DI (Diversità, equità e inclusione) speakers

Why organisations work with Francesca Martinez She fronted the WOW petition that crossed 100,000 signatures and forced a main-chamber debate in the House of Commons in 2014, which is a concrete democratic outcome rather than an inclusion talking point. Her debut play All Of Us opened at the National Theatre’s Dorfman in 2022 under Ian Rickson, putting disability and welfare politics in front of a mainstream theatre audience, with Francesca shortlisted for the George Devine Award. What the **** Is Normal?! (Virgin Books, Penguin Random House) gives the room a single shared reference point on identity and difference that holds up outside the corporate inclusion vocabulary. She speaks from inside the experience, not about it, which removes the discomfort senior audiences often feel when an external consultant lectures them on disability. She works the room as a stand-up first, which means the message lands in audiences that are sceptical of conventional DEI keynotes. Biography highlights First and only female winner of the Open Mic Award at the Edinburgh Festival (2000), and winner of the Edinburgh Fringe Media Network Award (2011). Author of What the **** Is Normal?! (Virgin Books, Penguin Random House, 2014); Bread and Roses Award runner-up and Chortle Best Comedy Book nominee. Wrote and starred in All of Us, National Theatre (Dorfman), 2022, directed by Ian Rickson; shortlisted for the George Devine Award. Her June 2019 Question Time appearance was called the show’s “best ever moment”, reaching 11 million views in its first week. The first disabled woman to perform on BBC Two’s Live at the Apollo, opening Series 11 in 2015; later featured in the BBC’s Access All Areas special. Fronted the WOW petition and secured a House of Commons main-chamber debate, February 2014. TEDxHousesOfParliament speaker (“Being Happy is a Political Act”) and performer at the World Economic Forum in Davos alongside Emma Thompson. Named to the BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour Power List (2014) and awarded two honorary doctorates for work on equality and inclusion. Biography Most inclusion programmes are written in a language that the people they are meant to help do not use. Francesca Martinez calls herself “wobbly”, refuses the medical vocabulary around cerebral palsy, and has spent twenty years showing what happens when someone with a disability narrates their own experience rather than being narrated about. The reframing sounds small. The downstream effect on a room of senior leaders is not. The credentials sit in unusual places for a speaker on this topic. She was the first and only woman to win the Open Mic Award at the Edinburgh Festival, in 2000, and went on to write What the **** Is Normal?!, published by Virgin Books, which was a runner-up for the Bread and Roses Award and a Chortle Best Comedy Book nominee. Her debut play All Of Us, directed by Ian Rickson, opened in the Dorfman at the National Theatre in 2022, and Francesca was shortlisted for the George Devine Award for it. The activism is the part most relevant to senior buyers thinking about substance over messaging. As the public face of the WOW (War on Welfare) campaign, she drove a petition past 100,000 signatures and forced a debate in the main chamber of the House of Commons in 2014, the first time disabled people had secured a main-chamber debate on an agenda of their own choosing. That is a measurable political result, not an inclusion narrative. For an organisation, the value of booking her is specific. Senior audiences hear a writer and performer with mainstream theatrical and broadcast credentials make an argument about identity and belonging that has already been tested in Parliament and at the National Theatre. The conversation that follows tends to be about whether the company’s own inclusion work would survive that kind of scrutiny. Key speaking topics Disability and inclusion at work Identity, difference and self-acceptance Resilience and lived experience Advocacy and the politics of welfare Storytelling as a tool for cultural change Mental health and wellbeing Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and ERG sponsors building inclusion programmes that engage sceptical audiences. Leadership offsites and culture events where the goal is to move beyond inclusion language into behaviour change. International Day of Persons with Disabilities, Mental Health Awareness Week and similar moments where credibility of the speaker matters more than topic coverage. Audience outcomes A sharper sense of how disabled and neurodivergent colleagues actually experience the workplace, narrated from the inside. A reference point (the book, the play, the WOW campaign) the audience can carry back into their own inclusion conversations. Permission to question the corporate vocabulary of inclusion without abandoning the work. A break from the standard motivational register; the room laughs first and then commits.

Why organisations work with Furkan Karayel She speaks to engineering leaders as a former engineer. Ten years across multinational tech firms in Ireland gave her a working vocabulary for the room. Inclusive Intelligence, her book, gives line managers a behavioural framework rather than a values statement. It is the artefact she leaves with leadership teams. She lectures on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Master’s programme at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology. The academic grounding sits alongside the practitioner experience. She has been recognised by named bodies including the WomenTech Global Awards and the International Diversity Leadership Awards, and sits on the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director, Diversein.com Author, Inclusive Intelligence: How to be a Role Model for Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace Associate lecturer, EDI Master’s programme, Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology Board member, Women For Election Ireland Speaker of the Year, WomenTech Global Awards Member, Harvard Business Review Advisory Council Biography Most inclusion programmes inside technology companies are designed by people who have never written production code. That gap shows up in the language, the metrics and the interventions. Furkan Karayel started her career as a software systems test engineer in Athlone, then spent a decade across multinational tech firms in Ireland in DevOps, automation, integration and support roles. She founded Diversein.com when she realised that, in her words, the action piece behind the diversity vocabulary was missing. The work that followed is documented in Inclusive Intelligence, a book written for line managers rather than chief people officers. It treats inclusion as a leadership behaviour, observable and learnable, not a values position. The framework has carried into her teaching on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Master’s programme at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, where she lectures alongside her commercial work. Her credentials sit across academic, commercial and civic categories. She holds a seat on the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, serves on the board of Women For Election Ireland, and was named in the EUClid Network’s Top 100 Women in Social Enterprise. Named awards include Speaker of the Year at the WomenTech Global Awards and the Diversity and Inclusion Role Model in Business honour from the International Diversity Leadership Awards. For technology businesses that have already invested in DEI and want a more useful conversation than the one they have been having, Karayel offers a practitioner’s argument rooted in the realities of engineering culture. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership in technology organisations Women in tech retention and progression Cultural intelligence across multilingual teams Bias-free decision-making for line managers Authentic leadership development Female founder and entrepreneur enablement Ideal for Engineering and product leadership teams inside multinational tech businesses CHROs and heads of DEI under pressure to convert programme spend into behavioural outcomes Women-in-tech networks and ERGs seeking content with technical credibility Conferences serving founders, female entrepreneurs and STEM professionals Audience outcomes A behavioural definition of inclusion managers can apply on Monday Specific practices for reducing bias inside engineering and product decisions A clearer view of why technical women leave, and what changes the equation Language for inclusive leadership grounded in lived practitioner experience

Why organisations work with Gabriela Hersham Ten years of operating data on what actually draws people back into shared space, drawn from running Huckletree hubs across London, Manchester and Dublin rather than theory. A working view on curating communities by sector, including Web3, fintech, AI and govtech, tested inside the UK’s first Web3-themed co-working hub at Oxford Street. A concrete record of inclusive entrepreneurship practice through Fairer Funding Now and the Huckletree Alpha accelerator, running pro-bono for under-represented founders since 2017. A founder’s view on scaling a physical network to roughly 300,000 sq ft while holding cultural standards, useful for any leader reconciling real-estate spend with employee experience. Speaking experience that spans TEDx stages, industry podcasts and corporate conferences, with a style that senior audiences read as operator rather than consultant. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Huckletree, launched in 2014 and grown to eight hubs across London, Manchester and Dublin. Operates roughly 300,000 sq ft of curated workspace serving around 4,000 members across Web3, fintech, AI, govtech and sustainable innovation. Launched Huckletree Oxford Street, positioned as the UK’s first Web3 and metaverse-themed co-working hub. Founded Fairer Funding Now, a campaign for greater inclusivity in startup investment, and runs Huckletree Alpha, a pro-bono accelerator for under-represented founders since 2017. TEDx speaker on the Future of Work; named one of Tide Bank’s Top 20 female entrepreneurs to watch in 2020. Contributor bylines at The Next Web and Creative Review; interviewed by HuffPost Trailblazing Women, Culture Trip and the Propertyshe podcast. Biography Huckletree opened its first space in Clerkenwell in 2014 after Gabriela Hersham returned to London convinced the city was missing the community model she had seen take hold in New York. Ten years on, the business runs eight hubs across London, Manchester and Dublin, about 300,000 sq ft of space, and a membership base of roughly 4,000 founders and operators. What distinguishes the company from a generic flexible-office provider is the curation. Each hub is built around a sector thesis: Web3 and the metaverse at Oxford Street, fintech and AI elsewhere in the portfolio, with members recruited against that thesis rather than sold desks on a first-come basis. That choice turns the workspace into a distribution channel for deals, hires and partnerships, which is why corporate partners buy into specific hubs rather than generic square footage. Inclusive entrepreneurship sits alongside the commercial model rather than running as a side project. Fairer Funding Now campaigns for change in how capital reaches under-represented founders. Huckletree Alpha, the pro-bono accelerator running since 2017, is the practical counterpart, giving cohort members space, mentoring and access without taking equity. For corporate audiences the value is the operating detail behind those choices. A TEDx talk on the future of work, repeat podcast appearances on property and founder platforms, and contributor bylines at The Next Web and Creative Review have made Hersham a recognisable voice on what brings people back into shared space. The argument she makes to boards and HR leaders is concrete: offices only earn their cost when they are designed as communities with a specific purpose, and diversity in hiring and funding is part of how that purpose holds together. Key speaking topics Future of work and the hybrid workplace Workplace design and community curation Women in entrepreneurship Inclusive funding and diverse founder pipelines Scaling a founder-led business Web3, fintech and emerging-sector ecosystems Ideal for CHROs and people leaders rebuilding office strategy and employee experience Real-estate and workplace directors balancing cost with culture Corporate innovation and venture teams engaging with early-stage ecosystems Networks and events on women in business and diverse entrepreneurship Audience outcomes A sharper read on why employees return to some offices and avoid others, grounded in operating data from a curated network. Concrete examples of how sector-themed workplace communities produce commercial value rather than just reduce cost. A practical view on embedding inclusive funding and hiring practices into the way a company runs, not as a separate programme. An operator’s perspective on scaling a physical and cultural network without losing what made it work in the first place.

Why organisations work with Georgia Harrison A first-hand voice on intimate image abuse with a direct line to legislative outcome. Her decision to waive anonymity during the Stephen Bear prosecution and her work with government produced amendments inside the Online Safety Act 2023, which is rare evidence of citizen campaigning translating into statute. Credibility with the people most affected. Harrison reaches young employees, customers, students and frontline staff in a register a senior policy speaker cannot match, which matters for internal wellbeing programmes, customer-facing safeguarding training and brand purpose work. Operational experience of consent and online safety campaigning. Named partnerships with Thames Valley Police (“Consent Conversations”) and Superdrug (“You before Yes”) give her a track record of building education programmes for adult and young-adult audiences. A working broadcaster and author on the subject. Her ITV documentaries Revenge Porn: Georgia vs Bear and Porn, Power, Profit, and her 2024 memoir Taking Back My Power, give the talk a body of public-facing work behind it rather than a single anecdote. A clear, current public profile. MBE recipient, BBC 100 Women 2023, Glamour Women of the Year 2023, which gives the booking external visibility and helps drive internal turnout. Biography highlights MBE awarded in the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours for services to the prevention of violence against women and girls and for campaigning on online privacy and cyber crime. First Love Island contestant to receive an MBE. Campaigning contributed to amendments to the Online Safety Act 2023 on intimate image abuse. Listed on BBC 100 Women 2023; Glamour Women of the Year 2023 (Activist Award). Author of Taking Back My Power (Dialogue / Hachette, 2024). Fronted ITV documentaries Revenge Porn: Georgia vs Bear (2023) and Georgia Harrison: Porn, Power, Profit (2025). Named campaigns with Thames Valley Police (“Consent Conversations”) and Superdrug (“You before Yes”); has interviewed Tony Blair, Sir Keir Starmer, Lord Hague and Sadiq Khan in policy interview work. Biography In December 2022 Stephen Bear was sentenced to 21 months in prison for voyeurism and for disclosing private sexual images. The complainant in that case had waived her anonymity to speak publicly. That decision turned a personal harm into the most-covered intimate image abuse prosecution in UK media and forced the issue out of the safeguarding column and into the policy column. The campaigning that followed contributed to amendments inside the Online Safety Act 2023, including the move away from requiring prosecutors to prove an intent to cause distress. That is a substantive legislative outcome traceable to one person’s public testimony and to sustained work with government, the Crown Prosecution Service stakeholders and victim groups. Georgia Harrison MBE has since built the public-facing apparatus around that work. Two ITV documentaries, Revenge Porn: Georgia vs Bear and Porn, Power, Profit, examined the legal and commercial mechanics of image-based abuse and the deepfake economy. Her 2024 memoir Taking Back My Power, published by Hachette’s Dialogue imprint, sets out the case story and the campaigning arc. Named partnerships with Thames Valley Police on consent education and with Superdrug on the “You before Yes” campaign extend the work into school and high-street audiences. For corporate buyers, the value is specific. Boards, HR teams and customer-facing brands are being asked to take positions on online safety, deepfakes and consent that they were not asked to take five years ago. Harrison brings a lived voice on those issues that policy expertise alone cannot supply, alongside the public profile of an MBE, a BBC 100 Women listing and a Glamour Women of the Year award. Key speaking topics Image-based sexual abuse and online safety Consent education and the workplace social contract Resilience after public trauma Reform of the Online Safety Act Deepfakes and the harms economy Personal advocacy and citizen campaigning Mental health and self-worth in the digital age Ideal for HR, DEI and wellbeing leads building internal programmes on online safety, consent and respect at work Customer-facing brands with young adult audiences (retail, telco, social platforms, education providers) Schools, universities and police forces commissioning consent and digital safety education Internal women’s networks, ERG events and International Women’s Day platforms Audience outcomes A clear account of how UK law on intimate image abuse changed and what is still unresolved A working vocabulary for talking about consent, image-based abuse and deepfakes inside an organisation A frank view of what online harm looks like from the receiving end, in language that lands with non-specialist audiences A direct example of how citizen advocacy turns into legislative change Renewed permission to take online safety seriously as a culture and wellbeing issue, not only a compliance one

Why organisations work with Georgia-Mae Fenton She has won the same individual event at consecutive Commonwealth Games, four years apart, the first gymnast in the discipline to do so. That is direct experience of defending a peak, which is harder than reaching one. Her team’s World Championship silver in Liverpool in 2022 was the best result by a British women’s artistic gymnastics team in the history of the World Championships. She can speak credibly to what changes inside a high-performing group at the moment the standard moves. She made her Olympic debut at Paris 2024 in her mid-twenties after several years of being the established figure in the squad. The arc is later than most assume, and that is the substance of her recovery and persistence material. East London based, comfortable in school, community and corporate audiences without changing register. Useful for organisations that want a high-profile athlete who reads the room. Biography highlights Commonwealth Games gold, uneven bars and team, Birmingham 2022. Commonwealth Games gold, uneven bars, Gold Coast 2018. World Championships silver, team, Liverpool 2022, with Great Britain. Team GB women’s artistic gymnastics, Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Trained from age five at South Essex Gymnastics Club; competes for Great Britain and England. Represented by Forte Model Management alongside her competitive career. Biography The uneven bars demand absolute composure inside an eight-second routine where one missed catch ends the competition. Georgia-Mae Fenton has stood on the top of the Commonwealth podium for that event twice, four years apart, in Gold Coast and Birmingham. That is a rare thing in any sport: holding a championship standard across a full Olympic cycle of injury risk, selection politics and shifting code requirements. The Liverpool World Championships in 2022 was the broader inflection point. Fenton was part of the five-woman Great Britain team that took silver, the strongest result a British women’s artistic gymnastics team has ever produced at a World Championship. That medal also booked the team’s quota place for Paris 2024. At Paris she made her Olympic debut as one of the more experienced figures in a young Team GB quintet that finished fourth, edged off the podium by Brazil in the final rotation. The arc from junior British champion at fifteen, to Commonwealth gold at seventeen, to Olympian at twenty-three, is the substance she draws on when she speaks about persistence and re-entry after long stretches of work with no obvious return. She works with corporate, school and community audiences from her base in East London. The material is grounded in what she has actually done: holding a routine when it counts, going back to the same event a second time after winning it once, and recovering form after the years when the medals do not come. Key speaking topics Composure under high-stakes performance pressure Defending a peak across long performance cycles Recovery and re-entry after setback Discipline and goal-setting in elite sport Team dynamics inside a high-performing squad Mental health and stress management for young performers Role models and visibility in women’s sport Ideal for Corporate audiences in sectors with high-pressure delivery cycles (sales, trading, professional services) HR and talent leaders programming on resilience, wellbeing and early-career performance Schools, universities and youth-facing organisations focused on aspiration and persistence Women’s networks and ERGs commissioning speakers on visibility in sport Audience outcomes A concrete view of what composure looks like inside an eight-second performance window, told by someone who has executed it on the world stage The mechanics of preparing to defend a title, which is different in kind from preparing to win one Honest material on the years when the medals do not come and the work continues A grounded perspective on managing public expectation as a young woman in elite sport

Why organisations work with Georgie Barrat Seven years fronting The Gadget Show built a specific skill, making complex technology feel usable to a general audience, and she brings that directly into boardroom and all-hands settings where AI adoption is stalling. She runs The AI Method, her own programme for helping non-technical users integrate AI into their work, so the keynote is informed by what actually lands with finance, HR and operations staff rather than with engineers. She has hosted on-stage for Google, IBM, Sony, Huawei, Mastercard and BAFTA, which means the moderating craft is tested at the level of audience and panellist that senior events require. Her keynote circuit includes Web Summit, Mobile World Congress and Smart City Expo, the venues where the AI and future-of-work conversation is actually being shaped. She is a credible voice on women in technology and STEM inclusion through sustained work with Stemettes, the IET, Girls in ICT and Childnet, which makes her a natural fit for diversity-led tech events rather than a bolt-on. Biography highlights Presenter of Channel 5’s The Gadget Show for seven years from 2017. Regular contributor to BBC Morning Live and stand-in host for Jeremy Vine on 5. Founder of The AI Method, an AI adoption programme for non-technical users and solopreneurs. Keynote speaker at Web Summit, Mobile World Congress and Smart City Expo. Host and moderator for Google, IBM, Sony, Huawei, Mastercard and BAFTA. First-class degree in English Literature from King’s College London. Biography Most organisations have an AI strategy. Far fewer have a workforce that knows what to do with it. That translation problem, between a tool a leadership team has bought and the person on the payroll expected to use it, is the ground Georgie Barrat has worked for more than a decade. Her training is broadcast. Seven years as a presenter of Channel 5’s The Gadget Show taught her to make complex consumer and enterprise technology legible to a general audience without losing the point. That discipline now runs through her keynotes on AI, digital transformation and the future of work, delivered at Web Summit, Mobile World Congress and Smart City Expo, and at corporate audiences for Google, IBM, Sony, Huawei, Mastercard and BAFTA. Barrat founded The AI Method, a programme designed for women and solopreneurs using AI without a technical background. It gives her keynote material an unusual grounding. She is not theorising about adoption; she is testing what actually moves a non-engineer from curiosity to use. That edge matters for any leader whose AI rollout depends on marketing, finance, HR and operations staff, not data scientists. She is also a sustained advocate for women in tech and STEM inclusion, working with Stemettes, the IET, Girls in ICT and Childnet. On stage she hosts, moderates and keynotes. Off stage she still reports, with regular slots on BBC Morning Live and Jeremy Vine on 5, which keeps the material current rather than curated. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence and workforce adoption Future of work in an AI-powered organisation Digital transformation and culture change Consumer and enterprise technology trends Women in technology and STEM inclusion Event hosting, moderation and on-stage interviewing Ideal for Leadership teams and all-hands audiences grappling with AI rollout across non-technical functions. CHROs, L&D leads and transformation directors planning workforce upskilling around AI. Tech, telecoms and consumer brands needing a broadcast-grade host or moderator for flagship events. Employee networks and diversity councils building credible women-in-tech programmes. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of where AI creates real productivity gains inside the business versus where the hype is running ahead of the use case. Practical language for leaders to use with non-technical staff so adoption feels less threatening and more achievable. A sharper view of which emerging technologies, from generative AI to spatial computing, warrant attention on a three-year horizon. Evidence-backed framing for women-in-tech and STEM inclusion work that goes beyond celebration days.

Why organisations work with Ghislaine Boddington She coined the Internet of Bodies, a named research concept now cited in academic and policy work on biometric data and human enhancement. Few speakers in this space own a defined intellectual territory of their own. Three decades of hands-on practice in body-responsive technology, telepresence, motion capture and immersive design. She speaks from inside the discipline, not from a desk review of it. A long-running co-presenter slot on BBC Digital Planet (BBC World Service) gives her a working week of structured exposure to global technology stories and the ethics around them. Sits inside formal advisory infrastructure: UK Government College of Experts via DCMS, advisory board of the Springer journal AI & Society, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Brings the inclusion dimension to technology conversations without losing the technical thread. Founder of Women Shift Digital, trustee at Stemettes Futures, former lead mentor on Deutsche Bank’s Women Entrepreneurs in Social Tech accelerator. Biography highlights Reader in Digital Immersion, University of Greenwich, School of Design and Creative Industries. Co-founder and Creative Director, body>data>space, an internationally exhibited interactive design collective. Co-presenter, BBC Digital Planet, BBC World Service. Author of “The Internet of Bodies, alive, connected and collective” in AI & Society (Springer, 2021). Adviser, UK Government College of Experts (DCMS); Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Recipient of the IX Immersion Experience Visionary Pioneer Award (2017), Society for Arts and Technology, Montreal. Biography Biometric data, immersive interfaces and human enhancement are moving from research labs into mainstream products, and most leadership teams are catching up in real time. Boddington has spent thirty years working inside that shift, first as a practitioner in body-responsive design, then as a research voice on what it means for identity, intimacy and consent. Her concept, the Internet of Bodies, sets out how physical and digital selves are merging through telepresence, biometric sensing, wearables and AI-enabled enhancement. The work appears as a peer-reviewed paper in the Springer journal AI & Society and runs through her keynote programme. The argument is not speculative. It is built from three decades of practice at body>data>space, the design collective she co-founded and still directs. The institutional footprint sits alongside the practice. Reader in Digital Immersion at the University of Greenwich, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, adviser to the UK Government’s College of Experts through DCMS, advisory board member at AI & Society. On BBC World Service she co-presents Digital Planet, which keeps her working through global technology stories week by week. Inclusion runs through the work as a technical condition, not a tone. She founded Women Shift Digital, mentors with Stemettes Futures and led Deutsche Bank’s Women Entrepreneurs in Social Tech accelerator. Her case is that immersive and biometric systems built without diverse human input encode the bias from the day they ship. Key speaking topics The Internet of Bodies Biometric data and digital identity Immersive technology and virtual presence Human enhancement and the body as interface AI ethics and embodied technology Inclusion and diversity in emerging tech Future human studies Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting policy on biometric data, AI ethics and immersive customer experience. Technology, product and R&D leaders building wearable, sensor-based or immersive products. Innovation, foresight and strategy functions inside regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, telecoms, media). Conferences and corporate events on the future of work, future human and responsible technology. Audience outcomes A working definition of the Internet of Bodies and what it means for organisations handling biometric, behavioural or sensor data. A sharper view of the ethical and consent issues that sit underneath immersive, wearable and AI-enabled products. A picture of where body-responsive technology is heading over the next five to ten years and which sectors are moving first. A specific argument for why inclusive design is a technical requirement in immersive and biometric systems, not a values statement.

Why organisations work with Gina Miller She has personally tested the limits of UK executive power in court, twice, and can speak about constitutional risk with first-hand authority rather than as a commentator. Her financial services work through SCM Direct and the True and Fair Campaign gives her a working operator’s view of regulation, fees, disclosure, and ESG claims, not a policy abstraction. She brings a credible read on the political conditions that shape regulation in the UK, including how parties form, how reform agendas are built, and where the system is fragile. She speaks from sustained personal exposure to public hostility and threat, which gives her a serious frame on resilience and on the personal cost of institutional accountability. Biography highlights Lead claimant in R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC 5, the case that required parliamentary authorisation to trigger Article 50. Lead claimant in R (Miller) v The Prime Minister [2019] UKSC 41, the prorogation case decided unanimously by eleven Supreme Court justices. Co-founder of SCM Direct, an investment management firm launched in 2009, and co-founder of the True and Fair Campaign in 2012. Founder and leader of the True and Fair Party, launched January 2022. Author of Rise: Life Lessons in Speaking Out, Standing Tall and Leading the Way (Canongate, 2018), co-written with Elizabeth Day. Global Ambassador for Peace, The Tutu Foundation UK; recipient of the Harper’s Bazaar Campaigner of the Year 2018 and Vanity Fair Challenger Award 2021. Biography The two Miller cases sit at the centre of modern UK constitutional law. The first, decided by the Supreme Court in 2017, required parliamentary authorisation before the government could trigger Article 50. The second, decided unanimously by eleven justices in 2019, found the prorogation of Parliament unlawful. Both cases were brought by Gina Miller as lead claimant. That record gives her an unusual vantage point on political risk. She has watched executive power, parliamentary sovereignty and judicial review meet under live conditions, and she has been on the receiving end of the political and personal consequences. For boards thinking about regulatory exposure, lobbying conduct, and the durability of the institutions they rely on, her perspective is operational rather than theoretical. Her commercial career runs in parallel. With Alan Miller, she co-founded SCM Direct in 2009 and the True and Fair Campaign in 2012, pressing the investment industry on hidden fees, closet index tracking and, more recently, greenwashing in ESG products. In January 2022 she launched the True and Fair Party, built around a written constitution, parliamentary accountability and reform of how public money is spent. She is the author of Rise, published by Canongate in 2018 and co-written with Elizabeth Day, and serves as Global Ambassador for Peace with The Tutu Foundation UK. Awards include Harper’s Bazaar Campaigner of the Year 2018, PSA Political Campaigner of the Year 2017, and the Vanity Fair Challenger Award 2021. Key speaking topics UK constitutional law and parliamentary sovereignty Political and regulatory risk for boards Financial services reform and investor protection Transparency in fees, fund disclosure and ESG claims Trust, accountability and the conduct of public office Resilience under sustained public hostility Women, leadership and visibility in public life Ideal for Boards and risk committees stress-testing exposure to political, regulatory and constitutional change Asset managers, pension trustees and financial services leaders facing disclosure and ESG scrutiny General counsel and public affairs leads tracking the boundary between executive action and parliamentary process Leadership and women’s network audiences interested in serious accounts of public exposure and recovery Audience outcomes A clearer read on how UK constitutional rules actually constrain executive decisions, and where they do not A working sense of how transparency, fees and ESG claims are being tested by regulators and campaigners A direct account of what it costs personally to challenge institutional power, and what it teaches about resilience A sharper view of how reform agendas form, gain traction or fail in UK political life

Why organisations work with Gloria Garcia She has made high-stakes decisions for a living, protecting ultra-high-net-worth families across Chicago, Mexico City, New York, London and Paris. The lessons she brings on presence and judgement come from work where the cost of error is not a missed quarter. Her background is operator-grade, not adjacent: Cook County Sheriff’s Department, Special Operations Response Team training, corrections leadership in the RTU Men’s Division, SIA-licensed close protection. Buyers get someone who has done the job, not someone who has studied it. She is one of a very small number of senior female close protection specialists on the international circuit, which gives her a credible platform for audiences working on women’s progression in operational, security and male-dominated environments. Her acting practice, including a role cast personally by J.J. Abrams in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, gives her a second language for presence, performance and audience reading that translates directly into executive communication. She speaks from a personal story, a survived kidnapping attempt at age 11, without making the story the product. The story sets up the work; the work is what she teaches. Biography highlights Cook County Sheriff’s Department officer, trained under the Special Operations Response Team (S.O.R.T.) and posted to Cook County Prison’s RTU Men’s Division. SIA-licensed close protection operative with over twenty years of experience protecting ultra-high-net-worth clients internationally. Known professionally as “La Mirla” (“The Blackbird”) within the private protection circuit. Actress cast personally by J.J. Abrams as the “Jakku Defender” in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). Recent screen credits include Dr. Sofia Guijarro in Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue (2025) and Agent Niki Delgado in Malice (2025-26). Represented for speaking by Kruger Cowne; life rights reported in development as a feature film with producer Lucas Foster. Biography Most executives will never work a live protection detail. The people who do will tell you the job is not physical force. It is attention: who is in the room, what has changed in the last thirty seconds, which person is a threat and which is a distraction. Gloria Garcia has spent two decades doing that job at the top of the market, for ultra-high-net-worth principals across Chicago, Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles, London and Paris. Her training is operator-grade. She came through the Cook County Sheriff’s Department under the Special Operations Response Team, ran a post in Cook County Prison’s RTU Men’s Division, then moved into international close protection as an SIA-licensed specialist. Inside the circuit she is known as “La Mirla”, “The Blackbird”. It is not a nickname she uses on stage. It is the one her peers use for her. She is also a working actress. J.J. Abrams cast her personally as the “Jakku Defender” in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. More recent roles include Dr. Sofia Guijarro in Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue and Agent Niki Delgado in the series Malice. The overlap matters: acting and protection both turn on reading people, holding presence, and adapting in real time. When she talks to leadership audiences about composure and communication, both practices are visible in the room. The personal starting point is a survived kidnapping attempt at age 11, in Cicero, Illinois. She tells that story because it explains the choice of career, not because it is the lesson. The lesson is what she built afterwards: a discipline of attention, trust and communication that senior leaders recognise the moment they hear it. Key speaking topics Decision-making under physical and reputational threat Situational awareness and presence in high-stakes rooms Communication tactics in protective and adversarial settings Women in operational and male-dominated roles Trauma, recovery and the choice to protect others Trust and composure in executive teams Ideal for Senior leaders and boards wanting a visceral perspective on judgement under pressure Security, risk and resilience functions looking beyond technical content Women’s leadership programmes in operational, industrial or security-heavy sectors Culture and communication events where presence and credibility are the brief Audience outcomes A sharper mental model for what composure actually looks like, from someone who uses it professionally Practical ways to read a room faster, including who to listen to and who to watch A clearer sense of how to communicate authority without raising volume A human account of turning a formative threat into a working discipline Renewed appetite for putting trusted operators, not only specialists, in front of senior teams

Why organisations work with Gorick Ng He turns two recurring HR problems, the disengagement of capable early-career hires and the quiet stagnation of mid-career professionals in pyramid-structured firms, into a single teachable framework drawn from 500-plus structured interviews and used by Harvard Business School with every MBA cohort. His work bridges three conversations that most organisations run separately: new-hire onboarding, frontline manager development, and DEI for first-generation and underrepresented professionals. One body of content, three internal audiences. The Unspoken Rules sits on the Thinkers50 Best New Management Books list for 2022 and is published by Harvard Business Review Press, which gives the content institutional credibility that motivational early-career speakers cannot match. He speaks the language of large professional-services and corporate buyers because he has been on the buy-side of it: Boston Consulting Group, Credit Suisse, and Harvard Business School’s Managing the Future of Work research project. Sessions are designed as practical training, not inspiration. Manager toolkits, ERG curricula, and onboarding modules can be built directly off the talk. Biography highlights Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Starting Your Career Off Right (Harvard Business Review Press). Named to Thinkers50’s 30 Thinkers to Watch in 2022; book selected for Thinkers50’s Best New Management Books of 2022. Career adviser at Harvard College and faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley. Former management consultant at Boston Consulting Group and investment banker at Credit Suisse. Researcher with the Managing the Future of Work project at Harvard Business School. Featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fast Company, Fortune, CNBC, and The Today Show. Biography The reason capable graduates plateau in their first two years is rarely the reason their managers give. It is almost never effort or intelligence. It is the gap between what new hires were told work would reward and what their organisations actually reward, a gap that is invisible to the people who already know the rules and punishing to those who do not. The Unspoken Rules, published by Harvard Business Review Press and built on more than five hundred structured interviews, names that gap and gives organisations a vocabulary for closing it. Gorick Ng wrote the book that Harvard Business School now hands to every MBA, and he teaches the same material to undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley. As a career adviser at Harvard College, he works directly with first-generation and low-income students, the population on whom the cost of unspoken rules is highest. The work moved from classroom to corporate quickly. Aon, BNP Paribas, GE, Google, IBM, Invesco, Kirkland and Ellis, and Charles River Associates have used the content in manager training, new-hire onboarding, and DEI programming. UC Berkeley, StartSe, and Singularity University have commissioned him on adjacent themes including innovation and how authors and founders build audiences in the AI search era. His authority comes from sitting on both sides of the question. Before academia he was a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group and an investment banker at Credit Suisse, and a researcher with Harvard Business School’s Managing the Future of Work project. He has watched professional-services organisations make the same recurring mistakes with early-career talent, and his frameworks are written for the specific tensions those organisations face, not for a general audience. Thinkers50 named The Unspoken Rules one of the ten best new management books of 2022 and named Gorick to its 30 Thinkers to Watch list the same year. The work has since been covered in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fast Company, Fortune, CNBC, and The Today Show. The recognition matters less than the practical point underneath it: very few speakers treat early-career navigation, manager onboarding, and first-generation inclusion as one connected problem with one connected research base, and that is what large employers buy him for. Key speaking topics Early-career talent attraction and retention Manager development for frontline and people-leader cohorts Inclusive management of first-generation and underrepresented professionals Onboarding and the school-to-work transition Employee Resource Group programming and DEI training content Ownership and performance behaviours in early-career roles The future of work and early-career expectations Ideal for CHROs, heads of talent, and learning and development leads designing onboarding or manager training at scale. Heads of DEI and ERG sponsors building substantive programming for first-generation and underrepresented professionals. Professional-services and corporate firms with large early-career intakes (consulting, banking, law, accounting, technology). Talent leaders addressing mid-career stagnation among senior associates, senior managers, and VPs in firms where the path to the top narrows sharply. University and graduate-school audiences at convocation, orientation, and career-readiness events. Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary across managers and new hires for the behaviours that quietly determine early-career progression. Specific manager actions that reduce avoidable attrition in the first two years, drawn from named patterns in the research. A practical lens for ERG and DEI work that translates inclusion into observable workplace behaviours, not slogans. Onboarding content that addresses what first-generation and underrepresented hires need to hear that their peers already know. Confidence among early-career employees that career progression is learnable, not a matter of background.

Why organisations work with Griselda Togobo She brings an engineer’s and chartered accountant’s bias for measurement to inclusion work, which is unusually rare in the field and lands credibly with operational and finance audiences. She has run a 20,000-member women’s professional network (Forward Ladies, now Novi) for over a decade, so her view of where female and minority talent gets stuck is grounded in pipeline data, not anecdote. Her client list, Boeing, Shell, HSBC, NatWest, Sage, Cambridge University, Oxford University, indicates senior buyers in technically demanding, male-dominated environments hire her back. Her style is direct and based in psychology rather than moral pressure, which is the only register that survives in rooms where DEI is now politically contested. Biography highlights MPhil, Industrial Systems, Manufacture and Management, Wolfson College, University of Cambridge. Chartered Accountant (ACA); former management consultant at Deloitte LLP. CEO of Forward Ladies (now Novi), a 20,000-member women’s professional network since 2014. Author, Unstoppable Women: Female Entrepreneurs’ Stories to Inspire and Motivate. Founder of Advancing Futures, a non-profit on education and economic empowerment in Ghana. Board member, Northern School of Contemporary Dance; Fellow of the Girls’ Schools Association. Biography The hard part of inclusion inside large organisations is not policy. It is what senior leaders do in the small moments: who they sponsor, who they interrupt, whose ideas they credit, and how they decide who is “ready” for the next role. Togobo’s work sits exactly there. She came to that work through an unusual route. She trained as an electrical and electronic engineer in Ghana, took an MPhil at Cambridge in Industrial Systems, Manufacture and Management, then qualified as a chartered accountant at Deloitte LLP. That technical and financial grounding shapes how she briefs executives. She uses data and behavioural psychology rather than moral argument, which travels better in operations, finance and engineering audiences than the standard DEI register does. Since 2014 she has led Forward Ladies, now relaunched as Novi, growing it into a 20,000-member professional development network for women across the UK. That platform gives her a continuous read on where mid-career women actually stall, which feeds the diagnostic work she does inside client organisations including Boeing, Shell, HSBC, NatWest, Sage, ASDA and Yorkshire Water. Her own writing extends the same theme. Unstoppable Women, published in 2022, profiles female entrepreneurs as case studies in commercial decision-making rather than personal struggle. Outside her commercial practice she founded Advancing Futures to support girls’ education in Ghana and sits on the board of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership inside FTSE-100 organisations Women in STEM and the senior pipeline Behavioural psychology of bias in promotion and sponsorship Building and sustaining women’s professional networks Female entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Cross-cultural leadership and the global workforce Ideal for CEOs and executive committees who have run DEI programmes and are not seeing pipeline movement. CHROs and heads of talent designing succession and sponsorship into senior leadership. Engineering, energy, financial services and industrial businesses with gender-imbalanced senior cohorts. Boards reviewing inclusion strategy in markets where DEI language is now politically contested. Audience outcomes A clearer view of which leadership behaviours actually move representation, and which are theatre. A working diagnostic for where female and minority talent stalls inside their own organisation. Language for inclusion that holds up in finance, engineering and commercial audiences. A more honest read on the gap between stated DEI commitments and how senior leaders behave in week-to-week decisions.

Why organisations work with Hamda Al Qubaisi She is a working case study, not a retired one. She is still competing at the front of an international single-seater field, which gives her perspective on inclusion the credibility of present tense rather than retrospect. The credential is specific and verifiable: first woman to podium in Italian F4, third in the inaugural F1 Academy championship with MP Motorsport, Red Bull Academy programme driver. Audiences can place her without an introduction. She speaks from inside the Gulf, not about it. For organisations operating in the Middle East, or building gender strategies that have to work in the region, that vantage point is unusual on the international circuit. Her message is operational, not motivational. She addresses what funding, family backing, and team-level decisions actually made the difference, which is closer to what HR and DEI leads need than a generic empowerment talk. Biography highlights Member of the Red Bull Academy Programme, representing Red Bull Racing in the 2024 F1 Academy season. Drove for MP Motorsport in the inaugural 2023 F1 Academy season, finishing third in the championship with four wins and seven podiums. First woman to score a podium in Italian F4, at Misano in 2021. First Emirati driver invited to the FIA CIK-FIA Karting Academy Trophy, in 2016. Featured by Nasdaq, Formula 1, Arab News, Goodwood, and Entrepreneur Middle East on women in motorsport and STEM. Ambassador for Abu Dhabi-based Yas Heat Racing; signed with AKCEL GP x PHM Racing for the 2025 F4 Middle East Championship. Biography Single-seater motorsport is one of the most consistently male environments in elite sport. The path through karting, regional Formula 4, and feeder series rewards drivers who have been visible to teams from childhood, which historically has not included girls from the Gulf. The arrival of a competitive Emirati woman in that pipeline is not a soft story about representation. It is a structural anomaly worth understanding. Hamda Al Qubaisi entered Italian F4 in 2019 and in 2021 became the first woman to podium in the championship’s history, at Misano. She won three races on home soil in the F4 UAE series and built the record that earned her a seat with MP Motorsport for the inaugural F1 Academy season in 2023, where she finished third overall with four race wins and seven podiums. The Red Bull Academy Programme signed her for 2024, putting her on the Red Bull Racing development pathway and giving her a commercial platform that few drivers, male or female, reach in their early twenties. She closed her two-year F1 Academy stint with two podiums in the final three races at Yas Marina, in front of a home crowd. What makes her useful in a corporate setting is the specificity of her account. She has spoken publicly, including at Nasdaq MarketSite, about how partnerships, family backing, and access to machinery decide who actually makes it through, rather than the abstract language of empowerment. For audiences in the Gulf, or for organisations whose inclusion work has to function in that region, she offers a first-person view from inside the pipeline that is still being built. Key speaking topics Women in male-coded high-performance environments Diversity and inclusion in motorsport and STEM Emirati and Gulf perspectives on women in sport Resilience and pressure management in elite competition Sponsorship, partnerships, and access in early careers Sustainable technology and the future of motorsport Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads designing inclusion programmes for technical, engineering, or operational workforces Organisations with a Gulf footprint building gender strategies that have to function regionally Corporate sponsorship, partnership, and brand teams in motorsport, automotive, and STEM Women’s leadership networks and graduate audiences in engineering and high-performance disciplines Audience outcomes A first-person view of what it takes for a woman to enter and hold a place in a male-coded technical field A clearer read on the Gulf context for women in sport, STEM, and competitive performance Specific examples of how sponsorship, family backing, and team decisions shape who progresses A working case for inclusion grounded in present-tense competition, not retrospective career story Honest framing of the pressure, scrutiny, and trade-offs that come with being the first or only in a room