Ayo Sokale

Why organisations work with Ayo Sokale

• Her engineering authority is substantive. Nine years at the Environment Agency working on flood and coastal risk, Fellowship of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and a seat on the ICE Council, give her credibility with technical audiences that most DEI speakers cannot access.
• Her work on neurodiversity is built on lived experience and published material, including her book Othered: How to Thrive and Disrupt in Spaces Not Created for You, and trustee-level governance work with Autistic Girls Network.
• Broadcast presence across CBeebies, BBC Reel, BBC Bitesize and documentary work for Smithsonian Channel, National Geographic, Discovery Channel and Channel 5 means she can carry a main-stage room, a town hall or a client conference with the same fluency.
• Her civic record, including Reading Borough Councillor, former Deputy Mayor of Reading and founder of Plastic Free Caversham, gives her public-sector and community-engagement credentials useful for regulated industries and public-service audiences.
• She speaks plainly on topics most organisations hedge around, using the specific language engineers, HR leaders and policy-makers recognise, rather than generalised wellbeing vocabulary.

Biography highlights

• Chartered Civil Engineer, Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
• Nine-plus years at the Environment Agency on flood and coastal risk management
• BBC presenter including CBeebies Get Set Galactic; documentary work for Smithsonian Channel, National Geographic and Discovery Channel
• Author of Othered: How to Thrive and Disrupt in Spaces Not Created for You
• Trustee, Autistic Girls Network; Patron, Me2 Club
• ICE President’s Future Leader (2018); Top 24 Global Ethnic Majority Role Model in STEM; former Reading Borough Councillor and former Deputy Mayor of Reading

Biography

The UK’s flood and coastal defence system is one of the more complicated pieces of infrastructure any civil engineer can work on, and Ayo Sokale spent nine years working on it at the Environment Agency. That engineering grounding, a Chartered Civil Engineer, Chartered Manager and Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, is the base she brings to every other part of her work, including the speaking, the broadcasting and the advocacy.

The second track is broadcast. She co-presents CBeebies’ science game show Get Set Galactic and has presented on BBC Reel and BBC Bitesize, with documentary credits for Smithsonian Channel, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, Channel 5 and Yesterday TV. The combination matters for corporate audiences: she can translate technical material on stage without dropping either the rigour of an engineer or the clarity of a broadcaster.

The third is authorship and advocacy. Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, she is a Trustee of Autistic Girls Network and Patron of Me2 Club, and the author of Othered: How to Thrive and Disrupt in Spaces Not Created for You. She is also featured in Dr Shini Somara’s Engineers Making a Difference and in Daniel Tammet’s 9 Minds. Her neurodiversity material is first-person but not confessional; the underlying argument is about how institutions, buildings, processes and teams can be designed to work for a broader range of minds.

Her civic work extends the same pattern. She served as a Reading Borough Councillor in the Caversham Ward and as a Deputy Mayor of Reading, and founded the Plastic Free Caversham campaign that achieved single-use plastic-free accreditation. For engineering firms, public-sector bodies and corporate audiences running their first serious conversation about neurodiversity, STEM representation or inclusive infrastructure, Sokale brings a rare mix of technical credibility, broadcast reach and governance responsibility.

Key speaking topics

• Neurodiversity in the workplace
• Diversity, representation and inclusion in engineering and STEM
• Autism, late diagnosis and career pathways
• Public-sector leadership and civic engagement
• Infrastructure, flood risk and environmental resilience
• Science communication and making technical material accessible

Ideal for

• HR, DEI and talent leaders designing neurodiversity strategy with the rigour they would apply to any operational programme
• Engineering, infrastructure and construction firms addressing representation, inclusive hiring and STEM pipeline
• Public-sector and regulated organisations balancing technical delivery with community and civic responsibilities
• School, university and STEM outreach programmes and employer early-careers events

Audience outcomes

• A more specific, less generalised vocabulary for discussing neurodiversity in hiring, team design and management
• Practical framing of inclusion questions from someone who has sat on both sides: senior engineer and neurodivergent employee
• A usable reference point from Othered for how institutions and spaces create friction for people they were not designed for
• Reference cases from Environment Agency infrastructure work, ICE governance and civic leadership in Reading