Our Practitioners

Moving Beyond began in 2018 as an initiative to experiment with new DE&I approaches in response to the challenge in the ecosystem of operationalizing DE&I in and throughout the core work of organizations.

In January 2020, we formed our current practice as a collective of practitioners spanning a range of expertise—including strategic planning, measurement and evaluation, training, facilitation, coaching, and L&D systems.

Aparna Rae

FOUNDER & PRINCIPAL

Founder of Moving Beyond, Aparna works at the intersection of DEI and organizational design. She currently leads the strategy and evaluation practice within the firm and supports fund managers, wealth advisors, impact-investors, philanthropists, and other social innovators creating a positive impact for people and the planet.

An award winning entrepreneurs, Aparna has launched a number of companies in the past decade. Her first in 2013, Project Feast, upskilled immigrant and refugee women in South King County to launch careers in the food industry. In 2015 she launched Firki, India’s first online teacher education platform supporting 1 million educators in its first year and in 2019 she launched Future for Us, a platform to advance women of color at work and grew a professional community of 11,000.

Her work has been featured in Forbes, Seattle Magazine, Business Insider, PSBJ, and Melinda Gates’s Evoke Magazine. She been a presenter on the intersection of diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) with program design and evaluation at SXSW, The American Evaluation Association, SOCAP, Global Impact Investing Network, as well a number of Greater Seattle Area organizations, including Equal Pay Today, Equal Rights Advocates, WASBA, Legal Fund of Washington, Seattle University and more.
Aparna serves as an advisor to a number of startups, former faculty at the Washington State Bar Association, and is a regular contributor to publications focused on diversity and inclusion in workforce development. Having lived and worked in six countries, Aparna brings a diversity lens to all her work.

Press: Seattle Magazine's Most Influential People 2019 | The Seattle Times | Forbes | Seattle Business Magazine