Deeyah Khan
Polarisation has moved inside the organisation. Leaders are now asked to hold teams together across values, identity, and politics that used to stay outside the office, and most have no practical method for doing it. The usual tools, policy statements, training modules, town halls, do not change the quality of the conversation in the room.
Deeyah Khan is a two-time Emmy and Peabody-winning documentary filmmaker who helps organisations lead difficult conversations across deep ideological and cultural divides.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Deeyah Khan
- She has spent years in rooms with jihadis, neo-Nazis, and honour-killing perpetrators and come out with a practical method for dialogue under hostility, which transfers directly to how senior leaders handle conflict inside their own organisations.
- Her authority on polarisation is earned, not theorised. The films (Jihad, White Right: Meeting the Enemy, America’s War on Abortion) are the primary source, and they sit behind two Emmys, two Peabodys, a BAFTA, and an RTS.
- She was appointed the first UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Artistic Freedom and Creativity, a signal that her work is taken seriously at the level of global institutions, not just media.
- She gives leadership teams something rare in DEI and culture content: a repeatable approach to listening across difference that holds up when the stakes are real and the room is hostile.
Biography highlights
- Two Emmy Awards and two Peabody Awards for documentary filmmaking.
- BAFTA winner (America’s War on Abortion) and BAFTA nominee (Jihad: A Story of the Others; White Right: Meeting the Enemy).
- First UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Artistic Freedom and Creativity, appointed 2016.
- Founder of Fuuse, a media and arts company centring women, minorities, and third-culture voices; founder of sister-hood, a platform for women of Muslim heritage.
- Recipient of the Ossietzky Prize (Norwegian PEN), the University of Oslo Human Rights Award, and the Peer Gynt Prize awarded by the Parliament of Norway.
- TED speaker on the radicalisation of young Muslims in Europe.
Biography
Most organisations treat polarisation as a communications problem. Deeyah Khan treats it as a listening problem, and she has the footage to prove the distinction matters. Her documentary work has put her across the table from neo-Nazis, jihadis, and the families of honour-killing victims, and the method she built in those rooms is what senior leaders now ask her to bring into theirs.
The body of work is specific. Banaz: A Love Story won her a first Emmy and Peabody for documenting the honour killing of Banaz Mahmod. Jihad: A Story of the Others was BAFTA-nominated and drew on two years of interviews with convicted extremists and former jihadis. White Right: Meeting the Enemy, shot inside the American far right and at the Charlottesville rally, won a second Emmy. America’s War on Abortion won a BAFTA. Muslim in Trump’s America added a second Peabody.
That record is why institutions treat her as more than a filmmaker. In 2016 UNESCO appointed her its first Goodwill Ambassador for Artistic Freedom and Creativity. Norwegian PEN awarded her the Ossietzky Prize. The Parliament of Norway awarded her the Peer Gynt Prize. Through Fuuse and sister-hood she has also built platforms for women of Muslim heritage and third-culture voices to tell their own stories rather than be described by others.
What she brings to a corporate audience is the translation of that practice into leadership. How do you hold a conversation with someone whose values you reject, long enough to understand what is actually driving them? How do you stay in the room when it would be easier to escalate? How does a senior team model that behaviour downward without looking weak? Khan turns her interview method into a working discipline for leaders who need to hold their organisations together across real difference.
Key speaking topics
- Dialogue across ideological and cultural divides
- Leadership in polarised environments
- Empathy as an operating discipline
- Difficult conversations at senior levels
- Storytelling and communication under pressure
- Culture, belonging, and inclusion
- Countering extremism and radicalisation
Ideal for
- CHROs and heads of culture navigating internal polarisation, identity tension, and DEI backlash.
- CEOs and executive teams preparing for public-facing crises where values, reputation, and employee trust collide.
- Leadership development programmes focused on inclusive leadership, difficult conversations, and psychological safety.
- Public-sector, NGO, and education leaders working on social cohesion, integration, and countering extremism.
Audience outcomes
- A concrete method for staying in conversation with people whose views they find difficult, without performing agreement.
- Sharper language for naming the tensions inside their own teams and a cleaner read on where polarisation is actually coming from.
- A more honest standard for what empathy looks like at senior level, distinct from niceness or avoidance.
- Renewed confidence that leaders can address values-based conflict directly without fracturing the organisation.
Talks
A reframing of empathy as an operating capability that strengthens decision-making, builds trust in reputational crises, and holds teams together through values-based conflict.
Key takeaways:
- How senior leaders use empathy as a strategic tool rather than a soft attribute.
- What changes in decision quality when leaders slow down and listen before responding.
- Why empathy is the lever that makes hard conversations possible at scale.
Drawn from years of filmed work with extremists on multiple sides, a practical approach to conversation across ideological and cultural difference.
Key takeaways:
- A working method for active listening when the room is hostile.
- How to build trust across deep disagreement without conceding ground.
- Why values-based leadership outperforms policy when teams are fractured.
A guide to communicating hard truths inside organisations without triggering defensiveness or losing authority.
Key takeaways:
- How to deliver unwelcome messages without breaking trust.
- Influence tactics that work across power, seniority, and ideology.
- Leading through uncertainty with credibility intact.