Available to book
Carla Harris
Carla Harris helps organizations build authentic, inclusive leadership that earns trust and drives innovation. A leadership speaker and author of Lead to Win, she spent three decades at Morgan Stanley and chaired the National Women's Business Council under Obama.
Carla Harris is a Wall Street executive, author, and leadership speaker who shows leaders how to earn trust, develop talent, and build teams that innovate.
A Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley, which she joined in 1987, Carla served as Vice Chairman of Wealth Management from 2013 to 2021 and was the first African American on the firm's management committee. President Barack Obama appointed her to chair the National Women's Business Council in 2013. She's the author of Expect to Win, Strategize to Win, and Lead to Win, and a gospel recording artist with three albums.
Her Eight Pearls of Leadership give leaders a practical structure for a workplace where people expect more voice and more choice. The framework covers authenticity, trust, clarity, developing other leaders, diversity, innovation, inclusivity, and voice, and it's built on what Carla has seen work across decades of client relationships and management at Morgan Stanley.
Audiences leave knowing how to define success when the path isn't clear, how to respond to failure so teams keep taking risks, and how to have the hard conversations others avoid. Her sessions are candid, practical, and grounded in real experience.
For events that need leadership advice from someone who's lived it at the top, Carla delivers.
Topics, sessions and talks
Carla Harris draws on her book Strategize to Win and more than three decades at Morgan Stanley to show professionals how to be intentional about their careers, whether they're starting out, stepping up, or starting over. She covers how to build performance currency and relationship currency, manage the perceptions that shape decisions made when you're not in the room, and lead authentically from any seat. Audiences leave with a clear plan for the next stage of their career.
Employees have more voice, more choice, and higher expectations of work. The old leadership playbook no longer holds. Carla Harris draws on three decades at Morgan Stanley to set out her Eight Pearls of Leadership: authenticity, trust, clarity, developing other leaders, diversity, innovation, inclusivity, and voice. She shows why failure should be celebrated and hard truths named, with courage as the thread running through all eight. Leaders leave with a framework for earning trust and building teams that innovate.
Testimonials
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frequently asked questions
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To book Carla Harris, email carla.harris@getapeptalk.com or call PepTalk on +44 20 3835 2929 (UK) or +1 737 888 5112 (US), and one of our speaker agents will contact you within hours to confirm Carla's availability and speaking fee. If you can, please include your budget upfront – it helps us fast-track your request. It’s also helpful to know the date, format (virtual or in-person), location, and about your audience.
Carla Harris builds her talks around named frameworks, such as her Eight Pearls of Leadership, and grounds each principle in a specific story from her decades on Wall Street.
Carla Harris speaks on intentional leadership through her Eight Pearls framework, career strategy and managing perception, and building trust, inclusion, and innovation in teams. She is a Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley, served as Vice Chairman of Wealth Management, and chaired the National Women's Business Council after her appointment by President Barack Obama in 2013.
No. PepTalk adds no booking fee, so you pay the speaker's fee and nothing beyond it. The service, from shortlist through to contracts and event-day logistics, is included. For repeat or multi-event bookings, PepTalk can agree preferential rates with your procurement team.
Share your event date, audience, format, objectives and budget, and PepTalk sends a hand-picked shortlist within 24 hours. Each suggestion comes with a profile, a fee and a recommendation on the strongest fit. Once you choose, PepTalk handles contracts, travel and logistics through to event day.
The typical fee range is the speaker's standard in-person fee in their home market, shown in their local currency. It moves with format, location, date and session length: virtual sessions and shorter slots usually cost less, while international travel and peak dates cost more. Send your brief to PepTalk and the team will confirm the exact fee in your currency.
Not all of them, and it makes no difference to your booking. PepTalk's network of 15,000+ speakers covers talent the team works with directly alongside speakers represented by agents and agencies worldwide. PepTalk approaches the speaker, negotiates the fee and handles contracting either way.
Three to six months ahead is comfortable for most events, and 12 months is better for large conferences, peak-season dates or one specific in-demand speaker. Shorter timelines are workable, and PepTalk regularly fills last-minute and replacement bookings within days. Availability is the constraint, so get in touch as soon as you have a date.
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