Susie Wolff

Why organisations work with Susie Wolff

• She is the only executive who has both experienced structural exclusion at the top of global motorsport as a competitor and then returned to redesign those structures – giving her an argument that runs deeper than advocacy.
• F1 Academy under her leadership secured the backing of all ten Formula 1 teams, partnerships with Charlotte Tilbury, American Express, TAG Heuer and The LEGO Group, and grew to become the second-most followed motorsport series after Formula 1 – these are not diversity metrics, they are commercial outcomes.
• Her work addresses a specific organisational failure that most DEI programmes miss: talent exclusion is not primarily a selection problem, it is a pipeline and development problem. She has built the operational case study.
• Her track record spans the full leadership arc – elite competitor, team principal, CEO, series director – giving her credibility in conversations about performance culture, high-pressure decision-making, and building organisations that win under scrutiny.
• Driven, her memoir published by Hodder & Stoughton, was an instant Sunday Times bestseller, endorsed by Lewis Hamilton – extending her reach beyond motorsport audiences and into mainstream leadership conversations.

Biography highlights

• Managing Director, F1 Academy (Formula 1’s all-female development series), appointed March 2023; reports directly to Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali
• First woman to participate in a Formula One race weekend since 1992 – four FP1 sessions with the Williams F1 team, 2014–2015
• Seven seasons in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM) with Mercedes-Benz, 2006–2012
• Team Principal then CEO, Venturi Formula E team, 2018–2022; led team to Formula E Vice-World Championship (runner-up)
• Founder, Dare To Be Different initiative (2016); merged with FIA Girls on Track (2019)
• Author, Driven (Hodder & Stoughton / Henry Holt) – instant Sunday Times bestseller; executive producer of Netflix docuseries F1: The Academy (2025)
• MBE (2017) for services to women in sport; Honorary Fellowship, University of Edinburgh (2013); CNBC Changemaker (2026)

Biography

Motorsport has long had a pipeline problem – not of talent, but of access. The structures that determined who made it to the top were built for a specific kind of competitor, and they were rarely questioned. Susie Wolff sat inside that system for over two decades: as a driver who pushed further into Formula One than any woman had in a generation, and then as the executive who went back to rebuild it.

Her driving career ran from karting to the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters with Mercedes-Benz, then to Williams F1, where she became the first woman to participate in a Formula One race weekend since 1992 across four practice sessions in 2014 and 2015. When she retired from driving, she turned to the leadership side of the sport: first as Team Principal, then CEO, of the Venturi Formula E team, where she led the organisation to a Formula E Vice-World Championship finish before joining F1 Academy in March 2023.

At F1 Academy, Wolff has built something that did not exist before: a commercially viable, Formula 1-integrated development series for female talent, which now carries the liveries of all ten F1 teams, holds partnerships with brands including Charlotte Tilbury, American Express, TAG Heuer and The LEGO Group, and has grown to become the second-most followed motorsport series after Formula 1. She executive produced the 2025 Netflix docuseries F1: The Academy alongside Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. Her memoir Driven (Hodder & Stoughton) was an instant Sunday Times bestseller.

What Wolff offers corporate audiences is not a motivational narrative with a motorsport backdrop. It is a specific and replicable argument: that inclusive talent pipelines are not built by changing who you select, but by redesigning the conditions in which talent is identified and developed. She has built that case inside one of the world’s most commercially demanding sports – and has the results to prove it.

Key speaking topics

• Inclusive talent pipeline design
• Leadership and performance under competitive pressure
• Organisational culture change in structurally resistant industries
• Executive leadership in high-performance sport
• Building commercial frameworks for underrepresented talent
• Resilience and ambition in elite environments
• Diversity as a strategic performance lever

Ideal for

• C-suite and senior leadership teams working on talent strategy, diversity, or cultural transformation
• CHROs and People directors designing inclusive talent development programmes
• Leadership and strategy teams in automotive, engineering, technology, and financial services
• Sports business, sponsorship, and commercial leadership audiences

Audience outcomes

• A clear framework for distinguishing between diversity as selection (reactive) and diversity as pipeline design (structural) – with a real-world organisational example
• Understanding of how to build commercial buy-in for inclusion initiatives, grounded in F1 Academy’s partnership and broadcast growth
• Insight into high-performance decision-making and the leadership qualities required to build organisations under public scrutiny
• A more specific vocabulary for talking about talent exclusion as a performance problem rather than a compliance issue
• First-hand perspective on what resilience, ambition, and goal-setting look like at the elite level – and how these translate into organisational contexts