Leadership inclusiva

Why organisations work with Ebony-Jewel Rainford-Brent She built the ACE Programme from a Surrey initiative in 2020 into a national charity with hubs in six cities, giving boards a working example of how inclusion moves from statement to system. As ECB Non-Executive Director and Surrey’s first female Director of Women’s Cricket, she speaks from inside governance, not as an external observer of it. Her career as the first Black woman to play cricket for England gives a credibility on race, talent pipelines and belonging that few business speakers can match. She translates elite-sport performance habits, preparation under pressure, recovery, decision-making in narrow margins, into language operating teams recognise. Through The Art of Success podcast and her broadcasting work for BBC Test Match Special and Sky Sports, she has interviewed and dissected the methods of high performers across sport and business at length. Biography highlights World Cup winner with England, 2009 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup, Sydney First Black woman to play cricket for England MBE for services to cricket and charity, 2021 Birthday Honours Founder of the ACE Programme; the charity now operates hubs across six English cities ECB Non-Executive Director; first female Director of Women’s Cricket at Surrey CCC BBC Test Match Special commentator and Sky Sports cricket pundit; host of The Art of Success podcast Honorary degree, Loughborough University, 2023 Biography Most diversity initiatives in professional sport collapse at the first hard year. ACE has not. Founded at Surrey in January 2020 in response to a sharp decline in Black British professional cricketers, the programme became an independent charity and now runs hubs in London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham and Sheffield. Its founder built it while serving as Surrey’s first female Director of Women’s Cricket and now sits on the ECB Board as a Non-Executive Director. That operational record is what gives the speaking work its weight. The argument is not that inclusion matters in principle. It is what governance, scouting, scholarships and academy pathways have to look like for the numbers to move, and what stops them moving when the early enthusiasm fades. The performance content draws on a playing career that ended in a World Cup-winning England side in Sydney in 2009 and an Ashes retention later that year. It runs through the BBC Test Match Special commentary box, the Sky Sports studio, and seven years of conversations with high performers on The Art of Success podcast. The texture is specific: how teams handle narrow margins, how individuals rebuild after injury and selection setbacks, how a culture either absorbs pressure or buckles under it. The MBE in 2021 and the honorary degree from Loughborough in 2023 are recognition of work already in motion, not the point of the story. The point is a body of practice on representation and high performance that organisations can actually use. Key speaking topics Inclusion as institutional practice High-performance culture in elite teams Resilience and decision-making under pressure Talent pipelines and representation Leadership in male-dominated environments Building programmes that survive their first hard year Performance lessons from elite sport for business Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers redesigning inclusion strategy beyond brand statements Boards and ExCos confronting representation gaps with hard data, not narrative Leadership and talent functions building cross-cultural pipelines Senior teams under sustained pressure looking for usable lessons from elite sport Audience outcomes A clear-eyed view of why most inclusion programmes stall and what design choices keep ACE moving A vocabulary for performance under pressure that elite teams actually use, separated from motivational generalities Specific examples of governance, sponsorship and pathway design that change participation numbers Renewed conviction that representation work is a leadership discipline, not a communications exercise

Why organisations work with Eleanor Mills She has built the most detailed evidence base in the UK on ABC1 women aged 45 to 60, including partnership research with HSBC on midlife female entrepreneurs and with Accenture on the economic power of women over 45. She names a category most boardrooms still treat as a footnote, the “Queenager”, and gives employers and brands a working vocabulary for talent retention, marketing strategy and product design aimed at this group. She has 22 years of editorial authority at The Sunday Times, including running the magazine when it won Supplement of the Year at the 2018 Press Awards, which gives her communications work with senior leaders genuine craft behind it. Her book, Much More to Come (HarperCollins, 2024), turns midlife transition into a leadership story about reinvention after redundancy, divorce and caring responsibilities, the same pressures organisations are failing to design around. She convenes a 50,000-strong community at Noon, which means her insight is continually refreshed by the audience itself, not drawn from a one-off study. Biography highlights Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Noon (noon.org.uk), launched 8 March 2021. Former Editorial Director of The Sunday Times and Editor of The Sunday Times Magazine, 1998 to 2020. Chair of Women in Journalism, 2013 to 2021. Author of Much More to Come (HarperCollins, 2024), a Sunday Times bestseller; co-editor of Cupcakes and Kalashnikovs (2005). Recipient of the International Alliance for Women World of Difference Award (2012); editor of the Press Awards Supplement of the Year (2018). Research partnerships with HSBC (Fearless and Thriving) and Accenture (The Rise of the Queenager). Biography The most economically active female demographic in Britain is also the one most likely to leave senior roles before reaching the top. Women aged 45 to 60 hold disposable income, household decision-making power and decades of operating experience, yet employers and consumer brands consistently underestimate both their commercial weight and their willingness to stay. This is the gap Eleanor Mills has spent the last five years documenting. After 22 years at Times Newspapers, including running The Sunday Times Magazine when it won Supplement of the Year at the 2018 Press Awards, she left in March 2020 and founded Noon on International Women’s Day 2021. Noon is now a 50,000-strong community and a research platform, with partnership studies for HSBC on midlife female entrepreneurs and Accenture on the economic power of women over 45. Her book Much More to Come (HarperCollins, 2024) extends that argument into the territory of reinvention. It draws on her own redundancy and the pressures her readers describe: menopause, divorce, empty nests, caring for elderly parents, second careers. The book reframes midlife as a productive stage organisations should design around, not write off. For a senior buyer, the value is precise. She gives a board the vocabulary, the data and the editorial sharpness to act on a workforce and consumer segment most strategy decks treat as a rounding error. Key speaking topics Women in midlife as a talent and consumer category Retention of senior women through menopause and caring years Reinvention after redundancy and career disruption Marketing and brand strategy for women over 45 Personal storytelling in leadership communication Resilience in transition Ideal for CHROs and talent leaders designing retention strategies for senior women CMOs and brand leaders targeting the over-45 female consumer Boards reviewing DEI and culture beyond entry and mid-career pipelines Leadership programmes for women navigating career and life transitions in their forties and fifties Audience outcomes A working definition of the Queenager category and what makes it commercially distinct Specific intervention points where organisations lose senior women, and what changes the curve Evidence drawn from named partnership research with HSBC and Accenture, not generic DEI argument A reframing of midlife transition as a leadership and reinvention story rather than a wellness theme

Why organisations work with Eliza VanCort A working method for executive presence rooted in Meisner acting technique, not generic confidence coaching. Voice, posture and physicality are treated as trainable instruments, not personality traits. An intersectional lens that takes inclusion past slogans. Her sessions address how mansplaining, interruption, and microaggression actually move through a meeting, and what a leader can do in the moment. A bestselling book, A Woman’s Guide to Claiming Space, that gives delegates a structured framework before and after the room, with named behaviours and language. Mainstream media reach. Appearances on The Drew Barrymore Show, Forbes, Fast Company and CNBC give her work cultural traction outside corporate L&D, which travels with audiences. Co-founder of Think Twice Labs with Alma Derricks, former CMO of Cirque du Soleil, building emotional intelligence and cross-difference communication tools used inside organisations. Biography highlights Author of A Woman’s Guide to Claiming Space: Stand Tall. Raise Your Voice. Be Heard, Berrett-Koehler, May 2021. Cook House Fellow, Cornell University. TEDxRochester speaker, “Women, Power and Revolutionizing Speech”. Founder of The Actor’s Workshop of Ithaca, a Meisner Technique studio. Co-founder of Think Twice Labs with Alma Derricks, former CMO of Cirque du Soleil. Featured in The Drew Barrymore Show, Forbes, Fast Company, CNBC, and Success magazine. Biography Most executive presence work treats authority as a personality trait. Eliza VanCort treats it as a craft. Her starting point is that voice, posture and language are trainable instruments, the same way an actor’s are, and that women and underrepresented leaders are routinely operating those instruments inside rooms that were not built for them. That argument has a specific origin. She founded The Actor’s Workshop of Ithaca, the region’s Meisner Technique studio, and spent years teaching how performers hold a stage. She then applied the same discipline to meeting rooms and boardrooms. A Woman’s Guide to Claiming Space, published by Berrett-Koehler in 2021, sets out the framework: five behaviours that shift how a leader is read, from posture and vocal placement to ending self-sabotage and building cross-difference coalitions. The work has reach beyond corporate L&D. Her TEDxRochester talk on women, power and speech has been viewed widely. Appearances on The Drew Barrymore Show, Forbes, Fast Company and CNBC have built a public audience of more than 250,000 followers. Inside organisations, she co-founded Think Twice Labs with Alma Derricks, former CMO of Cirque du Soleil, to translate the same material into emotional intelligence and communication tools teams can use across difference. She is a Cook House Fellow at Cornell University and an advisory board member of Performing Arts for Social Change. The intellectual frame is intersectional: most of her organisational work is about what happens to people with less institutional power when they intersect with structures designed around someone else’s authority. The output is concrete. Delegates leave with named behaviours, specific language and a vocabulary for the dynamics they have been navigating without naming for years. Key speaking topics Executive presence and communication craft Women in leadership and the politics of voice Anti-racist and cross-difference communication Emotional intelligence in senior teams Inclusion under pressure Confidence, posture and physicality for leaders Power dynamics in everyday workplace interaction Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers building executive-presence programmes for senior women Leadership-development leads designing high-potential and sponsorship pathways ERG sponsors and DEI heads commissioning substantive, non-performative inclusion content Senior women’s leadership summits, partner-track development programmes, and emerging-leader cohorts Audience outcomes A vocabulary for the meeting-room behaviours that quietly cost women authority, and language to interrupt them in the moment Specific techniques for voice, posture and physicality drawn from Meisner training, applied to senior business settings A framework from A Woman’s Guide to Claiming Space delegates can carry back into their teams Practical anti-racist and cross-difference communication moves that work inside live conversations, not only in policy documents A clearer reading of how power moves through an organisation’s everyday talk, and where to act on it

Why organisations work with Ellie Simmonds She speaks to inclusion from inside the experience, not from a research deck. Teams hear what belonging actually requires, from someone whose career was built in environments that were not designed for her. Her documentary work, including the BAFTA-winning “Finding My Secret Family”, gives her a vocabulary for difficult conversations about disability, identity and adoption that most speakers do not have. She brings elite high-performance credibility alongside the inclusion content. Audiences get eight Paralympic medals and the discipline behind them, without the detachment of a pure sports keynote. She is a working BBC Sport broadcaster, so she handles panels, Q and A and hosting at a professional standard, not as a one-off favour. Biography highlights Five Paralympic gold medals across Beijing 2008, London 2012 and Rio 2016; eight Paralympic medals in total across four Games Appointed MBE in 2009 aged 14, the youngest recipient of the honour at the time; promoted to OBE in 2013 for services to Paralympic sport BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year, 2008 Subject and presenter of “Ellie Simmonds: Finding My Secret Family” (ITV, 2023), winner of the BAFTA for Single Documentary, 2024 First contestant with dwarfism on BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing, series 20, 2022 Broadcaster for BBC Sport, including Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games and Paris 2024 Paralympics Biography At thirteen, Simmonds was the youngest British athlete at the Beijing 2008 Paralympics and left with two gold medals. The story could have ended as a prodigy footnote. Instead it became the first chapter of a fifteen-year career across four Paralympic Games, eight medals, and a public role that has stretched well beyond the pool. What made her visible beyond sport was the clarity with which she has always spoken about living with achondroplasia. The discipline that produced the medals is the same discipline she brings to conversations about difference, adoption and what inclusion actually asks of institutions. Her 2023 ITV documentary “Finding My Secret Family” followed her search for her birth mother and surfaced the historical attitudes to disability that shaped that adoption. It won the BAFTA for Single Documentary in 2024. She retired from competition after Tokyo 2020 and has built a second career as a broadcaster with BBC Sport, including coverage of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games and the Paris 2024 Paralympics. She was the first contestant with dwarfism on Strictly Come Dancing in 2022, a piece of visibility she treated with the same seriousness as her racing. For corporate audiences, the value is specific. She offers a first-person account of what inclusion feels like when it works and when it does not, backed by the credibility of an elite career and the communication range of a working broadcaster. Key speaking topics Disability inclusion and belonging in the workplace High-performance mindset and sustained excellence Resilience under public scrutiny Adoption, identity and family Representation in sport and media Managing transition out of an elite career Ideal for Chief People Officers and DEI leads building inclusion programmes that need more than policy language Employee resource groups focused on disability, neurodiversity or family and adoption Leadership development audiences looking at performance over a long career Organisations marking International Day of Persons with Disabilities, International Women’s Day or similar moments with substance Audience outcomes A first-person account of what daily inclusion requires, from someone who has navigated it in elite and public settings A clearer sense of how high performance is sustained across a decade and a half, and what falls away when it ends A vocabulary for talking about disability and difference at work without defaulting to either discomfort or platitude Language for leaders on representation that goes beyond visibility metrics

Why organisations work with Elliot Barnes-Worrell A first-hand account of how inclusion plays out inside institutions known for being difficult to enter: the RSC, the National Theatre, the Almeida, and the BBC. Academic standing alongside the performance career. Guest lecturer at Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Brown and Howard, with a published interest in race and representation in Shakespeare. A writer-director’s view of how creative cultures actually commission and back new voices, drawn from his own films The Works (BBC) and DIGGING (Film4). Range across keynote, masterclass and panel formats, with a tone that works for senior corporate audiences and for early-career and graduate populations inside the same organisation. Biography highlights Royal Shakespeare Company company member, 2013 to 2014, with roles in Henry IV, Richard II and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Horatio in Hamlet at the Almeida Theatre; Henry Straker in Man and Superman at the National Theatre. Screen credits include ITV’s Jericho and Van der Valk, Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle, Dolittle, and Black Mirror: Hotel Reverie. Writer and director of The Works (BBC, 2016) with Ralph Fiennes, and DIGGING for Film4, premiered at the London Film Festival. Guest lecturer at Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Brown and Howard universities. Alan Bates Award (Actors Centre); Sir John Gielgud Award (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama). Biography Most institutional inclusion work fails on the same question. Once a new voice is in the room, does the institution actually let it shape the work, or does it ask the voice to fit in quietly? Barnes-Worrell has spent his career inside the institutions where that question is hardest to dodge: the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, the Almeida and the BBC. He trained at the BRIT School and at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where he graduated with the Sir John Gielgud Award, and went on to win the Alan Bates Award at the Actors Centre. As an actor his stage work includes Horatio in Hamlet at the Almeida and Henry Straker in Man and Superman at the National Theatre, alongside an RSC company year covering Henry IV, Richard II and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. On screen he has appeared in ITV’s Jericho and Van der Valk, in Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle, in Dolittle, and in Black Mirror: Hotel Reverie. In 2016 he moved into writing and directing with The Works for the BBC, featuring Ralph Fiennes, and later wrote and directed DIGGING for Film4, which premiered at the London Film Festival. That second body of work gives him a working view of how creative organisations decide which voices to back, and on what terms. He also lectures inside the universities most associated with the canon he interrogates: Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Brown and Howard, with a particular line of work on race and representation in Shakespeare. For corporate audiences, that combination of practitioner credibility and academic standing lets him discuss inclusion as a question of craft and culture, not slogans, in front of senior leaders who have become wary of both. Key speaking topics Inclusion as a cultural and creative discipline Race and representation in Shakespeare Storytelling and business communication Confidence and composure in high-scrutiny settings Talent development and emerging voices Mental health and wellbeing for performers and creative teams Ideal for Chief People Officers and Heads of DEI rebuilding inclusion programmes after a period of fatigue or political pressure Early-careers, graduate and apprenticeship leads designing development programmes for new entrants Internal communications and leadership development teams using storytelling as a working skill Universities, business schools and arts institutions running cross-disciplinary events on culture and representation Audience outcomes A clearer view of where institutional inclusion efforts stall, drawn from someone who has worked inside the institutions most cited as case studies. Specific language for talking about race and representation without resorting to either compliance script or political signalling. A practitioner’s account of how creative confidence is built, tested and sustained under public scrutiny. A storytelling vocabulary that internal communicators and leaders can use in their own work.

Why organisations work with Emilie Bellet She has built one of the UK’s largest women-focused financial education communities from scratch, which gives her a live read on what employees actually ask, avoid and misunderstand about money. She pairs a Lehman Brothers and Trilantic private equity background with a mass-market book and weekly podcast, so she can move between a CFO audience and a shop-floor audience without shifting register. Her work gives employers a concrete way to connect financial wellbeing, pay equity and retention of senior women, three agendas that are usually owned by different teams and rarely joined up. She is a named voice in the UK financial media (Financial Times, The i Paper, Vogue, BBC), which makes her credible to finance services clients where brand risk around money content is high. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Vestpod, a financial education platform and community for women. Author of “You’re Not Broke, You’re Pre-Rich” (Octopus / Little, Brown) and contributor to “The WealthTech Book” (Wiley). Host of “The Wallet”, a weekly personal finance podcast. Columnist for the Financial Times and The i Paper; featured in Vogue, Forbes, BBC, The Guardian, Stylist and Courier. Former private equity professional at Lehman Brothers Merchant Banking and Trilantic Capital Partners, London. Named in the Women in FinTech Powerlist (Rising Stars) and shortlisted for Disruptor of the Year at the Women in Finance Awards. Biography Most financial education inside large employers stops at pensions and payroll. It rarely answers the questions people actually carry into Monday morning: how to invest a first bonus, whether to buy, how to talk about money with a partner, what to do with a redundancy package. Vestpod was built to close that gap, and it has become one of the UK’s most engaged communities on women and money. The founder’s route in is unusual. Emilie spent seven years in private equity at Lehman Brothers Merchant Banking and Trilantic Capital Partners in London before leaving the buy-side to build a platform she felt the market was not serving. That background matters for corporate audiences because she is not a lifestyle commentator, she is a former investor who now translates institutional finance into language a general workforce can use. The work has two sides that employers buy together. “You’re Not Broke, You’re Pre-Rich”, published by Octopus, codified the personal finance curriculum; the weekly newsletter, The Wallet podcast and Money Matters festival keep it current. Inside companies, that content becomes workshops on investing basics, the gender wealth gap and financial confidence, delivered for names including Amazon, BCG, Coutts, NatWest and Palo Alto Networks. Her media footprint is the credibility backstop. Regular columns in the Financial Times and The i Paper, plus coverage in Vogue, Forbes, BBC and The Guardian, put her in front of the audience senior HR and DEI teams are trying to reach, and give risk-sensitive financial services clients a known name they can put on a programme. Key speaking topics Women and wealth Financial wellbeing in the workplace The gender wealth and investment gap Personal finance and investing fundamentals Financial confidence and money mindset WealthTech and financial inclusion Entrepreneurship and building a consumer brand Ideal for CHROs and heads of reward designing financial wellbeing into benefits strategy DEI and women’s network leads who need content beyond mentoring and panels Financial services and WealthTech firms running client-facing events for women investors Internal International Women’s Day, Financial Wellness Month and employee festival programmes Audience outcomes A clear picture of where the gender wealth gap comes from and which levers an employer can actually pull Specific language and frameworks employees can use to take the next step on saving, investing or debt Renewed confidence to engage with pension, share scheme and investment decisions that many defer by default A sharper internal case for treating financial wellbeing as part of retention and inclusion strategy, not a standalone perk

Why organisations work with Emma Reed Turrell She brings the consulting room into the boardroom. The frameworks she uses with audiences are the same ones she works with in private clinical practice, not a borrowed model dressed up for corporate slides. Two trade-published books with named theses, Please Yourself (HarperCollins) on people-pleasing and What Am I Missing? (Penguin) on four blind-spot profiles, give her content a recognisable structure that audiences can act on after the session. Her four-blind-spot typology (The Gladiator, The Bridge, The Hustler, The Rock) gives teams a shared, non-judgemental language for the friction that usually goes unnamed in 1:1s and team reviews. Co-hosting Best Friend Therapy with Elizabeth Day, now in its seventh season, has trained her to translate clinical material into conversation that lands with non-specialist audiences without losing precision. MBACP-accredited practitioner status means employers can route sensitive content (boundaries, self-worth, conflict avoidance) through a clinician on the register, not a motivational speaker working in adjacent territory. Biography highlights Author of Please Yourself: How to Stop People-Pleasing and Transform the Way You Live, HarperCollins. Author of What Am I Missing? Discover the Four Blind Spots That Are Holding You Back, Penguin. Co-host of Best Friend Therapy podcast with Elizabeth Day, in its seventh season. MBACP-accredited psychotherapist running a private practice (The Therapy Loft). English graduate of Queens’ College, Cambridge; ten years in commercial roles before retraining. Corporate engagements named on her bureau profiles include Diageo, Sky, AstraZeneca, ClearScore, Evelyn Partners, and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. Biography The most common complaints inside large organisations, people who cannot say no, leaders who cannot ask for help, talented staff who under-claim their work, sit downstream of the same psychological patterns that fill a therapist’s caseload. Emma Reed Turrell has spent fifteen years working with those patterns clinically, and her speaking is built directly on what she sees in the consulting room. She read English at Queens’ College, Cambridge, spent a decade in commercial roles, then retrained as a psychotherapist and became MBACP-accredited. She now runs a private practice, The Therapy Loft, alongside her writing and speaking. The two books, Please Yourself with HarperCollins on the structure of people-pleasing, and What Am I Missing? with Penguin on four named blind-spot profiles, are the source material for her keynote content. Her co-hosted podcast with Elizabeth Day, Best Friend Therapy, now in its seventh season, has built her a reach beyond the clinical audience and trained her to make therapeutic ideas usable in everyday work conversations. The result is a speaker who can hold a non-specialist audience for an hour on people-pleasing, imposter syndrome, or unconscious blind spots, and leave them with a vocabulary they can take back into their team. Organisations that have booked her include Diageo, Sky, AstraZeneca, ClearScore, Evelyn Partners, and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, employers for whom employee wellbeing and communication are not soft topics but live retention and productivity issues. Key speaking topics People-pleasing and workplace boundaries Imposter syndrome in high-performing teams Psychological blind spots and self-awareness Self-worth and confidence at work Mental health and wellbeing in the workplace Non-conflict communication Resilience and stress management Ideal for CHROs, heads of talent, and L&D leads designing wellbeing and communication programmes for the wider workforce. Women’s networks and emerging-leader cohorts wrestling with imposter syndrome and self-worth. Senior teams that want a shared language for the friction patterns showing up in 1:1s and reviews. Employee conferences and all-hands events where wellbeing content needs clinical weight rather than motivational gloss. Audience outcomes A named vocabulary for the people-pleasing, imposter, and blind-spot patterns that shape day-to-day work. Specific tools for setting boundaries and managing self-worth that audiences can use the following week. Recognition of which of the four blind-spot profiles (Gladiator, Bridge, Hustler, Rock) is most active in their own behaviour. Practical anxiety-management techniques drawn from her clinical practice, including the worry-box approach. Permission to treat wellbeing as a serious operational topic, not a soft benefit.

Why organisations work with Emma Ross She brings the operating knowledge of the person who ran physiology for Team GB across Olympic and Paralympic cycles, applied directly to corporate workforces rather than borrowed as metaphor. She co-founded The Well HQ, the consultancy that has delivered women’s health programmes inside Sport England, England Netball, the Lawn Tennis Association, Vitality, News UK and Barclays; her frameworks are already in production in serious organisations. The Female Body Bible gave her a mainstream platform and a Sunday Times bestseller, which means her language is already familiar to employees and journalists before she walks into the room. She closes the knowing-doing gap leaders struggle with most: turning evidence on menstrual health, menopause, pelvic health and breast health into specific policy, benefits and manager scripts. Her authority is independent and scientific. The Cardiff Metropolitan honorary doctorate and her Fellowship of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Science signal that the content is peer-respected, not opinion. Biography highlights Head of Physiology, English Institute of Sport, 2013 to 2021, across Rio and Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic cycles. Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, The Well HQ. Co-author, The Female Body Bible, Sunday Times bestseller, 2023. Changemaker, The Sunday Times Sportswomen of the Year Awards, 2021. Honorary Doctorate, Cardiff Metropolitan University, 2025. Honorary Research Fellow, University of Brighton; Honorary Lecturer, University of Kent; Fellow of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Science. Biography Women make up roughly half of most workforces and a larger share of many consumer markets. Until recently, almost no corporate policy, product design or leadership development programme was built on evidence about how female bodies actually work. Emma Ross is one of the people rewriting that. As Head of Physiology at the English Institute of Sport from 2013, she supported Team GB athletes and coaches across the Rio and Tokyo cycles. Inside that system she saw how much of the playbook for elite performance had been written for men, and what happened when women were given training, recovery, nutrition and medical support designed around their physiology instead. In 2021 she co-founded The Well HQ with Baz Moffat and Dr Bella Smith. The consultancy has built education and policy programmes for Sport England, England Netball, the Lawn Tennis Association and the Open University, and has moved into corporate workforces with Vitality, News UK and Barclays. The Female Body Bible, co-authored in 2023, landed as an instant Sunday Times bestseller and took the argument into the mainstream. Her credibility is underwritten by a PhD from Brunel, more than thirty peer-reviewed publications, a Fellowship of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Science, and an Honorary Doctorate from Cardiff Metropolitan University awarded in 2025. The practical value for a boardroom is simpler: she can tell a CHRO, in specific terms, what to change on Monday about benefits, line-manager training, menopause policy, return-to-work protocols and the data the organisation is not yet collecting. Key speaking topics Women’s health in the workplace Female physiology and high performance Menstrual health, menopause and pelvic health at work Policy and manager capability for women’s health Culture change in male-default organisations Lessons from elite sport for corporate performance systems Evidence-based wellbeing for women Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers and Heads of Reward designing benefits, menopause and family-health policy. DEI and ERG leads moving from awareness events to operational change. Executive teams in organisations with large female workforces or female consumer bases. Leadership programmes for senior women and their managers. Audience outcomes A clear read on where your current policies and manager behaviours fail women, and what to change first. Specific, evidence-based actions on menstrual health, menopause, pelvic and breast health that can be taken into HR and benefits. Language that line managers and male leaders can use without fear of saying the wrong thing. A framework for translating women’s health from a wellbeing initiative into an organisational performance lever. Confidence that the content is backed by elite sport science and peer-reviewed evidence, not opinion.

Why organisations work with Eric M. Bailey He turns cognitive neuroscience into 22 named tools managers can use the next morning, not a worldview to adopt over time. The methodology is called the Principles of Human Understanding. His client list spans Google, the US Air Force, Los Angeles County, and the Phoenix Police Department. Few communication speakers translate across that range of cultures. The Cure for Stupidity gives an organisation a shared vocabulary for irrational workplace behaviour. Once a team has read it, conflict conversations get shorter. He works the room across analytical and emotional registers. Engineering audiences and frontline service teams both come away with the same takeaways, which is rare. Biography highlights President of Bailey Strategic Innovation Group, a communication and organisational development consultancy. Bestselling author of The Cure for Stupidity: Using Brain Science to Explain Irrational Behavior at Work. Creator of the Principles of Human Understanding methodology, used in keynote, facilitation, and coaching engagements. Master’s in Leadership and Organizational Development, Saint Louis University. Client work with Google, US Air Force, Los Angeles County, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, City of Phoenix, Phoenix Police Department. Media features on CNN, Forbes, and HuffPost. Speaker on the Workhuman Live conference programme. Biography Most conflict at work is not about the issue on the table. It is about two people running different software on the same conversation. Bailey has built a career mapping that mismatch and giving leaders a way to talk about it without making anyone feel stupid. His book The Cure for Stupidity: Using Brain Science to Explain Irrational Behavior at Work sets out the argument. Irrational behaviour is usually rational once you understand what the brain is protecting against. The book seeded a methodology, the Principles of Human Understanding, which now anchors his keynote and consulting work through Bailey Strategic Innovation Group. The client list is the proof. Google, the US Air Force, Los Angeles County, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the City of Phoenix, and the Phoenix Police Department have all brought him in. These are organisations with very different tolerance for soft language, which forces the material to do real work. The Master’s from Saint Louis University in Leadership and Organizational Development is the academic underpinning. The 22 tools are what audiences actually leave with. What sets Bailey apart from other neuroscience-of-work voices is that he writes for the manager who has eleven things to do today, not for the reader who wants a theory of mind. The framework is built to be used inside a difficult conversation, not admired from a distance. Key speaking topics Brain science of workplace communication Generational dynamics and intergenerational friction Diversity, equity and inclusion under contested conditions Change management and the neuroscience of resistance Team trust and functional team design Leadership development for first-line and mid-level managers Ideal for CHROs and people leaders dealing with persistent team conflict and engagement decay Heads of L&D commissioning manager development at scale DEI leads who need a frame for inclusion that lands with sceptical audiences Public sector and uniformed leadership teams (law enforcement, military, municipal government) needing communication training that travels across rank Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for naming the cognitive patterns that drive workplace friction Specific tools, drawn from the Principles of Human Understanding, that can be used in a difficult conversation the same week A reframe of irrational behaviour as predictable, not personal, which lowers the temperature of recurring conflicts A working model for how the brain interprets change, status, and difference, applied to current team dynamics

Why organisations work with Erika Lucas Her accelerator, run in partnership with the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder, has supported more than 220 women and minority-owned startups since 2017. She draws on live operating experience, finding and scaling founders that most capital systems miss. Her venture fund, VEST Her Ventures, invests in women-led companies in the care economy and the future of work. She brings a current portfolio view of where workforce shifts and regulatory pressure are opening commercial opportunities, and the market is under-pricing. She speaks the language of the full capital stack. As a former private equity Partner and as Director of Trade and Foreign Direct Investment at the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, she is fluent in public incentives, PE, VC, and bank credit, which matters for boards making complex allocation decisions. Her TED talk, “America’s Trillion Dollar Blindspot,” makes a market-sizing case for capital flowing to overlooked founders. That is the register that senior leaders and investment committees respond to. She operates from Oklahoma City, away from the coastal hubs from which most speakers on this topic come. For companies building workforce, consumer, or policy strategies outside a handful of metros, her ground-level view is difficult to source elsewhere. Biography highlights Co-founder of StitchCrew, its accelerator with the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder, has supported more than 220 women and minority-owned startups since 2017 Founder and General Partner of VEST Her Ventures, an early-stage venture fund investing in women-led companies in the care economy and future of work TED speaker: “America’s Trillion Dollar Blindspot” (TEDxOU) Host of the VEST Her Podcast, examining the structural barriers to women’s economic advancement Board of Directors at Arvest Bank; Fellow at the Just Economy Institute; Member of the Latino Corporate Directors Association Former Partner at a US and European private equity firm; former Director of Trade and Foreign Direct Investment at the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, where 38 international companies located or expanded during her tenure Biography Only a sliver of venture capital reaches women and founders of colour. The commercial cost of that pattern is usually understated. Whole categories of customers, markets, and operators are being systematically under-priced by capital that is trained to look in the same handful of places. StitchCrew was built on that reading of the market. Co-founded with her husband Chris in 2016, it runs an accelerator in partnership with the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder and has supported more than 220 women and minority-owned founders. The positioning matters. It sits in the middle of the country, not on a coastal hub, and the deal flow reflects markets that most East Coast or Bay Area funds never see. The logic extended into investment. VEST Her Ventures, founded in 2022, backs early-stage women-led companies in the care economy and future of work, two sectors where demand is visibly running ahead of available capital. The fund came together in weeks. Two million dollars was raised in two months, entirely from women limited partners based in the middle of the country. The throughline runs back through her earlier career. She was a Partner at a private equity firm with investments in the United States and Europe, and Director of Trade and Foreign Direct Investment at the Oklahoma Department of Commerce, where 38 international companies located or expanded during her tenure. She sits on the board of Arvest Bank, is a Fellow at the Just Economy Institute, and hosts the VEST Her Podcast, where the repeated question is what it would take for American capital to stop leaving its most profitable markets untouched. Key speaking topics Access to capital and overlooked markets Entrepreneurship and the new majority economy The care economy and future of work Women in leadership and ownership Venture capital and economic inclusion Economic mobility and public-private strategy Ideal for Corporate boards and Chief Investment Officers are looking for the next source of portfolio growth Private equity and venture investment committees assessing deal flow and diversification CHROs and heads of talent building workforce and care infrastructure strategies Economic development agencies, chambers of commerce, and regional leadership forums are working on commercial inclusion Audience outcomes A sharper commercial argument for investing in overlooked founders and markets, drawn from a live accelerator and an active venture portfolio A clearer map of where venture and growth capital actually lands in the United States, and which geographies and founder profiles it consistently misses Named sectors where consumer and workforce change is already running ahead of investment capital, including the care economy and the infrastructure of work A vocabulary for discussing inclusion in commercial terms, usable with boards, investment committees, and senior executives who are sceptical of fairness-led framing

Why organisations work with Estefania Cervantes She speaks from a documented turnaround, not a tagline. She lost her leg at 18 mid-degree, completed her studies at Universidad Iberoamericana, and built a registered Mexican civil association that delivers prosthetics and rehabilitation. Ampuvalia gives her a working operator’s vocabulary. Audiences hear from someone who has had to fund, govern, and scale a small organisation, which translates resilience into language a senior team recognises. Her book “Actitud Que Trasciende” gives Spanish-speaking audiences a structured account of recovery and reinvention they can hand to teams afterward, rather than a one-off keynote moment. She holds the 2015 Premio Ibero-Bremond-FICSAC Compromiso Social, an institutional recognition from a serious Mexican university, not a self-issued award. She has lived the inclusion conversation from the disability side without making it a compliance lecture, which is what most internal DEI programmes are quietly looking for. Biography highlights Founder of Ampuvalia, a Mexican civil association providing physical therapy, prosthetics, and peer support to the limb-loss community since 2015. Author of “Actitud Que Trasciende”, a Spanish-language book on rebuilding life and identity after limb loss. Recipient of the Premio Ibero-Bremond-FICSAC Compromiso Social, awarded by Universidad Iberoamericana. Featured climber on the 2019 ROMP Cotopaxi expedition, documented in the Merrell-produced short film “In Her Shoes”. Graduate in International Business Administration, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City. Bilingual speaker in Spanish and English, with a Latin American operating base that is uncommon on bureau rosters at this level. Biography A car accident in Mexico City interrupted a second-semester business student’s degree and removed her right leg. The student returned to Universidad Iberoamericana, finished her programme, and four years later registered Ampuvalia as a civil association to fund prosthetics and rehabilitation for other amputees in Mexico. That sequence of facts is the spine of her credibility. The work since has been operational rather than purely autobiographical. Ampuvalia coordinates physical therapy, prosthesis fitting, and peer-support sessions, the unglamorous middle of disability recovery that public storytelling usually skips. Her Spanish-language book “Actitud Que Trasciende” treats limb loss as a problem of identity and decision-making, not a story of triumph, which is what makes it usable inside coaching engagements. Universidad Iberoamericana awarded her the Premio Ibero-Bremond-FICSAC Compromiso Social in 2015 for that work, and the 2019 ROMP ascent of Cotopaxi placed her in the Merrell-produced documentary “In Her Shoes” alongside other amputee climbers. These are the named credentials. The reason to put her in front of a senior team is that she can describe, in operating terms, what it took to keep functioning when the original plan was no longer available, and translate that into something a leadership audience can use the next morning. Key speaking topics Resilience after acute personal setback Reinvention of identity and purpose Disability inclusion in Latin American workplaces Founding and running a mission-led nonprofit Executive coaching grounded in lived recovery Bilingual leadership for Spanish and English audiences Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads commissioning substantive disability inclusion content for Latin American or bilingual workforces Latin American leadership conferences and Spanish-language internal events Sales kick-offs and annual conferences seeking a credible resilience anchor speaker Executive coaching programmes in Mexico and the wider Spanish-speaking region Audience outcomes A working definition of resilience that survives contact with a real organisational setback A first-hand account of disability inclusion told without compliance language A model for how a small, mission-led organisation gets built and funded in Mexico A bilingual perspective that lands with Spanish-first audiences without translation flattening

Why organisations work with Fee Mak She holds a live room across formats that very few hosts move between credibly: BBC daytime radio, the MOBO Awards mainstage, in-game presenting for London Spirit at The Hundred, and literary festival chairing at Hay and Cheltenham. Her BBC 1Xtra Sunday Breakfast residency means she is in front of a national, multi-generational, culturally diverse audience every week. That muscle transfers directly to award shows and internal events trying to land with the same audience. She chairs interview content as a working craft, not as decoration. The Business Book Awards, Ditto X Meet the Music Industry, and book festival panels are formats that expose hosts who cannot follow a guest’s argument in real time. Her event roster includes inclusion-led briefs that organisations frequently get wrong: the Diana Award Anti-Racist Bullying showcase, Inclusive Books for Children Awards, BBC Bitesize Tour. She is a credible voice for clients who need a host who can carry that tone without performing it. Biography highlights Host, BBC Radio 1Xtra Sunday Breakfast Show, since July 2022. Selected through the BBC Radio 1 Presenter Search 2019; presenter credits include Christmas Drivetime, Early Breakfast, and daytime cover on Radio 1. Awards host credits: MOBO Awards, AIM Awards, Business Book Awards, Diana Award Anti-Racist Bullying showcase, Inclusive Books for Children Awards. Live event host credits: Red Bull BC One UK Cypher, Move It, Breakin’ Convention, U.Dance National Showcase, BBC Bitesize Tour, Ditto X Meet the Music Industry, Earl’s Court International Film Festival. In-game host for London Spirit at The Hundred (Lord’s). Chair at Hay Festival, Cheltenham Festival, Chiswick Book Festival, and Brighton Festival. BA (Hons) French and Business Administration, University of Kent. Former junior associate, The Royal Ballet School; West End child cast of Billy Elliot the Musical. Biography The hardest job at a live event is the one people only notice when it goes wrong. Holding a 90-minute awards ceremony together, moving between sponsors, winners and a writers’ room of jokes that may or may not land, takes a craft that broadcast hosts spend years building. Fee Mak has built it across an unusually wide range of stages. Her weekly residency is the Sunday Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 1Xtra, where she has hosted since July 2022. The route in was the BBC Radio 1 Presenter Search in 2019, followed by Christmas Drivetime, Early Breakfast and daytime cover on Radio 1 before moving across to 1Xtra. That is a competitive route into BBC daytime broadcasting and gives her a working relationship with a national, multi-generational, culturally diverse audience that organisations pay agencies a great deal of money to reach. The event work runs alongside the broadcast role and is the reason most corporate buyers commission her. Awards: MOBO, AIM, Business Book Awards, Inclusive Books for Children, the Diana Award Anti-Racist Bullying showcase. Live events: Red Bull BC One UK Cypher, Move It, Breakin’ Convention, U.Dance National Showcase, BBC Bitesize Tour, Ditto X Meet the Music Industry, Earl’s Court International Film Festival. Sport: in-game host for London Spirit at The Hundred. Literary festivals: chair at Hay, Cheltenham, Chiswick, and Brighton. The thread across those rooms is one specific capability: she can read an audience that does not share a single demographic and find a register that works for all of it. That is why she lands in inclusion-led briefs, youth audiences, music industry rooms, and corporate award stages with the same composure. Key speaking topics Awards and ceremony hosting Conference and summit MC work Panel chairing and interview moderation Literary festival and book event chairing Live sport and entertainment presenting Inclusion-led event hosting Broadcast voiceover Ideal for Brand and marketing leads commissioning a national awards ceremony, brand launch, or industry gala Internal communications and culture leads running town halls, recognition events, or all-hands moments that need a credible external voice Organisations running inclusion, education, or youth-audience programmes that need a host who can carry the tone authentically Conference programmers needing a moderator who can chair interviews and panels live without losing the thread Audience outcomes A live event that runs on time, with energy held from open to close Sponsor, winner and guest moments that land cleanly without dead air between them Interview segments where the guest is drawn out rather than walked over A host presence that connects with audiences across generations, cultures and seniority in the same room