Professional Biography

Cara Yar Khan is a global strategist, international public speaker, entrepreneur and one of the world’s most distinctive voices on disability rights, inclusive leadership and social impact.

A former White House political appointee, Cara served as Senior Advisor on International Disability Rights at the U.S. Department of State, where she helped advance disability inclusion across American foreign policy, diplomacy and international development. Her career has placed her at the intersection of government, business, human rights, philanthropy and global storytelling, advising senior leaders and institutions on how to translate ambitious commitments into credible action.

As Founder and CEO of The Purple Practice, a New York City based advisory firm, Cara works with governments, global companies, foundations and international organizations to broker disability inclusive partnerships, investments and strategies. Her premise is both moral and commercial: no organization can afford to exclude people with disabilities, not their talent, their leadership, their ingenuity or the enormous market they represent.

Cara began her international career with the United Nations World Food Programme in Ecuador before joining Dell Technologies in Panama in an executive communications role. She later spent more than a decade working with UNICEF, developing corporate partnerships, mobilizing resources and advancing humanitarian and development priorities through assignments in Angola, China, Madagascar, Mozambique, Thailand and Haiti following the devastating 2010 earthquake.

In 2019, Cara delivered the closing talk at TEDWomen. Her talk, “The beautiful balance between courage and fear,” has been viewed nearly three million times and translated into 27 languages. She has since spoken on some of the world’s most influential stages, challenging audiences to reconsider how courage, vulnerability, disability and leadership shape the future of institutions and societies.

Cara is also the central participant and a producer of the acclaimed documentary short film Facing the Falls, directed by Celia Aniskovich, produced by Liz Yale Marsh and executive produced by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton. The film follows Cara’s extraordinary expedition through the Grand Canyon while confronting far larger questions about fear, interdependence, representation and who is permitted to be seen as powerful.

Cara holds a master’s degree in International Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy. She is fluent in Spanish and has working knowledge of French, Italian and Portuguese, as well as basic Mandarin Chinese.

Across every dimension of her work, Cara brings a rare combination of geopolitical experience, executive judgment, lived expertise and compelling communication. She does not simply speak about inclusion. She helps institutions understand what it demands, what it unlocks and why getting it right is essential to their relevance, performance and future.