Hayley Mulenda
Younger employees are leaving faster than they are being replaced, and the standard wellbeing programme is not slowing the exit. Senior leaders know engagement, mental health, and inclusion now sit on the same agenda. Translating that into something a Gen Z hire actually responds to is the harder problem.
Hayley Mulenda is an international speaker, author, and Wagamama brand board member who helps senior leaders engage and retain a younger, more diverse workforce through credible work on mental health, inclusion, and reverse mentoring.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Hayley Mulenda
- She has been booked into the rooms where retention strategy is set, including Microsoft HQ in Redmond, Unilever’s C-suite under Leena Nair, and Meta MENA’s leadership.
- Her TEDxLSE talk “The Danger of Being a Role Model” frames a specific argument about authenticity that translates directly into how organisations think about leadership visibility and reverse mentoring.
- She holds an active operating seat as Brand Board Member at Wagamama, so the inclusion and culture content is informed by board-level decision-making, not consultancy at arm’s length.
- Her work on the gap between C-suite intent and Gen Z lived experience addresses a problem most leadership teams can name but few can resolve.
- Her book “The ABCs to Student Success” and her TEDx platform give her a public body of work that buyers can read before booking.
Biography highlights
- TEDxLSE speaker, “The Danger of Being a Role Model”
- Author, “The ABCs to Student Success”
- Brand Board Member, Wagamama
- Keynote and consulting work with Microsoft, Unilever, JP Morgan, Google, Meta MENA, Chanel, Bloomberg Media, Harrods, Clifford Chance, Cabinet Office UK
- Spoken at Wembley Arena, Oslo Spektrum, and the UK Houses of Parliament
- Named one of 25 Black entrepreneurs to watch in 2024, The Black Business Show x HSBC
Biography
The cost of failing to engage a younger workforce is now measured at executive committee level. Retention has become a leadership question rather than an HR one. Hayley Mulenda’s work sits at the point where mental health, inclusion, and generational change converge inside that question.
She came to the work through her own experience. After a suicide attempt at 18, she rebuilt her life around the practical mechanics of mental health and self-worth, and turned that into a public body of work. Her TEDxLSE talk, “The Danger of Being a Role Model”, argues that organisations and leaders default to curated personas when employees actually need authenticity, and that the difference is what determines trust.
Her client list reflects how that argument lands inside large organisations. Microsoft brought her to Redmond. Unilever’s then Chief HR Officer Leena Nair, now CEO of Chanel, has worked with her. Meta MENA, JP Morgan, Bloomberg Media, Clifford Chance, Google, the Cabinet Office, and Teach First have all booked her on briefs covering wellbeing, inclusion, and reverse mentoring. Wagamama appointed her to its brand board.
The “ABCs to Student Success” gives her a published framework. The board seat keeps the work close to operating decisions. Together, they explain why she is booked less as a wellbeing speaker and more as a translator between senior leaders and the workforce now reporting to them.
Key speaking topics
- Mental health and wellbeing in the workplace
- Reverse mentoring and generational engagement
- Diversity, equity and inclusion
- Employee retention and the social contract of work
- Authentic leadership and personal branding
- Workplace culture across the MENA region
Ideal for
- CHROs and people directors managing retention of Gen Z and millennial talent
- Inclusion and culture leads building reverse mentoring or ERG programmes
- Executive teams reviewing employee engagement and wellbeing strategy
- Conferences and offsites where leadership wants a credible voice on mental health rather than a generic one
Audience outcomes
- A working language for the difference between leader visibility and leader authenticity, and why one drives engagement and the other does not
- A direct view of what younger employees actually want from senior leaders
- A reframing of mental health from a wellbeing programme into a retention lever
- Practical reference points for designing reverse mentoring that produces decisions, not optics
Talks
A keynote on why authenticity outperforms curated leadership personas in winning trust from a younger workforce.
Key takeaways:
- Why “role model” framing produces distance instead of trust
- How authentic leadership shifts retention conversations
- What leaders can do publicly to model the behaviour they want internally
A keynote on mental health, vulnerability, and what resilience looks like when treated as a leadership capability.
Key takeaways:
- A first-person account of mental health crisis and recovery used to anchor the substance
- The cost to organisations of treating wellbeing as a benefit rather than a leadership competence
- What a credible mental health conversation looks like inside a senior team
A programme-style session on how to bridge C-suite decisions and the lived experience of Gen Z employees.
Key takeaways:
- What reverse mentoring is for, and what it is not
- How to design a programme that informs decisions rather than gestures at inclusion
- The role of senior accountability in making the model work