Anj Handa
Inclusion policies sit on the intranet while the people they were written for keep leaving, stalling, or burning out. Senior leaders need someone who can name the structural reasons for that, not the comfortable ones. The work is governance and culture, redesigned together, by someone who has done both.
Anj Handa is a governance specialist, lobbyist, and inclusion strategist who helps boards and senior teams turn inclusive leadership into operating practice, drawing on two decades of campaign and consultancy work as Founder of Inspiring Women Changemakers.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Anj Handa
- She brings governance-level credibility into inclusion conversations that usually stop at HR, holding positions as Independent Governor of Leeds Arts University, Chair of Freedom Studios, and Fellow of the RSA.
- Her campaign craft is verifiable, not rhetorical. She built the legal team, petition, and media strategy on the Afusat Saliu FGM-asylum case, gathering 126,500 signatures and pushing FGM higher on the UK political agenda.
- She names the parts of inclusive leadership most speakers avoid: emotional correctness, healthy boundaries, psychological safety, and what allyship has to do that employee networks cannot.
- She offers a working alternative to the glass ceiling, the labyrinth, which describes the actual sequence of barriers women, and particularly Black and brown women, encounter inside large organisations.
- Forbes named her in its 10 Diversity & Inclusion Trailblazers list, and Grant Thornton UK featured her among its 100 Faces of a Vibrant Economy. The recognition tracks substantive work, not commentary.
Biography highlights
- Founder of Inspiring Women Changemakers, an inclusive community and consultancy advising on equity, governance, and systems change.
- Independent Governor of Leeds Arts University and Chair of the Board of Freedom Studios.
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
- Named in Forbes “10 Diversity & Inclusion Trailblazers” and Grant Thornton UK’s 100 Faces of a Vibrant Economy (2018).
- Featured in Charity Times 2023 International Women’s Day list.
- Contributor to “Generation Share”, “Eradicating FGM in the UK” (Hilary Burrage), and “Refugee Tales” (Comma Press).
Biography
Most organisations have a diversity statement. Far fewer have governance and leadership practices that match it. The gap is where talent gets lost, complaints get managed, and senior leaders quietly accept attrition that the policy was meant to prevent. Closing that gap requires someone fluent in both the structural and the human side of the work.
Anj Handa has spent more than two decades operating in that space. She is Founder of Inspiring Women Changemakers, an inclusive community and consultancy that advises senior leaders on inclusive governance, equity, and systems change. She is an Independent Governor of Leeds Arts University, Chair of Freedom Studios, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; positions she has often noted are held by fewer than one percent of Black and brown women in the UK.
Her authority is not theoretical. In 2014 she led the high-profile asylum campaign for Afusat Saliu and her daughters, assembling the legal team, running a Change.org petition that drew 126,500 signatures, and bringing MPs and national media into the story. The work was later included in Hilary Burrage’s “Eradicating FGM in the UK” and the Comma Press anthology “Refugee Tales”. Forbes named her in its 10 Diversity & Inclusion Trailblazers list; Grant Thornton featured her among its 100 Faces of a Vibrant Economy.
What separates her work for senior teams is the territory she is willing to name. Psychological safety, emotional correctness, healthy boundaries, allyship that is more than a network. She challenges the glass ceiling as a useful frame and offers the labyrinth in its place, a more accurate description of the sequence of barriers women encounter inside complex organisations. That precision is what boards and executive teams hire her for.
Key speaking topics
- Inclusive leadership and governance
- Equity, diversity, and structural change
- The labyrinth: rethinking the glass ceiling
- Allyship beyond employee networks
- Psychological safety and emotional correctness
- Self-care and resilience for changemakers
- Campaign craft and policy influence
Ideal for
- Boards, governance committees, and executive teams setting inclusion strategy
- CHROs, Heads of DEI, and senior people leaders rebuilding programmes under scrutiny
- Public sector, charity, and arts leaders working on equity and safeguarding
- Women’s leadership and changemaker networks inside large organisations
Audience outcomes
- A sharper vocabulary for the structural barriers women face beyond the glass ceiling
- A clear distinction between allyship as practice and employee networks as forum
- Specific governance-level questions to put to their own inclusion programmes
- Permission and language to address emotional correctness and boundaries in senior teams
- A view of inclusion that connects policy, governance, and lived experience without losing rigour
Talks
A reframing of the barriers women face inside organisations, replacing the glass ceiling with the labyrinth as a more accurate model.
Key takeaways:
- Why the glass ceiling under-describes the actual sequence of organisational barriers
- Where intersectionality changes the shape of the labyrinth
- What boards and senior teams can change at governance level, not only at HR level
A talk on sustaining people who carry inclusion, advocacy, and change work inside organisations that have not been built to support them.
Key takeaways:
- The cost of emotional labour for those leading inclusion work
- Boundaries and emotional correctness as professional skills, not personal habits
- Practical recovery practices for senior leaders carrying systemic load
A direct examination of why diversity strategies underperform and what changes at the level of governance, leadership behaviour, and culture.
Key takeaways:
- The structural reasons inclusion plans fail to convert into retention
- The difference between an employee network and substantive allyship
- Governance-level interventions senior leaders can act on directly