Ebony-Jewel Rainford-Brent
Inclusion programmes rarely survive the gap between launch and operational reality. The pipelines stay narrow, the data flatters the brochure, and the original sponsors lose interest before the change is embedded. Leaders need a credible voice on what it actually takes to move representation from intention to institutional practice.
Ebony-Jewel Rainford-Brent MBE is a World Cup-winning England cricketer, broadcaster and ECB Non-Executive Director who helps organisations turn inclusion ambition into operating practice and lift performance under pressure.
Full Profile
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