Miranda Brawn
Boards are being asked to govern sustainability, AI risk and inclusion at the same time, often with the same committee, and often with the same hour on the agenda. The instruments most directors were trained on were not designed for this. The question is no longer whether to address these pressures, but what defensible governance actually looks like when the political wind on each is moving in a different direction.
Miranda Brawn helps boards translate sustainability, inclusion and AI oversight into governance practice that holds up under regulatory, investor and political scrutiny, drawing on her work as a non-executive director, barrister and author of The Brawn Review.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Miranda Brawn
- She brings the perspective of a sitting non-executive director across an NHS Foundation Trust, FTSE 100 sustainability funds and AI start-ups, so her recommendations land as practitioner advice rather than commentary from outside the boardroom.
- The Brawn Review, launched at the House of Lords in October 2025, gives clients access to a named, evidenced governance framework with 50 specific recommendations, not a general lecture on why diversity matters.
- She is a barrister called to the Bar of England and Wales with an MBA and academic appointments at Roehampton and previously Oxford, which gives her credibility with general counsel, audit committees and regulators in equal measure.
- Her foundation has run the UK’s first diversity leadership lecture and scholarship programme since 2016, giving her a decade of evidence on what actually shifts representation, useful for clients tired of pledges that do not move numbers.
- She covers ESG, AI ethics and inclusive leadership from the same vantage point, which suits boards that no longer want three different speakers for three governance topics that have collapsed into one.
Biography highlights
- Author of The Brawn Review: Boardroom Sustainability, Inclusion and Corporate Governance, launched at the UK House of Lords in October 2025.
- Honorary Professor in Business and Law, University of Roehampton; former Senior Visiting Fellow, University of Oxford.
- Barrister, Bar of England and Wales; MBA; Honorary Doctor of Letters (Brighton); Honorary Doctor of Laws (University of Law).
- Non-executive director, chair, trustee and advisor across an NHS Foundation Trust, FTSE 100 sustainability funds with over GBP 2 billion AUM, VC funds and AI start-ups including X0PA AI.
- Former Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan; founder and CEO of The Miranda Brawn Diversity Leadership Foundation (2016).
- Financial Times Top 30 Ethnic Minority Leaders; Prime Minister’s Point of Light; Woman of the Year, Women in Finance Awards.
Biography
The Brawn Review landed at the House of Lords in October 2025 with 50 recommendations on boardroom sustainability, inclusion and governance, drawn from contributions by 1,000 global board members and endorsed by Lord Davies of the 2011 Davies Review. It is the work of an author who sits on the boards she is writing about, not a researcher describing them from outside.
Miranda Brawn is a barrister, MBA, honorary professor at the University of Roehampton and former Senior Visiting Fellow at Oxford, where the review began. Her board portfolio runs across the UK’s largest NHS Foundation Trust, FTSE 100 sustainability funds with more than GBP 2 billion in assets under management, venture capital funds and AI start-ups. Before the boardroom she traded for Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.
Most inclusion speakers offer advocacy. Her contribution is governance design: what a sustainability committee should actually do, how directors should oversee AI deployment, how inclusion outcomes should be measured against legal and fiduciary tests. The Miranda Brawn Diversity Leadership Foundation, which she founded in 2016, has run a decade of scholarship and mentoring programmes that give her a longitudinal view of what shifts representation in finance, law and technology.
Her recognition reflects the breadth of that practice rather than a single domain: Financial Times Top 30 Ethnic Minority Leaders, Prime Minister’s Point of Light, Woman of the Year at the Women in Finance Awards, and Top 50 Afro-Caribbean Leadership Award presented at the House of Lords.
Key speaking topics
- Boardroom governance of sustainability, inclusion and AI
- Inclusive and values-based leadership
- ESG strategy and board oversight
- AI ethics and responsible technology
- Non-executive director practice
- Diversity, equity and inclusion in regulated industries
- The Brawn Review recommendations
Ideal for
- Boards, chairs and non-executive directors reviewing committee structure on ESG, AI and inclusion
- General counsel, company secretaries and heads of governance preparing for investor and regulator scrutiny
- CHROs and chief sustainability officers translating board commitments into operating practice
- Financial services, healthcare and professional services firms with concentrated DEI and governance exposure
Audience outcomes
- A named governance framework, The Brawn Review, with specific recommendations on board composition, committee remits and oversight of AI and sustainability.
- A clearer view of where DEI commitments sit in fiduciary and regulatory terms, not only reputational ones.
- A practitioner reading of what NEDs are actually being asked to evidence on inclusion and ESG by investors and regulators.
- Evidence from a decade of scholarship and mentoring programmes on which interventions move representation in finance, law and technology.