Who Is April Rinne?
April Rinne has been weaving a story about how to navigate change, personally and professionally, for as long as she can remember. Flux: Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change is the container to express this story and cast a broader vision for humanity as a whole.
A World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and ranked one of the “50 Leading Female Futurists” in the world by Forbes, April Rinne (pronounced Rih-Nee) is a change navigator: she helps individuals and organizations rethink and reshape their relationship with change, uncertainty, and a world in flux. She is a trusted advisor to well-known startups and companies, financial institutions, nonprofits, and think tanks worldwide, including Airbnb, Nike, Intuit, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, NESTA, Trōv, AnyRoad, and Unsettled, as well as governments ranging from Singapore to South Africa, Canada to Colombia, Italy to India. Her work has been featured in major publications worldwide, including Harvard Business Review, Wired, Fast Company and CNBC. April is the author of Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change.
A graduate of Harvard Law School and member of the Silicon Guild, April has been weaving a story about how to thrive amid flux for as long as she can remember, drawing on her history as a futurist, advisor, global development executive, microfinance lawyer, investor, mental health advocate, certified yoga teacher, globetrotter (100+ countries), and insatiable handstander. April also harnesses her very personal experiences with flux, including the death of both of her parents in a car accident when she was 20. Through her travels and tragedy, vision and values, global perspective and grounded sense of purpose, April helps others better understand how we see, think about, struggle with, and ultimately forge positive relationships with change.
April’s Journey to Flux
April’s perspective on change, uncertainty, and a world in flux is best understood through three lenses: as a futurist and trusted advisor; as a global citizen, adventurer and cultural connector; and as an orphan and lifelong student of anxiety.
April spent the first half of her career focused on global development and financial inclusion, and the latter half on the “new” digital economy and the future of work. Over more than two decades, she has seen emerging trends early, understands their potential, and helps others do the same.
For example, April was in the vanguard of microfinance, impact investing, the sharing economy, remote work, and portfolio careers — all of which were largely “invisible” until they whipsawed the world and changed how we live, work, purchase, travel, build community, create livelihoods, and invest for good.
Today, April is an acclaimed futurist, sought-after speaker and trusted advisor especially known for her role as a bridge: between startups and governments, between executives and customers, between financial and social returns, between for-profit and for-benefit business models, between developed and developing countries, between those excited about change and those resistant to it. She walks the talk: bucking conventionality, seeing differently, and constantly seeking to level-up her ability to help others reshape their relationship to change.
April’s work and travels in more than 100 countries have offered her a front-row seat to change at both local and global levels. This includes the better part of four years spent solo without a permanent address and with a backpack and an insatiable desire to better understand how the rest of the world lives. Change is universal; how we deal with it is not.
From relatively small instances of flux, like not knowing where she’d sleep that night in Indonesia or being held up at gunpoint in Bolivia, to much bigger (and often borderless) issues such as how climate change affects megacities in Africa or whether mobile banking helps reduce inequality in Latin America, April has seen first-hand how different places and cultures grapple with change. She is as comfortable at Davos as she is talking with microfinance borrowers in an urban slum. And she constantly Gets Lost (intentionally or not!), Starts with Trust as often as she can, and Knows Her “Enough” thanks to observing how other cultures live more sustainably.
However, experiences not on April’s CV have had the most profound impact on her quest to understand the landscape of change. When April was 20 years old, both of her parents died in a car accident, which threw her into a world of flux. She put her expectations on hold to deal with the aftermath, ultimately letting go of how she thought her own future might unfold. She’d struggled with depression already, but now her anxiety went into hyperdrive. Her desire to rebuild family, coupled with her hope to live a life of meaning and her hunger to make sense of it all, made April a lifelong advocate for mental health and humanity. Flux: Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change is peppered with her personal stories, insights and observations that underscore the fundamentally human nature of change... and that the best way we get through all this change is together.
April holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an M.A. in International Business and Finance from The Fletcher School at Tufts University, and a B.A. in International Studies and Italian summa cum laude from Emory University. She is a Fulbright Scholar and studied at Oxford University, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the European University Institute. She is one of the 50 leading female futurists in the world, one of the earliest Estonian e-Residents, and — for balance — a certified yoga teacher. In 2011 the World Economic Forum named her a Young Global Leader.