Francesca Martinez
Inclusion has become a vocabulary problem inside most organisations. The language is fluent, the policies are written, and yet disabled employees, neurodivergent talent and anyone whose body or mind sits outside the default still report the same friction at work. The question senior leaders quietly ask is whether their inclusion programme is changing anything, or whether it has become a parallel function that runs alongside the real culture without altering it.
Francesca Martinez is a comedian, writer and campaigner who uses lived experience of disability to push organisations past inclusion language into inclusion behaviour.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Francesca Martinez
- She fronted the WOW petition that crossed 100,000 signatures and forced a main-chamber debate in the House of Commons in 2014, which is a concrete democratic outcome rather than an inclusion talking point.
- Her debut play All Of Us opened at the National Theatre’s Dorfman in 2022 under Ian Rickson, putting disability and welfare politics in front of a mainstream theatre audience, with Francesca shortlisted for the George Devine Award.
- What the **** Is Normal?! (Virgin Books, Penguin Random House) gives the room a single shared reference point on identity and difference that holds up outside the corporate inclusion vocabulary.
- She speaks from inside the experience, not about it, which removes the discomfort senior audiences often feel when an external consultant lectures them on disability.
- She works the room as a stand-up first, which means the message lands in audiences that are sceptical of conventional DEI keynotes.
Biography highlights
- First and only female winner of the Open Mic Award at the Edinburgh Festival (2000), and winner of the Edinburgh Fringe Media Network Award (2011).
- Author of What the **** Is Normal?! (Virgin Books, Penguin Random House, 2014); Bread and Roses Award runner-up and Chortle Best Comedy Book nominee.
- Wrote and starred in All of Us, National Theatre (Dorfman), 2022, directed by Ian Rickson; shortlisted for the George Devine Award.
- Her June 2019 Question Time appearance was called the show’s “best ever moment”, reaching 11 million views in its first week.
- The first disabled woman to perform on BBC Two’s Live at the Apollo, opening Series 11 in 2015; later featured in the BBC’s Access All Areas special.
- Fronted the WOW petition and secured a House of Commons main-chamber debate, February 2014.
- TEDxHousesOfParliament speaker (“Being Happy is a Political Act”) and performer at the World Economic Forum in Davos alongside Emma Thompson.
- Named to the BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour Power List (2014) and awarded two honorary doctorates for work on equality and inclusion.
Biography
Most inclusion programmes are written in a language that the people they are meant to help do not use. Francesca Martinez calls herself “wobbly”, refuses the medical vocabulary around cerebral palsy, and has spent twenty years showing what happens when someone with a disability narrates their own experience rather than being narrated about. The reframing sounds small. The downstream effect on a room of senior leaders is not.
The credentials sit in unusual places for a speaker on this topic. She was the first and only woman to win the Open Mic Award at the Edinburgh Festival, in 2000, and went on to write What the **** Is Normal?!, published by Virgin Books, which was a runner-up for the Bread and Roses Award and a Chortle Best Comedy Book nominee. Her debut play All Of Us, directed by Ian Rickson, opened in the Dorfman at the National Theatre in 2022, and Francesca was shortlisted for the George Devine Award for it.
The activism is the part most relevant to senior buyers thinking about substance over messaging. As the public face of the WOW (War on Welfare) campaign, she drove a petition past 100,000 signatures and forced a debate in the main chamber of the House of Commons in 2014, the first time disabled people had secured a main-chamber debate on an agenda of their own choosing. That is a measurable political result, not an inclusion narrative.
For an organisation, the value of booking her is specific. Senior audiences hear a writer and performer with mainstream theatrical and broadcast credentials make an argument about identity and belonging that has already been tested in Parliament and at the National Theatre. The conversation that follows tends to be about whether the company’s own inclusion work would survive that kind of scrutiny.
Key speaking topics
- Disability and inclusion at work
- Identity, difference and self-acceptance
- Resilience and lived experience
- Advocacy and the politics of welfare
- Storytelling as a tool for cultural change
- Mental health and wellbeing
Ideal for
- CHROs, heads of DEI and ERG sponsors building inclusion programmes that engage sceptical audiences.
- Leadership offsites and culture events where the goal is to move beyond inclusion language into behaviour change.
- International Day of Persons with Disabilities, Mental Health Awareness Week and similar moments where credibility of the speaker matters more than topic coverage.
Audience outcomes
- A sharper sense of how disabled and neurodivergent colleagues actually experience the workplace, narrated from the inside.
- A reference point (the book, the play, the WOW campaign) the audience can carry back into their own inclusion conversations.
- Permission to question the corporate vocabulary of inclusion without abandoning the work.
- A break from the standard motivational register; the room laughs first and then commits.