Rachel Happe is a well-regarded workplace strategist who has collaborated with some of the world’s largest organizations to transform how they collaborate and learn. She is passionate about cultivating connection, joy, and trust in workplaces by building community-centric cultures that empower employees and create shared value.
Rachel has a unique ability to understand, simplify, and align strategy, operations, and tactics in ways that increase the connection and effectiveness of complex environments. Her understanding of complex adaptive social systems allows her to craft governance that feels like a trellis instead of a cage, helping organizations flourish.
Rachel founded Engaged Organizations in 2021 to collaborate deeply with a select set of clients to transform organizations. Prior to that, in 2009, she co-founded The Community Roundtable where she published over a decade of groundbreaking research documenting effective community strategy, governance, and operations and created the first online community management training courses. She pursued this work in order to better understand how traditional organizations would need to adapt for the digital age. Her clients have included BASF, Steelcase, AAAS, EA, Microsoft, Hilti, Aspen Institute, PWC, the Canadian Medical Association, and the World Bank Group.
Earlier in Rachel’s career, she served as a product executive designing emerging technology platforms and was IDC’s first award-winning social technology analyst. She is a sought-after speaker and expert on the impact of technology on engagement, relationships, and culture. She has presented at Enterprise 2.0, DeFrag, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, JiveWorld, APQC, J. Boye, IBM Connect, and SocialNow. She was named a 2023 Top 50 Remote Work Advocate by Mobeus Software and is a Constellation SuperNova and Reworked Impact Award judge. Rachel’s writing has been published in Harvard Business Review, CMSWire, and Information Week and she has been quoted in publications ranging from Variety to Diginomica to The Mercury News. She was the technical advisor for the book, B2B Customer Communities. Some of her writing, podcast appearances and select presentations can be found here.
Rachel writes and works in a cozy garret office, which she’s dreamed of for decades, at her home outside of Boston when she is not inducing eye-rolls from her teen for offering yet another life lesson.
Rachel strives to write about complex topics in ways that everyone can understand because she believes it is hubris more than a lack of intelligence that inhibits learning.
