Rane has been speaking and inspiring groups (20-25,000) since 1994. She has overcome significant adversities in her life as a first generation Vietnamese American. Rane has conquered: physical and mental abuse in youth, living in a group home, foster care then being emancipated at 15, attending one of the top engineering and liberal arts universities winning $150K in scholarships, successful career in education and technology, insomnia and Traumatic Brain Injury (18 concussions).

Rane Stempson is a recognized leader in Diversity & Inclusion, Innovation, Government, Education, Entrepreneurship and Technology.  She was the CEO and founder of the Ranemaker Institute focused on the need that individuals, organizations and cities need help in understanding how to discuss inclusive innovation and create action plans that benefit themselves, their companies, organizations and communities.  Rane launched the Inclusive Innovation Initiative in Bend to ensure Bend becomes one of the most inclusive cities in America.  She has volunteered extensively across the country, to ensure we support our technology entrepreneurs, women in STEM, under-represented groups starting their own business and mentored our future technical workforce in high schools, college and universities and across our nation.  After having another three concussions she had to take leave from Ranemaker Institute and focus on her health and now is returning to focus on public speaking, leadership development, coaching, team building and wellness sessions to help individuals and organizations reach their full potential.

Rane was a 15-year veteran at Microsoft where she held a number of roles, most recently Principal Research Director, where she engaged with academics worldwide and identified high-impact areas for research investigations and leads for growing, attracting and retaining women and under-represented groups in research, science and engineering. She worked on projects that taught middle and high school girls programming, launched the first international women’s hackathon targeting university women around the world, worked on how technology can help us eradicate human trafficking, how solving social issues with technology can increase diversity in technology and how diversity can help businesses become more innovative and drive better business outcomes. She has also helped organizations and groups create diversity strategies in recruitment, retention and advancement of under-represented groups and how diversity can be a competitive advantage for your business. She has launched and created strategic plans for employee resource groups and student organizations regarding women in technology.  She has taught at universities, guest lectured, advised student organizations and engineering departments in recruiting and retaining more diverse engineers.

Rane has worked actively with organizations like NCWIT, Anita Borg, AAUW, CRA-W, IEEE-WIE, CSTA, ACM-W, CMDiT and researchers on how to grow the pipeline of women and under-represented groups in research, science and engineering. She has been selected to sit on White House and United Nations committees to focus on how technology can stop the commercial sex trafficking of minors and technology inclusion for under-represented minorities in STEM. Previously, as the WW Director of Education Strategy and a certified Partnership Broker she was responsible for multi-stakeholder partnerships, Cisco-Intel-Microsoft Alliance, World Economic Forum- Global Education Initiative, Fast Track Initiative-Private Constituency and helping teams around the world use the power of technology as an accelerator to transform education to meet local government priorities to drive economic and workforce development in the 21st century.

She is an experienced leader in managing global technical teams, marketing, social media, brand, sales, business development & strategy, and turn around organizational development. If something is a disaster Rane has been well-known as the person to turn it around successfully. She has coached and mentored a number of entrepreneurs, professionals, civil servants, and technical individuals. Recently, she has been focusing a lot of her efforts supporting small businesses, government, non-profits and youth in rural America.