Joanne Lockwood
Inclusion policies rarely change daily behaviour. Statements are published, training is delivered, and yet many employees still feel they cannot bring difficult parts of themselves to work. Leaders need a way to move from compliance language to lived practice, particularly around trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion, where uncertainty and fear of getting it wrong often produce silence rather than support.
Joanne Lockwood is an inclusive culture and belonging specialist who helps organisations turn DEI policy into everyday workplace behaviour, with particular depth in trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Joanne Lockwood
- A rare combination of lived experience as a transgender woman and the formal speaker credentials of a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I, which gives leaders both authenticity and confidence in how the message will land in a corporate room.
- A timely reading of what AI means for people and culture, drawn from two decades running IT businesses and her inclusion practice: how automated hiring, AI-assisted grievances, and an emerging “AI readiness divide” quietly decide who belongs at work and who gets left behind.
- Practical experience translating inclusion into operational HR practice through SEE Change Happen, the consultancy she founded after exiting a £3m IT services business she had run for two decades.
- A track record at scale with employers including Levi Strauss, lululemon EMEA, HarperCollins UK, Unilever, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Ogilvy, Molson Coors and Wates Group, across retail, professional services, housing and the NHS.
- A delivery style summarised by her own mantra, Smile, Engage, Educate, that lowers the temperature of difficult conversations and lets senior teams engage with trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion without defensiveness.
Biography highlights
- Founder and CEO, SEE Change Happen, a diversity, inclusion and belonging consultancy specialising in transgender awareness and workplace inclusion.
- Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I.
- Fellow of the Institute of Equality and Diversity Professionals.
- First openly transgender National President of Round Table Great Britain and Ireland.
- Host of the Inclusion Bites podcast and featured subject of the Channel 4 / RDF documentary The Making of Me.
- Former Trustee of akt, the LGBT+ youth homelessness charity, and volunteer with Beyond Reflections.
Biography
Most organisations have an inclusion statement. Far fewer have a workforce that knows how to act on it. The gap between published intent and daily behaviour is where culture either compounds or quietly erodes, and it is the space Joanne Lockwood has built her practice around.
SEE Change Happen, the consultancy she founded after a career that ran from the Royal Air Force to a £3m IT services business of 25 staff, works with employers to translate DEI policy into the language and habits of line managers. The work is grounded in trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion, where she has personal authority as a transgender woman, and extends into belonging and inclusive recruitment. Clients include Levi Strauss, lululemon EMEA, HarperCollins UK, Unilever, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Ogilvy, and Wates Group.
Her newest work takes the same lens to artificial intelligence. Drawing on her years running IT businesses, she treats AI as a culture and belonging question rather than a technical one: how automated hiring, AI-assisted grievances, and the gap she calls the “AI readiness divide” decide who gets designed in and who gets left behind. Her framing is blunt. AI does not create culture; it amplifies the culture it enters.
Recognition from her own profession reinforces the work. She is a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I and a Fellow of the Institute of Equality and Diversity Professionals, and her published thinking runs through the Inclusion Bites podcast and contributions to HRZone, The HRD, and Training Zone. She was the first openly transgender National President of Round Table Great Britain and Ireland, and the subject of Channel 4 and RDF’s documentary The Making of Me.
Key speaking topics
- AI, belonging and the human future of work
- Inclusive culture and belonging
- Trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion
- Inclusive leadership and engagement
- Workplace allyship
- Inclusive recruitment and hiring practice
- Culture change and DEI strategy
Ideal for
- CHROs, heads of DEI and employee experience leaders rebuilding inclusion practice beyond statements and training modules.
- Executive teams and boards preparing for substantive conversations on trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion in a contested public climate.
- Leadership and HR teams working out what AI means for their people, their hiring, and their culture.
- Talent acquisition and people-team leaders working on inclusive recruitment, onboarding and line-manager capability.
Audience outcomes
- A clearer view of where inclusion policy is and is not shaping daily workplace behaviour, and the specific points at which it breaks down.
- Direct, practical language for trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion that leaders and line managers can use without fear of getting it wrong.
- A practical way to treat AI as a culture and inclusion issue, including where human judgement has to stay in hiring and employee-relations decisions.
- A working definition of allyship that goes beyond visible support and into the everyday decisions managers make about hiring, promotion and team culture.
- Renewed confidence to engage with DEI as a leadership responsibility rather than an HR programme.
Talks
A practical, hype-free keynote that treats AI as a culture and leadership question rather than a technical one.
Key takeaways:
- Where AI amplifies existing bias in hiring, grievances, and everyday communication
- What the “AI readiness divide” means for who participates and who is left behind
- Where human judgement, governance, and ethics have to stay in the loop
Moving organisations past diversity metrics to cultures where people genuinely belong.
Key takeaways:
- Why published values and daily behaviour diverge, and where the gap shows
- The line-manager habits that build or erode belonging
- Practical steps that hold once the keynote is over
Why engagement tracks the culture leaders create, and how leaders lead inclusively without freezing for fear of getting it wrong.
Key takeaways:
- The traits that turn a group of individuals into a team
- How to give difficult conversations a productive shape
- Where leader behaviour, not policy, sets the tone
Evidence-based insight into LGBTQIA+ experience at work, grounded in lived experience.
Key takeaways:
- What everyday inclusion looks like beyond Pride month
- Direct, usable language for managers
- How allyship shows up in hiring, promotion, and team decisions
A joint fireside chat with Joanne and her wife Marie Manley on transition, relationships, and leading inclusion when the climate feels hard.
Key takeaways:
- Two connected perspectives on the same transition
- How partners and colleagues navigate change together
- Sustaining inclusion work under public pressure