AUstIN
Austin Arias is helping leaders and organizations lead more purposefully through engaging keynotes, facilitation, curriculum design, and coaching.
Austin’s goal is to help individuals and organizations think bigger and do better through more values-based and mission-aligned actions. By sharing thought-provoking dialogue and developing a genuine connection, Austin works to ensure individuals feel ready to take on the challenges ahead of them. He knows firsthand one very vital truth: leadership is not easy, but when done right, can make a lasting impact. He hopes to provide his audiences with the tools they need to make it a little bit easier and solve the root of the problems to ensure sustainable change.
As an award-winning speaker and professional, Austin has become a trusted voice in leadership, belonging, organizational development, personal growth, and talent development. For him, no two programs are the same. He is energized by the opportunities to create custom educational experiences to help you better meet your goals.
Austin has led the smallest and largest of teams and understands the important role a good manager plays in their team’s success. He has led full-lifecycle, national talent acquisition to hire diverse talent at all levels. Austin developed onboarding and talent development programs to bolster employee performance, employee retention, and overall satisfaction. He has successfully created departmental operational, programmatic, and hiring structures. He knows how to amplify an organization’s mission and vision through initiative execution and strategic planning.
His experience also includes leading large live and virtual events and activations with a history of working with the nation’s biggest music artists, performing acts, and comedians in venues from coffeehouses to stadiums and arenas. You can ask him for a story from an event and his first answer will always be, “How many stories and how much time do you have?” This experience has led Austin to be recognized as an expert in live and virtual event production, providing consulting on event delivery and strategy.
Austin is an active volunteer for many organizations as a facilitator of leadership and harm reduction workshops and curriculum across the country. He is a proud brother of Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity.
Austin currently resides in Nashville, TN with his rescue dog, where he spends most of his free time enjoying live music, exploring the growing food scene, and finding a new trail to explore. His favorite role in life is that of uncle to his niece Capri. Austin is originally from Tampa, FL.
CREDENTIALS & EXPERIENCE
Education
Master of Science, College Student Personnel Administration - Illinois State University (2013)
Bachelor of Arts, Mass Communications - University of South Florida (2011)
Professional Experience
Speaker, Consultant & Recruitment Coach — CAMPUSPEAK
Senior Training & Development Manager — Kappa Delta Sorority National Headquarters
Associate Director for Leadership Development — University of South Florida
Adjunct Faculty, Leadership Studies — University of South Florida
Director of Student Involvement — William Peace University
Assistant Director for Student & Family Engagement — The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Graduate Assistant for Student Programming — Illinois State University
Approach
Austin creates a space where leaders feel they can be honest with themselves, their identities, leadership experiences, and state of their organizations. He accomplishes this by integrating humor, life experiences, and what he learns about the group he is working with. He wants to challenge with care, asking individuals the tough questions with the hope they can be honest with themselves. Austin hopes to provide leaders with tangible, strategic practices they can integrate into their daily lives that will allow for personal, professional and organizational progress.
Austin’s approach is honest but comes from life experiences. He understands the perils of a student leader, and the difficulties to learn from missteps as a person and a leader, and they want to be successful. When an audience member leaves his programs, he hopes to provide them strength, the tools to allow them and their peers to be successful, the motivation to care for themselves, and the confidence to be the leader they are capable of being.