Inkluderende lederskab speakers

Why organisations work with Karen Blackett She ran WPP in the UK during the COVID turnaround, responsible for around US$2 billion of revenue and 13,000 people, which gives her authority on what cultural change at FTSE scale actually requires. During her five years as CEO of MediaCom UK, ethnic diversity moved from 11% to 19% and women in senior management reached 44%, the kind of attributable shift most leadership talks cannot reference. As the UK government’s Race Equality Business Champion under the Race at Work Charter, she has worked across sectors on the specific mechanics of progression, not the rhetoric of inclusion. Her current Diageo board seat and her co-founder role at the Black Equity Organisation give her a live view of how the same questions land in a FTSE 10 boardroom and in national civil society. Biography highlights Former UK President, WPP, with responsibility for around US$2 billion of revenue and 13,000 people. Former CEO of MediaCom UK and CEO of GroupM UK; MediaCom named Campaign Agency of the Year in 2013 and 2014 under her leadership. Non-Executive Director, Diageo plc, since June 2022; member of the Nomination and Remuneration Committees. Non-Executive Director, Cabinet Office Board; previously UK Race Equality Business Champion under the Race at Work Charter. Co-founder, Black Equity Organisation (2021), alongside David Lammy, David Olusoga, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Ric Lewis and Dame Vivian Hunt. Chancellor of the University of Portsmouth, the first alumna to hold the position. Awarded CBE (2025) for services to Advertising and the Creative Industries; OBE (2014); first businesswoman to top the Powerlist. Biography Running a marketing services group of 13,000 people through a pandemic exposes whether a leader’s cultural language is operational or decorative. WPP UK was Karen Blackett’s brief for four years, with around US$2 billion of revenue under her remit and a workforce that needed to be both held together and pushed forward. She came to the role after running MediaCom UK as CEO, where the agency was named Campaign Agency of the Year in 2013 and 2014. The MediaCom record is the one she is most often asked about. Across her five years as CEO, ethnic diversity in the business moved from 11% to 19% and women in senior management reached 44%. Those numbers are unusual because they exist at all. Most senior leaders speaking on culture cannot point to a specific business they changed by a specific amount. That track record is why government and boards now use her. She was appointed UK Race Equality Business Champion in 2018 by Prime Minister Theresa May, working through the Race at Work Charter with Business in the Community. She sits on the Cabinet Office Board as a Non-Executive Director, and on the Diageo board as a Non-Executive Director, where she is a member of the Nomination and Remuneration Committees. In 2021 she co-founded the Black Equity Organisation with David Lammy, David Olusoga, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Ric Lewis and Dame Vivian Hunt, an independent national civil rights body for Black Britons. She was awarded an OBE in 2014 and a CBE in the 2025 King’s New Year Honours. She was the first businesswoman to top the Powerlist of Britain’s 100 most influential Black people, in 2015. Key speaking topics Leadership at scale through periods of disruption Culture as an operating system, not a statement Inclusion as a measurable business outcome Board-level race equity and the Race at Work agenda Future of work in marketing and creative industries Brand, growth and consumer change Ideal for CEO and board audiences considering how to make culture or inclusion commitments measurable CHROs, CPOs and group HR directors responsible for senior progression data Marketing and communications leadership teams in FTSE-scale businesses Networks and councils focused on Black leadership progression in UK corporates Audience outcomes A board-level frame for treating culture as part of operating performance rather than a separate workstream. A specific worked example of how senior leadership composition changes when progression mechanics are redesigned. A clearer view of where Race at Work Charter commitments most often fail and what holds them in place. Sharper language for talking about inclusion in a contested external environment without retreating to compliance speak.

Why organisations work with Karenjeet Kaur Bains She holds a Guinness World Record (42 bodyweight squats in a minute, set against a male equivalent of 34) and a Commonwealth gold, which gives her claims about pressure and preparation a weight that motivational speakers without competitive credentials cannot match. She is the first British Sikh woman to represent Great Britain at the European and World powerlifting championships, which makes her a credible voice on what representation actually costs and produces inside an institution. She qualified as an ACA Chartered Accountant and spent six years in audit at KPMG, so she speaks to professional services and corporate audiences in their own language rather than from outside it. She combines a primetime BBC platform as Athena on Gladiators with a serious athletic and professional record, which lands with employee networks, ERGs, and graduate populations in a way a single-track speaker rarely does. Biography highlights Commonwealth Powerlifting Champion; first British Sikh woman to represent Great Britain at European and World championships. Guinness World Record holder, most bodyweight squats by a woman in one minute (42 reps, 2022). ACA Chartered Accountant; six years at KPMG in audit before moving into charity finance. Athena on the BBC One reboot of Gladiators, broadcast on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. British Powerlifting Athlete of the Year, 2023 and 2024. Listed keynote speaker at the ICAEW Annual Conference. Biography Powerlifting is one of the smallest, most demographically narrow sports in Britain. The first British Sikh woman to represent Great Britain at the European and World championships is also a Commonwealth gold medallist and a Guinness World Record holder. That combination is what Karenjeet Kaur Bains brings into a room. Her route to elite strength sport ran through, not around, a professional services career. She qualified as an ACA Chartered Accountant, spent six years at KPMG in audit, and trained for international competition in the hours either side of a working day. The Guinness record (42 bodyweight squats in a minute, against a male equivalent of 34) was set in two weeks of preparation while she held a full-time charity finance role. Her account of how high performers actually structure their lives is grounded, not theoretical. Since 2024 she has appeared as Athena on the BBC One reboot of Gladiators, which has put her in front of a household audience without softening the technical seriousness of her sport. ICAEW lists her as a keynote speaker at its Annual Conference, and she has been recognised as British Powerlifting Athlete of the Year in 2023 and 2024. For HR, DEI and employee engagement leaders, the value is specific. She speaks to what it takes for someone visibly different to stay, perform, and be seen inside institutions that did not previously include her, and what employers, networks and managers can usefully do about it. Key speaking topics Representation and identity in elite environments Performance under pressure and recovery from injury South Asian women in sport and professional life Breaking cultural and gender stereotypes Resilience and the psychology of high performance Inclusive culture in professional services Ideal for CHROs, DEI leads, and employee network sponsors planning Heritage Month, IWD, or culture moments. Professional services firms briefing graduate, qualified-accountant, and women’s network audiences. Leadership and high-performance offsites looking for a credentialled athlete voice over a generic motivational one. Audience outcomes A grounded picture of what visible representation costs and produces inside an institution. A practical sense of how high performers structure preparation, recovery, and the routine work around a peak. Language for ERGs and managers on how to support employees who are first or only in their roles. A reframing of “strength”, physical and professional, that audiences can use in their own teams.

Why organisations work with Keely Cat-Wells She has built and sold the category. C Talent, the agency she founded in 2018, was acquired by Whalar in 2022 and remains the largest exit of a Disabled-led talent business in the sector. Her current company, Making Space, gives leaders an operating model rather than a manifesto: an employer-backed training and acquisition platform with reported lifetime earnings gains of more than $1.1M per learner. She speaks from inside the boardroom conversation, not next to it. As a Presidential Leadership Scholar, Obama Leader USA, and Forbes contributor, she carries credibility with executive audiences who are tired of generic DEI framing. She connects representation in media to talent strategy in the workforce, drawing on a roster that has placed Disabled creators in projects including The Last of Us, Avatar, and The Hunger Games. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Making Space, a venture-backed talent acquisition and learning platform for Disabled professionals. Founder of C Talent, acquired by Whalar in 2022. Co-founder, Making Space Media, with a first-look deal at Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. 2025 Presidential Leadership Scholar, 2025 Obama Leader USA, inaugural Gloria Steinem Fellow. L’Oreal Paris 2025 Women of Worth, Forbes 30 Under 30, Diana Award, One Young World Entrepreneur of the Year 2022. Forbes contributor on disability, entrepreneurship, and inclusive workforce strategy. Biography The Disabled talent pool is one of the largest underused labour markets in the global economy. Most companies do not have a working strategy for reaching it. Keely Cat-Wells builds the infrastructure that closes that gap. She founded C Talent in 2018 after disability discrimination ended an early career in performing arts. The agency grew into the most prominent home for Deaf and Disabled creators in entertainment, placing talent in The Last of Us, Avatar, and The Hunger Games before being acquired by Whalar in 2022. It remains the largest exit of a Disabled-led talent business in the industry. Making Space, founded in 2023, is the operator-led answer to a different question: how do enterprise employers actually hire and retain Disabled professionals at scale. The platform pairs employer-backed training with talent acquisition, and closed a $2M pre-seed round led by Beta Boom in 2024. Its Ascend program reports projected lifetime earnings gains of more than $1.1M per participant. Cat-Wells writes for Forbes, sits on disability-focused boards, and was named the youngest Presidential Leadership Scholar in the program’s history. Her recognitions include the Diana Award, Forbes 30 Under 30, L’Oreal Paris Women of Worth, and Gloria Steinem Fellow. The credentials matter, but the harder evidence is the line item her work creates on a hiring scorecard. Key speaking topics Disability and workforce strategy Hiring and retaining Disabled professionals Inclusive talent acquisition platforms Representation in media and entertainment Building and scaling mission-led ventures Hidden disabilities in the workplace Founder experience in inclusive entrepreneurship Ideal for CHROs and heads of talent acquisition rebuilding disability hiring strategy Chief diversity and inclusion officers moving from awareness work to operational outcomes Boards and ELTs reviewing workforce, ESG, and human capital reporting Media, entertainment, and creative leaders accountable for on-screen and off-screen representation Audience outcomes A clearer view of where disability inclusion programmes break in practice and what to fix first. Specific tactics for sourcing, onboarding, and retaining Disabled professionals at enterprise scale. A founder’s view of how to translate inclusion strategy into measurable economic outcomes. Language and evidence senior leaders can use with their own boards on disability as a workforce issue.

Why organisations work with Kelly Mackin A research instrument leaders can actually use. The Motives Met Human Needs Assessment surfaces the 28 psychological, emotional, and social needs that drive a specific employee, team, or culture, replacing one-size-fits-all engagement scores with personalised data. A direct challenge to universal hierarchy thinking. Mackin’s research argues that Maslow-style and engagement-survey frameworks misrepresent how needs actually distribute across a workforce, and gives leaders a defensible alternative. Award-winning published work. Work Life Well-Lived is a Nonfiction Authors Association Bronze Award winner and an Amazon best-seller in its category, giving senior buyers a citable reference point. Practical depth beyond keynote theatre. Mackin trained as a cognitive behavioural coach and meditation teacher and runs assessments, workshops, and leadership accelerators, so the keynote connects to a delivery system the organisation can run after she leaves. Biography highlights CEO and co-founder, Motives Met, the workplace well-being platform behind her research. Author of Work Life Well-Lived: The Motives Met Pathway to No-B.S. Well-Being at Work (Greenleaf Book Group, 2024). Nonfiction Authors Association Bronze Book Award winner. Creator of the Motives Met Human Needs Assessment, identifying 28 motives that drive thriving at work. BA in Communications, Wittenberg University; certified cognitive behavioural therapy practitioner and meditation teacher. Host of DisruptHR San Diego; featured in Authority Magazine and the Human Capital Innovations webinar series. Biography Most workplace well-being programmes assume that everyone is motivated by the same things in roughly the same order. That assumption shapes every engagement survey, every wellness benefit, every “top reasons people quit” list. It is also wrong. Kelly Mackin’s research at Motives Met identifies 28 distinct psychological, emotional, and social motives, and shows that the ranking varies sharply between individuals, teams, and roles. The work sits inside Motives Met, the platform she co-founded and leads as CEO. Its core instrument, the Human Needs Assessment, surfaces an individual’s top motives and maps them against the conditions a manager or organisation is actually providing. The output is a usable diagnostic for leaders who have run out of patience with engagement scores that do not tell them what to do next. Her 2024 book, Work Life Well-Lived: The Motives Met Pathway to No-B.S. Well-Being at Work, became an Amazon category best-seller and won a Bronze Book Award from the Nonfiction Authors Association. The technical foundation comes from her training as a cognitive behavioural therapy practitioner and meditation teacher, which she pairs with quantitative research methods to keep the framework empirical rather than inspirational. For HR and culture leaders, the relevance is operational. Mackin gives them a vocabulary for the gap between what a workforce reports on a survey and what individual people actually need from their work, and a measurement layer they can act on across hybrid teams, multigenerational workforces, and post-restructure cultures. Key speaking topics Workplace well-being and the science of thriving at work Psychological needs and motivation at work Human-first leadership and management practice Stress, burnout, and work-life harmony Psychological safety and emotional inclusion Culture design for hybrid and multigenerational teams Ideal for CHROs and heads of people redesigning engagement and well-being strategy Culture, DEI, and talent leaders responsible for retention and inclusion outcomes Senior managers and team leaders running large or multigenerational teams Leadership development and L&D heads designing manager capability programmes Audience outcomes A working understanding of the 28 motives framework and how it differs from Maslow and engagement-survey models Specific questions leaders can ask their teams to surface individual motives, not just aggregate sentiment A diagnostic lens on where current well-being and engagement spend is misaligned with actual employee needs Language and structure for conversations on burnout, work-life harmony, and psychological safety A clearer link between well-being investment and performance outcomes leaders can defend internally

Why organisations work with Kelly Somers A live host who has worked the biggest moments in English football, including becoming the sixth woman to present Match of the Day, and brings that calibre of broadcast craft to a corporate stage. A trusted facilitator for the sport ecosystem itself. The Premier League, The FA, EFL, LMA and Barclays use her on their own conferences, awards and leadership events, which is the strongest possible reference for any sponsor or partner of those bodies. A practitioner voice on gender inclusion in industries coded male for generations, drawn from her own working life across football broadcasting, not from secondary research. Interview range across elite athletes, managers and executives, with the discipline of live broadcast applied to panels, fireside chats and on-stage Q and A. Biography highlights Sports presenter and reporter across BBC Sport, including Final Score, Football Focus, The Women’s Football Show and BBC 5Live. Sixth woman to present Match of the Day, covering the 2020 FA Community Shield. Match reporter and presenter at UEFA Euro 2020, the 2022 FIFA World Cup, UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 and UEFA Euro 2024. Presenter for Amazon Prime’s Premier League coverage and Channel 4’s UEFA Nations League output. Corporate event host for the Premier League, Barclays, The FA, EFL and LMA. Postgraduate in broadcast journalism, Nottingham Trent University, following undergraduate studies at Loughborough University. Biography Live football broadcasting is a discipline most corporate stages underestimate. The presenter has to absorb a fast-moving situation, keep multiple guests coherent, manage time to the second, and make the whole thing feel calm. Kelly Somers has done that across the BBC, Amazon Prime and Channel 4 for more than a decade. Her CV inside the BBC includes Final Score, Football Focus, The Women’s Football Show and BBC 5Live, and reporting from England’s campaigns at UEFA Euro 2020, the 2022 FIFA World Cup, UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 and UEFA Euro 2024. In August 2020 she became the sixth woman in the programme’s history to present Match of the Day, covering the FA Community Shield. That broadcast track record is what brings her into corporate work. The Premier League, Barclays, The FA, EFL and the League Managers Association use her to host their own conferences, awards and leadership events, which is the highest reference any sport-adjacent client could ask for. The same discipline travels to keynote stages outside sport, where boards and leadership teams need a host who can keep a complex programme moving without losing the audience. When Somers speaks from the stage rather than hosting it, her subject is the one she has lived: how women earn credibility, hold a room, and change the everyday texture of a male-coded industry. She trained in broadcast journalism at Nottingham Trent University after Loughborough, started in the media department at AFC Bournemouth as the club rose into the Premier League, and built the broadcast career from there. The story is specific, not theoretical, and that is what makes it useful inside organisations trying to do the same work. Key speaking topics Football broadcasting and live event hosting Gender inclusion in male-dominated industries Building a career in sports media Interviewing elite performers under pressure Communicating with multi-generational audiences in digital media Sport, sponsorship and brand storytelling Ideal for Sponsors and partners of the Premier League, EFL, FA and LMA convening their own conferences, awards or hospitality programmes. Leadership teams in male-coded industries (financial services, engineering, construction, energy) running inclusion or women-in-leadership programming. Corporate awards, fireside chats and panels that need a broadcast-trained host rather than a celebrity name. Sport, media and broadcast businesses programming internal leadership and culture events. Audience outcomes A live event that runs to broadcast standard, with a host who keeps the room with her and the programme to time. A first-person account of building credibility as a woman inside elite football broadcasting, with the practical detail intact. Useable language for talking about gender inclusion that does not collapse into policy or slogan. Interview craft transferred to internal stages: how to prepare a guest, structure a conversation, and read a room in real time.

Why organisations work with Kemba Smith Pradia She brings a story that has been independently verified by Congress, the United Nations, two presidents and a feature film, which gives DEI and values conversations a level of moral authority that internal speakers cannot replicate. She has worked inside the system she critiques. Service on the Virginia Parole Board and Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission gives her policy fluency that pure advocacy speakers lack. Her memoir Poster Child and the BET+ film KEMBA give audiences a shared cultural reference point before she walks on stage, which compresses the time needed to land a serious message about fairness and institutional accountability. She speaks to domestic violence, coercive relationships and self-esteem with the same first-person credibility she brings to incarceration, which makes her useful to organisations running employee resource groups and wellbeing programmes that need substance rather than awareness theatre. A presidential pardon from Joe Biden in January 2025 closes a loop that has been open in public for thirty years. Few speakers carry that arc of personal and institutional resolution into a room. Biography highlights Founder, The Kemba Smith Foundation, 501(c)(3) focused on criminal justice education and youth advocacy. Author, Poster Child: The Kemba Smith Story. Executive producer, KEMBA (2024), feature film on BET+. Appointed to the Virginia Parole Board by Governor Ralph Northam in 2019; former member of the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission. Former State Advocacy Campaigns Director, ACLU of Virginia. Bachelor of Social Work, Virginia Union University. Testified before the United States Congress and the United Nations; featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, Court TV, Nightline, Essence, Glamour, People, Emerge and Jet. Sentence commuted by President Bill Clinton in December 2000; full pardon granted by President Joe Biden in January 2025. Biography In 1994 a twenty-three-year-old college student with no prior criminal record was sentenced to 24.5 years in federal prison for a non-violent drug conspiracy tied to a former boyfriend. The case became one of the most cited examples of the human cost of mandatory minimum sentencing in the United States, covered in Emerge, The Washington Post and on Nightline, and used by the Drug Policy Alliance and the ACLU as a reference point for federal sentencing reform. President Bill Clinton commuted that sentence in December 2000 after six and a half years inside. Kemba Smith Pradia then completed a Bachelor of Social Work at Virginia Union University and began a decades-long second career in advocacy, founding The Kemba Smith Foundation, working as State Advocacy Campaigns Director for the ACLU of Virginia, and testifying before Congress and the United Nations on incarceration, drug policy and the treatment of women in the criminal legal system. In 2019 Governor Ralph Northam appointed her to the Virginia Parole Board, and she also served on the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission. That inside-the-system service is what separates her from most lived-experience speakers in this space: she has read the case files, voted on parole decisions, and sat on the commission that sets sentencing policy. Her memoir Poster Child and the 2024 BET+ feature film KEMBA, on which she served as executive producer, give organisations a substantive cultural and documentary record to work from. On 19 January 2025 President Joe Biden issued her a full pardon, closing a public arc that began with the 1996 Emerge cover story “Kemba’s Nightmare.” Organisations book her when they need a serious, named voice on resilience, domestic abuse, inclusion and the practical content of values-based leadership, delivered by someone who has lived every part of the argument and helped change the policy that produced it. Key speaking topics Criminal justice reform and mandatory sentencing policy Resilience and recovery after institutional failure Values-based and inclusive leadership Domestic violence, coercive control and self-worth Women, race and the United States criminal legal system Personal responsibility and consequence Youth advocacy and civic engagement Ideal for Chief diversity officers, employee resource group leads and culture leaders running inclusion programmes that need substance over signalling. Heads of wellbeing and employee support designing serious conversations on domestic abuse and resilience. Universities, law schools, and public-policy audiences working on criminal justice, sentencing and policy reform. Leadership development programmes building values-based leadership content beyond business case studies. Audience outcomes A named, verifiable example of how mandatory minimum sentencing reshapes individual lives and the policy choices that follow. Language for talking about inclusion, dignity and fairness at work that survives political contestation. A direct account of coercive relationships and self-worth that audiences can use in employee resource group and wellbeing settings. A clearer sense of what personal responsibility, institutional accountability and second chances look like in practice rather than as abstractions.

Why organisations work with Kerry Washington A globally recognised cultural voice on representation, civic participation and women’s rights, with a platform built over a decade of headline activism rather than borrowed celebrity Founder and principal of Simpson Street, a production company whose work, Confirmation, American Son, Little Fires Everywhere, treats race, justice and family as serious subjects for mainstream audiences Two-time Tony-nominated Broadway producer and a working creative executive, which means she speaks about storytelling, audience and influence from inside the industry, not as a commentator Author of Thicker than Water, a New York Times bestselling memoir, which gives her a personal narrative on identity and disclosure that lands with audiences far beyond fan culture Co-chair of Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote and a long-standing partner to grassroots civic organisations, which gives her a credible point of view on how institutions engage with democratic participation Biography highlights Star of ABC’s Scandal (2013-2020), the first Black woman to lead a network drama since 1974, with two Primetime Emmy nominations, a Golden Globe nomination, a SAG nomination and two NAACP Image Awards for the role Founder of Simpson Street (2016), the production company behind Confirmation (HBO), American Son (Broadway and Netflix), Little Fires Everywhere (Hulu) and the Gypsy Broadway revival Author of Thicker than Water: A Memoir (Little, Brown, 2023), a New York Times bestseller Co-chair of When We All Vote; former member of President Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities Recipient of the NAACP President’s Award (2013), the GLAAD Vanguard Award (2015) and the ACLU Bill of Rights Award (2016); named to the Time 100 in 2014 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of George Washington University Biography The role of Olivia Pope on Scandal was the first time in nearly forty years that an American network drama had been led by a Black woman. Kerry Washington carried that show for seven seasons, while building a parallel career as a producer, author and civic organiser. The combination is what makes her interesting as a public voice, the platform is large, but the work behind it is specific. Simpson Street, the production company she founded in 2016, sits at the centre of that work. Its projects, Confirmation on HBO, American Son on Broadway and Netflix, Little Fires Everywhere on Hulu, are commercial properties that take seriously the politics of race, family and justice. As a producer, she is now a two-time Tony nominee, with credits including the recent Broadway revival of Gypsy. The company also runs a venture arm and an impact arm that funds grassroots civic organisations through the Movement Voter Project’s Vision Into Power Cohort. Her activism is similarly substantive. She co-chairs Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote, served on President Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, and has campaigned on voter access in Georgia, women’s health and violence against women. Her memoir, Thicker than Water, a New York Times bestseller, added a personal layer to that public profile, telling the story of learning in adulthood that the man who raised her was not her biological father. For a corporate audience, what she offers is a credible voice on representation, civic participation and the conditions under which institutions are expected to speak. She is most powerful in conversation formats and keynotes that address voice, values and storytelling, where her experience as a producer and activist gives her something specific to say, rather than as a content expert on a defined management discipline. Key speaking topics Activism, civic voice and public participation Representation in media and storytelling Women’s health and women’s rights Identity, family and personal disclosure Building purpose-driven creative businesses Voting access and democratic engagement Ideal for CEO and board events where the brief is values, voice and the conditions for taking a public position DEI, ERG and women’s leadership programmes seeking a recognised cultural figure with substantive activist credentials Investor, philanthropic or impact-led convenings on civic participation and democracy Fireside conversations or in-conversation formats with senior moderators, the format where her authority is strongest Audience outcomes A clearer view of how representation in media and culture shapes the expectations placed on institutions A grounded reading of what credible civic engagement looks like for a public figure or organisation, drawn from over a decade of activist practice A personal account of identity and disclosure that gives audiences a vocabulary for difficult conversations An inside view of how purpose and commercial production can sit inside the same business

Why organisations work with Kim Davis Live broadcast experience that translates directly into stage presence: she presents The Travel Show on BBC News and writes regularly for CNN Travel, CNN Underscored and The Telegraph, so a panel or conference plenary in her hands feels editorially produced rather than improvised. A working marketer’s view of communication, not a theorist’s. Sarsaparilla, the consultancy she founded after moving from New York to London in 2004, operates inside campaigns, brand work and go-to-market decisions for commercial clients. Range across the unlovable formats. After-dinner, awards-night emcee, panel moderation, fireside interview and keynote, performed without the tonal mismatch that normally appears when speakers cross between them. A keynote thesis on arts-led achievement, given on the TEDxLukelyBrook stage in 2022, that gives leadership and culture audiences a route into creativity without the usual self-help register. Biography highlights Presenter, The Travel Show on BBC News. Contributing writer, CNN Travel, CNN Underscored and The Telegraph. Founder and CEO, Sarsaparilla Marketing, London. TEDxLukelyBrook speaker, “How The Arts Can Help You Achieve Anything”, 2022. New York native, London-based for over two decades; works across UK, US and EU markets. Stage and broadcast credits include Carnegie Hall, the O2 Arena and the TED platform (per speaker representation). Biography A live audience makes decisions about a speaker inside the first sentence. Davis was trained for that. Her day job is presenting The Travel Show on BBC News and writing for CNN Travel, CNN Underscored and The Telegraph, work that depends on getting a viewer or reader to lean in before a single fact has been delivered. That broadcast craft is what organisations are buying when they put her on stage. As a host and moderator she structures conversations the way an editor structures a segment: a clear thread, time discipline, and the ability to draw a usable answer out of an executive who would otherwise read from notes. The substantive content sits behind that. In 2004 she moved from New York to London and founded Sarsaparilla, a marketing and communications consultancy that runs campaign, brand and go-to-market work for commercial clients. Her keynote material draws from this practice and from her own performing background, including the TEDxLukelyBrook talk on arts and achievement she delivered in 2022. The combination is unusual. Most marketing speakers cannot present. Most broadcasters cannot speak credibly about commercial growth. Davis is booked when an event needs both in the same person. Key speaking topics Hosting, moderation and emcee craft Media and broadcast communication for executives Marketing and brand building Customer and audience engagement Arts-led approaches to creativity and achievement Female leadership in media, business and culture After-dinner speaking and awards-night presenting Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and marketing leadership teams looking for a working practitioner rather than a marketing academic Conference organisers and internal event leads who need a host or moderator with broadcast credibility Awards nights, gala dinners and customer events that need a confident emcee with editorial range Leadership and culture programmes wanting a session on creativity, communication and presence Audience outcomes A clearer view of how a journalist structures a story, and how to apply that discipline to a board narrative or all-hands talk Specific techniques drawn from broadcast and stage performance for holding attention in high-stakes settings A working framework for using arts and creative practice as a tool for executive communication For events: a tightly run room, a coherent through-line across sessions, and interviews that produce usable quotes rather than safe ones

Why organisations work with Kimberly Bryant She built Black Girls CODE from a single San Francisco workshop into an organisation that reached more than 100,000 students across the US and South Africa, which gives her concrete authority on what scales in early-career technical pipeline work and what does not. Her current platform, the Black Innovation Lab at Ascend Ventures, puts her in active deal flow with founders working in AI, climate, healthcare, and femtech, so her view of inclusive innovation is grounded in capital decisions, not advocacy. The Black Girlboss Paradox is her own framework for the specific leadership progression problem Black women hit at senior levels, and it gives audiences a usable concept rather than a general DEI message. A 20-plus year engineering career at Genentech, Novartis, Merck, and Pfizer means she can hold a serious conversation with technical leaders about pipeline, R&D culture, and progression in regulated, complex organisations. Recognition by the Obama White House as a Champion of Change for Tech Inclusion and a Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award places her in a small group of named, vetted voices on this subject for senior audiences. Biography highlights Founder, Black Girls CODE (2011), reaching more than 100,000 students across the US and South Africa. Founder and CEO, Black Innovation Lab at Ascend Ventures Tech, based in Memphis on the historic Griggs College campus, investing in Black founders in AI, climate, healthcare, and femtech. White House Champion of Change for Tech Inclusion, 2013. Smithsonian Magazine American Ingenuity Award for Social Progress, 2014. BE Electrical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, 1989. Twenty-plus year career in engineering leadership roles at Genentech, Novartis, Merck, and Pfizer. Forthcoming book, Ascending: Black Women and the Paradox of Power, Tiny Reparations Books / Penguin Random House, autumn 2027. Biography In 2011 a Memphis-born electrical engineer ran a coding workshop for fourteen girls in San Francisco because her own daughter could not find a class that looked like her. The workshop became Black Girls CODE. Inside a decade it had reached more than 100,000 students across the US and South Africa, with Smithsonian and White House recognition attached. Kimberly Bryant came to that work after twenty years as an engineering manager inside Genentech, Novartis, Merck, and Pfizer. That matters for buyers, because her view of inclusion is shaped by R&D budgets, validation cycles, and Fortune 100 promotion ladders, not by the language of advocacy alone. Her current platform, the Black Innovation Lab at Ascend Ventures Tech, is based on the historic Griggs College campus in her hometown of Memphis. The fund writes cheques into Black-led companies in AI, climate, healthcare, and femtech, which keeps her thesis on inclusive innovation tied to live capital decisions. The framework she now brings to senior audiences is the Black Girlboss Paradox: the structural reason Black women who reach the threshold of executive power encounter heightened scrutiny, narrower capital access, and confinement to lower-leverage roles. It is also the subject of her forthcoming book, Ascending: Black Women and the Paradox of Power, from Tiny Reparations Books at Penguin Random House, due in autumn 2027. Key speaking topics Institutional accountability in leadership Inclusive innovation and venture capital Founder journeys and entrepreneurship at scale Black women’s leadership progression and the Black Girlboss Paradox Organisational design and who holds power Inclusive AI development and AI for social impact Ideal for CHROs and chief diversity officers responsible for moving senior representation, not just hiring numbers Boards and executive teams reviewing the credibility of their inclusion strategy Heads of innovation, R&D, and venture units allocating capital to underrepresented founders Women in leadership programmes, particularly those focused on senior progression for women of colour Audience outcomes A clear, named framework, the Black Girlboss Paradox, for the leadership-progression problem that generic DEI language misses A practitioner view of what scales in tech-equity work, drawn from running an organisation that reached 100,000 students Specific signals to apply when assessing inclusive innovation strategies, sourced from active venture practice A re-set on the difference between access initiatives and structural change in promotion, capital, and culture

Why organisations work with Kwame Onwuachi He has built an inclusive kitchen at the top of fine dining, an industry structurally hostile to it, and can speak to the practical mechanics of who gets hired, who gets mentored, and who stays. His entrepreneurial track record is concrete: multiple restaurant openings, public failure with Shaw Bijou, and the rebuild that produced Tatiana, named #1 in New York by The New York Times two years running. The Family Reunion, his annual hospitality industry summit with Salamander and Sheila Johnson, gives him standing as a convenor of the diversity conversation in food, not just a participant in it. Two best-selling books with Penguin Random House, a James Beard Rising Star Chef award, and a Food & Wine executive producer role mean his narrative is documented and credible to a corporate audience. Biography highlights James Beard Foundation Rising Star Chef of the Year, 2019. Chef and owner of Tatiana at Lincoln Center, named #1 Restaurant in New York by The New York Times in 2023 and 2024, and “One to Watch” by World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Author of “Notes from a Young Black Chef” (2019) and “My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef” (2022) with Penguin Random House. Founder of The Family Reunion, an annual hospitality diversity event in partnership with Salamander Hotels & Resorts. Contributing executive producer at Food & Wine; named one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs. Trained at The Culinary Institute of America, Per Se, and Eleven Madison Park; Top Chef finalist. Biography The fine-dining industry has spent decades discussing diversity without changing very much about who runs its kitchens. Onwuachi is one of the few chefs operating at the top of that industry who can describe, from the inside, why that gap exists and what it takes to close it. Tatiana, his Lincoln Center restaurant, has been named the number one restaurant in New York by The New York Times for two consecutive years. His route there was not linear. He sold candy on subway platforms in the Bronx to fund a catering business, cooked on a boat serving the Deepwater Horizon clean-up crews, trained at the Culinary Institute of America, and worked the line at Per Se and Eleven Madison Park. His first solo restaurant, Shaw Bijou in Washington DC, closed within months. The James Beard Foundation named him Rising Star Chef of the Year in 2019, the year his memoir “Notes from a Young Black Chef” was published. The substance of his corporate work sits in what he built next. The Family Reunion, his annual industry event with Salamander Hotels & Resorts, brings together chefs and hospitality leaders to address representation in food. His cookbook “My America” reframes the question of what American cuisine actually is by tracing the Caribbean, African, and southern Black culinary lineages that produced it. As a Food & Wine contributing executive producer, he sits inside the editorial conversation rather than outside it. For a corporate audience, the value is specific. He has hired, trained, and retained an unusually diverse senior team in an industry where attrition for those workers is severe. He talks about the operational decisions that produced that outcome, not the ideology behind it. Key speaking topics Inclusion and culture in fine dining and hospitality Entrepreneurship through failure and recovery The food of the African Diaspora as American cuisine Storytelling, identity, and brand Building creative teams in exclusionary industries Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads facing pressure to move beyond programmatic inclusion Hospitality, food, and consumer brand leadership teams Founder and entrepreneur audiences working through scale and reinvention Off-sites and conferences seeking a credible voice on culture without corporate framing Audience outcomes A concrete account of what inclusive hiring and retention look like inside a high-pressure operating environment A founder’s view of public failure and the discipline required to rebuild A more honest reading of what American food culture actually is and who built it Renewed appetite for cultural specificity as a commercial asset, not a compliance category

Why organisations work with Kyle and Brent Pease They are the first push-assist brother duo in history to finish the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona, a fact every audience can verify and few will forget. Their work is operational, not symbolic. The Kyle Pease Foundation has supported hundreds of adaptive athletes, run inclusive employment programmes, and raised over $12 million in cumulative funding. They speak as one unit, not a panel. The dynamic between Kyle and Brent is the content. Audiences see what shared accountability looks like at the level of muscle memory. The “Invisible Wheelchair” frame gives leaders a usable shorthand for the unseen constraints colleagues carry, without the political weight that has stalled mainstream DEI conversations. Biography highlights First push-assist brother duo to complete the IRONMAN World Championship, Kona 2018. Six IRONMAN finishes together, with 100+ endurance races as a push-assist team. Co-authors of “Beyond the Finish” (Mascot Books, 2019), a dual-perspective memoir. Co-founders of The Kyle Pease Foundation, supporting adaptive athletes and inclusive employment in Atlanta and nationally. Subjects of a Hyundai Motor America six-part documentary series chronicling their road to Kona. Kyle holds a Sport Management degree from Kennesaw State University; Brent is a Florida State University graduate and certified endurance coach. Biography The Kona finish line in October 2018 was the first time two brothers had crossed it together as a push-assist duo. Brent had towed Kyle through 2.4 miles of open water in an inflatable kayak, pedalled 112 miles with Kyle reclined ahead of him on the bike, and pushed Kyle in a racing wheelchair through a 26.2-mile marathon in volcanic heat. The crossing was sport history. It was also the clearest public demonstration of a working relationship most organisations claim to want and few build. Kyle Pease was born with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy. He went on to earn a Sport Management degree from Kennesaw State University and now serves as Chief Inspirational Officer at The Kyle Pease Foundation. Brent, a Florida State University graduate and certified endurance coach, is the Foundation’s Executive Director. Together they have completed more than one hundred races and built a 501(c)(3) that supports adaptive athletes, funds adaptive equipment, and runs inclusive employment programmes. Cumulative fundraising sits above $12 million. Their keynote work draws on the same partnership the race made visible. The Invisible Wheelchair frame asks leaders to recognise constraints that colleagues carry without announcement. Find Your Finish reframes goal-setting around the conditions a team controls rather than the times on the clock. Together We Wheel makes the case that shared accountability is a behavioural practice, not a values statement. Their book “Beyond the Finish” (Mascot Books, 2019) tells both sides of the story in alternating voices. For organisations rebuilding trust after restructure, threading inclusion through a fatigued workforce, or anchoring a leadership event in something the room will actually remember, the brothers offer a working example of two people producing a result neither could produce alone. The proof is on the Kona course tape. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained physical and operational constraint Inclusive leadership in practice, not policy Shared accountability and team interdependence Goal-setting beyond performance metrics Adaptive sport, disability advocacy, and the case for adaptive employment Brotherhood, partnership, and trust under load Ideal for All-hands and town hall events where leadership wants the room to leave changed, not briefed Leadership offsites focused on resilience, team trust, or inclusion behaviours Sales kickoffs and annual conferences seeking an anchor keynote with high recall Employee resource group summits, particularly disability ERGs, and culture-change moments inside large organisations Audience outcomes A vocabulary for the unseen constraints colleagues carry, usable in everyday team conversations A reframing of resilience as a shared behaviour rather than an individual trait A vivid reference point for what real partnership looks like when failure is not an option A renewed sense of why inclusion matters in operational terms, beyond compliance framing

Why organisations work with Laura Bates Over 200,000 firsthand testimonies collected through the Everyday Sexism Project give her an evidence base on workplace and institutional sexism that no consultancy or HR function can replicate. Two years of undercover research inside incel, pickup-artist and men’s rights forums, published as Men Who Hate Women, means she can speak credibly about how online radicalisation enters workplaces through younger employees and customers. Her work has produced operational outcomes, not just commentary: Facebook policy changes on rape and abuse content, sexual consent education added to the national curriculum, and revised British Transport Police protocols on sexual violence. She translates a politically charged subject into language senior leaders can act on, with the credibility of a BEM, a Royal Society of Literature fellowship and ten years of reporting in The Guardian and The New York Times behind her. Biography highlights Founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, with over 200,000 testimonies collected globally since 2012. Author of Everyday Sexism (shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year), Sunday Times bestseller Girl Up, Men Who Hate Women, and Fix the System, Not the Women. British Empire Medal in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to gender equality. Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge; Vice President of the Hay Festival. Regular contributor to The New York Times and The Guardian; named one of the BBC’s inaugural 100 Women and Woman of the Year by Cosmopolitan, Red and The Sunday Times Magazine. Recipient of the Internet and Society Award from the Oxford Internet Institute alongside Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Biography Workplace sexism is rarely a single visible incident. It is the accumulation of small, normalised behaviours that policies on paper do not catch, and that employees, especially women and younger staff, stop reporting because they have learned reports go nowhere. The Everyday Sexism Project, founded in 2012, was built to make that accumulation visible. More than 200,000 testimonies later, it has become one of the largest qualitative datasets on gender inequality in existence. The project’s founder, Laura Bates, has spent over a decade translating those testimonies into work that organisations can use. Her books, Everyday Sexism, Girl Up, Misogynation, Men Who Hate Women and Fix the System, Not the Women, move from individual experience to institutional pattern. The work has produced concrete policy outcomes: Facebook revised its rules on rape and abuse content, sexual consent education entered the national curriculum, and British Transport Police updated how it handles reports of sexual violence on public transport. A second strand of her work is investigative. For Men Who Hate Women, Bates spent two years undercover in incel, pickup-artist and men’s rights forums, mapping how extreme misogyny is now produced and distributed online. That work matters for organisations because the audience for it is in classrooms now and entering workforces within a few years; HR leaders and school heads cannot afford to be unfamiliar with it. The credentials are serious. A British Empire Medal in 2015 for services to gender equality. Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. Vice President of the Hay Festival. Regular columns in The New York Times and The Guardian. The Internet and Society Award from the Oxford Internet Institute, shared with Tim Berners-Lee. The work has been judged on substance by serious institutions, which is what allows a sceptical executive committee to take the argument seriously. Key speaking topics Everyday sexism and institutional inequality Workplace harassment and bystander response Male allyship and positive masculinity Online misogyny, incels and the manosphere Gender, consent and education Media representation of women Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and culture leads designing policy that will hold up under scrutiny Senior leadership teams and boards examining harassment, retention and reputational risk Heads of school, university leadership and education policymakers Internal employee networks and male allyship programmes inside large organisations Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how harassment patterns form in their own organisation, drawn from the largest qualitative dataset on the subject. Specific language for talking to men about allyship without defensiveness shutting the conversation down. A working understanding of incel and manosphere content that is influencing employees, students and customers. Confidence to challenge policies and processes that look good on paper but fail in practice.