About Us
Our Approach
At BelongLab, we uniquely utilize data combined with the subjective experience to engage organizations and individuals in visionary institutional and professional development with a keen eye on the value of diverse perspectives.
We believe in starting with the client to gain a firm understanding of its values, mission, culture, and goals in order to build and implement tailored programs with lasting impact.
Our Team
Neha Sampat, Esq.
CEO and Founder
Neha helps organizations create cultures of belonging into which each individual can bring more of their true and best self. Through consulting, training, speaking, and writing, she helps organizations create peak‐performance, inclusive teams by addressing hidden barriers to belonging, such as internalized bias, unconscious bias, distrust in teams, and wellness challenges. She is an internationally sought-after expert on inclusive leadership and disrupting Imposter Syndrome, and she created the top-rated “Owning Your Value” programs to cultivate evidence-based confidence and nurture authenticity.
Neha is a big believer in the power of a story. She founded GenLead | BelongLab in part to honor each person's lived experience as valuable data that drives change. She helps her clients engage not only their heads, but also their hearts in how they live and work.
Neha’s insights have been featured in numerous publications, including Time Magazine, Thrive Global, ABA Journal, and News India Times. Neha holds BAs in Sociology and Political Science from University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign, obtained her JD from UC Berkeley School of Law, holds a Certificate in Graduate Applied Psychology, and is certified in Hogan Assessments. Neha has worked in big law, boutique law, and higher ed, and continues to thrive in one of her favorite roles: Mama to her two kiddos.
Rita Givens Byrd
Engagement Manager
To say Rita is passionate about creating diverse cultures in corporate settings and workspaces would be a huge understatement; it consumes her entire being and continually drives her work. Rita brings over two decades of results-driven executive and operations experience with startups, existing corporations and other socially-conscious organizations to help navigate their focus, operational, and inclusion areas. Her expertise provides innovation and strategic oversight to companies, helping them improve operations efficiencies, launch new products and programs, and successfully execute corporate events. She has an extensive background in nonprofit operations, program development, community building, and public relations with a particular focus on innovation, problem solving, event planning, and communications.
Patricija Petrac, Esq.
Research & Development Specialist
Patricija has spent her career advocating for and supporting marginalized communities as well as understanding and addressing the systems that perpetuate bias and inequity. When asked what drives her, the answer is creating lasting positive change. Patricija leverages her background in public policy, human complex systems (fancy word for computer modeling), law, and psychology to look at each situation in the context of the systems it inhabits in conjunction with taking the time to hear the truths each person brings to the story.
Patricija received her JD from UC Davis School of Law and holds a BA in Political Science, Public Policy, & Human Complex Systems from UCLA. A lifelong researcher, she has researched and written extensively on pregnancy and caregiving discrimination, rural communities & access to healthcare, the effect poverty has on government intervention (e.g., parental rights), LGBTQ+ rights in immigration and parental laws, and legal protections of victims of domestic abuse in immigration and family court. She has a keen understanding of the realities of the American workplace, including hourly workers, performance review processes, professional development barriers and tools, and both legal and structural methods of identifying and busting bias and injustice. Processing difficult and complex materials and providing concrete actionable solutions in a digestible format are of utmost importance to her in her work, written or otherwise. Patricija believes that empowering people to make the changes themselves is the only way to drive lasting transformation.
BelongLab