Katara McCarty
- Helping leaders and organizations build a future where care is treated as essential infrastructure.
- Empowering Black Women through Technology and Leadership
- Founder & CEO, Exhale
- Founder, Exhale Cares
- Award-Winning Entrepreneur
- Certified Executive Coach
- Webby Award Winner
Katara McCarty Speaker Biography
Katara McCarty is a nationally recognized entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and thought leader building a future where care is treated as essential infrastructure for healthier people, stronger organizations, and more connected communities.
She is the Founder and CEO of Exhale, an award-winning mental well-being platform that centers Black women through culturally grounded practices, and the Founder of Exhale Cares, a nonprofit advancing mental health equity through research, education, and advocacy.
Before founding Exhale, Katara spent more than a decade leading culture, learning, and leadership initiatives for organizations. Today, she helps leaders rethink how care, innovation, and human-centered leadership can create stronger organizations and more sustainable success.
Her work has been recognized with a Webby Award, first place in the 2024 NBA Foundation All-Star Pitch Competition, and fellowships with MIT Solve, Rock Health, and The Highland Project.
Book this SpeakerSpeech Topics
Care Is Infrastructure
Why the Future of Leadership Depends on It
What if care isn’t a perk—but the infrastructure that determines whether people, organizations, and communities truly thrive?
The organizations best prepared for the future are those that intentionally design for people, not just performance.
Many of today’s greatest workplace challenges—including burnout, disengagement, declining trust, and constant change—are symptoms of systems that have treated care as optional rather than essential.
In a world that often rewards speed, extraction, and scale, what does it mean to build differently?
Drawing from her experience building Exhale at the intersection of technology, culture, and well-being, Katara challenges leaders to rethink how organizations are designed. She makes the case that care is not soft—it is strategic infrastructure that fuels innovation, resilience, trust, and sustainable growth.
Through compelling stories, practical leadership insights, and a fresh perspective on organizational design, audiences discover how to intentionally build cultures where people and performance thrive together.
When we treat care as infrastructure rather than an afterthought, we don’t just build healthier people—we build stronger organizations, more resilient communities, and a future where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
Participants will learn how to:
• Shift from viewing care as an employee benefit to treating it as a strategic leadership advantage.
• Design cultures where trust, belonging, and well-being strengthen performance.
• Build resilient organizations that thrive through change and uncertainty.
• Foster innovation by creating environments where people feel safe to contribute their best ideas.
• Lead with greater intention while balancing growth, purpose, and humanity.
The Cost of Carrying It All
Why Sustainable Leadership Begins with Caring for Yourself
What if the greatest threat to your leadership isn’t the demands around you—but the belief that your worth is measured by how much you can carry?
Many leaders, especially women, have been conditioned to overperform, overgive, and push through at the expense of their own health and well-being. They become the steady one, the helper, the fixer, and the one everyone relies on—until carrying it all becomes unsustainable.
In this powerful keynote, Katara invites audiences to challenge the belief that self-sacrifice is the price of success. Through personal stories, practical tools, and moments of reflection, she shows how speaking up, creating healthy boundaries, embracing intentional pauses, practicing breathwork, and reconnecting with yourself are not signs of weakness—they are essential leadership practices.
When we care for ourselves first, we lead with greater clarity, presence, resilience, and impact.
Audience Takeaways
• Recognize the hidden emotional and physical costs of chronic overperformance.
• Identify the beliefs and expectations that keep you stuck in over functioning.
• Learn practical tools to pause, breathe, reset, and recenter throughout the workday.
• Build the confidence to speak up, set healthier boundaries, and advocate for your own well-being.
• Create sustainable habits that support both personal well-being and professional excellence.
