Inkluderende lederskab speakers

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.

Why organisations work with Leee John He carries the weight of a verifiable cultural archive. The Flashback documentary alone represents over a decade of original interviews with figures including Labi Siffre, Billy Ocean and Pauline Black, giving inclusion conversations a body of named, recorded testimony rather than slogans. His authority on Black British contribution is built on lived participation. He fronted one of the defining British soul acts of the 1980s, which lets him talk about representation, visibility and creative gatekeeping from inside the room rather than the academy. He moves an audience emotionally. A career built on falsetto vocal performance and stage presence translates into keynote energy that DEI sessions, gala dinners and cultural-anniversary moments often lack. His humanitarian work is concrete, not decorative. As an ambassador for SOS Children’s Villages he has campaigned annually for World Orphan Week and was recognised with a Humanitarian award in France, which gives credibility on purpose-led brand and CSR programmes. He brings a reinvention story senior audiences recognise. Singer to producer to documentary director to charity ambassador is a useful proof point for any room thinking about second-act careers, creative longevity or staying commercially relevant across generational shifts in taste. Biography highlights Founding member and lead singer of Imagination, the British soul/funk trio with three UK top 10 singles, including “Just an Illusion” (UK No. 2, 1982). Imagination earned four platinum discs, nine gold discs and over a dozen silver discs between 1981 and 1983. Director of Flashback: The History of UK Black Music, an independent documentary featuring 80+ interviews across jazz, soul, funk, reggae, ska and 2-tone. Ambassador for SOS Children’s Villages and recipient of a Humanitarian award in France for charity work; also holds a UK Lifetime Achievement award. Released the jazz album Feel My Soul on Candid Records in 2005; later solo album Retropia reached No. 1 on UK Soul and UK Reggae charts. Trained at the Anna Scher Theatre School; appeared in the 1983 Doctor Who serial Enlightenment, and went on to host and produce television including ITV’s Night Network strand Leee’s Place. Biography The history of British Black music is mostly told in fragments. Leee John has spent more than a decade pulling those fragments into a single record, with over 80 filmed interviews across jazz, soul, funk, reggae, ska and 2-tone now sitting inside Flashback: The History of UK Black Music. Subjects include Labi Siffre, Billy Ocean, Jaki Graham, Pauline Black and Neville Staple. Before that work, he was the front of Imagination, the British soul/funk trio whose 1982 single “Just an Illusion” reached No. 2 in the UK and No. 1 in Spain. Imagination earned four platinum discs and nine gold discs in a two-year run between 1981 and 1983, which places him inside the small group of Black British artists who broke into mainstream European pop charts in that era. That career is the substance behind his keynote work on inclusion, identity and creative reinvention. He talks about gatekeeping, visibility and longevity from someone who has been on both sides of them, and he extends the same argument into philanthropy as an ambassador for SOS Children’s Villages, where his campaigning was recognised with a Humanitarian award in France. The reinvention thread runs through everything: lead singer, jazz recording artist on Candid Records, film and television producer, documentary director, charity ambassador. Flashback is the current centre of gravity, and it is the body of work that gives a contemporary inclusion conversation a name, a face and a primary source. Key speaking topics Diversity, equity and inclusion Cultural identity and Black British heritage Creative resilience and career reinvention Storytelling and oral history Music, media and representation Purpose, philanthropy and brand Motivation and inspiration Ideal for DEI and ERG leadership programmes seeking a culturally substantive keynote presence rather than a policy-led speaker. CSR, purpose and brand teams marking heritage moments such as Black History Month, World Orphan Week or cultural-anniversary launches. Senior audiences in media, music, entertainment and creative industries debating representation, longevity and the economics of Black British creative output. Conference organisers wanting a closing keynote that combines testimony, performance presence and emotional lift. Audience outcomes A clearer mental map of British Black music history and why it underwrites contemporary conversations about representation. A worked example of creative reinvention across four decades, useful for anyone thinking about second-act careers and staying relevant. A felt understanding of why inclusion is a question of belonging and visibility, not compliance language. Direct exposure to a cultural archive most rooms have never heard, drawn from the Flashback documentary interviews. An emotional close, often involving live vocal performance, that lifts the room rather than ending on a slide.

Why organisations work with Lisa Nichols She speaks to the part of a workforce that engagement surveys cannot reach: the private doubt, fatigue, and self-protection that quietly drains performance during change. Her credibility is lived, not theoretical. She built a multi-million dollar enterprise from public assistance, and she uses that arc to make resilience feel concrete to senior teams who have heard every framework. She has been trusted by Google, Amazon, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, and NBC for workforce and leadership development sessions, which is a useful signal for enterprise buyers vetting cultural fit. She is one of the most recognised motivational voices of her generation, with reach through The Secret, Oprah, The Today Show, and a Broadway debut at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater. That recognition fills rooms and earns attention before she opens her mouth. Her work translates well into multi-format engagements: keynote, executive coaching circles, and emerging-leader programmes through Motivating the Masses, so a single booking can extend into a programme. Biography highlights New York Times bestselling author of No Matter What! and author of Abundance Now (HarperCollins, 2016). Featured teacher in The Secret (2006), the global self-help film that introduced her to a mass audience. Founder and CEO of Motivating the Masses, Inc., a personal and business development training company. Founder of the Motivating the Teen Spirit Foundation, focused on teen mental health, self-esteem, and dropout prevention. Broadway debut in December 2024 with the one-woman show When My Soul Speaks at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, directed by Emmy winner Nick Nanton. Recipient of the Humanitarian Award from the country of South Africa, The Ambassador Award, and the LEGO Foundation’s Heart of Learning Award. Biography Public assistance and a baby wrapped in towels because the diapers had run out. That is where Lisa Nichols started in 1994. The arc from that night in a small apartment to a CEO’s chair, a New York Times bestseller list, and a Broadway stage is the source material she draws on when she speaks to leadership teams about resilience. She came to a global audience through The Secret, the 2006 film that sold tens of millions of copies and put a small group of teachers in front of a mass readership. Her own book, No Matter What!, followed and reached the New York Times bestseller list. Abundance Now, published by HarperCollins in 2016, took the same lived material into a more practical framework for personal and professional change. The corporate work sits underneath that public profile. Through Motivating the Masses, the training company she founded and runs, Nichols has delivered leadership and engagement programmes for Google, Amazon, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, and NBC. The brief is usually the same: a workforce facing change, a culture that needs reigniting, or a leadership cohort that has the strategy but not the conviction. In December 2024, Nichols took the same material to Broadway, performing When My Soul Speaks for one night at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater under Emmy winner Nick Nanton. Eleven vignettes covered abusive relationships, poverty, single motherhood, and the late-arriving private wins. It is the same story she tells corporate audiences, told in the form most people only see on television, and it is part of why her name still draws a room. Key speaking topics Resilience and personal conviction Employee engagement through change Inclusive and values-based leadership Self-leadership for emerging leaders Storytelling for organisational influence Women’s leadership and advancement Ideal for CHROs and culture leads designing engagement, wellbeing, or DEI programmes that need a credible lived voice rather than a frameworks-only speaker. Senior leadership offsites where conviction, accountability, and personal resilience are the agenda, not the warm-up. Emerging-leader and high-potential cohorts inside large enterprises. Women’s leadership networks and ERG flagship events looking for a recognised voice with a corporate track record. Audience outcomes Leaders leave with a sharper sense of how their own conviction shows up to their teams in periods of change. Cohorts leave with practical language for resilience and self-trust they can use in difficult conversations the next week. Engagement and wellbeing programmes gain a vocabulary that lands across seniority levels, not only at the top. Audiences leave with a story arc they remember, which is what makes the rest of the programme stick.

Why organisations work with Lisa Walden She translates over a decade of qualitative research on generational sociology into culture decisions a CHRO can actually defend at board level, not survey commentary. Two published books, including The Future of Work is Human and the Wiley “For Dummies” field guide on managing millennials, give her arguments a public, citable spine. She tackles the contested ground of hybrid work, return-to-office friction and Gen Z expectations without retreating into either nostalgia or hype. Her work on trust and psychological safety reads as operational, not therapeutic: barriers named, ingredients specified, applied across in-person, virtual and hybrid teams. She customises through pre-event interviews with client teams, so the keynote lands on the organisation’s specific cultural tension rather than a generic future-of-work narrative. Biography highlights Co-founder of Good Company Consulting, a workplace culture and future-of-work advisory firm. Co-author of The Future of Work is Human: Transforming Company Culture for a Post-Pandemic World (with Hannah L. Ubl). Co-author of Managing Millennials for Dummies, part of Wiley’s “For Dummies” series. Advisor to organisations including BMW, Siemens, HP, Syntellis, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Texas A&M University System. Over a decade of qualitative research on generational dynamics and employee experience. Speaker on culture, trust, hybrid work, AI and human judgement, and cross-generational collaboration. Biography Five generations now share the same payroll, and the cultural assumptions each one brought to work have stopped quietly cohabiting. Trust expectations differ. Communication norms differ. The unwritten contract between employer and employee, the one that held through most of the late twentieth century, no longer carries the room. This is the territory Lisa Walden has spent more than a decade studying as a generational sociologist and workplace strategist. As co-founder of Good Company Consulting, Walden advises organisations on how to redesign culture for a workforce that no longer agrees on what work is for. Her clients include BMW, Siemens, HP, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Syntellis and Texas A&M University System. The work focuses on the connective tissue of an organisation: trust, psychological safety, communication norms, and the specific operating shifts that make a hybrid or multigenerational workforce coherent rather than fractious. Her two books anchor the public argument. The Future of Work is Human, co-authored with Hannah Ubl, sets out a post-pandemic culture playbook built around compassionate leadership and person-first management. Managing Millennials for Dummies, published in Wiley’s “For Dummies” series, gave her the early platform on generational management and remains a working reference for HR and people leaders. What distinguishes her on a stage is the refusal to default to either the wellness register or the technology register when discussing culture. She treats generational difference as a design input for operating decisions, not a personality theme, and she addresses the friction points that senior teams usually avoid in public: return-to-office disagreement, Gen Z expectations of managers, and what AI adoption does to the human texture of a team. Key speaking topics Future of work and post-pandemic culture Multigenerational workplace dynamics Trust and psychological safety Hybrid and remote work design Employee engagement and motivation Human-centred AI adoption Leadership communication across generations Ideal for CHROs, people leaders and heads of culture redesigning post-pandemic operating norms. Executive teams confronting return-to-office friction and hybrid policy disagreement. Boards and CEOs of organisations with significant Gen Z and millennial workforces. Leadership development and talent programmes inside large, multi-generational employers. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where generational friction is actually costing the organisation, and where it is noise. A working vocabulary for trust and psychological safety that managers can apply on Monday. Specific operating moves for hybrid and in-person team design, not policy slogans. A way to talk about AI adoption that treats human judgement as a capability, not a leftover. Confidence to make culture decisions defensible to both a board and a Gen Z hire.

Why organisations work with Lorraine Hariton Six years leading Catalyst, the global nonprofit whose research and benchmarks Fortune 500 boards already use to evaluate their own progress on women’s advancement. Operating background that buyers in male-dominated executive teams take seriously: 15 years at IBM, CEO of two Silicon Valley start-ups, Obama-appointed State Department official. Specific authority on the measurement question. Catalyst’s frameworks on emotional tax, empathic leadership, and inclusion assessment were developed and scaled during her tenure. Credible on the intersection of bias and emerging technology, including how gender and racial bias enter AI systems through data and design choices. Biography highlights President and CEO of Catalyst from 2018 to 2024. Special Representative for Commercial and Business Affairs at the US State Department under President Obama. CEO of two venture-backed Silicon Valley companies, Beatnik and Apptera. Senior Vice President of Global Partnerships, New York Academy of Sciences; co-founder of the Global STEM Alliance and the 1000 Girls, 1000 Futures programme. Inaugural Women’s Leadership Champion Award, University of Virginia Darden School of Business, 2022. Crain’s New York Business Women of Influence, 2023. BS Stanford University, MBA Harvard Business School. Biography Catalyst is the research organisation whose data Fortune 500 boards quote back to themselves when they discuss the women-in-leadership gap. For six years that organisation was run by Lorraine Hariton, an operator with credentials those same boards understand: fifteen years at IBM, two CEO roles at venture-backed Silicon Valley companies, an Obama-administration appointment representing US commercial interests at the State Department. That mix matters because the audience for serious DEI work has shifted. Senior teams now want practitioners who can speak the language of operating performance and capital discipline, not advocacy. At Catalyst, Hariton oversaw the development of frameworks used inside member companies on emotional tax, empathic leadership, and inclusion measurement, the kind of artefacts that survive contact with a sceptical executive committee. Her work addresses the credibility gap between public DEI commitments and observable workplace outcomes. She speaks directly to the failure mode senior leaders fear most, performative policy that produces no change and erodes employee trust. She also works on how gender and racial bias enter AI systems through training data, an issue most executive teams are still under-prepared for. The University of Virginia Darden School of Business presented her with its inaugural Women’s Leadership Champion Award in 2022. Crain’s named her to its Women of Influence list the following year. Her holistic view of where women’s advancement sits within an organisation, alongside compensation strategy, capital allocation, and technology governance, is what makes her useful in a boardroom rather than at a conference panel. Key speaking topics Gender equity and women’s advancement in senior leadership Inclusion measurement and DEI accountability Bias in artificial intelligence and emerging technology Workplace culture transformation Future of work and flexible workplace design Empathic and inclusive leadership practice Ideal for CHROs, Chief Diversity Officers, and CEO offices commissioning a measurable advancement strategy for women in senior leadership Boards and nominating committees evaluating their own pipeline credibility Senior leadership teams in male-dominated industries (financial services, technology, energy, industrials) working on inclusion outcomes that hold up to scrutiny Companies building governance around bias and fairness in AI deployment Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what credible DEI measurement looks like, drawn from Catalyst’s published frameworks A sharper grasp of where bias enters AI systems and what executive teams should be asking about it Direct exposure to a practitioner who has worked with the leadership teams of many of the world’s largest employers on this agenda A more confident vocabulary for senior leaders, particularly men in executive roles, to engage with women’s advancement as a business strategy issue rather than a compliance one

Why organisations work with Madison Butler She works inside the people function as a practitioner, not as an outside commentator. Her perspective comes from running employee experience as Chief Experience Officer at GRAV and as a fractional people ops consultant. She has built a structural intervention into her own industry. The Black Speakers Collection was created to close the speaker pay gap for Black speakers, and is now a working directory used by meeting planners. Her book “Let Them See You” (Wiley, 2025) gives buyers a published thesis on authenticity at work that they can hand to a leadership team before the keynote. She speaks credibly on mental health, trauma and psychological safety in workplace settings without softening the operational implications for managers. Named a LinkedIn Top Black Voice and a DivInc Austin Rising Star, with sustained media presence in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider and Rolling Stone. Biography highlights Author, “Let Them See You: Empowering Change Through Authenticity” (Wiley, 2025) Founder, Black Speakers Collection, a directory created to address pay equity for Black speakers Founder, Blue Haired Unicorn, an HR and DEI consultancy advising on psychological safety and culture design Chief Experience Officer at GRAV, based in Austin, Texas Named a LinkedIn Top Black Voice; named DivInc Austin Rising Star, 2021 Featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Yahoo and Rolling Stone Biography The employee experience is the part of the company most leaders do not own. HR runs onboarding, operations runs the systems, leadership sets the tone, and the actual lived experience falls between them. Butler works in that gap. As Chief Experience Officer at GRAV and through her consultancy Blue Haired Unicorn, she designs how a workforce actually moves through the organisation, from joining to leaving. Her published thesis sits in “Let Them See You: Empowering Change Through Authenticity”, released by Wiley in 2025. The argument is that performative culture work fails because it asks people to keep their full selves out of the building. Butler treats authenticity as an operating condition for trust, engagement and retention, not as a value statement. The Black Speakers Collection is her clearest demonstration of how she thinks. Faced with persistent pay inequity for Black speakers in the bureau industry, she built a directory rather than writing a position piece. It is now used by meeting planners as a working resource, profiled by PCMA and Prevue Meetings. Her media presence reflects the breadth of her audience. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Yahoo and Rolling Stone have carried her commentary on workplace culture, mental health and inclusion. LinkedIn named her a Top Black Voice; DivInc named her Austin Rising Star in 2021. Key speaking topics Psychological safety and workplace culture Authenticity and human-centred leadership Employee experience design Inclusion as operating practice Mental health and trauma at work Future of work and the people function Personal branding and self-presentation at work Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers designing employee experience end to end Heads of DEI and inclusion leads looking for operating substance over signalling Founders and CEOs of scaling companies under cultural strain Internal leadership programmes for managers responsible for psychological safety Audience outcomes A clearer view of where the employee experience is breaking inside their own organisation A sharper distinction between performative culture work and operating culture work Language for managers to discuss mental health, trauma and authenticity at work without flinching Practical reference points from a practitioner running these problems day to day A published thesis (“Let Them See You”) to extend the conversation after the room

Why organisations work with Maggie Alphonsi A first-hand account of what seven consecutive Six Nations titles and a World Cup actually required, told by someone who was on the field for all of it. Inclusion grounded in lived institutional experience: the first woman to win the Pat Marshall Award in its 50-year history, the first former female player to commentate on men’s international rugby for ITV, an elected RFU Council member working inside the governance structure she came up through. A published account, “Winning the Fight,” shortlisted for Autobiography of the Year at the 2024 Sports Book Awards, that grounds the cultural narrative in specific decisions, not platitudes. A practitioner view of high-performance teams that names the mechanics behind sustained dominance, not the highlight reel. Biography highlights 74 caps and 28 tries for England between 2003 and 2014, playing flanker for Saracens. Member of the England squad that won the 2014 Women’s Rugby World Cup; named in the tournament’s Dream Team. Inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame in November 2016. MBE for services to rugby, 2012 Birthday Honours. First female recipient of the Rugby Union Writers’ Club Pat Marshall Award (2011); first former female player to commentate on men’s international rugby for ITV (2015 Rugby World Cup). Elected member of the Rugby Football Union Council, active on the RFU Diversity and Inclusion steering group; author of “Winning the Fight” (Polaris, 2023). Biography Seven consecutive Six Nations titles, six of them Grand Slams, plus a Rugby World Cup. That is the England team Maggie Alphonsi played in between 2003 and 2014. The achievement was structural, not accidental, and she has spent the years since explaining what that kind of sustained performance actually requires inside a team environment. The credentials line up. 74 caps, 28 tries, MBE in 2012, World Rugby Hall of Fame in 2016. What matters more for organisational audiences is what she did next. In 2011, she became the first woman to win the Pat Marshall Award from the Rugby Union Writers’ Club, ahead of Richie McCaw, in the prize’s 50-year history. In 2015, she became the first former female player to commentate on men’s international rugby for ITV. In 2016, she was elected to the Rugby Football Union Council and joined its Diversity and Inclusion steering group. Each of those firsts came inside an institution that had not previously built a place for someone like her. Her 2023 autobiography, “Winning the Fight,” sets out the specifics: a club foot at birth, North London council estates, racism and sexism encountered along the way, and the operational decisions that produced a World Cup. The book was shortlisted for Autobiography of the Year at the 2024 Sports Book Awards. For senior leaders working on inclusion, performance culture, or how teams hold standards across long cycles, she brings the rare combination of having executed at the top of her sport and then sat on the governance body that runs it. Key speaking topics High-performance team culture Inclusion in male-dominated institutions Sustained excellence under pressure Diversity and inclusion in sport and business Resilience and identity through career change Breaking institutional norms Mentoring and developing emerging talent Ideal for CHROs and heads of D&I building inclusion programmes that have to produce measurable cultural change, not optics. Leadership teams responsible for sustained high performance over multi-year cycles. Boards and senior leaders confronting representation gaps in their governance structures. Talent and learning leaders running development programmes for women and underrepresented groups. Audience outcomes A working picture of what produced seven Six Nations titles and a World Cup, drawn from inside the squad. A first-hand account of being the first woman in three different institutional settings and what that took week to week. Specific reference points for how inclusion and high performance reinforce each other in practice. Frank perspective on the gap between stated organisational values and lived employee experience.

Why organisations work with Magie Cook A nine-figure exit built from $800 in starting capital. Buyers get a speaker whose entrepreneurial credibility is documented in a real Campbell’s Soup transaction, not a curated personal-brand narrative. The 3R Framework (Resourceful, Resilient, Relentless) gives audiences a portable model for decision-making under pressure, drawn from the same operating discipline that scaled her business across 38 states. A bilingual Latina founder voice that lands with U.S. and Latin American workforces without the cultural flatness of imported keynote material. Credentials buyers recognise: SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year, induction into the NAWBO Hall of Fame, and an honorary LL.D. from the University of Charleston. A philanthropic chapter, including the rescue of 31 children from cartel exploitation in Mexico, that gives her resilience material weight most speakers in the category cannot match. Biography highlights Founder and former CEO of Maggie’s All-Natural Fresh Salsas & Dips, distributed across 38 U.S. states through Whole Foods, Walmart and Sam’s Club. Sold Maggie’s Salsa with Garden Fresh to Campbell’s Soup in 2015 for $231 million. U.S. Small Business Administration Young Entrepreneur of the Year, 2009. Inducted into the National Association of Women Business Owners Hall of Fame and invited onto the NAWBO Board of Directors in 2022. Author of “Mindful Success: How To Use Your Mind To Transform Your Life,” endorsed by Jack Canfield. Honorary Doctorate of Laws, University of Charleston, 2022; Athletics Hall of Fame inductee, 2015. Biography The first order from Whole Foods came after ninety rejections. The starting capital was $800, handed to a homeless university graduate by a stranger at a salsa contest. Within four years, Maggie’s All-Natural Fresh Salsas & Dips was on shelves in 38 states across Whole Foods, Walmart and Sam’s Club. In 2015 the business sold with Garden Fresh to Campbell’s Soup for $231 million. That trajectory is the substance behind Cook’s keynote work. The 3R Framework she uses with corporate audiences (Resourceful, Resilient, Relentless) is not a packaged model written for the stage. It is the operating discipline that took the company from $12,000 in annual revenue to $1.9 million in a single year after the Whole Foods listing, and ultimately to a nine-figure exit. She has codified it in “Mindful Success,” her book endorsed by Jack Canfield, and translates it for Fortune 500 leadership teams looking for a credible voice on building under constraint. The credentials sit alongside the operating record. The U.S. Small Business Administration named her Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2009. The University of Charleston, where she arrived from a Mexican orphanage on a basketball scholarship, inducted her into its Athletics Hall of Fame and later awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws. In 2022 she was inducted into the NAWBO Hall of Fame and joined its Board of Directors. What buyers tend to remember is the second chapter. After the Campbell’s exit, Cook returned to the orphanage where she grew up, served as US Program Director for its parent organisation, and helped coordinate the rescue of 31 children from cartel exploitation. That is what gives her resilience content its weight: a founder who built a national brand, exited it cleanly, and went back to the place that shaped her with the proceeds. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Resilience and high-performance mindset Purpose-driven leadership Diversity, equity and inclusion Mental conditioning and personal transformation Women in business and Latina leadership Corporate culture and employee engagement Ideal for Sales and commercial leadership conferences looking for a founder voice on building through rejection. CHROs and people leaders running engagement, DEI or culture-change programmes that need lived authority rather than theoretical framing. Leadership offsites where the senior team needs an external operator perspective on resilience and decision-making under constraint. Hispanic and Latina employee resource groups, women-in-business networks and bilingual audiences across the U.S. and Latin America. Audience outcomes A working version of the 3R Framework (Resourceful, Resilient, Relentless) that leaders can apply to their own commercial decisions. A clearer read on how constraint and rejection get converted into operating advantage in a real scale-up. Specific mental-conditioning techniques the speaker used personally to keep building through homelessness, ninety rejections and capital constraints. A practical sense of what changes inside a leader when they stop treating adversity as a setback and start treating it as input. Renewed commitment in the room, especially among under-represented and bilingual employee groups, to act on ambitions they had quietly written off.

Why organisations work with Makala Green She holds the Chartered Financial Planner credential, the senior qualification of the UK financial advice industry, which gives employee audiences a regulated voice they can actually trust on money decisions. She is the first black woman in the UK to achieve that chartered status, which makes her a credible speaker on inclusion in financial services and on the confidence gap that disproportionately affects women and minority employees. Her book The Money Edit (Yellow Kite, Hachette UK) sets out a deliberately jargon-free framework, which lets her translate pensions, investing and budgeting into language a mixed-seniority audience can act on the same week. She has worked with Waitrose, John Lewis and Metro Bank on financial wellbeing programmes, so the content has been tested inside large UK employers rather than only on a public stage. Her ITV This Morning, BBC Radio and Financial Times appearances mean she can hold a room of non-finance professionals without losing the technical accuracy a regulated topic demands. Biography highlights UK’s first black female Chartered Financial Planner, the senior credential of the Chartered Insurance Institute’s financial advice qualification track. Founder of Green Wealth Planning and the consumer platform The Wealth Check. Author of The Money Edit: Your No Shame, No Blame Guide to Taking Control of Your Money, published by Yellow Kite (Hachette UK), 2022. Named Financial Adviser of the Year, South East England, Professional Adviser, 2021. Resident financial expert on ITV’s This Morning, with further appearances on BBC Radio and contributions to the Financial Times, Spear’s, FinTech Magazine, Glamour, Stylist and Women’s Health. Corporate financial wellbeing work with Waitrose, John Lewis and Metro Bank. Host of the Your Financial Journey podcast. Biography Financial anxiety inside a workforce rarely shows up as a line item, but it shows up in absence, in retention, and in the quality of decisions people make under pressure. Most employers respond with a benefits brochure and an EAP phone number. Few have a voice that employees actually trust on money. Makala Green is that voice. She is a Chartered Financial Planner, the senior qualification of the UK financial advice industry, and the first black woman in the country to hold that status. She built Green Wealth Planning as a regulated advisory practice, then founded The Wealth Check as the consumer-facing platform that translates the same discipline into language employees and entrepreneurs can act on. Her book The Money Edit, published by Yellow Kite at Hachette UK, sets out the framework she uses on stage and inside corporate programmes. Waitrose, John Lewis and Metro Bank have run her into their workforces. ITV’s This Morning, BBC Radio, the Financial Times and Spear’s have used her as a financial expert on air and in print. Professional Adviser named her Financial Adviser of the Year for the South East of England in 2021. What she gives a corporate audience is the rare combination of regulatory standing and plain English. She can talk about pensions, investing and household resilience without either patronising the room or hiding behind jargon, and she can do it from a position that audiences hearing from a woman of colour in senior financial expertise still find unusual. That is the substance behind the inclusion claim, and it is also why her financial wellbeing work travels into mixed-seniority rooms that more conventional adviser-speakers struggle to hold. Key speaking topics Employee financial wellbeing Financial confidence and the gender and ethnicity wealth gap Cost-of-living resilience for workforces Inclusion in financial services Investing, pensions and long-term wealth planning Entrepreneurship and personal finance for founders Money mindset and behavioural finance Ideal for HR, reward and benefits leaders designing financial wellbeing programmes DEI leads and employee resource groups focused on women, Black and minority employees Retail, consumer and financial services employers with large mixed-seniority workforces Founder and scale-up communities where personal finance and business finance overlap Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how financial anxiety is currently affecting their workforce and where regulated input would change behaviour. A jargon-free vocabulary for talking about pensions, investing and debt that employees of any seniority can use. Specific moves employees can make in the weeks after the session on savings, pensions and household budgeting. A more honest conversation about the gender and ethnicity dimensions of financial confidence inside the organisation.

Why organisations work with Marina Díaz Ibarra She has run a regional consumer technology business at scale, leading Mercado Libre’s Argentina, Chile and Peru operation as General Manager, so her view of digital growth is built from operating P&L, not consultancy. She built and exited a digital transformation company, Wolox, which Accenture acquired in 2021, giving her a working view of how incumbents actually buy and absorb innovation. She sits on the boards of Nasdaq-listed AgileThought, Rotoplas, Gentera and IFC (World Bank) portfolio companies, so she can speak to how boards across Latin America are framing AI, fintech and risk decisions. Her advisory work with Bitso, the largest crypto exchange in Latin America, and Jumex gives her live exposure to fintech, blockchain and consumer brand strategy in volatile markets. She wrote “Un mundo sin jefes” (Conecta, 2021), a candid book on executive life and self-leadership, which makes her credible on the human side of transformation as well as the technology side. Biography highlights General Manager for Argentina, Chile and Peru at Mercado Libre, 2015 to 2017. Managing Director of Wolox, the digital product and transformation firm acquired by Accenture in 2021. Earlier global roles at Nike (Emerging Markets Apparel), Under Armour (Global Senior Product Manager), Unilever (Dove, Latin America) and Puratos. Board director of Rotoplas, Gentera (Banco Compartamos), AgileThought (Nasdaq) and IFC (World Bank) portfolio companies. Advisor to Bitso and Jumex. MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Economics degree from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Master’s in Project Valuation from ITBA. Author of “Un mundo sin jefes” (Conecta, Penguin Random House, 2021). Biography Mercado Libre is the company that beat Amazon in Latin America. Marina Díaz Ibarra was the General Manager who ran its Argentina, Chile and Peru business between 2015 and 2017, at the point where mobile commerce, payments and logistics were converging into a single operating problem. That seat shapes how she thinks about digital growth: as a question of unit economics, talent and execution, not as a slide on disruption. After Mercado Libre, she moved to the other side of the table. As Managing Director of Wolox, she built a digital product company that helped incumbents in financial services, retail and consumer goods translate ambition into working software. Accenture acquired the business in 2021. The experience left her with a precise view of where corporate transformation programmes break down, and what makes the small number that work different. Her earlier career was inside the brand machinery of Unilever, Nike, Under Armour and Puratos, with regional and global roles spanning Latin America and the United States. That background, combined with an MBA from Wharton and an economics training from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, gives her an unusual range: she can read a brand P&L, a venture cap table and a board pack with equal fluency. She now sits on the boards of Rotoplas, Gentera, Nasdaq-listed AgileThought and several IFC (World Bank) portfolio companies, and advises Bitso, the largest crypto exchange in Latin America. Her book “Un mundo sin jefes” (Conecta, 2021) put on record the human cost of running at executive speed and the discipline required to keep going. It is the part of the story that boards rarely talk about and that her audiences consistently respond to. Key speaking topics Digital transformation in incumbent businesses Exponential technologies and operating advantage E-commerce, omnichannel and mobile in emerging markets Fintech, blockchain and crypto in Latin America Board-level technology and innovation governance Customer experience and brand in a digital economy Self-leadership and executive resilience Ideal for Boards and executive committees framing AI, fintech and digital transformation decisions CEOs and CDOs of incumbents who have stalled between pilot and scaled deployment CMOs and customer experience leaders rebuilding around digital and mobile commerce Senior leadership audiences in Latin America, the United States and EMEA looking for an operator view from the region Audience outcomes A clear-eyed account of what separates digital transformation programmes that scale from those that stall A working view of how Latin American operators have built consumer technology businesses against larger global incumbents Specific cases from Mercado Libre, Wolox and live board work in fintech, water, microfinance and technology services A frank perspective on the human and leadership cost of running at the pace transformation now demands

Why organisations work with Marina Ibrahim She has run cross-cultural integration work inside named multinationals including BMW Group, Bentley, Nike, Kellogg’s, PepsiCo, BP, UBS and Deutsche Telekom, across automotive, FMCG, financial services and life sciences. Her own biography (British-German, born to a German mother and Egyptian father, bilingual in English and German) is the lived case study behind the work, which lands with international audiences in a way a single-culture expert cannot match. She brings instrument-led rigour, not opinion. GLOBE+, her signature framework, integrates Country Navigator, Wiley Everything DiSC Certified Partner, Wiley Five Behaviours Certified Partner (Lencioni’s Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team), GlobalDISC and ICQ Growth 2.0 into diagnostic data on team performance. She has worked the British-German interface specifically, including post-merger cultural integration, where most cross-cultural speakers stay at a generic level. Externally judged: FSB West Midlands Diversity and Inclusion Award 2024 for the consultancy she founded, and Professional Speaker of the Year Staffordshire 2025. Biography highlights Founder of Globility Insights, the West Midlands-based cultural agility and inclusive leadership consultancy she established in 2011. Creator of GLOBE+, her signature cultural agility framework, used with multinational clients across automotive, FMCG, financial services and life sciences. Senior Culture Coach at Country Navigator, the cultural intelligence training platform. Finalist at The Speaker Awards 2026, the UK awards for the professional speaking industry, shortlisted for Best Thought Leadership Speaker and Best Storyteller. Federation of Small Businesses West Midlands Diversity and Inclusion Award 2024; Professional Speaker of the Year, Staffordshire 2025; Cartus Service Excellence Award 2020. Client organisations include BMW Group, Bentley, Nike, Kellogg’s, PepsiCo, EMI, Commerzbank, BP, UBS, Deutsche Telekom and Wood PLC. Wiley Everything DiSC Certified Partner; Wiley Five Behaviours Certified Partner (Lencioni’s Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team); Country Navigator, GlobalDISC and ICQ Growth 2.0 Coach; MirrorMIRROR Certified Team Coach; NLP Practitioner; MCIM Chartered Marketer. British and German national with Egyptian heritage; bilingual English and German. Biography Most multinational organisations treat culture as a soft variable. Strategy is hard, culture is decoration. The teams running the actual work know better. They are the ones absorbing the friction when a German engineering function tries to land a project inside a Brazilian commercial team, or when a British acquirer tells a Japanese subsidiary that “nothing will change”. Marina Ibrahim has spent more than 25 years inside that gap. Through Globility Insights, the consultancy she founded in 2011, she has worked with BMW Group, Bentley, Nike, Kellogg’s, PepsiCo, BP, UBS and Deutsche Telekom on the parts of cross-cultural collaboration that do not show up on a strategy slide: trust between merged teams, decision-making across British and German operating styles, the difference between an inclusion statement and a multicultural team that actually functions. Her own profile is part of the credibility. Born to a German mother and Egyptian father, British-German, bilingual in English and German, she is the lived case study behind the work. The method is not. GLOBE+, her signature framework, runs senior teams through Country Navigator, Wiley Everything DiSC, Wiley Five Behaviours, GlobalDISC and ICQ Growth 2.0, so leaders leave with diagnostic data on how their teams actually operate, not a set of stories. In 2024, the Federation of Small Businesses named Globility the West Midlands Diversity and Inclusion Award winner, an externally judged signal that the practice she built holds up under scrutiny. For senior teams trying to make global structures actually perform, that is the relevant test. Key speaking topics Cultural agility as a competitive advantage Inclusive leadership in multinational organisations High-performing multicultural teams Post-merger cultural integration British and German business cultures and operating styles Unconscious bias and inclusive decision-making in practice Leading internationally distributed and hybrid teams Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads embedding inclusion beyond policy into team behaviour Executive teams running cross-border integrations or post-merger collaboration Global function heads managing multicultural and internationally distributed teams Leadership development programmes for senior leaders preparing for international roles Audience outcomes A working definition of cultural agility that names what behaviours actually shift performance across borders A diagnostic view of where their own multicultural teams break down, drawn from established cultural instruments rather than opinion Specific moves leaders can use the next day to manage British, German and broader European operating differences A sharper sense of where current inclusion efforts are stalling and what to do about it

Why organisations work with Mark Foster A first-person performance argument for inclusion. Foster competed at five Olympics while hiding that he was gay; his account of what that cost him is harder to dismiss than any case study. Twenty-three years of elite-level pattern recognition on what separates athletes who reach a final from those who win it, drawn from a career that produced six World Championship golds and eight world records. Credibility with broadcast audiences. As a BBC Sport analyst across four Olympics and four Commonwealth Games, he is comfortable in front of senior rooms, on stage with a host, and in moderated panel formats. A flag-bearer story that is not the usual one. Foster led Team GB into the Beijing 2008 opening ceremony, the first British swimmer to do so since 1964, and uses it to talk about visibility and what representation actually does for the people watching. Biography highlights Five-time Olympian: Seoul 1988, Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000, Beijing 2008 Six World Championship golds, eleven European titles, two Commonwealth titles, eight world records across a 23-year career Flag bearer for Great Britain at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games opening ceremony BBC Sport swimming analyst across the London 2012, Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Olympics, alongside Clare Balding and Rebecca Adlington Honorary Doctor of Health Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University (2016) Patron of The Anaphylaxis Campaign and ambassador for SportsAid UK Autobiography, My Double Life, scheduled for 2026 publication Biography Most performance cultures are built around what people produce, not around what people are carrying while they produce it. The gap between the two is where output quietly gets lost. Foster’s contribution is to make that gap legible to a corporate audience using the only evidence harder to argue with than data: a 23-year career he competed through while hiding who he was. The competitive record stands on its own. Six World Championship golds, eleven European titles, two Commonwealth titles, eight world records, and selection for five Olympic Games between Seoul 1988 and Beijing 2008. He carried the Union Flag at the Beijing opening ceremony, the first British swimmer to lead the team in since Anita Lonsbrough in 1964. What he has said publicly since 2017, and what his autobiography My Double Life addresses in full, is the part of that career that did not appear in the results. Foster competed at the highest level while closeted, and has been specific about the energy that consumed and the performance margin it cost. For a senior leader thinking about inclusion as a productivity question rather than a values one, that is a useful first-hand source. His broadcast work keeps him sharp on stage. Foster has been a BBC Sport swimming analyst across four Olympics and four Commonwealth Games, regularly on air with Clare Balding and Rebecca Adlington, and Anglia Ruskin University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2016 in recognition of the contribution. Key speaking topics Inclusive performance cultures Visibility and representation in high-performance environments Resilience across a long career Goal-setting and reinvention Olympic-level preparation and mindset Working under pressure Coming out at work Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads building the business case for inclusion in performance terms Senior leadership offsites where the brief is performance under sustained pressure Employee Resource Groups and Pride networks looking for an external voice with sporting credibility Awards dinners, conferences and broadcast-style panels needing a confident on-stage presenter Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how concealment at work shows up in output, and what it actually costs A practical view of what twenty-three years of competing taught him about setbacks, plateaus and second acts A sharper sense of why representation at senior levels matters, told from the person being represented A reframing of resilience as something built across a career, not summoned in a moment