compassion and community. Her experiences, challenges, setback and triumphs kept our audience of engineers glued to their seats. Read More

Rana Chakrabarti

Director of Customer Experience, SAP Academy of Engineering

“We invited Jane to speak at our annual YPO Taipei Symposium, themed ‘Game Changers and Mavericks.’ Jane’s talk made a lasting impact among our members, as she showed how to have both enormous social and business impact in the world.”

Royce Hong

Chapter Chair, YPO Taipei