Meet Renée
Founder and Bold Strategist for Making Work More Human
Creator of the Love-Centered Leadership Framework™
I’m Renée Smith, a leadership strategist, researcher, and speaker who helps leaders and organizations build love-centered workplaces where people and performance thrive together.
I work with organizations that are ready to move beyond fear-based cultures and create healthier, happier, more human ways of working.
The Problem I Help Leaders and Teams Solve
Fear shows up at work in many forms:
Low trust and psychological safety
Disengagement and burnout
Silos, conflict, and high turnover
Values that sound good, but aren’t actually lived.
This fear harms people and results. Most leaders don’t want this.
But fear-based habits and systems can be deeply embedded.
I help leaders and organizations see those patterns clearly — and change them — for good!
My Approach
My work is grounded in:
My primary research on love and fear in the workplace
Deep experience across sectors
Practical tools leaders can actually use
I help leaders:
Build love-centered leadership capability
Strengthen trust, belonging, and accountability
Improve employee engagement and retention
Design cultures that support humanity - instead of undermining it.
Love, in my work, is not sentiment.
It is a strategic leadership discipline and an uplifting set of team practices.
Who I Serve
I work with human-centered leaders and their teams to help them deepen their leadership skills and strengthen their team practices to create an exceptional employee experience.
I have worked in Professional Services Organizations, Technology, Government, Higher Education, Healthcare, Social Services, K-12 Education, Non-profit mission-driven organizations, and small/medium-sized businesses.
With a thoughtfully curated mix of strategies for each client, I guide organizations to make work more human and effective - for everyone.
Why Love at Work Matters
Work shapes how people experience themselves, one another, and the world.
When fear dominates, people shrink and withhold.
When love leads, people rise and commit.
Teams and organizations can be places where people feel:
Seen and respected
Acceptance and belonging
Challenged to learn and supported to grow
Able to contribute meaningfully
When this happens, trust becomes the bedrock.
People stay. Cultures change. Performance and customer satisfaction soar.
Love makes work more successful — by being more human!
What I Do
At the heart of my work is a simple truth: Love is greater than fear. And when leaders, teams, and entire organizations shift from fear to Love, embracing love as a guiding principle and daily practice, both humans and organizational outcomes flourish. Here’s what I do to help clients make this shift.
Love-Centered Leadership Development
Helping you learn cutting-edge leadership insights and practical actions to deepen and mature your human-centered leadership with Love at the core. I teach you what Love-Centered Leadership is, why it is so crucial for success and satisfaction, how team members experience love, what it means to practice love, and how to embed love in systems.
Employee Experience Insights and Plans
You're working hard to be a compassionate, human-centered leader, but you may wonder, “Is it working? How is my team really experiencing our workplace?” Using my EX Insights process and tools, I listen to your team to discover what’s strong and positive and what can be improved. Then we co-create a confidence-boosting plan to make your employee experience even stronger.
Keynote Talks for Your Event or Conference
Fear has run workplaces for generations, breeding burnout, disconnection, and harm. But in my talks, I make the business case for Love as the most practical way to build healthy, thriving organizations that are good for people and get results. My warm, bold message has been called “Life changing!” and “The most memorable message that will stick with me for life.”
Love in Action Projects Bring Change
Each year, I work with select organizations and teams that are facing unique challenges. I help them overcome barriers and achieve results by choosing Love over fear. No two projects are the same; each requires their own strategy and tactics. But the move away from harm and division and toward healing and connection is universal.
What clients are saying…
“My team members still talk about you and the workshop, which I sense made quite an impact on them. You helped us validate what we sensed was the right thing to do in the workplace regarding being kind to your fellow human.”
— Karid Shawwa, Lean Construction Manager
Consolidated Construction Company
Beirut, Lebanon
“I am so grateful to [Renee] for making such a profound impact on me, my students, and our evolving perspective on how to build a more human workplace.”
— David Berry, M.Ed., VP People & Culture
MUNICIPAL
San Diego, CA, USA
“Her professionalism is matched by her knowledge and experience, and this creates a sense of reassurance with her audience. Renee’s impact on a particularly skeptical cohort of medical professionals was impressive and we’ve booked her to return this year. Highly recommend.”
— Management Consultant & Trainer
London, UK
More About Renée Smith
To be fully human means being connected to others, to belong, to know that you matter. People do incredible things when they can bring their true selves to the workplace. They give their best. It’s what humans want most. To bring their gifts and have these gifts received.
Renée helps organizations around the world become more loving and human. She helps leaders and teams recognize that there’s no benefit to living and working in conditions that trigger fear responses.
She teaches people and organizations how to deeply regard the humanity within themselves and others, how to work in harmony and be at ease in safe spaces, and how to seek the greatest good for all the people in the system.
Help to Transform Your Organization
How can organizations transform into more human workplaces? It starts at the top. Renée has helped leaders transform their outmoded leadership habits based on fear and threat, and build more effective Love-Centered habits based on what we know about human flourishing. She guides leaders around the world, speaks at conferences and to organizations, and conducts workshops and trainings to inspire and guide change.
She served as Director of Workplace Transformation in the Governor’s Office for the State of Washington, a position created for her to reach state leaders and teams with her message and practices of loving leadership. She has spoken to thousands of people in hundreds of audiences in 20 countries, helping them to discover that the best results come when team members experience more love and less fear at work.
Renée has more than two decades of experience providing organization development services to public, private, and non-profit organizations, always with a focus on people. Now, as a professional speaker, teacher, and guide, Renée shares her insights on making work more loving and human.
Renée’s Story
Founder and CEO of A Human Workplace, Renée is a writer, speaker, researcher, teacher, and leader of the movement to make work more loving and human. As a young person, she lost her way in life and later faced and overcame personal tragedy when her husband’s plane crashed.
Life halted, and she was thrust into the unknown of holding her young family together, as her husband, who suffered a debilitating head injury, lost his ability to be a partner. After eight years caring for him, Renée reclaimed herself and found her voice and purpose in the world.
In this new season, Renee completed her BA in Organizational Behavior at Seattle Pacific University, then earned her Master of Science in Organization Development from Pepperdine University.
Renée now works with leaders around the world who are ready to decrease fear and increase love in their workplaces. She helps organizations large and small, in faraway places or near to her home in the Pacific Northwest, where she lives on the shores of the Puget Sound in the shadow of Mount Rainier.
A mother of four and grandmother of ten (!), she enjoys drawing for pleasure, cooking new recipes, hosting friends and family at the beach, kayaking on the Puget Sound, and exploring cities around the world.
Learn more about Renée’s professional journey on her LinkedIn profile.
Working with Leaders and Teams to Elevate Love and Stamp Out Fear
Human workplaces are places where people flourish. Renée has spent her career championing human-centered principles and practices, and now she is transforming work cultures across the globe into more thriving, human-centered organizations. Her secret to bringing out the best in people? More love, less fear.
That’s what her research and nearly twenty years of organization development experience reveal is the secret to bringing out the best in people. Thousands of people have already learned how to elevate love and stamp out fear in their lives, workplaces, and communities. Connect with Renée to breathe new life into your workplace.
“The Love I advocate for isn’t weak and permissive; it is strong, wise, and durable. It unleashes possibilities. My purpose is to help you center your work in that Love every day.”
— Renée Smith
Strategist, Researcher, Speaker, and Founder of A Human Workplace