Dumi Senda
Most inclusion programmes land as policy statements that never change how colleagues actually treat each other. Senior teams know the gap between the stated culture and daily experience is what drives attrition, engagement scores and trust in leadership. Closing it requires behaviour change at manager level, not another framework.
Dumi Senda is a diversity, equity and inclusion specialist who helps large organisations turn stated inclusion values into everyday manager behaviour, drawing on his role as Diversity and Inclusion Portfolio Lead for BBC England.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Dumi Senda
- He runs inclusion inside a 3,000-person operation at BBC England, so his method has been tested against the same scale and politics the audience is wrestling with, not built in a classroom.
- His LinkedIn Learning course “Make Belonging Real in the Workplace” gives organisations a shared curriculum to anchor manager conversations after the keynote, which most DEI speakers cannot offer.
- As President of the Oxford Black Alumni Network and ICF-accredited coach, he brings institutional credibility with senior audiences alongside coaching craft that works one-to-one with leaders.
- His lived arc from a decade of UK factory work to an Oxford MSc is the proof point that disarms the most sceptical rooms, including leadership teams that have sat through several DEI sessions already.
- He has delivered programmes inside the BBC, the UN, the House of Commons, the Bank of England, Google and Goldman Sachs, so references translate across public sector, finance and technology briefs.
Biography highlights
- Diversity and Inclusion Portfolio Lead, BBC England (six regions, 3,000+ staff).
- Oxford University MSc graduate; sitting President of the Oxford Black Alumni Network (OxBAN).
- LinkedIn Learning instructor, “Make Belonging Real in the Workplace”; 2024 LinkedIn Top Voice, Teambuilding.
- International Coaching Federation (ICF) accredited coach.
- Founder of Titese, an EDI consultancy working with clients including the UN, House of Commons, Bank of England, Google and Goldman Sachs.
- Featured in “Everyday Ubuntu” (Mungi Ngomane, Penguin), foreworded by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Biography
The gap in most inclusion programmes is not ambition, it is operational credibility. Statements of intent are easy to write. Changing how three thousand managers actually speak to each other on a Tuesday morning is harder, and that is the work Senda does every day inside BBC England, where he leads the Diversity and Inclusion portfolio across six regions.
That operational grounding is the reason his keynotes do not sound like generic DEI content. He is running the same programme internally that he is recommending to the audience, with the same budget pressures and the same sceptical middle managers. His LinkedIn Learning course, “Make Belonging Real in the Workplace”, distils that method into a curriculum organisations can deploy after he has left the stage.
The personal story is well known and deliberately useful. Ten years as a labourer in the UK, a Master’s from Oxford, and now President of the Oxford Black Alumni Network. Senda uses it not as inspiration, but as evidence: inclusion is decided by the everyday behaviour of people already inside the room, and that behaviour can change.
Clients include BBC, the UN, House of Commons, Bank of England, Google and Goldman Sachs. What they book him for is rarely a talk on diversity as a topic. They book him to shift the conversation from what the organisation says about inclusion to what its managers actually do on Monday.
Key speaking topics
- Inclusive leadership and manager behaviour
- Belonging at work
- Bias and everyday conduct
- Culture change inside large organisations
- Authenticity and bringing your whole self to work
- Career development and professional identity
- Transformational change and taking the organisation with you
Ideal for
- CHROs and heads of DEI designing the next phase of an inclusion programme that has stalled at policy level.
- Executive and senior leadership teams ahead of a culture change, restructure or “digital first” transformation.
- People managers across regionally dispersed organisations who carry the practical load of inclusion.
- Employee resource group leads and internal DEI networks looking for an external voice with operational authority.
Audience outcomes
- A sharper read of where their own inclusion programme is losing traction between executive intent and manager behaviour.
- Specific language for describing belonging, bias and conduct that holds up in difficult day-to-day conversations.
- A framework for connecting personal values to professional contribution that coaches and managers can reuse.
- Practical prompts from Senda’s LinkedIn Learning curriculum that can be taken back into team sessions.
- Renewed confidence among sceptical managers that this work is a leadership skill, not a compliance task.
Talks
A session on the behaviours that separate leaders who genuinely build belonging from those who only speak about it.
Key takeaways:
- The daily manager habits that create or erode inclusion at team level.
- How authenticity and empathy show up in decisions, not statements.
- Signals that tell a team whether inclusion is real inside this organisation.
A talk on the professional and organisational conditions that let people contribute fully at work.
Key takeaways:
- Why selective self-presentation drains engagement and retention.
- Practical tests for whether a team culture supports full contribution.
- The leader’s role in making “whole self” a reality rather than a slogan.
Senda’s core session, drawn from his LinkedIn Learning course, on making belonging measurable and operational.
Key takeaways:
- What belonging looks like in day-to-day team interactions.
- Where common programmes fall short and why policy alone does not move the dial.
- Prompts managers can use in one-to-ones and team meetings from Monday onwards.
A session on leading culture and structural change in dispersed, multi-regional organisations.
Key takeaways:
- How to hold inclusion steady during restructure or digital transformation.
- The communication practices that keep distributed teams aligned.
- Why the hardest work happens at middle management, and how to resource it.