DI (Diversità, equità e inclusione) speakers

Why organisations work with Janine Hamner Holman She translates neuroscience into HR-grade interventions, drawing on more than a decade studying brain science alongside a SHRM-CP and SHRM Inclusive Cultures certification, which gives operational HR teams a usable language rather than a TED-style abstraction. Her Mind The Gap: A Thought Leader’s Guide to 21st Century Conscious Leadership gives buyers a defined thesis on the distance between stated values and observed leadership behaviour, useful for boards trying to diagnose culture programmes that stall. She speaks credibly to both nonprofit and Fortune 200 contexts, having spent twenty years in nonprofit leadership followed by close to a decade inside a Fortune 200, which makes her unusual in audiences that mix public-sector, mission-driven, and corporate buyers. Her Cost of Not Paying Attention podcast and signature talk on civility give her a sustained body of public material on workplace incivility as a P&L line, not as a tone-of-voice issue. Biography highlights CEO, J&J Consulting Group; 30+ years as executive and consultant. Author, Mind The Gap: A Thought Leader’s Guide to 21st Century Conscious Leadership; contributing author, On The Shoulders of Mighty Women. Host, The Cost of Not Paying Attention podcast. Named a USA Today Keynote Speaker to Watch in 2024 and LA Weekly Top 10 Trailblazing Entrepreneur in 2023. Winner of the CXO 2.0 Leadership Award. Certified in the Psychology of Leadership (Cornell); SHRM-CP and SHRM Inclusive Cultures certified; Certified Practitioner in Emotional Intelligence. Biography Workplace culture is now a measurable variable on the P&L. Engagement, attrition, and incivility numbers move customer outcomes, and senior leaders increasingly want interventions that change behaviour, not posters. The cost of getting it wrong has stopped being soft. J&J Consulting Group, the firm Janine Hamner Holman leads as CEO, sits in that gap. Her professional history runs across twenty years of nonprofit leadership and almost a decade inside a Fortune 200, with close work alongside the public sector. That mix lets her talk to mission-driven and commercial audiences without flattening either. The intellectual spine of the work is applied neurobiology. More than a decade studying brain science, plus a Cornell certification in the Psychology of Leadership, sits underneath her practice on psychological safety, belonging, and conscious leadership. Her book Mind The Gap sets out the thesis: the distance between stated leadership values and observed leadership behaviour is where culture programmes fail. Public recognition tracks the same content. USA Today named her a Keynote Speaker to Watch in 2024, LA Weekly placed her in its 2023 Top 10 Trailblazing Entrepreneurs, and she won the CXO 2.0 Leadership Award at the CXO2 Conference in Las Vegas. Her podcast, The Cost of Not Paying Attention, gives buyers a sustained sense of the argument before they book the room. Key speaking topics Conscious leadership Organisational culture change Diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging Psychological safety at work Employee engagement and retention Workplace incivility and its commercial cost Change management and neurobiology Emotional intelligence Ideal for CHROs and Heads of People wrestling with engagement, attrition, and DEIB delivery Executive teams running culture transformation programmes that have stalled at policy level Boards and CEOs treating culture as a commercial variable rather than a values statement Nonprofit and mission-driven leadership teams managing growth and professionalisation Audience outcomes A working definition of psychological safety that HR and line managers can operationalise A practical view of how incivility shows up on the P&L through retention, customer experience, and productivity A neuroscience-grounded model for why change resistance is predictable, and what to do about it A clearer separation between DEIB as compliance theatre and DEIB as belonging that affects performance A diagnostic for the gap between stated leadership values and observed leadership behaviour

Why organisations work with Jason Roberts He is the named architect of the 2012 player boycott of the Kick It Out campaign, which produced the PFA’s six-point plan and a UK Rooney Rule for coaching appointments. He can speak to inclusion as institutional reform, not as awareness work. He runs football development across CONCACAF’s forty-one member associations, including the Coaching Convention and the Pro Licence, which gives him a working operator’s view of talent pathways and governance at scale. He built and still leads the Jason Roberts Foundation, active since 2007 across the UK and Grenada, with a documented record of programme delivery rather than badge philanthropy. His MBE was awarded for services to sport in both Grenada and London, recognition of cross-jurisdiction social impact, not single-country celebrity endorsement. He has a long broadcast track record (BBC 5 Live 606, Match of the Day 2, Sky Sports), so he handles audience and conversation with the fluency of a working presenter. Biography highlights Chief Football Development Officer, CONCACAF, leading coaching education and grassroots infrastructure across forty-one member associations. MBE, 2010 New Year Honours, for services to sport in Grenada and London. Founder and chair, Jason Roberts Foundation, established 2007, operating in the UK and Grenada. Premier League career across West Bromwich Albion, Wigan Athletic, Blackburn Rovers and Reading; full Grenada international. Director, West Bromwich Albion Football Club Limited (board appointment, April 2026). Broadcaster for BBC Radio 5 Live (606), Match of the Day 2 and Sky Sports. Biography In October 2012, a group of Premier League players refused to wear the Kick It Out t-shirt at the weekend’s fixtures. The protest had a named leader. Roberts, then at Reading, had written publicly that the campaign was under-resourced and that the league’s anti-racism work was failing the players it was meant to protect. The fallout produced concrete reform. The PFA published a six-point plan that included tougher sanctions for racial abuse and an English version of the NFL’s Rooney Rule for coaching interview opportunities. Inclusion in English football moved, however briefly, from communications campaign to procedural change. That is the through-line of his career: refusing the symbolic version of an institutional problem and pushing for the operating version. That instinct now runs at confederation scale. As Chief Football Development Officer at CONCACAF, he leads coaching education, the Pro Licence, and grassroots infrastructure across forty-one member associations from Canada to Caribbean micro-states. The work is structural. It is about who gets coached, by whom, to what standard, in which country. The credentials on paper, MBE for services to sport in Grenada and London, a Premier League career of nearly five hundred appearances, broadcast roles at BBC 5 Live and Sky, and the foundation running since 2007, are real. They matter most as evidence that the inclusion argument and the development work are not separate tracks. They are the same job done from different positions. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership and institutional reform Race equality in elite sport and corporate parallels Talent pathways and development systems Governance and culture change in high-performance organisations Social impact through sport Leadership and resilience in competitive environments Ideal for CHROs, DEI leads and culture transformation executives examining the gap between inclusion narrative and operating change. Board and executive committees responsible for governance reform in legacy institutions. Talent and learning leaders rebuilding development pathways and progression systems. Sport, broadcast and entertainment organisations facing reputational and structural inclusion pressure. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what it takes to convert an inclusion problem into a procedural reform with measurable obligations. A working view of how confederation-scale development systems are structured, useful by analogy for any federated organisation. Honest assessment of the personal and reputational cost of leading reform from inside a powerful institution. A grounded perspective on social impact programmes that survive past the initial press cycle.

Why organisations work with Jayati Ghosh Sits on the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism and the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All, so her read on global financial and health governance is drawn from inside the rooms where it is being rewritten. Co-chairs ICRICT, the independent commission pressing for reform of international corporate taxation, which gives her first-hand authority on the OECD-led tax overhaul that is reshaping how multinationals plan their effective rate. Reads emerging-market risk from a development-economist vantage point, not a Wall Street one, which is what buyers booking her tend to want: a sharper picture of sovereign debt, currency stress, and the political economy of the Global South. Thirty-five years at Jawaharlal Nehru University and now at UMass Amherst, author or editor of nineteen books, and winner of the ILO Decent Work Research Prize and the Galbraith Award: credentials that translate into credibility with serious audiences. Writes a monthly column for Project Syndicate, so her current thinking is publicly available and buyers can hear the argument before booking the room. Biography highlights Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, since January 2021. Member of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism (2022). Member, WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All, chaired by Mariana Mazzucato. Co-chair, Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT). ILO Decent Work Research Prize (2011); John Kenneth Galbraith Award, AAEA (2023). Author or editor of nineteen books, including Women Workers in the Informal Economy and The Making of a Catastrophe: Covid-19 and the Indian Economy; monthly columnist for Project Syndicate. Biography The rules governing cross-border capital, corporate tax, and public health spending are being rewritten at the same time. Boards that track any one of these in isolation tend to miss how they interact. Ghosh works across all three. She is Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a post she took up in 2021 after nearly 35 years teaching at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Her research has long focused on globalisation, employment in developing countries, macroeconomic policy, and the gendered structure of informal labour. Nineteen books and roughly two hundred scholarly articles sit behind that work. The institutional footprint is what sets her apart from other macro voices. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres named her in 2022 to the 12-person High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, the body tasked with proposing reforms to global governance ahead of the Summit of the Future. She sits on the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All, chaired by Mariana Mazzucato, and co-chairs ICRICT, which has driven much of the civil-society case for a global minimum corporate tax. Outside academic journals she writes a monthly Project Syndicate column read by finance ministers and central bankers, and for nearly three decades ran a fortnightly column at Frontline. The ILO awarded her its Decent Work Research Prize in 2011; the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association gave her its Galbraith Award in 2023 for contributions to economics and to humanity. Key speaking topics Global financial architecture and reform International corporate tax and ICRICT’s agenda Inequality, labour, and the informal economy Development and growth in India and the Global South Economics of health and public goods Sovereign debt and emerging-market risk Gender and the economics of care Ideal for Boards and investment committees sizing emerging-market and sovereign-debt exposure. CFOs and tax leaders tracking the OECD minimum tax and the next wave of multinational tax reform. Leadership teams in global health, pharma, and development finance who need a public-goods frame for their strategy. Conferences on globalisation, inequality, and the future of multilateralism where a policy-insider voice is needed. Audience outcomes A clear read on how the UN, WHO and OECD reform agendas translate into corporate risk over the next three to five years. A defensible position on international tax reform and what it means for transfer pricing, effective rates and reputational exposure. A sharper picture of sovereign debt and currency stress in the Global South, drawn from development-economics evidence rather than market commentary. An argument for why care, informal labour, and gender sit inside the macro picture, not alongside it.

Why organisations work with Jeanette Kwakye A working national broadcaster, not a former athlete trading on past results. Buyers get a host who runs live BBC Sport and ITV current affairs every week, with the on-stage instincts that come with it. Rare credibility on women in sport and media. She broke a 24-year drought as a British woman in the Olympic 100m final, then became the first Black female UK presenter to front a terrestrial boxing production. Hosting and moderation experience with Google, Nike, BMW, the IOC and World Athletics, which translates into clean panel craft for senior leadership audiences. Direct, unsentimental on the transition from elite sport to a second career. Useful for talent, learning and DEI conversations that have grown tired of the standard sportsperson keynote. Biography highlights Sixth place in the 100m final at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, the first British woman in that final since 1984. Silver medallist over 60m at the 2008 IAAF World Indoor Championships, equalling the British record of 7.08. BBC athletics trackside reporter; host of BBC Radio 5 Live’s Football Daily podcast; co-host of BBC Radio 5 Live Weekend Breakfast. Co-host of The Martin Lewis Money Show on ITV1. First Black female UK TV presenter to lead a boxing production on a terrestrial channel, on Channel 5. Appointed MBE in the 2021 Birthday Honours for services to sport and sports broadcasting. Loughborough University graduate in Politics and Economics; author of the children’s book Femi the Fox. Biography A British woman had not reached an Olympic 100m final for twenty-four years when Jeanette Kwakye ran 11.14 in Beijing in 2008 and finished sixth. The earlier rounds, not the final, are the part that matters. She trained at Loughborough, came through British championships in both the 100m and 200m, and took silver over 60m at the World Indoors that same year, equalling the British record of 7.08. The second career has the same shape. After retiring in 2014 she went through an NCTJ qualification, started in local BBC radio, and built outwards. She is now a BBC athletics trackside reporter, hosts the Football Daily podcast on BBC Radio 5 Live, co-hosts Weekend Breakfast on the same station, and co-presents The Martin Lewis Money Show on ITV1. In 2020, she became the first Black female presenter on a terrestrial UK boxing production. Her hosting and moderation portfolio outside broadcast covers Google, Nike, BMW, the International Olympic Committee and World Athletics. Senior audiences hire her because she runs a room cleanly, pushes panellists, and brings a working journalist’s instinct to questions of representation and performance rather than a retired-athlete reflection. She was appointed MBE in 2021 for services to sport and sports broadcasting. She is also the author of the children’s book Femi the Fox. Key speaking topics Representation in sport and media Women in broadcasting and elite sport High-performance mindset Career transition from elite sport Olympic preparation and selection Sports broadcasting and journalism Resilience after injury Ideal for Conference and summit organisers needing a host or moderator with senior on-stage credibility DEI, talent and people leaders running events on representation and women’s progression Sports industry, federation and rights-holder events Internal kick-offs and leadership offsites looking for an Olympic-finalist perspective on performance under pressure Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what representation actually changes inside elite environments, told from inside two of them A working definition of high performance that survives contact with injury, deselection and reinvention Practical ground for talent and DEI leaders considering how the pipeline into senior visible roles really moves A panel or fireside that lands cleanly, with a host who keeps senior speakers honest

Why organisations work with Jen Sincero Her four Badass books have sold more than five million copies in over forty languages, which gives audiences immediate familiarity and a shared vocabulary before she takes the stage. She speaks directly to the part of an engagement and retention problem that policy cannot fix: what people privately believe about their own potential, their right to earn, and their capacity to change a habit. Her audiobook narration of You Are a Badass won the 2014 Audie Award from the American Audio Publishers Association, evidence that the delivery itself, not only the writing, holds an audience. She is a regular speaker at the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Conference for Women, which gives her a track record at the scale and format most women’s leadership programmes commission. She is one of the few keynote names that consistently lifts attendance and registration for internal empowerment, mental fitness, and money mindset events without requiring topical reframing for each booking. Biography highlights Number-one New York Times bestselling author of You Are a Badass, with over five million copies sold and translation into more than forty languages Author of four titles in the Badass series, including You Are a Badass at Making Money, also a New York Times bestseller 2014 Audie Award winner from the American Audio Publishers Association for narration of You Are a Badass Featured speaker at the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Conference for Women Media credits include the New York Times, Forbes, Fast Company, Bloomberg, The Dr. Oz Show, Oprah Magazine, Success Magazine, and The Howard Stern Show BA in English, Colorado College, 1987 Biography You Are a Badass became a slow-burn phenomenon after its 2013 release, climbing the New York Times bestseller list and staying there for years. The book reframed personal success as a problem of belief and habit rather than information. Jen Sincero wrote it, narrated it, and won the 2014 Audie Award from the American Audio Publishers Association for the audiobook. The Badass series now runs to four titles, including You Are a Badass at Making Money and Badass Habits, with combined sales of more than five million copies across forty languages. Sincero’s central argument is that the gap between what people say they want and what they do is held in place by inherited beliefs about money, worth, and what they are allowed to want. Closing that gap is the work of her books, coaching, and stage material. Her speaking practice is built for audiences inside organisations that have already tried policy answers to engagement and retention. She speaks at the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Conference for Women, at corporate empowerment events, and at executive retreats where the brief is to shift what people privately believe is available to them. Her style is direct, comedic, and unapologetically practical, designed for action rather than reflection. Before the Badass books, Sincero was a freelance writer in Los Angeles and a workshop facilitator with the women’s entrepreneurial network Ladies Who Launch. She holds a BA in English from Colorado College. Her media credits include the New York Times, Forbes, Fast Company, Bloomberg, Oprah Magazine, The Dr. Oz Show, and The Howard Stern Show. Key speaking topics Money mindset and wealth psychology Self-limiting belief and confidence Habit formation and behaviour change Personal motivation and empowerment Women’s leadership and entrepreneurship Ideal for CHROs and people leaders running engagement, retention, and internal mobility programmes Heads of DEI and women’s leadership networks commissioning conference and ERG keynotes Sales, broker, and advisor conferences where money belief and personal confidence determine output Internal empowerment, mental fitness, and culture moments inside large organisations Audience outcomes A direct, named language for the beliefs that quietly limit individual performance Specific habit-change tools drawn from Badass Habits, applicable from the day after the event A money-mindset frame that connects personal earning beliefs to commercial behaviour Higher attendance and registration energy around internal empowerment programming A shared reference that people leaders can carry into one-to-ones and team conversations

Why organisations work with Jennifer Willey The Certified Speaking Professional designation from the National Speakers Association is held by fewer than 12% of NSA members. For a main-stage keynote where delivery quality is part of the decision, that level of platform competence reduces the risk on the booking. Behind every keynote sits a deployable methodology, the Fearless Fundamentals framework (Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage), built from Wet Cement’s Fearless@Work Survey and a decade of leadership programme delivery. The work can continue inside the organisation after the event. The career arc, from TV news anchor to senior commercial leader at Yahoo, AOL and The Trade Desk to founder of a leadership development firm, gives her credibility with two audiences at once: the people running culture and the people running the business. Wet Cement is dual-certified as a Woman-Owned (WBENC) and Disability-Owned (Disability:IN) business, which matters for organisations applying supplier diversity criteria in procurement, and reinforces the lived basis of her work on confidence, voice and inclusion. Her book Fearless in 5: Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage is being published by Pearson in September with a UK and European launch, giving clients in the region a credible local moment to anchor a leadership programme around. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Wet Cement (founded 2017); dual-certified Woman-Owned (WBENC) and Disability-Owned (Disability:IN) business Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), National Speakers Association Author, Fearless in 5: Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage (Pearson, September 2026; UK and European launch) Creator of the Fearless in 5 microlearning series and the Advance Women at Work practice; co-founder of WE.DOOH at the Digital Place Based Advertising Association Twenty-year commercial career across Yahoo, AOL, pwc, WebMD, Sharecare and The Trade Desk; earlier career as a TV news anchor and reporter for ABC and CBS affiliates Clients include Johnson & Johnson, Nissan, Paramount, Samsung, Genentech, NBCUniversal, Comcast, NPR, Walmart and Wesco Biography The leadership capabilities that mattered most a decade ago are not the ones under most pressure now. The pressure has shifted to composure, to communicating clearly when the brief keeps changing, and to keeping teams engaged through the third or fourth restructure of the year. That is the work Wet Cement was built around. Jenn Willey founded the firm in 2017 after twenty years leading sales and marketing teams at Yahoo, AOL, pwc, WebMD and The Trade Desk, with an earlier career as a TV news anchor and reporter for ABC and CBS affiliates. The firm’s methodology, the Fearless Fundamentals framework, is anchored on five capabilities: Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage. It draws on the Wet Cement Fearless@Work Survey and a research collaboration with Wharton behavioural scientists, and has been deployed at Johnson & Johnson, Nissan, Paramount, Samsung and Genentech. The September publication of Fearless in 5: Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage with Pearson is the first time the methodology has been put between hard covers. The retitling, from a women’s leadership guide in earlier framing to a broader leadership framework now, mirrors a real shift in how Wet Cement is bought. Women’s leadership remains a substantial specialty, anchored by the Advance Women at Work practice and her co-founding role at WE.DOOH at the Digital Place Based Advertising Association. The primary work is now leadership development for change-fatigued teams across the seniority range. The Certified Speaking Professional designation from the National Speakers Association, earned by fewer than 12% of NSA members, is the platform credential most large rooms screen for. It marks Jenn out from most leadership development founders, who do not keynote at her standard. The combination of CSP-grade delivery and a deployable methodology is what makes her work usable past the event itself. Key speaking topics Fearless leadership and team capability under repeated change Self-leadership and resilience under sustained pressure Executive presence and confident communication for senior leaders Inclusive leadership and the next phase after DEI Women’s leadership and the Advance Women at Work approach Career navigation, sponsorship and the personal board of directors Ideal for Heads of leadership development and CHROs designing executive and senior-leader programmes for change-fatigued teams Executive teams and senior off-sites looking for a speaker who can also run the programme behind the keynote Women’s leadership networks, ERGs and high-potential cohorts that need a credible voice on confidence, advancement and inclusion without performative DEI framing Media, technology, advertising and life sciences organisations where her commercial vocabulary maps directly onto the audience Audience outcomes A working version of the Fearless Fundamentals (Confidence, Communication, Connection, Control and Courage) applied to their own context Specific behaviours for staying composed and decisive when the brief keeps changing, drawn from the Wet Cement Fearless@Work research The vocabulary to coach team members through impostor patterns, confidence gaps and self-advocacy challenges A defensible argument for why inclusion still matters as a leadership capability, useful in rooms where DEI as a label has been retired A method for designing and using a personal board of directors as a working career navigation tool

Why organisations work with Jenny Fleiss She has built a consumer business from a Harvard Business School idea to a publicly listed company, and a separate venture inside Walmart’s Store No. 8 incubator. That gives a board credible answers on both routes into a new market. She speaks from inside the operating cockpit of conversational commerce and AI-driven personalisation, not from a strategist’s deck. Jetblack used text and machine learning to handle real customer requests at scale. Her seat at Initialized Capital and prior investing work put her across hundreds of early-stage decks in e-commerce, consumer and AI. She can tell a corporate audience which startup behaviours are worth importing and which are noise. She brings board-level perspective from listed and private companies including The Lanvin Group, Shutterfly and Rent the Runway, which lets her translate founder language into governance language an audit and risk committee will understand. Biography highlights Co-founder and board member, Rent the Runway, the New York-listed designer rental company she started with Jennifer Hyman in 2008. Founder and former CEO of Jetblack, the conversational commerce startup launched inside Walmart’s Store No. 8 incubator in 2018. Former Partner at Initialized Capital, the seed-stage venture firm, where she led e-commerce, consumer and AI investing. Independent director, The Lanvin Group (since 2022); board member, Shutterfly (since 2019); board member, Arteza. MBA, Harvard Business School; BA in Political Science, Yale University, cum laude. Recognised on Fortune’s 40 Under 40 (2012), Inc. 30 Under 30 (2010), Forbes Disruptors 2013, and Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology. Biography Renting a designer dress through a website was not an obvious business in 2008. Jenny Fleiss and Jennifer Hyman started Rent the Runway from a Harvard Business School idea and turned it into a publicly listed consumer company. The work needed to be done in unglamorous places: dry cleaning logistics, returns flows, fit data, inventory forecasting. The brand sat on top of an operations problem. A decade later, Walmart asked her to build a startup inside its corporate body. Jetblack was a text-based, AI-assisted personal shopping service for high-spending New York households, incubated inside Store No. 8. The product taught Walmart what conversational commerce actually costs to run, what humans still have to do behind the model, and where machine learning genuinely earns its keep in retail. That double track, founder of a venture-backed unicorn and intrapreneur inside a Fortune 1 retailer, is what makes her useful in a corporate room. She has lived the trade-offs between speed and brand risk, between founder autonomy and parent-company governance, between AI promise and operating reality. Her investing work at Initialized Capital and as an angel adds a third lens: which early-stage signals are worth a corporate’s attention and which are theatre. Her board work at The Lanvin Group, Shutterfly, Rent the Runway and Arteza puts her in front of the same governance questions her audiences face. Boards want innovation, but they also want explanations. Key speaking topics Building and scaling consumer internet businesses Conversational commerce and AI in retail Corporate venture building and intrapreneurship Customer data and personalisation at scale Female founders and the funding gap Early-stage investing in consumer and AI Board governance for innovation programmes Ideal for CEOs and divisional presidents in retail, consumer goods and direct-to-consumer brands Heads of innovation, corporate venture and new ventures inside large incumbents Chief digital, chief data and chief AI officers responsible for customer-facing AI deployment Founder communities, accelerator cohorts and women-in-business leadership programmes Audience outcomes A clearer view of which startup behaviours translate into a corporate parent and which collapse on contact with it. A working vocabulary for what conversational commerce and AI personalisation actually require to run at scale. A board-level frame for sponsoring internal ventures: what to measure, what to protect, when to wind down. A grounded read on the current early-stage consumer and AI investment market from someone who has sat on both sides of the table.

Why organisations work with Jessica Ennis-Hill Her experience of performing as the public face of a home Olympics – carrying national expectation while managing injury recovery and a multi-discipline competition – gives leaders a concrete, pressure-tested model of composure under scrutiny that no training programme replicates. As founder of Jennis, she has applied elite athletic methodology to a commercial problem – closing the gender data gap in sport and exercise science – giving her credibility in conversations about evidence-based decision-making and innovation, not just personal achievement. Her perspective on women’s health and female performance, backed by clinical collaboration with physiologist Dr Emma Ross and a funded femtech business, adds substance to DEI and wellbeing conversations that goes well beyond lived experience. She has maintained a high-profile public platform post-retirement – BBC lead analyst across four Olympic cycles, Times columnist, podcast host – which means audiences arrive with recognition and trust already established. Her career narrative – career-threatening injury before Beijing 2008, gold in London 2012, return from maternity leave to World Championship gold in 2015 – gives her a specific, sequenced story about recovery and reinvention that senior leaders find directly applicable to organisational context. Biography highlights Olympic heptathlon gold medallist, London 2012; silver medallist, Rio 2016; three-time World Heptathlon Champion; European Champion; World Indoor Pentathlon Champion Appointed DBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to athletics BBC Sports Personality of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award, 2017 – second woman and first British woman to receive the award Founder of Jennis, a femtech platform using CycleMapping technology developed with women’s health physiologist Dr Emma Ross; raised £1M in pre-seed funding, 2021 Regular BBC athletics analyst: Olympic Games 2020 and 2024, World Athletics Championships 2019, 2022 and 2023, Commonwealth Games 2018 and 2022 Columnist for The Times; host of Gold Minds podcast (High Performance network); author of autobiography Unbelievable Psychology graduate, University of Sheffield Named in Forbes 30 Most Influential Under 30s in Europe, 2016 Biography Jessica Ennis-Hill won Olympic heptathlon gold at London 2012 as the publicly designated face of the Games – carrying a level of expectation that few athletes at any level have been asked to manage. That she delivered one of the most complete performances in the event’s history, having missed the Beijing Games entirely through injury four years earlier, is the foundation of everything she brings to a business audience. The comeback from a career-threatening stress fracture, the return from maternity leave to win the World Championship in Beijing in 2015, and the silver medal in Rio in 2016 give her career a specific structure – repeated reinvention under constraint – that organisations find more useful than a single triumph. The discipline behind those performances: meticulous preparation, managing uncertainty, performing at the moment that matters, is the substance of her speaking work. Post-retirement, she has built a second career with genuine intellectual weight. As founder of Jennis, she identified a specific commercial and scientific gap – most sport and exercise research is conducted on male subjects, leaving women without evidence-based training guidance – and built a femtech business to address it, in clinical partnership with physiologist Dr Emma Ross and backed by institutional investment. That work sits inside a broader argument about female performance and health that she has developed as a BBC analyst, Times columnist, and podcast host. For organisations, she represents something specific: a high-performer who has tested the connection between preparation, recovery, and execution across multiple high-stakes moments, and who has since applied that understanding to build a credible entrepreneurial venture. That combination – elite athletic credential plus founder experience plus sustained media presence – is what separates her from the broader field of sports motivational speakers. Key speaking topics Peak performance under pressure Resilience and recovery from setback Leading through reinvention and uncertainty Women’s health and the gender data gap in performance science Preparation, process, and high-stakes execution Entrepreneurship and building from elite expertise Mindset and mental performance Ideal for Senior leadership teams and executive conferences seeking a performance mindset frame grounded in real-world pressure CHROs and people leadership forums addressing female talent, wellbeing, and the conditions that enable sustained high performance Organisations navigating periods of change or recovery who need a credible, non-generic narrative around reinvention Boards and C-suite audiences where public recognition and media credibility matter alongside substantive content Audience outcomes A concrete, sequenced model of how elite performers build resilience – not as a trait but as a practiced discipline – that teams can apply to their own context Greater clarity on the specific role preparation and process play in sustaining performance under public scrutiny, with direct organisational parallels An evidence-based perspective on women’s health and performance science that gives HR and people leaders new language and framing for wellbeing conversations Sharper thinking on what recovery from setback actually requires, drawn from a career defined by structured comebacks rather than uninterrupted success A founder’s account of translating elite expertise into commercial impact – relevant to innovation, entrepreneurship, and growth conversations

Why organisations work with Joanne Lockwood A rare combination of lived experience as a transgender woman and the formal speaker credentials of a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I, which gives leaders both authenticity and confidence in how the message will land in a corporate room. A timely reading of what AI means for people and culture, drawn from two decades running IT businesses and her inclusion practice: how automated hiring, AI-assisted grievances, and an emerging “AI readiness divide” quietly decide who belongs at work and who gets left behind. Practical experience translating inclusion into operational HR practice through SEE Change Happen, the consultancy she founded after exiting a £3m IT services business she had run for two decades. A track record at scale with employers including Levi Strauss, lululemon EMEA, HarperCollins UK, Unilever, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Ogilvy, Molson Coors and Wates Group, across retail, professional services, housing and the NHS. A delivery style summarised by her own mantra, Smile, Engage, Educate, that lowers the temperature of difficult conversations and lets senior teams engage with trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion without defensiveness. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, SEE Change Happen, a diversity, inclusion and belonging consultancy specialising in transgender awareness and workplace inclusion. Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I. Fellow of the Institute of Equality and Diversity Professionals. First openly transgender National President of Round Table Great Britain and Ireland. Host of the Inclusion Bites podcast and featured subject of the Channel 4 / RDF documentary The Making of Me. Former Trustee of akt, the LGBT+ youth homelessness charity, and volunteer with Beyond Reflections. Biography Most organisations have an inclusion statement. Far fewer have a workforce that knows how to act on it. The gap between published intent and daily behaviour is where culture either compounds or quietly erodes, and it is the space Joanne Lockwood has built her practice around. SEE Change Happen, the consultancy she founded after a career that ran from the Royal Air Force to a £3m IT services business of 25 staff, works with employers to translate DEI policy into the language and habits of line managers. The work is grounded in trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion, where she has personal authority as a transgender woman, and extends into belonging and inclusive recruitment. Clients include Levi Strauss, lululemon EMEA, HarperCollins UK, Unilever, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Ogilvy, and Wates Group. Her newest work takes the same lens to artificial intelligence. Drawing on her years running IT businesses, she treats AI as a culture and belonging question rather than a technical one: how automated hiring, AI-assisted grievances, and the gap she calls the “AI readiness divide” decide who gets designed in and who gets left behind. Her framing is blunt. AI does not create culture; it amplifies the culture it enters. Recognition from her own profession reinforces the work. She is a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I and a Fellow of the Institute of Equality and Diversity Professionals, and her published thinking runs through the Inclusion Bites podcast and contributions to HRZone, The HRD, and Training Zone. She was the first openly transgender National President of Round Table Great Britain and Ireland, and the subject of Channel 4 and RDF’s documentary The Making of Me. Key speaking topics AI, belonging and the human future of work Inclusive culture and belonging Trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion Inclusive leadership and engagement Workplace allyship Inclusive recruitment and hiring practice Culture change and DEI strategy Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and employee experience leaders rebuilding inclusion practice beyond statements and training modules. Executive teams and boards preparing for substantive conversations on trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion in a contested public climate. Leadership and HR teams working out what AI means for their people, their hiring, and their culture. Talent acquisition and people-team leaders working on inclusive recruitment, onboarding and line-manager capability. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where inclusion policy is and is not shaping daily workplace behaviour, and the specific points at which it breaks down. Direct, practical language for trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion that leaders and line managers can use without fear of getting it wrong. A practical way to treat AI as a culture and inclusion issue, including where human judgement has to stay in hiring and employee-relations decisions. A working definition of allyship that goes beyond visible support and into the everyday decisions managers make about hiring, promotion and team culture. Renewed confidence to engage with DEI as a leadership responsibility rather than an HR programme.

Why organisations work with Joe Gerstandt He reframes inclusion as organisational design work, with named practices leaders can actually run, rather than a values campaign that depends on goodwill. His “From Anti to Ally” narrative gives sceptical audiences a credible personal entry point, useful in rooms where DEI language has lost its purchase. Co-author of Social Gravity, a published thesis on how relationship dynamics shape collective performance, which gives the work an intellectual spine beyond bureau talking points. Sits on Twitter’s Intersectional Culture and Diversity Advisory Council and the ISO US Technical Advisory Group on Diversity and Inclusion, meaning his frameworks have been tested inside platform governance and global standards. Marine Corps veteran turned culture practitioner, with a delivery register that lands credibly in industrial, defence, and engineering-led organisations where conventional DEI speakers often do not. Biography highlights Co-author, Social Gravity: Harnessing the Natural Laws of Relationships. Intersectional Culture and Diversity Advisory Council, Twitter. US Technical Advisory Group’s Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, International Organization for Standardization. Board director, Tri-Faith Initiative, Nebraska. Featured contributor, Workforce Diversity Network Expert Forum. Clients include Boeing, Toyota, Nestle, Target, Eli Lilly, Marathon Oil, Cornell University, University of Michigan, the CIA and the FAA. Biography Inclusion work has hit a credibility ceiling inside many large organisations. Twenty years of programmes, statements and training have not translated into the operating changes leaders were promised, and the political pressure on DEI has stripped away the cover that older approaches relied on. The result is a leadership population that knows the work matters but no longer trusts the standard playbook. Joe Gerstandt has spent the past two decades rebuilding the work on different ground. His starting point is that inclusion is a design problem, not a sentiment problem. Behaviour, norms, decision rights, conflict practices and conversational habits are the actual machinery. His sessions teach leaders to operate that machinery, with concrete practices around brave conversations, authenticity, and team design. Two strands give the work its weight. Social Gravity, which he co-authored, sets out the relational dynamics that determine whether collective performance compounds or decays. His “From Anti to Ally” narrative draws on his own move from rural Iowa and the Marine Corps into culture work, giving sceptical audiences a credible bridge into the material without asking them to start from agreement. The institutional record matters. He sits on Twitter’s Intersectional Culture and Diversity Advisory Council and on the ISO US Technical Advisory Group’s Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, advises Fortune 100 employers and federal agencies including the CIA and FAA, and has published in Diversity Best Practices, Diversity Executive and HR Executive. That positions him as a practitioner whose frameworks have been pressure-tested against platform governance, global standards and operating reality. Key speaking topics Inclusion as organisational design Inclusive leadership practice Authenticity and psychological safety at work Team performance and relational dynamics Behaviour change and culture change Allyship and personal transformation Bias, identity and decision-making Ideal for CHROs, Chief Diversity Officers and culture leads rebuilding inclusion programmes that have lost internal credibility. Executive teams running culture change inside engineering, defence, industrial and regulated environments where conventional DEI delivery falls flat. Boards and leadership cohorts treating inclusion as a leadership capability rather than a compliance line. Employee resource group leaders and allies seeking practical practice, not slogans. Audience outcomes A working definition of inclusion as a designed practice, separable from political language. Named behaviours and conversational practices leaders can use the next working day. A clearer read on where their organisation’s inclusion work has stalled and why. Language for engaging sceptics and ambivalent middle managers without forcing ideological agreement. A frame for treating relational dynamics as a performance variable, drawn from Social Gravity.

Why organisations work with John Amaechi The giants framework – introduced in The Promises of Giants (New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, 2021 Porchlight Business Book Award winner) – gives senior leaders a precise accountability tool: every person with influence shapes culture through their most ordinary behaviour, whether they intend to or not. He has held non-executive director appointments at FTSE 250 company Greencore Group plc and served a decade as board director at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust – giving him verified access to the governance conversations his clients face, not just advisory proximity to them. As Professor of Leadership at the University of Exeter Business School and a Chartered Psychologist, he can name the specific behavioural mechanisms – not just the desired outcomes – that distinguish leaders who consistently build high-performing teams from those who inadvertently undermine them. His reframing of unconscious bias as “entrenched assumption” – from The Promises of Giants – shifts the inclusion conversation from psychological absolution to direct leadership accountability, making it actionable for boards and executive committees that have grown fatigued by compliance-oriented framing. Inducted into HR Magazine’s Hall of Fame in 2022, after multiple appearances on its Most Influential Thinkers list, he is recognised across HR, governance, and psychology communities – not within a single professional silo. Biography highlights Founder, APS Intelligence Ltd (est. 2008), working with executive teams and boards across FTSE 100 companies in financial services, technology, legal, and engineering sectors Professor of Leadership (HC), University of Exeter Business School; Research Fellow, University of East London; Chartered Psychologist (British Psychological Society), Chartered Scientist, Chartered Fellow of the CIPD Author of The Promises of Giants (New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller; 2021 Porchlight Business Book Award, Leadership and Strategy category) and It’s Not Magic: The Ordinary Skills of Exceptional Leaders Former non-executive director, Greencore Group plc (FTSE 250); former 10-year board director and HR Scrutiny Committee Chair, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust HR Magazine Hall of Fame inductee 2022; Sport Industry Integrity and Impact Award 2023; OBE 2011 First Briton to have a career in the NBA; appointed European Ambassador to the NBA Biography Culture gaps in senior teams are almost always a behaviour problem. APS Intelligence, the consultancy John Amaechi OBE founded in 2008, was built on that premise, and his advisory engagements, governance roles, and published research have only strengthened the case. Amaechi has held non-executive director appointments at FTSE 250 company Greencore Group plc and served a decade as board director at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. This places him inside the governance conversations most consultants observe from outside. He holds academic roles as Professor of Leadership at the University of Exeter Business School and Research Fellow at the University of East London, where his research focuses on the mechanisms of inclusive leadership, team performance, and organisational design. His professional credentials sit across three chartered bodies: Chartered Psychologist of the British Psychological Society, Chartered Scientist, and Chartered Fellow of the CIPD. The Promises of Giants (2021) introduced the giants framework, the argument that every leader shapes culture through their most ordinary behaviour, intentionally or not. The book became a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller and won the Porchlight Business Book Award in Leadership and Strategy. His follow-up, It’s Not Magic: The Ordinary Skills of Exceptional Leaders, translates the framework into specific, repeatable actions that distinguish leaders who build high-performing environments from those who inadvertently undermine them. Amaechi was inducted into HR Magazine’s Hall of Fame in 2022, after multiple appearances on its Most Influential Thinkers list, and is a LinkedIn Top Voice and LinkedIn Influencer with sustained reach across professional audiences. Before his consultancy career, he was the first Briton to have a career in the NBA. That background informs his understanding of how culture either releases or suppresses individual potential, and what it costs organisations when it does the latter. Key speaking topics Leadership behaviour and culture Inclusive leadership High-performance team dynamics Executive accountability and governance Leadership through permanent disruption AI integration and the human organisation Ideal for Executive teams and C-suite leaders where a gap exists between declared culture and how people actually experience leadership Board members and non-executive directors engaged with governance, leadership accountability, and inclusive decision-making CHROs, CPOs, and people leaders designing culture and inclusion strategies that connect directly to performance outcomes Senior leadership cohorts in organisations navigating culture transformation, post-merger integration, or leadership succession Audience outcomes A specific vocabulary for naming the leadership behaviours – not strategy documents or values statements – that create or undermine the culture an organisation is trying to build Clarity on why inclusion programmes stall at leadership level, and what it takes behaviourally to move them forward A personal accountability framework – the giants principle from The Promises of Giants – that senior leaders can apply immediately to audit and adjust their own daily behaviour Greater understanding of how identity and belonging affect individual contribution, team cohesion, and organisational performance Practical, evidence-based tools from organisational psychology for building psychologically safe environments where high performance is sustainable

Why organisations work with Jonnie Peacock The credibility behind his pressure narrative is specific. He won the London 2012 Paralympic 100m in front of 80,000 people, at 19, as the home favourite, having been largely unknown twelve months earlier. The preparation-to-execution discipline he describes is grounded in that exact moment, and he makes it concrete for business audiences in ways retrospective case studies cannot. His Strictly Come Dancing appearance was a deliberate disability advocacy strategy, not a media opportunity. He has described it publicly as a specific effort to shift mainstream perception of disability, which gives organisations working on inclusion a frame grounded in personal agency rather than policy or HR language. He has won at the highest level and lost at the highest level: two Paralympic golds, a bronze when gold was expected at Tokyo 2020, and a fifth place at Paris 2024 after a career as the public face of British Paralympic sprinting. His account of managing that full arc is something few performance speakers can draw on with equivalent specificity. His Channel 4 series Jonnie’s Blade Camp placed him in a structured coaching role with five young amputees, demonstrating that his performance insight has been tested and applied beyond his own biography. Competing at four Paralympic Games across twelve years, he provides a long-cycle view of high performance: managing injury, rival pressure, public expectation, and identity shift across a career, not just the story of a single peak moment. Biography highlights Two-time Paralympic 100m champion (London 2012, Rio 2016); bronze medallist T64 100m Tokyo 2020; silver medallist 4x100m Universal Relay at Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 World champion at the IPC Athletics World Championships, Lyon 2013, and the World Para Athletics Championships, London 2017; multiple European champion; former world record holder in amputee sprinting (10.85 seconds) MBE for services to athletics, 2013 New Year Honours First amputee Paralympian to compete on BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing (Series 15, 2017), partnered with Oti Mabuse Featured in the Netflix documentary Rising Phoenix (2020) and Channel 4’s “Meet the Superhumans” campaign (2012) Creator and presenter of Channel 4’s Jonnie’s Blade Camp (2021), a structured training programme for young amputees Biography At the 2012 London Paralympic 100m final, a 19-year-old largely unknown twelve months earlier stood behind the start line as the home favourite, in a stadium of 80,000 people. Jonnie Peacock won by a clear margin and set a Paralympic record. The insight that produces is not just biographical. Performing consistently when pressure is highest is one of the hardest things organisations ask of their people. Peacock is a two-time Paralympic 100m champion and former world record holder in amputee sprinting, with medals at three of the four Paralympic Games he has competed in across twelve years. His Channel 4 series Jonnie’s Blade Camp placed him in a structured coaching environment with five young amputees, demonstrating that his understanding of performance development has been applied in a formal teaching context, not only in his own career. His mainstream media presence reflects a deliberate strategy. He became the first amputee Paralympian on BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing in 2017, a decision he has described publicly as an act of disability advocacy rather than entertainment. He features in the Netflix documentary Rising Phoenix and was at the centre of Channel 4’s “Meet the Superhumans” campaign in 2012, both of which sit inside the wider argument about how disability is perceived in high-performance sport. The story underneath all of this is not decorative. Peacock contracted meningitis at five and lost his right leg below the knee. He found athletics through a Paralympic talent identification day and became Paralympic champion in his first competitive senior season. His argument to organisations rests on that arc: the gap between preparation and peak execution under genuine pressure is real, and it can be closed. Key speaking topics Performance under pressure Resilience and adversity recovery Elite competitive mindset Disability and inclusion High-performance team discipline Managing expectation in high-stakes moments Long-cycle career performance Ideal for Executive and leadership teams focused on consistency, decision-making, and execution under scrutiny Organisations running DEI programmes seeking inclusion framed through personal agency and elite performance evidence Commercial, sales, and competitive teams preparing for high-stakes pitches or critical competitive moments HR and people leaders building resilience and wellbeing strategies with credible, first-hand evidence Audience outcomes A first-hand account of what mental preparation for maximum-pressure performance feels like, grounded in verified results across four Paralympic Games Sharper distinction between building capability in training and executing consistently when real scrutiny arrives Disability reframed as competitive capability, evidenced through elite sport rather than policy language Greater clarity on managing external expectation from rivals, public audiences, and an organisation’s own culture A longer view of high performance: how to absorb setback, return to competition, and sustain standards across a career