Cultural Intelligence

Why organisations work with Marina Ibrahim She has run cross-cultural integration work inside named multinationals including BMW Group, Bentley, Nike, Kellogg’s, PepsiCo, BP, UBS and Deutsche Telekom, across automotive, FMCG, financial services and life sciences. Her own biography (British-German, born to a German mother and Egyptian father, bilingual in English and German) is the lived case study behind the work, which lands with international audiences in a way a single-culture expert cannot match. She brings instrument-led rigour, not opinion. GLOBE+, her signature framework, integrates Country Navigator, Wiley Everything DiSC Certified Partner, Wiley Five Behaviours Certified Partner (Lencioni’s Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team), GlobalDISC and ICQ Growth 2.0 into diagnostic data on team performance. She has worked the British-German interface specifically, including post-merger cultural integration, where most cross-cultural speakers stay at a generic level. Externally judged: FSB West Midlands Diversity and Inclusion Award 2024 for the consultancy she founded, and Professional Speaker of the Year Staffordshire 2025. Biography highlights Founder of Globility Insights, the West Midlands-based cultural agility and inclusive leadership consultancy she established in 2011. Creator of GLOBE+, her signature cultural agility framework, used with multinational clients across automotive, FMCG, financial services and life sciences. Senior Culture Coach at Country Navigator, the cultural intelligence training platform. Federation of Small Businesses West Midlands Diversity and Inclusion Award 2024; Professional Speaker of the Year, Staffordshire 2025; Cartus Service Excellence Award 2020. Client organisations include BMW Group, Bentley, Nike, Kellogg’s, PepsiCo, EMI, Commerzbank, BP, UBS, Deutsche Telekom and Wood PLC. Wiley Everything DiSC Certified Partner; Wiley Five Behaviours Certified Partner (Lencioni’s Five Behaviours of a Cohesive Team); Country Navigator, GlobalDISC and ICQ Growth 2.0 Coach; MirrorMIRROR Certified Team Coach; NLP Practitioner; MCIM Chartered Marketer. British and German national with Egyptian heritage; bilingual English and German. Biography Most multinational organisations treat culture as a soft variable. Strategy is hard, culture is decoration. The teams running the actual work know better. They are the ones absorbing the friction when a German engineering function tries to land a project inside a Brazilian commercial team, or when a British acquirer tells a Japanese subsidiary that “nothing will change”. Marina Ibrahim has spent more than 25 years inside that gap. Through Globility Insights, the consultancy she founded in 2011, she has worked with BMW Group, Bentley, Nike, Kellogg’s, PepsiCo, BP, UBS and Deutsche Telekom on the parts of cross-cultural collaboration that do not show up on a strategy slide: trust between merged teams, decision-making across British and German operating styles, the difference between an inclusion statement and a multicultural team that actually functions. Her own profile is part of the credibility. Born to a German mother and Egyptian father, British-German, bilingual in English and German, she is the lived case study behind the work. The method is not. GLOBE+, her signature framework, runs senior teams through Country Navigator, Wiley Everything DiSC, Wiley Five Behaviours, GlobalDISC and ICQ Growth 2.0, so leaders leave with diagnostic data on how their teams actually operate, not a set of stories. In 2024, the Federation of Small Businesses named Globility the West Midlands Diversity and Inclusion Award winner, an externally judged signal that the practice she built holds up under scrutiny. For senior teams trying to make global structures actually perform, that is the relevant test. Key speaking topics Cultural agility as a competitive advantage Inclusive leadership in multinational organisations High-performing multicultural teams Post-merger cultural integration British and German business cultures and operating styles Unconscious bias and inclusive decision-making in practice Leading internationally distributed and hybrid teams Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads embedding inclusion beyond policy into team behaviour Executive teams running cross-border integrations or post-merger collaboration Global function heads managing multicultural and internationally distributed teams Leadership development programmes for senior leaders preparing for international roles Audience outcomes A working definition of cultural agility that names what behaviours actually shift performance across borders A diagnostic view of where their own multicultural teams break down, drawn from established cultural instruments rather than opinion Specific moves leaders can use the next day to manage British, German and broader European operating differences A sharper sense of where current inclusion efforts are stalling and what to do about it

Why organisations work with Neelu Kaur She treats workplace silence as a structural problem. Most speakers in this space coach individuals to be more confident; her intervention sits in meeting design and the conversational rules that decide who gets to challenge a senior idea. The Self-Trust Recession is her named diagnosis of the moment: capable leaders, surrounded by AI and competing opinion, are second-guessing themselves and outsourcing decision authority. Her Self-Trust Reset framework is the way back. Her cross-cultural lens, the collective “we” she was raised in meeting the individualistic “I” of American corporate life, makes her credible to global and AAPI audiences who have lived that gap themselves. Her tools combine cognitive and body-based techniques. The pairing of organisational psychology training (Columbia, NYU Stern) and sixteen years of yoga and Ayurveda teaching produces practical methods her audiences can apply in the next meeting they walk into. Be Your Own Cheerleader, published by Post Hill Press in January 2023, gives her work a published thesis a senior buyer can read before commissioning. Biography highlights Author of Be Your Own Cheerleader (Post Hill Press, 2023), a guide to self-advocacy that addresses the cultural gap between collective and individualistic workplace norms. MA in Social and Organizational Psychology, Columbia University, and BS from NYU Stern School of Business. Certified NLP Master Practitioner and Coach, NLP Center of New York. Client list includes Google, Bloomberg, Sony Music, RBC, Ernst & Young, and Jefferies. Featured on Morning Brew’s Good Work and TV Asia / SEEMA Network’s Sundays with Seema. Chief Guide at Chief (NYC), with over sixteen years as a yoga teacher and Ayurveda practitioner. Biography Most organisations have more talent than they have contribution. Capable people stay quiet at exactly the moments their judgement is most needed, and what looks like alignment is often silence. This is the tension Neelu Kaur takes on. Trained as an organisational psychologist at Columbia and with an undergraduate degree from NYU Stern, she has spent over fifteen years inside Fortune 500 organisations. The question her work returns to is why capable people stay quiet in the moments that matter. Her client list, which includes Google, Bloomberg, Sony Music, RBC, Ernst & Young, and Jefferies, gives her a view across financial services, consulting, and tech. Her current diagnosis is what she calls the Self-Trust Recession. Leaders are surrounded by AI tools and competing opinion, and the quiet effect is that capable people are outsourcing their own judgement. The Self-Trust Reset framework she has built around this idea is a way to recognise when fear is shaping a decision and rebuild internal authority before acting on it. The earlier strand of her work runs through Be Your Own Cheerleader (Post Hill Press, January 2023). She wrote the book out of her own experience growing up between two cultures: Indian at home, American at work. It examines why people raised in collective ‘we’ cultures struggle to advocate for themselves in workplaces built around the individualistic ‘I’. That cultural lens still shapes her work and is part of what makes her credible to global teams and AAPI audiences who have lived the same code-switch. Key speaking topics Self-trust and decision-making in high-pressure environments Self-advocacy in the workplace Cross-cultural communication in global teams The cost of consensus and over-collaboration AAPI and underrepresented voices in corporate life Burnout and sustainable leadership Ideal for Leadership teams in Fortune 500 environments where decision speed and contribution quality are the bottleneck CHROs, Chief Learning Officers, and L&D leaders building cultures of voice and accountability DEI, AAPI, and Employee Resource Group programmes looking for content that goes beyond representation language High-potential talent and mid-career professionals working across cultures in global organisations Audience outcomes A clear way to recognise when fear, perfectionism, or comparison is shaping a decision instead of judgement Behavioural tools to speak up in high-stakes moments without overshooting or shutting down A vocabulary for the cultural gap between collective and individualistic workplace norms, useful for global team conversations A diagnostic for where consensus and over-discussion are slowing the team’s decisions

Dr. Paolo Petrocelli: Pioneering Leadership in Arts and Cultural Diplomacy Dr. Paolo Petrocelli (PhD, EMBA, FRSA) stands at the forefront of international cultural leadership, serving as the Head of Dubai Opera and shaping the performing arts landscape across the globe. Driven by a firm belief in the catalytic power of culture, arts, and education, Paolo is acclaimed for mobilizing change, development, and international cooperation through strategic cultural initiatives and music diplomacy. Recognized among “The Dubai 100” most influential personalities (Arabian Business) and featured in the “30 Under 40” Middle Eastern leaders (Arabian Business), Paolo’s vision and achievements have earned him distinctions from institutions such as the World Economic Forum—where he was named a Young Global Leader in 2023—and the Italian Republic, which awarded him the title of Knight of the Order of Merit in 2025. Fast Company, Fortune, and Cartier have also honored his impact and creativity as a cultural innovator. As Founder and President of EMMA for Peace—the largest Euro-Mediterranean nonprofit promoting peace through music—Paolo actively forges cross-cultural bonds and serves as a key advisor and cultural diplomacy officer for major organizations, including the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates and the UNESCO youth system. His guidance extends to world-renowned artists, currently acting as cultural advisor to the band Coldplay. With over 15 years of leadership across the public and private sectors in Europe and the Middle East, Paolo’s previous appointments include Director General of the Stauffer Center for Strings, strategic roles at the Royal Opera House Muscat, Rome Opera House, and major music institutions in Italy. He holds board and advisory positions with elite cultural and arts organizations throughout Europe, is an Honorary President and cofounder of Opera for Peace, and has played a pivotal role in shaping youth leadership in the cultural sector through UNESCO and the World Economic Forum. Committed to nurturing the next generation, Paolo is a frequent lecturer at prestigious universities—Yale, MIT, NYU, Paris-Sorbonne, Bocconi University, and more. He is a leading academic voice in cultural management and diplomacy, currently coordinating the Cultural Diplomacy Program at Bocconi University, and has spearheaded innovative research projects at Harvard’s metaLAB and MIT Media Lab. His academic credentials span a PhD in Cultural Economics (IULM, Milan), an Executive MBA (SDA Bocconi), advanced degrees in musicology and violin performance, and leadership qualifications from the University of Oxford. A respected journalist and thought leader, Paolo contributes to Forbes, Arabian Business, Huffington Post, and serves on prestigious editorial councils. He is a LinkedIn Top Voice and TEDx Speaker, known for amplifying the importance of cultural diplomacy worldwide. His pioneering work continues to inspire collaboration, excellence, and progressive thinking within the arts and beyond.

Why organisations work with Elena Boheme She has run the full development lifecycle, from hotel operator design management and fit-out contracting through to property M&A and family office advisory. That breadth is rare; most advisors sit on one side of the design, build, or operate split. She co-founded Metrix Projects and Metrix Advisory in the Kingdom, and sits on the advisory board of RED Summit KSA and the Modern Building Summit KSA. That places her inside the rooms where Saudi development decisions are made, not adjacent to them. She works credibly across the capital stack, advising AETOS MFO on luxury asset and yacht financing and Triversa Holding at executive board level. International family offices use her to translate Gulf real estate exposure into something they can actually govern. She operates in English, French, and Russian fluently, with working Arabic and Mandarin, and has executed projects in China, Macau, Korea, Monaco, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Cross-cultural deal structuring is a practised skill, not a claim. Biography highlights Co-founder and Development Director, Metrix Projects; co-founder, Metrix Advisory and AETOS MFO. Executive Board Member, Triversa Holding. Strategic Advisor on Project Management, Coldwell Banker Commercial Saudi Arabia. Advisory Board member, RED Summit KSA, and Advisory Board member plus moderator, Modern Building Summit KSA 2025. Speaker and moderator across AlMashtal Knowledge of Design 2024, Cityscape Saudi Arabia 2024, Hospitality Leadership and F&B Forum UAE 2025, Furtech Show Dubai 2025, and Women in Private Equity Forum London 2025. Host of LinkedIn Live series Development Dialogues and author of the LinkedIn newsletter Project Within. Biography Saudi Arabia’s development pipeline is the largest in the world and the least forgiving. International capital arrives expecting Dubai and discovers a market with its own regulatory architecture, its own localisation requirements, and its own definition of what delivered means. Elena Boheme’s work sits inside that translation problem. She co-founded Metrix Projects and Metrix Advisory in Riyadh to do one specific job: take hospitality and residential developments from concept through to operational handover without the gaps that quietly consume budget. Before that, she spent a decade on hotel operator design management, fit-out contracting, and property development across China, Macau, Korea, Monaco, and the UAE, including hospitality projects valued at over two billion US dollars in Korea and Macau. A second strand of her work runs through capital. She co-founded AETOS MFO, a multi-family office advising on luxury real estate and yacht financing, and sits as an executive board member at Triversa Holding and strategic advisor on project management to Coldwell Banker Commercial Saudi Arabia. The combination matters: developers usually understand bricks, family offices usually understand money, and Saudi-bound investors need someone who can hold both sides of the conversation at once. She moderates and chairs across the Kingdom’s main industry platforms, including the RED Summit KSA advisory board, the Modern Building Summit KSA, Cityscape Saudi Arabia, and AlMashtal Knowledge of Design, and hosts the LinkedIn Live series Development Dialogues. The track record is operational rather than academic. For a leadership team weighing a Vision 2030 entry, that is the more useful kind of credibility. Key speaking topics Project deliverability in Saudi Arabia Localisation and market entry strategy for the Kingdom Real estate development lifecycle, from design through operations Cross-cultural deal structuring in the Gulf Women in real estate development and leadership Family office exposure to Gulf real estate Ideal for International hospitality operators and developers planning entry into Saudi Arabia Family offices and private investors building Gulf real estate exposure Boards of project management, design, and construction firms expanding into the Kingdom C-suite teams at firms shifting from regional MENA presence to substantive KSA delivery Audience outcomes A clear-eyed view of what separates a signed Saudi deal from a delivered asset The localisation choices that decide whether a foreign operator can actually execute in the Kingdom A working map of how design, build, operate, and capital decisions interact across a Gulf development Specific failure modes she has seen at the hand-off between international design teams and local execution A perspective on Saudi development from someone embedded in it, not commenting from outside

Why organisations work with Levi Roots Few founders can speak with authority on what happens after the famous television moment. Levi has lived the full arc from Dragons’ Den pitch to national distribution, brand extension, restaurant operation, and category exit. His Reggae Reggae Sauce became Sainsbury’s fastest-selling product in six weeks, a verifiable retail data point that grounds his story in commercial substance, not anecdote. He brings a distinctive blend of performance and persuasion to a stage. The guitar is not decoration; it is the brand mechanic that won the original Dragons’ Den room. His career covers product development, retail buyer negotiation, licensing, restaurant launch, and brand stewardship across nearly two decades. That spread is rare in motivational speakers. Biography highlights Founder of Reggae Reggae Sauce; secured £50,000 investment from Peter Jones and Richard Farleigh on Dragons’ Den in 2007. Brand portfolio includes sauces, ready meals, soft drinks, and desserts stocked nationally across UK supermarkets. Operated the Levi Roots Caribbean Smokehouse at Westfield Stratford City, 2015 to 2019. Author of six cookbooks and the business book You Can Get It If You Really Want, published by Collins in 2011. MOBO Award nominee for Best Reggae Act, 1998, for the album Free Your Mind. Honorary Fellow of the Royal Agricultural University. Biography Reggae Reggae Sauce arrived in Sainsbury’s in 2007 and outsold Heinz Ketchup within six weeks. That single retail fact, more than the famous guitar pitch on Dragons’ Den, is the reason Levi Roots is taken seriously by commercial audiences. It marked one of the fastest retail launches the supermarket had recorded. The brand has since extended into ready meals, soft drinks, desserts, restaurant partnerships, and a flagship Caribbean Smokehouse in Westfield Stratford City. Each step required a different commercial discipline, from product development and licensing to retail buyer negotiation and hospitality operation. Levi has worked through all of them with Peter Jones still on the cap table. Before the sauce, there was a Brixton kitchen, a Notting Hill Carnival stall trading for more than twenty years, and a MOBO-nominated music career under the name Free Your Mind. That backstory matters because it explains the brand. The product was not a marketing construct. It was a recipe with a performance attached to it. On stage, Levi works the same instinct. He plays the guitar, tells the Windrush family story, and walks audiences through what actually happens when a domestic recipe meets a national retail buyer. The argument is for founders, sales teams, and culture-led brands that need a working example of how authenticity translates into shelf space. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and start-up scaling Brand building from personal narrative Retail launch and supermarket distribution Resilience and reinvention Cultural heritage as commercial advantage Storytelling and performance in business Ideal for Sales conferences and retail customer events Founder programmes, accelerators, and entrepreneurship awards Diversity and inclusion events seeking a commercial voice After-dinner and motivational keynotes for large mixed audiences Audience outcomes A concrete account of how a kitchen-table product reaches a national supermarket shelf. A live demonstration of how performance and personality function as brand assets. Direct lessons on negotiating with investors and retail buyers, drawn from a known case. An entertaining, music-led keynote that leaves a room energised rather than lectured.

Why organisations work with Wema Hoover She ran global DEI inside four of the most scrutinised employers in the world: Google, Pfizer, Sanofi and Bristol-Myers Squibb. The advice is shaped by what survives in regulated, multinational environments. She separates the politics of DEI from the operating substance, which lets boards keep the practice going without the labels that now invite litigation and activist pressure. Her work covers the full stack: hiring, promotion, belonging, manager capability, and how leadership teams behave under public scrutiny. Not awareness training. She writes for Fast Company on the structural questions, gender investment, leadership double standards, beyond the DEI backlash, which means buyers get a thinker, not a workshop facilitator. Coqual Hidden Brain Drain Task Force membership signals she works alongside the most serious researchers in this field, not adjacent to them. Biography highlights Former Global Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Google Former Chief Diversity Officer / Global Head of DEI at Pfizer, Sanofi and Bristol-Myers Squibb Published contributor at Fast Company, Inc. and Diversity Magazine Member, Coqual Hidden Brain Drain Task Force Board member, Ten By Three MSc Human Resource Management and Master’s Certificate in Organizational Change Management, The New School; BA Psychology, Rutgers; GPHR certified Biography The DEI conversation has fractured. Court rulings, shareholder activism and political pressure have made the language toxic in some markets, while the underlying organisational questions, who gets hired, who gets promoted, who feels they belong, are now more commercially material than they have been in a decade. Wema Hoover spent the last fifteen years running that practice inside large, regulated, global employers. As Global Head of DEI at Google, and in equivalent senior roles at Pfizer, Sanofi and Bristol-Myers Squibb, she designed and operated inclusion programmes in the kinds of environments where the work has to clear legal, board, regulator and workforce scrutiny. That operator background is what makes her useful now. She is not arguing for DEI as a value; she is showing leadership teams how to keep the operating substance, hiring discipline, manager capability, advancement pipelines, belonging metrics, without the rhetorical scaffolding that has become a liability. Her Fast Company writing and her “Beyond the DEI Backlash” work track the same argument in public. She holds an MSc in Human Resource Management and a Master’s-level Certificate in Organizational Change Management from The New School, a BA in Psychology from Rutgers, and a Global Professional in Human Resources certification. She sits on Coqual’s Hidden Brain Drain Task Force, the working group most senior corporate DEI heads consult on talent equity research. Key speaking topics Inclusion strategy after the DEI backlash Belonging and culture inside global, regulated employers Women’s advancement, sponsorship and the leadership double standard Manager capability for inclusive teams Cross-cultural leadership in multinational workforces Executive coaching for senior leaders navigating cultural change Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers managing inclusion programmes through political and legal headwinds Boards and ExCos that need to reset their position on DEI without abandoning the substance Global employers with regulated workforces (pharma, tech, financial services) where inclusion is tied to talent risk Senior leadership development programmes for newly promoted women and underrepresented executives Audience outcomes A clear read on what has changed in the DEI landscape, in the US and globally, and what that means for their own programme design A working distinction between inclusion as compliance theatre and inclusion as operating capability Practical decisions on which existing initiatives to keep, which to retire and which to rename Confidence in how to brief their board on DEI in the current environment without overpromising or retreating A sharper view of where sponsorship and advocacy, not training, actually move the dial on women’s advancement

Why organisations work with Onyeka Nubia Brings primary-source historical research to a conversation that has become dominated by opinion and ideology, giving inclusion content intellectual credibility rather than activist framing. Has spent a decade rewriting how British history teaches diversity, with seminars in roughly half of UK universities that teach history, so the methodology travels into corporate contexts with academic weight. Author of Blackamoores and England’s Other Countrymen, the two reference works most cited in debates on Black presence in pre-modern Britain. Reframes a contested topic on factual ground. Equally comfortable at the Houses of Parliament, the National Portrait Gallery and on BBC and Channel 4 history programming, which means the register adjusts to the room without losing substance. Useful precisely because he does not sound like a DEI consultant. The frame is historical, cultural and intellectual, which is the register many boards now prefer. Biography highlights Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Nottingham Fellow of the Royal Historical Society Advance HE National Teaching Fellow, recognised for embedding diversity in university history curricula Author of Blackamoores: Africans in Tudor England (2013) and England’s Other Countrymen: Black Tudor Society (2019) PhD by publication, University of East Anglia Keynote presenter at the Houses of Parliament, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland Television contributor for BBC’s Digging for Britain and History Cold Case, Channel 5’s Walking Victorian Britain, and Channel 4’s London’s Lost Graveyard and The Queens Who Changed the World Over fifty articles in History Today, BBC History Magazine, European History Quarterly and the Times Literary Supplement Biography For most of the last decade, the inclusion conversation inside large organisations has been carried by HR language and political framing. That register is now strained. Boards want substance, not slogans, and the people leading inclusion work need a deeper well to draw from. Onyeka Nubia offers that well. As Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nottingham and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, his research has rewritten what is known about Black presence in pre-modern Britain. Blackamoores and England’s Other Countrymen are now standard references on Tudor diversity, drawn from parish registers, court records and primary archives rather than secondary commentary. The Advance HE National Teaching Fellowship recognises a parallel achievement: a body of curriculum work, delivered in roughly half of the UK universities that teach history, that has changed how the subject is taught. The methodology, evidence first, identity later, is exactly what corporate audiences are reaching for as the DEI conversation moves out of advocacy and into substance. His broadcasting work, from Digging for Britain to The Queens Who Changed the World, sharpens the public-facing register. The audience he is most useful to is a senior leadership team that wants to keep talking about inclusion seriously, without the language that has stopped working. Key speaking topics Black British history and the Tudor period Cultural intelligence and national identity Diversity, equity and inclusion grounded in historical evidence Decolonising knowledge and curriculum Race, otherness and the British imagination Renaissance and pre-modern multiculturalism Storytelling and historical method Ideal for CHROs and heads of inclusion looking to reset the intellectual frame for their DEI work Boards and executive teams under pressure on the politics of inclusion who want substance over signalling Cultural and educational institutions reviewing how they curate history, identity and audience Leadership development programmes that want a serious treatment of cultural intelligence Audience outcomes A historically grounded language for diversity and identity that holds up to scrutiny A clearer view of how British national identity has been constructed, and what that means for inclusion now Confidence to lead inclusion conversations on evidence rather than ideology Exposure to the primary sources that reshape commonly held assumptions about race in British history A sharper sense of how curriculum and culture change actually happens inside institutions

Why organisations work with Furkan Karayel She speaks to engineering leaders as a former engineer. Ten years across multinational tech firms in Ireland gave her a working vocabulary for the room. Inclusive Intelligence, her book, gives line managers a behavioural framework rather than a values statement. It is the artefact she leaves with leadership teams. She lectures on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Master’s programme at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology. The academic grounding sits alongside the practitioner experience. She has been recognised by named bodies including the WomenTech Global Awards and the International Diversity Leadership Awards, and sits on the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director, Diversein.com Author, Inclusive Intelligence: How to be a Role Model for Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace Associate lecturer, EDI Master’s programme, Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology Board member, Women For Election Ireland Speaker of the Year, WomenTech Global Awards Member, Harvard Business Review Advisory Council Biography Most inclusion programmes inside technology companies are designed by people who have never written production code. That gap shows up in the language, the metrics and the interventions. Furkan Karayel started her career as a software systems test engineer in Athlone, then spent a decade across multinational tech firms in Ireland in DevOps, automation, integration and support roles. She founded Diversein.com when she realised that, in her words, the action piece behind the diversity vocabulary was missing. The work that followed is documented in Inclusive Intelligence, a book written for line managers rather than chief people officers. It treats inclusion as a leadership behaviour, observable and learnable, not a values position. The framework has carried into her teaching on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Master’s programme at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, where she lectures alongside her commercial work. Her credentials sit across academic, commercial and civic categories. She holds a seat on the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, serves on the board of Women For Election Ireland, and was named in the EUClid Network’s Top 100 Women in Social Enterprise. Named awards include Speaker of the Year at the WomenTech Global Awards and the Diversity and Inclusion Role Model in Business honour from the International Diversity Leadership Awards. For technology businesses that have already invested in DEI and want a more useful conversation than the one they have been having, Karayel offers a practitioner’s argument rooted in the realities of engineering culture. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership in technology organisations Women in tech retention and progression Cultural intelligence across multilingual teams Bias-free decision-making for line managers Authentic leadership development Female founder and entrepreneur enablement Ideal for Engineering and product leadership teams inside multinational tech businesses CHROs and heads of DEI under pressure to convert programme spend into behavioural outcomes Women-in-tech networks and ERGs seeking content with technical credibility Conferences serving founders, female entrepreneurs and STEM professionals Audience outcomes A behavioural definition of inclusion managers can apply on Monday Specific practices for reducing bias inside engineering and product decisions A clearer view of why technical women leave, and what changes the equation Language for inclusive leadership grounded in lived practitioner experience

Why organisations work with Yael Leibovitz Tannenbaum She has spent two decades inside the hiring rooms of financial and technology organisations, so her recommendations target the specific points where bias enters a recruitment process. Her work with Mekorot’s Committee for the Advancement of Women and Haredi Women In Tech gives her a track record on one of the harder workforce integration problems: bringing ultra-Orthodox women into mainstream Israeli technology employment. Co-developed “The Double-Glass Ceiling” with Chani Zisman, a talk delivered at the European Parliament that translates the secular and ultra-Orthodox divide into terms a mixed audience can act on. Trains hiring managers in practical interview redesign, not abstract awareness, which means HR teams leave with changes they can put into a process the following week. Biography highlights Twenty-plus years in HR and recruitment across financial services and technology Staff training delivery at SCE Shamoon College of Engineering Manager preparation programmes at Israel Electric Corporation Work with Mekorot’s Committee for the Advancement of Women Co-delivered talks at the European Parliament and the Women and Economy conference in India Active engagement with the Haredi Women In Tech community Biography Most diversity programmes are built around the wrong question. They ask how an organisation describes itself to candidates, when the harder question is how the organisation reads candidates in the room. Yael Leibovitz Tannenbaum has spent two decades on the inside of that problem, working with financial and technology employers whose recruitment processes were quietly filtering out the people they said they wanted to hire. Her training is in HR and recruitment. Her practical reputation comes from a specific seam in Israeli workforce policy: bringing ultra-Orthodox women into secular technology and financial sector employment, where neither side of the table has been trained to read the other. Her work with Mekorot’s Committee for the Advancement of Women and with Haredi Women In Tech operates directly on that translation problem. The signature output of this work is “The Double-Glass Ceiling,” co-developed with Chani Zisman and delivered at the European Parliament, the Women and Economy conference in India, and to the Prague Jewish community. The talk makes the secular-religious workplace divide legible to audiences who have no working knowledge of it, then identifies the specific decisions through which mixed teams either close the gap or reinforce it. Alongside the keynote work, she trains hiring managers and HR teams in interview redesign and conscious decision-making. The format is closer to a workshop than a lecture, and the result is process change rather than a refreshed values statement. Key speaking topics Inclusive recruitment and interview design Unconscious bias in hiring decisions Cross-cultural workforce integration Storytelling for career advancement Decision-making under organisational complexity Workforce participation of underrepresented groups Ideal for CHROs and heads of talent acquisition reviewing hiring processes DEI leads designing programmes that survive the interview stage Hiring managers and interview panels in technology and financial services Boards examining workforce participation across underrepresented communities Audience outcomes A clearer view of where bias enters the recruitment funnel and which interventions actually move the numbers Practical interview tools that hiring managers can apply in the next round of recruitment A working understanding of the cultural and linguistic frictions that block integration of underrepresented groups Sharper instincts for the difference between cultural fit and capability when assessing candidates

Fleur East – Presenter, Singer, Dancer, Writer & Fitness Expert Fleur has established herself as one of the UK’s most respected and likeable broadcasters, particularly as host of Hits Radio’s nationwide Breakfast show and Strictly Come Dancing spin off show, Strictly: It Takes Two on BBC Two. Fleur has appeared in some of the UK’s most beloved family TV programs starting with her successful turn in ITV’s X Factor 2014, where she became the first act to top the UK chart during the competition with her cover of ‘Uptown Funk.’ In 2018, Fleur made it to the final four of ITV’s ‘I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here’ and since 2019, has appeared as a series presenter on ‘Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway’ for ITV One. Fleur also hosted new ITV Saturday night show, The Void alongside Ashley Banjo. Away from her TV work, Fleur continues to sing, dance and perform at shows and festivals around the country. Fleur is also a talented actress who has appeared in Apple TV drama, Ted Lasso and is performing the role of Miss Meesha in CBBC drama, Phoenix Rise which airs May 2024. Fleur launched a haircare business with her sister ‘Kurl Kitchen’ in 2024 – based on the challenges that they faced with their hair growing up and how they have come to fully embrace their natural curls.

Why organisations work with Ritula Shah Fifteen years anchoring BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight gives her the editorial reflexes to keep a senior panel honest under time pressure, on the record, without losing the audience. A working seat on the RUSI Advisory Board means she walks into defence, security and geopolitics briefings already inside the conversation, not learning it from a brief. Reporting experience from Guantanamo Bay, China, India, Brazil and Jordan gives her first-hand reference points when a panel drifts into abstraction on foreign policy or human rights. She is one of a small number of UK broadcasters trusted by ministers, regulators and dissenting voices to chair a discussion that needs to be both serious and broadcast-quality. Her ambassadorial work with the British Asian Trust and trusteeship of INIVA make her a credible host for organisations who want representation handled without performance. Biography highlights Lead presenter, The World Tonight, BBC Radio 4 (15 years, to 2023). Former presenter, The Real Story (BBC World Service), Woman’s Hour, The World Today, One to One. Current weekday-evening presenter, Calm Classics, Classic FM. Advisory Board member, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Ambassador, British Asian Trust; trustee, INIVA. Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of Warwick (2019). Biography The World Tonight is the BBC Radio 4 programme senior leaders, diplomats and ministers tend to listen to on the drive home. Ritula Shah presented it for fifteen years. That fact alone places her in a small group of UK broadcasters who have spent a working career interrogating finance ministers, foreign secretaries, sanctioned oligarchs, generals and dissidents on the record, in real time, with no second take. The geographical footprint matters here. She has reported from Guantanamo Bay, China, India, Brazil, Jordan, Finland and Germany, and covered the Soviet collapse, 9/11 from New York, multiple US and UK elections and the slow grind of Brexit. When a panel on supply chains, sanctions or political risk drifts into theory, she pulls it back to a place she has actually been. The think-tank work is not decorative. Shah sits on the Advisory Board of RUSI, the world’s oldest defence and security institute, which means she chairs geopolitics and security sessions already inside the institutional conversation rather than reading in. She is also an ambassador for the British Asian Trust, a trustee of INIVA, and an honorary Doctor of Letters of the University of Warwick. For organisations, the practical offer is rarer than a keynote. She is a broadcaster who can take a sensitive board conversation, a regulator panel, a closed-room briefing on China exposure or a high-profile awards ceremony, and run it at the standard of a Radio 4 broadcast. The room hears something true, the recording is usable, and the senior speakers do not feel ambushed. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and the multipolar world International affairs and foreign policy Defence and national security News literacy and trust in media Inclusion, identity and belonging in public life Conference, panel and awards moderation Board-level event chairing Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning a geopolitical, sanctions or China-exposure session Defence, security, foreign policy and policy-research convenings Awards ceremonies and flagship annual conferences requiring a broadcast-grade host Regulators, professional bodies and universities running on-the-record panels with public figures Audience outcomes A clearer mental map of where the multipolar world is actually moving, beyond headline framing Better-quality contributions from senior panellists, because the questions are sharper and the chairing is firmer A working sense of how to read news critically in an environment of declining trust and rising misinformation Confidence that a difficult conversation, on geopolitics, identity or institutional reform, can be held in public without becoming theatre

Why organisations work with Peter Rios He brings a published research base on Latinx leadership in higher education that few DEI advisers can match. Untold Stories (Wipf & Stock, with Juan F. Martinez) is one of the first academic studies of Latinx administrators in Christian higher education and gives his diagnosis weight no consultant deck can. He works in two doctoral disciplines, intercultural studies (Fuller) and strategic leadership (Regent), so his prescriptions sit inside organisational structure and incentives, not alongside them. He delivers in English and Spanish, useful for organisations with bilingual workforces or Latin American operations where translated DEI content typically loses its edge. His operator credibility is genuine. He held vice presidential roles at two universities and ran teams as a pastor for a decade before moving into consulting, so his sessions speak to leaders carrying P&L and people responsibility, not just HR. Biography highlights Author of Untold Stories: The Latinx Leadership Experience in Higher Education (Wipf & Stock, 2022), co-written with Juan F. Martinez. Author of Maximize!: 12 Keys to Unlocking Your Greatest Potential. Lecturer in leadership at Penn State University; former adjunct at Colorado State University-Global Campus and Indiana Wesleyan University. PhD in Intercultural Studies, Fuller Graduate Schools; Doctorate in Strategic Leadership, Regent University School of Business and Leadership; doctoral coursework at USC Rossier School of Education; MA, Northeastern Seminary. Founder of Peter Rios Consulting, advising clients across business, government, higher education and faith-based institutions on leadership and inclusion. US Marine Corps veteran; bilingual in English and Spanish. Biography Most organisations describe inclusion as a value and treat it as a programme. The leaders who carry it inside the building, particularly Latinx leaders in white-dominated institutions, often experience something else: invisibility, code-switching, and a slow drain on the energy needed to do the job. Untold Stories: The Latinx Leadership Experience in Higher Education, written by Peter Rios with Juan F. Martinez and published by Wipf & Stock, was one of the first academic studies to document that gap inside Christian higher education. Rios writes from inside the systems he studies. He served as vice president at two universities, taught at Penn State, Colorado State University-Global Campus and Indiana Wesleyan University, and built Peter Rios Consulting to advise organisations on leadership development, organisational change and DEI integration. Clients sit across business, government, higher education, non-profits and faith-based institutions. His credentials sit in two disciplines on purpose. The PhD in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Graduate Schools gives him the language of identity, power and belonging. The Doctorate in Strategic Leadership from Regent University gives him the language of structure, decision-making and organisational design. That dual lens is what allows him to translate inclusion from values statement into management practice. His second book, Maximize!: 12 Keys to Unlocking Your Greatest Potential, sits alongside the consulting work as a leadership development resource. He delivers in English and Spanish, draws on his US Marine Corps service and a decade in pastoral ministry, and is a frequent podcast guest on shows including Les Brown and Cafe con Pam. Key speaking topics Inclusive and values-based leadership Latinx leadership and representation Leadership development and executive coaching Organisational change and culture Identity, power dynamics and belonging at work Generational diversity in the workplace Personal leadership and peak performance Ideal for Heads of HR, CHROs and DEI leads in organisations where inclusion programmes are stalling at the leadership pipeline University presidents, provosts and trustees navigating Latinx student growth and faculty representation Bilingual or pan-American organisations seeking leadership development that works in English and Spanish Faith-based institutions and non-profits revisiting how leadership is identified and developed across cultural lines Audience outcomes A clearer view of where inclusion language and leadership practice diverge inside their own organisation Specific moves leaders can make to retain and promote underrepresented talent rather than just hire it A framework drawn from Rios’s research and consulting for surfacing the lived experience of Latinx and other underrepresented leaders Personal leadership reflection grounded in the twelve principles of Maximize!