Caroline Criado-Perez
Most organisations make product, workforce, and policy decisions on data that under-represents half their market. The gap is structural, not incidental, and it shows up in safety failures, missed customers, and AI systems that inherit the bias of their training sets. Leaders who suspect this is happening rarely have a defensible way to find it, fix it, or explain it to a board.
Caroline Criado-Perez is the author of Invisible Women and the campaigner who shows organisations how missing data about women produces flawed products, unsafe systems, and weaker commercial decisions.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Caroline Criado-Perez
- She built the public evidence base on the gender data gap. Invisible Women sits on the desks of regulators, engineers, and policy teams in more than thirty languages and is the default reference when the question is raised.
- She has won both the Royal Society Science Book Prize and the FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year for the same work, a combination almost no other author can claim, and one that signals her rigour to both technical and commercial audiences.
- She translates the gender data problem into concrete operating examples: car crash test dummies, medical dosing, voice recognition, AI training data, urban infrastructure, workplace tools. Audiences leave with examples they recognise from their own organisation.
- She has actually changed policy. The Jane Austen banknote and the Millicent Fawcett statue are her campaigns; the credibility she brings to a corporate room is built on shifting state institutions, not commentary.
Biography highlights
- Author, Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, winner of the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize and the 2019 FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year.
- OBE for services to equality and diversity, 2015.
- Author, Do It Like a Woman, profiling pioneering women globally.
- Founder of the campaigns that put Jane Austen on the Bank of England £10 note and Millicent Fawcett’s statue in Parliament Square.
- Liberty Human Rights Campaigner of the Year, 2013; Finland’s HÄN Honour, 2020; winner of the inaugural Unwin Award, 2025.
- Honorary doctorates from the University of Lincoln, the University of Westminster, and The Open University.
- Host of the Visible Women podcast with Tortoise Media; writes the Invisible Women Substack newsletter.
Biography
The crash test dummy used to certify most cars on the road is modelled on the body of an average male. Medical drug trials, voice recognition systems, office temperatures, and stab vests share a similar history. Invisible Women assembled this evidence into a single argument and made it impossible to ignore.
Caroline Criado-Perez wrote the book that did this. It won the Royal Society Science Book Prize and the FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year in the same year, a dual recognition that signals scientific rigour and commercial relevance at once. It has been translated into more than thirty languages and is used by policymakers, engineers, and product teams looking for a defensible account of where their data is incomplete.
Her credibility with corporate audiences comes from changing institutions, not commenting on them. She ran the campaign that placed Jane Austen on the Bank of England £10 note. She campaigned for the Millicent Fawcett statue in Parliament Square, the first statue of a woman to stand there. An OBE, a Liberty Human Rights Campaigner of the Year award, and the inaugural Unwin Award are the public record of work that altered what the state chose to put in front of its citizens.
Her current focus is on the operating consequences of the data gap for businesses making decisions about AI, product design, workforce policy, and customer experience. Through her Invisible Women Substack and Visible Women podcast with Tortoise Media, she continues to surface the specific cases where missing data on women becomes a material business risk.
Key speaking topics
- The gender data gap
- Bias in AI training data and algorithmic systems
- Inclusive product and service design
- Workforce data and policy design
- Gender bias in medical and safety research
- Campaigning, influence, and institutional change
Ideal for
- CHROs, chief diversity officers, and people analytics leaders auditing workforce data
- Heads of product, design, and data science teams in consumer-facing or safety-critical industries
- AI and machine learning leaders responsible for model bias and training data quality
- Boards and ESG committees reviewing how the organisation evidences its claims about inclusion
Audience outcomes
- A working vocabulary for naming where the gender data gap shows up in their own products, policies, and decisions
- A clear view of the commercial and safety risks created by data that under-represents half the customer or workforce base
- Specific examples from medicine, automotive, technology, and infrastructure that translate the problem into terms their teams will recognise
- An understanding of how AI inherits and amplifies existing data bias, and what that means for governance
- A grounded sense of how institutional change actually happens, drawn from campaigns that succeeded
Talks
A walk through the structural absence of women from the data that shapes products, policy, and AI, with the case studies that have made the book a global reference.
Key takeaways:
- Where the gender data gap originates and why it persists in modern systems
- The commercial, safety, and reputational consequences for organisations relying on incomplete data
- Practical starting points for auditing data and design assumptions inside the organisation
A focused session on the operating implications of biased data for businesses deploying AI, designing products, and setting workforce policy.
Key takeaways:
- How AI systems inherit and scale existing bias when trained on incomplete data
- The decision points where leaders can intervene before bias becomes embedded
- Examples from companies and public bodies that have closed parts of the gap
How institutional change actually happens, drawn from the campaigns that placed Jane Austen on the Bank of England £10 note and Millicent Fawcett’s statue in Parliament Square.
Key takeaways:
- The mechanics of building public and institutional pressure
- What separates campaigns that shift policy from those that generate attention
- How corporate leaders can apply campaigning thinking to internal change
Videos
Books
Fees
| EUR | GBP | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Country | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Asia Pacific | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Europe | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Middle East & Africa | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| South America | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| United Kingdom | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US East Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US West Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Virtual | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |