ABOUT THE AUTHOR
APRIL RINNE has been weaving a story about how to navigate change, personally and professionally, for as long as she can remember. Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change is the container to express this story and cast a broader vision for humanity as a whole. Her perspective is best understood through three lenses on change: as a futurist and trusted adviser; as a global citizen, adventurer, and cultural connector; and as an orphan and lifelong student of anxiety.
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April spent the first half of her career focused on global development and financial inclusion, and the latter half on the “new” digital economy and the future of work. Over more than two decades, she has seen emerging trends early, understands their potential, and helps others do the same.
For example, April was in the vanguard of microfinance, impact investing, the sharing economy, remote work, and portfolio careers—all of which were largely “invisible” until they whipsawed the world and changed for good how we live, work, purchase, travel, invest, and think about what’s next.
Today, April is an acclaimed futurist, sought-after speaker, and trusted adviser, especially known for her role as a bridge: between start-ups and governments, between executives and customers, between financial and social returns, between for-profit and for-benefit business models, between developed and developing countries, and between those excited about change and those resistant to it. She walks the talk: bucking conventionality, seeing differently, and constantly seeking to level up her ability to help others reshape their relationship to change.
April’s work and travels in more than one hundred countries have offered her a front-row seat to change at both local and global levels. This includes the better part of four years spent solo without a permanent address and with a backpack and an insatiable desire to better understand how the rest of the world lives. Change is universal; how we deal with it is not.
From relatively small instances of flux, like not knowing where she’d sleep that night in Indonesia or being held up at gunpoint in Bolivia, to much bigger (and often borderless) issues, such as how climate change affects megacities in Africa or whether mobile banking helps reduce inequality in Latin America, April has seen firsthand how different places and cultures grapple with change. She is as comfortable at Davos as she is talking with microfinance borrowers in an urban slum. She constantly Gets Lost (intentionally or not!), Starts with Trust as often as she can, and Knows Her “Enough” in part thanks to observing how other cultures live more sustainably.
However, experiences not on April’s CV have had the most profound impact on her quest to understand the landscape of change. When April was twenty years old, both of her parents died in a car accident, which threw her into a world of flux. She put her expectations on hold to deal with the aftermath, ultimately letting go of how she thought her own future might unfold. She’d struggled with depression already, but now her anxiety went into hyperdrive. Her desire to rebuild family, coupled with her hope to live a life of meaning and her hunger to make sense of it all, made April a lifelong advocate for mental health and humanity. Flux is peppered with her personal stories, insights, and observations that underscore the fundamentally human nature of change … and that the best way we get through all this change is together.
April holds a JD from Harvard Law School, an MA in International Business and Finance from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and a BA in International Studies and Italian summa cum laude from Emory University. She is a Fulbright Scholar and studied at Oxford University, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the European University Institute. She is one of the fifty leading female futurists in the world, one of the earliest Estonian e-Residents, and—for balance—a certified yoga teacher. In 2011, the World Economic Forum named her a Young Global Leader. For more details and inspiration, including handstands from around the world, head to aprilrinne.com and fluxmindset.com.