Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Why organisations work with Lorraine Heggessey She has led turnarounds across three very different sectors: a flagship public broadcaster, a private-equity-backed independent producer, and a senior royal charity. Few speakers can compare an operating challenge across that range and be credible on each. She commissioned the decisions that defined a generation of British television, including the revival of Doctor Who and the launch of Strictly Come Dancing. Audiences trust her on risk because she has personally backed the calls that institutions hesitate to make. She built Boom Pictures from a private equity start into the UK’s seventh-largest independent producer in three years, then exited to ITV. She speaks on scale-up and exit with operator detail, not investor abstraction. As CEO of The Royal Foundation, she professionalised a venture philanthropy model addressing mental health and veteran support, working directly with the principals. She is one of a small number of speakers credible on both commercial leadership and complex stakeholder organisations. She is forthright on the practical content of leading women into senior roles, drawing on her own progression to one of British broadcasting’s most scrutinised jobs. The argument is operational, not motivational. Biography highlights First female Controller of BBC One, 2000 to 2005, commissioning Doctor Who (revival), Strictly Come Dancing, Spooks, and Waking the Dead. CEO of TalkbackThames, 2005 onwards, launching Britain’s Got Talent and growing profits by more than 50% in two years. Executive Chair of Boom Pictures, founded in 2012, grown into the UK’s seventh-largest independent producer and acquired by ITV in 2015. CEO of The Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, 2017 to 2019. Chair of the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre (since 2022) and Chair of The Grierson Trust (2014 to 2025). Fellow of the Royal Television Society; Woman of the Year, Women in Film and Television UK Awards, 2005; Peabody Award winner. Biography BBC One was losing to ITV1 in audience share when a new Controller took over in November 2000. Five years later the channel had recommissioned Doctor Who after a sixteen-year absence, launched Strictly Come Dancing, and reclaimed the position of Britain’s most-watched channel. Lorraine Heggessey, the first woman to hold the role, made the commissioning calls that shifted the institutional culture around risk. She left the BBC in 2005 to run TalkbackThames, where Britain’s Got Talent and Take Me Out drove a profit increase of more than fifty per cent inside two years. In 2012 she raised private equity to start Boom Pictures, which within three years was the UK’s seventh-largest independent producer and was sold to ITV in 2015. Few UK operators have moved from running a public-service broadcaster to founding and exiting a commercial production business at that scale. In 2017 she became CEO of The Royal Foundation, the philanthropic vehicle of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, with a brief to professionalise its venture philanthropy approach to mental health, veterans, and conservation. She left in 2019, having institutionalised a model that the principals could continue to grow. Her current platforms are the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, which she chairs, and Channel 4’s Growth Fund, which she has advised for nearly a decade. She is a Fellow of the Royal Television Society and a regular BAFTA and RTS judge. Her authority on change and on senior leadership is grounded in repeated operating experience, not in a single signature thesis. Key speaking topics Leading organisational turnaround Risk-taking and commissioning under public scrutiny Scale-up leadership and exit Intrapreneurial culture inside large organisations Women in senior leadership Mental health at work Stakeholder-heavy non-profit leadership Ideal for CEO, CHRO, and board audiences working through structural change or repositioning. Senior leadership programmes inside large public-service or regulated organisations. Women’s leadership and high-potential talent forums seeking operational, not motivational, content. Founders and scale-up leadership teams preparing for institutional growth or exit. Audience outcomes A direct account of how a senior leader changes the risk appetite of a cautious institution. A working view of intrapreneurial culture from inside organisations that have to deliver under public scrutiny. An operator’s perspective on building and exiting a media business, including the decisions that determine value at sale. A grounded position on women’s progression to the most senior roles, based on lived experience rather than advocacy. A practical frame for addressing mental health at work, drawn from involvement in the Heads Together campaign.

Why organisations work with Simon Wheatcroft He offers a working case study, not a metaphor, of operating without the information channel most leaders treat as non-negotiable, with named technology partners including IBM and WearWorks behind the work. He has translated personal adaptation into shipped product: the Wayband haptic navigation device, piloted unaided across the 2017 New York City Marathon in 5:17:40, and the IBM-built eAscot corrective navigation app used in the 4 Deserts ultramarathon in Namibia. He pairs the keynote story with a credentialed teaching practice, holding the 2022 Pearson National Teaching Gold Award for Outstanding New Teacher in his first year teaching computer science at Outwood Academy Adwick. He gives technology and product audiences something rare: an accessible-design perspective from someone who is both the end user and a hands-on collaborator on the engineering, including data sonification work and the hackcessible accessible hackathon format. Biography highlights 2022 Pearson National Teaching Awards Gold Award for Outstanding New Teacher, computer science, Outwood Academy Adwick First blind person to run the 4 Deserts ultramarathon in Namibia solo, May 2016 Completed the 2017 New York City Marathon unaided using the Wayband haptic device, 5:17:40 Ran 260 miles solo from Boston to New York over nine days in 2014 Collaborator with IBM on the eAscot corrective navigation app and with WearWorks on the Wayband haptic navigation system Created hackcessible, a user-led accessible hackathon format Featured by CBS News Sunday Morning, BBC Click, CNN and the New York Times Biography Most leadership content treats adversity as a chapter to be survived. The harder question is what an organisation does when the conditions producing the adversity do not pass. That is the conversation Simon Wheatcroft is qualified to lead. He was registered blind at 17 with Retinitis Pigmentosa. The relevant fact is what came next. He taught himself to run outdoors using only a smartphone GPS app and his remaining senses, and progressed inside seven months to a hundred-mile race. The work to remove the guide dog and the helper from the route turned into a research practice. He partnered with IBM on eAscot, a corrective navigation app named after his guide dog, and with WearWorks on the Wayband, a haptic device that holds a user inside a virtual corridor through small vibrations. He ran the 2017 New York City Marathon with the Wayband, unaided, in 5:17:40. The teaching career runs in parallel and sharpens the speaking work. He teaches computer science at Outwood Academy Adwick in Doncaster, and in 2022 won the Pearson National Teaching Gold Award for Outstanding New Teacher in his first year in the classroom. He runs enrichment clubs in gaming and physical computing, and has built a separate body of work on data sonification and on hackcessible, a user-led accessible hackathon format that opens the design process to disabled participants. That combination, an endurance discipline that ships product, gives him a useful brief in front of senior teams. The keynote is not a story about courage. It is a working account of how to set achievable tasks, how to minimise risk inside a route you cannot fully see, and how to rebuild a team’s confidence around new sources of information. For technology and product audiences he can also speak with authority on inclusive design from inside the engineering, an angle most accessibility keynotes cannot offer. Key speaking topics Decision-making and risk under sustained adversity Self-leadership and adaptation when information channels fail Inclusive design and accessible technology Human-computer interaction and assistive wearables Resilience as an operating discipline Diversity in technology and engineering teams Ideal for Leadership and senior team offsites focused on resilience and judgement under pressure Product, engineering and design organisations working on inclusive and accessible technology Transformation, HR and DEI leaders rebuilding cultures of confidence and adaptation Conferences on the human side of AI, wearables and assistive technology Audience outcomes A concrete model for setting achievable tasks when the path ahead is uncertain A first-hand view of how accessible technology is actually built, tested and used A rebuilt sense of what a team can do when its usual information channels are degraded Sharper questions for inclusive-design briefs, grounded in a real end-user practice A working language for talking about risk, adaptation and recovery without slipping into metaphor

Why organisations work with Caroline Criado-Perez She built the public evidence base on the gender data gap. Invisible Women sits on the desks of regulators, engineers, and policy teams in more than thirty languages and is the default reference when the question is raised. She has won both the Royal Society Science Book Prize and the FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year for the same work, a combination almost no other author can claim, and one that signals her rigour to both technical and commercial audiences. She translates the gender data problem into concrete operating examples: car crash test dummies, medical dosing, voice recognition, AI training data, urban infrastructure, workplace tools. Audiences leave with examples they recognise from their own organisation. She has actually changed policy. The Jane Austen banknote and the Millicent Fawcett statue are her campaigns; the credibility she brings to a corporate room is built on shifting state institutions, not commentary. Biography highlights Author, Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, winner of the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize and the 2019 FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year. OBE for services to equality and diversity, 2015. Author, Do It Like a Woman, profiling pioneering women globally. Founder of the campaigns that put Jane Austen on the Bank of England £10 note and Millicent Fawcett’s statue in Parliament Square. Liberty Human Rights Campaigner of the Year, 2013; Finland’s HÄN Honour, 2020; winner of the inaugural Unwin Award, 2025. Honorary doctorates from the University of Lincoln, the University of Westminster, and The Open University. Host of the Visible Women podcast with Tortoise Media; writes the Invisible Women Substack newsletter. Biography The crash test dummy used to certify most cars on the road is modelled on the body of an average male. Medical drug trials, voice recognition systems, office temperatures, and stab vests share a similar history. Invisible Women assembled this evidence into a single argument and made it impossible to ignore. Caroline Criado-Perez wrote the book that did this. It won the Royal Society Science Book Prize and the FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year in the same year, a dual recognition that signals scientific rigour and commercial relevance at once. It has been translated into more than thirty languages and is used by policymakers, engineers, and product teams looking for a defensible account of where their data is incomplete. Her credibility with corporate audiences comes from changing institutions, not commenting on them. She ran the campaign that placed Jane Austen on the Bank of England £10 note. She campaigned for the Millicent Fawcett statue in Parliament Square, the first statue of a woman to stand there. An OBE, a Liberty Human Rights Campaigner of the Year award, and the inaugural Unwin Award are the public record of work that altered what the state chose to put in front of its citizens. Her current focus is on the operating consequences of the data gap for businesses making decisions about AI, product design, workforce policy, and customer experience. Through her Invisible Women Substack and Visible Women podcast with Tortoise Media, she continues to surface the specific cases where missing data on women becomes a material business risk. Key speaking topics The gender data gap Bias in AI training data and algorithmic systems Inclusive product and service design Workforce data and policy design Gender bias in medical and safety research Campaigning, influence, and institutional change Ideal for CHROs, chief diversity officers, and people analytics leaders auditing workforce data Heads of product, design, and data science teams in consumer-facing or safety-critical industries AI and machine learning leaders responsible for model bias and training data quality Boards and ESG committees reviewing how the organisation evidences its claims about inclusion Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for naming where the gender data gap shows up in their own products, policies, and decisions A clear view of the commercial and safety risks created by data that under-represents half the customer or workforce base Specific examples from medicine, automotive, technology, and infrastructure that translate the problem into terms their teams will recognise An understanding of how AI inherits and amplifies existing data bias, and what that means for governance A grounded sense of how institutional change actually happens, drawn from campaigns that succeeded

Why organisations work with Laura Bates Over 200,000 firsthand testimonies collected through the Everyday Sexism Project give her an evidence base on workplace and institutional sexism that no consultancy or HR function can replicate. Two years of undercover research inside incel, pickup-artist and men’s rights forums, published as Men Who Hate Women, means she can speak credibly about how online radicalisation enters workplaces through younger employees and customers. Her work has produced operational outcomes, not just commentary: Facebook policy changes on rape and abuse content, sexual consent education added to the national curriculum, and revised British Transport Police protocols on sexual violence. She translates a politically charged subject into language senior leaders can act on, with the credibility of a BEM, a Royal Society of Literature fellowship and ten years of reporting in The Guardian and The New York Times behind her. Biography highlights Founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, with over 200,000 testimonies collected globally since 2012. Author of Everyday Sexism (shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year), Sunday Times bestseller Girl Up, Men Who Hate Women, and Fix the System, Not the Women. British Empire Medal in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to gender equality. Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge; Vice President of the Hay Festival. Regular contributor to The New York Times and The Guardian; named one of the BBC’s inaugural 100 Women and Woman of the Year by Cosmopolitan, Red and The Sunday Times Magazine. Recipient of the Internet and Society Award from the Oxford Internet Institute alongside Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Biography Workplace sexism is rarely a single visible incident. It is the accumulation of small, normalised behaviours that policies on paper do not catch, and that employees, especially women and younger staff, stop reporting because they have learned reports go nowhere. The Everyday Sexism Project, founded in 2012, was built to make that accumulation visible. More than 200,000 testimonies later, it has become one of the largest qualitative datasets on gender inequality in existence. The project’s founder, Laura Bates, has spent over a decade translating those testimonies into work that organisations can use. Her books, Everyday Sexism, Girl Up, Misogynation, Men Who Hate Women and Fix the System, Not the Women, move from individual experience to institutional pattern. The work has produced concrete policy outcomes: Facebook revised its rules on rape and abuse content, sexual consent education entered the national curriculum, and British Transport Police updated how it handles reports of sexual violence on public transport. A second strand of her work is investigative. For Men Who Hate Women, Bates spent two years undercover in incel, pickup-artist and men’s rights forums, mapping how extreme misogyny is now produced and distributed online. That work matters for organisations because the audience for it is in classrooms now and entering workforces within a few years; HR leaders and school heads cannot afford to be unfamiliar with it. The credentials are serious. A British Empire Medal in 2015 for services to gender equality. Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. Vice President of the Hay Festival. Regular columns in The New York Times and The Guardian. The Internet and Society Award from the Oxford Internet Institute, shared with Tim Berners-Lee. The work has been judged on substance by serious institutions, which is what allows a sceptical executive committee to take the argument seriously. Key speaking topics Everyday sexism and institutional inequality Workplace harassment and bystander response Male allyship and positive masculinity Online misogyny, incels and the manosphere Gender, consent and education Media representation of women Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and culture leads designing policy that will hold up under scrutiny Senior leadership teams and boards examining harassment, retention and reputational risk Heads of school, university leadership and education policymakers Internal employee networks and male allyship programmes inside large organisations Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how harassment patterns form in their own organisation, drawn from the largest qualitative dataset on the subject. Specific language for talking to men about allyship without defensiveness shutting the conversation down. A working understanding of incel and manosphere content that is influencing employees, students and customers. Confidence to challenge policies and processes that look good on paper but fail in practice.

Why organisations work with Karen Blackett She ran WPP in the UK during the COVID turnaround, responsible for around US$2 billion of revenue and 13,000 people, which gives her authority on what cultural change at FTSE scale actually requires. During her five years as CEO of MediaCom UK, ethnic diversity moved from 11% to 19% and women in senior management reached 44%, the kind of attributable shift most leadership talks cannot reference. As the UK government’s Race Equality Business Champion under the Race at Work Charter, she has worked across sectors on the specific mechanics of progression, not the rhetoric of inclusion. Her current Diageo board seat and her co-founder role at the Black Equity Organisation give her a live view of how the same questions land in a FTSE 10 boardroom and in national civil society. Biography highlights Former UK President, WPP, with responsibility for around US$2 billion of revenue and 13,000 people. Former CEO of MediaCom UK and CEO of GroupM UK; MediaCom named Campaign Agency of the Year in 2013 and 2014 under her leadership. Non-Executive Director, Diageo plc, since June 2022; member of the Nomination and Remuneration Committees. Non-Executive Director, Cabinet Office Board; previously UK Race Equality Business Champion under the Race at Work Charter. Co-founder, Black Equity Organisation (2021), alongside David Lammy, David Olusoga, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Ric Lewis and Dame Vivian Hunt. Chancellor of the University of Portsmouth, the first alumna to hold the position. Awarded CBE (2025) for services to Advertising and the Creative Industries; OBE (2014); first businesswoman to top the Powerlist. Biography Running a marketing services group of 13,000 people through a pandemic exposes whether a leader’s cultural language is operational or decorative. WPP UK was Karen Blackett’s brief for four years, with around US$2 billion of revenue under her remit and a workforce that needed to be both held together and pushed forward. She came to the role after running MediaCom UK as CEO, where the agency was named Campaign Agency of the Year in 2013 and 2014. The MediaCom record is the one she is most often asked about. Across her five years as CEO, ethnic diversity in the business moved from 11% to 19% and women in senior management reached 44%. Those numbers are unusual because they exist at all. Most senior leaders speaking on culture cannot point to a specific business they changed by a specific amount. That track record is why government and boards now use her. She was appointed UK Race Equality Business Champion in 2018 by Prime Minister Theresa May, working through the Race at Work Charter with Business in the Community. She sits on the Cabinet Office Board as a Non-Executive Director, and on the Diageo board as a Non-Executive Director, where she is a member of the Nomination and Remuneration Committees. In 2021 she co-founded the Black Equity Organisation with David Lammy, David Olusoga, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Ric Lewis and Dame Vivian Hunt, an independent national civil rights body for Black Britons. She was awarded an OBE in 2014 and a CBE in the 2025 King’s New Year Honours. She was the first businesswoman to top the Powerlist of Britain’s 100 most influential Black people, in 2015. Key speaking topics Leadership at scale through periods of disruption Culture as an operating system, not a statement Inclusion as a measurable business outcome Board-level race equity and the Race at Work agenda Future of work in marketing and creative industries Brand, growth and consumer change Ideal for CEO and board audiences considering how to make culture or inclusion commitments measurable CHROs, CPOs and group HR directors responsible for senior progression data Marketing and communications leadership teams in FTSE-scale businesses Networks and councils focused on Black leadership progression in UK corporates Audience outcomes A board-level frame for treating culture as part of operating performance rather than a separate workstream. A specific worked example of how senior leadership composition changes when progression mechanics are redesigned. A clearer view of where Race at Work Charter commitments most often fail and what holds them in place. Sharper language for talking about inclusion in a contested external environment without retreating to compliance speak.

Why organisations work with Keith Wyche He has actually run the P&L. Former President of Cub Foods and ACME Markets, former President of U.S. Operations at Pitney Bowes, and a retired Walmart Vice President. His advice on change comes from someone who has signed off on it. He sits on a NYSE board today. As an Independent Director at The Brink’s Company since 2022, he speaks to senior leaders with the perspective of someone in their own governance seat, not above it. His inclusion work is anchored to commercial outcomes. Diversity Is Not Enough sets out a recruitment, development, and promotion roadmap built around what large employers can actually operate, which is why boards and CHROs commission him in a contested DEI climate. He is one of a small group of senior Black executives who has reached the most senior operating ranks of corporate America, recognised twice over by Black Enterprise and Savoy. That lived authority changes how an inclusion conversation lands in a room of senior leaders. Biography highlights Retired Vice President, Community Engagement and Support, Walmart Inc. Former President, Cub Foods (SuperValu); former President, ACME Markets Former President, U.S. Operations, Pitney Bowes Management Services Independent Director, The Brink’s Company (NYSE: BCO) Author of Diversity Is Not Enough, Good Is Not Enough (2009 NAACP Image Award nominee), Corner Office Rules, and Swag Is Not Enough Named to the Top 100 African American Executives list by Black Enterprise and Savoy magazine Biography Cub Foods was a $3 billion grocery business with more than 8,000 employees when Keith Wyche took it through a turnaround that produced double-digit sales growth in his first year as President. That kind of operating record, repeated across ACME Markets, Pitney Bowes, and a long Walmart career that ended as Vice President of Community Engagement and Support, is the foundation everything else rests on. He now sits as an Independent Director on the board of The Brink’s Company (NYSE: BCO), appointed in 2022. The board seat matters because it changes the room he is speaking into. He is not advising senior leaders from a step removed. He is in the same governance conversations they are. His four books, including the NAACP Image Award nominated Good Is Not Enough and the more recent Diversity Is Not Enough, treat inclusion as an operating problem rather than a values statement. The argument is that recruitment, development, and promotion of Black leaders in America requires the same systems thinking large companies apply to any other business priority. It is a position that holds up in front of a CHRO with revenue targets attached to it. Black Enterprise and Savoy have both named him among the Top 100 African American executives in the United States. That recognition signals what makes him useful in front of a senior audience right now. He carries the personal authority of someone who has done the work at the highest operating levels, and he brings it into rooms where the inclusion conversation has otherwise gone stale. Key speaking topics Leadership through transformation and restructure Inclusive leadership and DEI as an operating discipline Talent development and executive pipelines Personal branding and career progression for senior leaders Corporate culture and change management Board-level perspectives on organisational performance Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leaders rebuilding inclusion strategy with commercial credibility Boards and C-suite teams setting direction on culture, talent, and transformation Employee resource groups and senior leadership networks for under-represented talent Annual leadership conferences for retail, consumer, and services organisations Audience outcomes A direct view of what change leadership actually looks like inside a multi-billion dollar P&L A grounded position on inclusion that holds up commercially with senior peers and external scrutiny Specific career and visibility moves for high-potential leaders ready for executive roles Board-level perspective on how culture, talent, and performance connect at the top of an organisation

Why organisations work with Melissa Majors She gives managers a behavioural model, not a values statement. The seven habits in her book are written for the team-lead who has fifteen minutes between meetings, not for the chief diversity officer. She speaks from operator credibility, having rebuilt the education function at Ellucian for more than half a million clients and partners and run global education at Meeting Professionals International. She makes inclusion commercially legible. The argument she lands with senior buyers is innovation, retention and team output, which keeps the conversation alive when political appetite for DEI has cooled. She brings packaged IP, in’klooded for strategic planning and Community Keynotes for surfacing ideas, that clients can put to work after the keynote rather than translating principles into practice on their own. Biography highlights Author, The 7 Simple Habits of Inclusive Leaders; also author of Help Them Thrive: Leadership Coaching for Humans Leading Humans. Former Director, Global Education Services, Ellucian; former Director of Global Education, Meeting Professionals International. Career across Nationwide Insurance, Wells Fargo and HD Vest Financial Services before moving into education and consulting. Founder of Melissa Majors Consulting; creator of the in’klooded inclusive strategic planning methodology and Community Keynotes. Advanced study in strategy and innovation at Harvard University; guest lecturer in leadership and inclusion at San Diego State University. Featured contributor and subject in Forbes, Smart Meetings, PCMA Convene and The Meeting Professional. Biography Most inclusion programmes were built for a different political climate. They assumed senior sponsorship would hold, that the language would be uncontested, and that managers would translate principles into practice. None of that is reliable now. The work that survives is the work that turns inclusion into something a busy manager can do, repeatedly, without thinking of it as a programme at all. That is the territory Melissa Majors has spent more than two decades inside. She ran global education at Meeting Professionals International and rebuilt the education services function at Ellucian, where she was responsible for more than 500,000 clients and partners. Before that, her career sat inside Nationwide Insurance, Wells Fargo and HD Vest Financial Services. The pattern is consistent: large, regulated, performance-measured organisations where culture work has to justify itself in operating terms. Her book The 7 Simple Habits of Inclusive Leaders is the spine of her speaking work. It reframes inclusion as a set of repeatable behaviours, including how decisions get made, how empathy is applied tactically, and how dissent is invited rather than tolerated. The companion methodologies, in’klooded for strategic planning and Community Keynotes for idea generation, give clients something to use after the room clears. She has been featured in Forbes, Smart Meetings, PCMA Convene and The Meeting Professional, and lectures on leadership and inclusion at San Diego State University. The work she is booked for is straightforward: take inclusion off the values poster and put it back into the operating practice of managing a team. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership as everyday management practice Behavioural habits of high-performing inclusive teams Women’s leadership and progression Manager effectiveness and team performance Psychological safety and team trust Talent retention through inclusion Tactical empathy in leadership Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and heads of L&D rebuilding inclusion programmes for a more contested environment People-leader populations: front-line managers, mid-level leaders and newly promoted team leads Women’s leadership networks and ERGs inside large organisations Member associations and professional bodies addressing the meetings, events and education sectors Audience outcomes A behavioural model managers can apply in the next team meeting, not after the next training cycle Language for inclusion that holds up commercially when sponsorship has cooled A clearer read on where current inclusion efforts are stalling and which habits would shift them Practical mechanisms for surfacing dissent and quieter voices inside decision-making

Why organisations work with Rose Cartolari Operator-grade credibility with senior leaders: she co-founded and ran the operations of Scharper Pharmaceuticals through to a 2011 sale, then turned that experience into a coaching practice. She has sat in the chair the room is talking about. A board-level lens on inclusion as leadership capability, built through her Executive Committee role at European Women on Boards and the Board Readiness Programme she launched there. Cross-cultural fluency that holds up in genuinely complex settings, drawn from senior roles at American Express and UNICEF and on-the-ground postings in India, Indonesia and Somalia. A coaching toolkit grounded in neuroleadership, emotional intelligence and social styles, applied to specific senior problems: influence across the C-suite, executive presence, succession readiness. Teaches the material as well as practises it, through executive programmes at Columbia Business School, SDA Bocconi and the University of Milan-Bicocca. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director, RC Consulting, advising C-suite leaders and their teams on leadership, influence and inclusion. Executive Committee member, European Women on Boards; launched the EWOB Board Readiness Programme. Co-founder and former COO, Scharper Pharmaceuticals SpA, exited in 2011. Senior corporate roles at American Express and UNICEF, with field postings across India, Indonesia and Somalia. Executive education faculty at Columbia Business School, SDA Bocconi and the University of Milan-Bicocca. MBA, Columbia Business School. BA, Brown University. Forbes Coaches Council member. TEDx speaker (TEDxArona). Co-author, Winning Mindset: Elite Strategies for Peak Performance (Erik Seversen, ed., 2021). Biography Senior leadership rarely fails on technical knowledge. It fails on composure, influence and the ability to hold a team together when conditions stop being stable. That is the territory Rose Cartolari works in, and she works in it from the position of someone who has held an operating role at scale and then chosen to coach the people who hold those roles now. Cartolari is Founder and Managing Director of RC Consulting, a leadership advisory and executive coaching practice for the C-suite and their teams. Before founding RC, she co-founded and served as COO of Scharper Pharmaceuticals SpA, a European pharmaceuticals business sold in 2011, after senior roles at American Express and UNICEF, including field assignments in India, Indonesia and Somalia. That operator history is the reason her conversations with senior leaders sound like conversations between peers, not between a leader and an outside expert. Her work sits at the point where leadership behaviour meets inclusion practice. On the European Women on Boards Executive Committee she launched the Board Readiness Programme, which prepares senior women for credible non-executive roles. She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA from Brown, sits on the Forbes Coaches Council, and teaches executive programmes at Columbia Business School, SDA Bocconi and the University of Milan-Bicocca. She is co-author of Winning Mindset: Elite Strategies for Peak Performance and a TEDx speaker (TEDxArona). The throughline of the work is practical: senior leaders, under pressure, learning to influence other senior people, hold their own counsel under ambiguity and turn inclusion from a value statement into a leadership behaviour. Key speaking topics Executive presence and influence across the C-suite Inclusive leadership as a senior capability Leading senior teams through change and ambiguity Board readiness and the path to non-executive roles Personal leadership and self-awareness for senior roles Cross-cultural leadership in multinational organisations Emotional intelligence applied to executive performance Ideal for C-suite executives and their direct reports working through ambiguity, restructure or succession Senior women preparing for non-executive director or board positions Heads of executive development, talent and inclusion building senior leadership pipelines Multinational leadership teams operating across multiple cultures and geographies Audience outcomes A sharper read on how senior influence works and where their own influence is leaking Language and practices for inclusive leadership that hold up in front of other senior leaders A specific view of board readiness, what selectors actually look for and how to close the gap Tools from neuroleadership, emotional intelligence and social styles applied to live senior dilemmas A working definition of executive presence that is behavioural, not stylistic

Why organisations work with Kyle and Brent Pease They are the first push-assist brother duo in history to finish the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona, a fact every audience can verify and few will forget. Their work is operational, not symbolic. The Kyle Pease Foundation has supported hundreds of adaptive athletes, run inclusive employment programmes, and raised over $12 million in cumulative funding. They speak as one unit, not a panel. The dynamic between Kyle and Brent is the content. Audiences see what shared accountability looks like at the level of muscle memory. The “Invisible Wheelchair” frame gives leaders a usable shorthand for the unseen constraints colleagues carry, without the political weight that has stalled mainstream DEI conversations. Biography highlights First push-assist brother duo to complete the IRONMAN World Championship, Kona 2018. Six IRONMAN finishes together, with 100+ endurance races as a push-assist team. Co-authors of “Beyond the Finish” (Mascot Books, 2019), a dual-perspective memoir. Co-founders of The Kyle Pease Foundation, supporting adaptive athletes and inclusive employment in Atlanta and nationally. Subjects of a Hyundai Motor America six-part documentary series chronicling their road to Kona. Kyle holds a Sport Management degree from Kennesaw State University; Brent is a Florida State University graduate and certified endurance coach. Biography The Kona finish line in October 2018 was the first time two brothers had crossed it together as a push-assist duo. Brent had towed Kyle through 2.4 miles of open water in an inflatable kayak, pedalled 112 miles with Kyle reclined ahead of him on the bike, and pushed Kyle in a racing wheelchair through a 26.2-mile marathon in volcanic heat. The crossing was sport history. It was also the clearest public demonstration of a working relationship most organisations claim to want and few build. Kyle Pease was born with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy. He went on to earn a Sport Management degree from Kennesaw State University and now serves as Chief Inspirational Officer at The Kyle Pease Foundation. Brent, a Florida State University graduate and certified endurance coach, is the Foundation’s Executive Director. Together they have completed more than one hundred races and built a 501(c)(3) that supports adaptive athletes, funds adaptive equipment, and runs inclusive employment programmes. Cumulative fundraising sits above $12 million. Their keynote work draws on the same partnership the race made visible. The Invisible Wheelchair frame asks leaders to recognise constraints that colleagues carry without announcement. Find Your Finish reframes goal-setting around the conditions a team controls rather than the times on the clock. Together We Wheel makes the case that shared accountability is a behavioural practice, not a values statement. Their book “Beyond the Finish” (Mascot Books, 2019) tells both sides of the story in alternating voices. For organisations rebuilding trust after restructure, threading inclusion through a fatigued workforce, or anchoring a leadership event in something the room will actually remember, the brothers offer a working example of two people producing a result neither could produce alone. The proof is on the Kona course tape. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained physical and operational constraint Inclusive leadership in practice, not policy Shared accountability and team interdependence Goal-setting beyond performance metrics Adaptive sport, disability advocacy, and the case for adaptive employment Brotherhood, partnership, and trust under load Ideal for All-hands and town hall events where leadership wants the room to leave changed, not briefed Leadership offsites focused on resilience, team trust, or inclusion behaviours Sales kickoffs and annual conferences seeking an anchor keynote with high recall Employee resource group summits, particularly disability ERGs, and culture-change moments inside large organisations Audience outcomes A vocabulary for the unseen constraints colleagues carry, usable in everyday team conversations A reframing of resilience as a shared behaviour rather than an individual trait A vivid reference point for what real partnership looks like when failure is not an option A renewed sense of why inclusion matters in operational terms, beyond compliance framing

Why organisations work with Risha Grant A direct, behaviour-first approach to inclusion that holds up when the political climate around DEI is hostile, because the work targets individual bias and culture, not slogans or programmes. The BiaSphere framework, drawn from her book Be Better Than Your BS, gives leaders and employees a shared vocabulary for the belief systems that shape how they hire, promote, sell, and lead. More than twenty five years operating her own diversity consulting firm, which means the perspective in the room is that of a practitioner who has rebuilt cultures, not a commentator describing them. Credibility with both senior executives and broad employee audiences, evidenced by engagements at Google, Samsung, Procter and Gamble, the US Air Force, and Harvard University. A commercial frame on inclusion, connecting culture work to talent retention and to the customer markets organisations are otherwise leaving on the table. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Risha Grant LLC, founded in 1998 as the first diversity communications firm in Oklahoma. Author of Be Better Than Your BS: How Radical Acceptance Empowers Authenticity and Creates a Workplace Culture of Inclusion (Hay House, 2023), and of That’s BS! How Bias Synapse Disrupts Inclusive Cultures. Creator of DiversityConneX.com, a recruitment platform connecting diverse professionals to corporate roles, internships, and board seats. Named one of the Top 10 Most Powerful Women Leaders in HR (PeopleHum), NBA OKC Thunder Changemaker, and one of Real Leaders’ 40 Top Women Keynote Speakers. Featured in Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Glamour UK, and Black Enterprise. Client engagements include Google, Levi Strauss, Samsung Electronics, Procter and Gamble, Intuit, Nestle Purina, the US Air Force, and Harvard University. Biography Most inclusion work fails for the same reason. It tries to change behaviour without ever touching the belief systems underneath it. Grant’s career has been a sustained argument that bias lives in personal stories before it lives in policies, and that organisations cannot get culture right until people are willing to examine the BS they bring to work. She built Risha Grant LLC in 1998, the first diversity communications firm in Oklahoma, and has run it ever since. That longevity matters. It means her view of what works in inclusion has been tested across more than two decades of changing political conditions, from the early diversity training era to the post 2020 acceleration and the current backlash. The framework she now teaches, the BiaSphere, came out of that long arc of practical work, not academic theory. Her 2023 book Be Better Than Your BS, published by Hay House and a Wall Street Journal bestseller per her publisher, set out the BiaSphere thesis in full: the subconscious beliefs that drive judgement of self and others, and the inner work required to dismantle them before any culture programme can stick. The book has anchored a speaking practice that reaches Google, Samsung, Procter and Gamble, the US Air Force, and Harvard University, and a media presence across Forbes, Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, and Bloomberg. What separates her in the current climate is the refusal to soften the work or dress it in safer language. The premise is that inclusion is a behavioural and commercial capability, that organisations leave talent and customer revenue on the table when they get it wrong, and that the route to getting it right runs through individual honesty before it runs through policy. That is a harder message to sell now than it was five years ago, which is precisely why the organisations still serious about culture keep buying it. Key speaking topics Inclusive culture and belonging Unconscious bias and the BiaSphere Radical acceptance and authenticity at work Inclusive leadership behaviour Talent attraction and retention through inclusion Diverse customer markets and commercial inclusion Psychological safety in mixed teams Ideal for CHROs, chief diversity officers, and heads of talent rebuilding inclusion strategy after recent rollbacks Executive teams and boards under pressure to articulate a defensible position on culture and inclusion Senior leadership offsites where the brief is honest conversation about bias, not a training exercise All-employee and ERG audiences where credibility with both sceptics and advocates matters Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary, drawn from the BiaSphere framework, for the personal belief systems that drive bias at work A clearer view of where unconscious bias is costing the organisation in hiring, promotion, retention, and customer reach Permission and a method to have direct conversations about inclusion without defaulting to compliance language A behavioural starting point for leaders who want to model inclusive practice rather than delegate it to a function A reframing of inclusion as a commercial capability tied to talent and market access, not a values statement

Why organisations work with Stephen Frost He has run inclusion at a scale almost no other practitioner can claim, leading diversity and inclusion across the 200,000-strong workforce of the London 2012 Olympics and afterwards heading the function at KPMG. He treats inclusion as a system to be engineered into hiring, promotion and decision-making, not a values campaign, an approach laid out in The Inclusion Imperative and Building an Inclusive Organization. His teaching positions at Harvard Business School, Sciences Po and Singapore Management University give boards confidence that the methodology stands up to academic scrutiny as well as commercial pressure. He brings a record of building inclusion infrastructure that outlives him, including Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index, now used by most leading UK employers. He is one of a small number of DEI voices able to hold the line on substance while a political backlash makes many DEI conversations harder to have at board level. Biography highlights Head of Diversity and Inclusion for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Former Head of Diversity and Inclusion at KPMG. Founder and CEO of Included, a global diversity and inclusion consultancy. Teaches Inclusive Leadership at Harvard Business School, Singapore Management University and Sciences Po. Author of The Inclusion Imperative, Inclusive Talent Management and Building an Inclusive Organization; editor of The Key to Inclusion. All published by Kogan Page. Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum (2011); recipient of the 2010 Peter Robertson Award for Equality and Diversity Champions. Biography The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games employed close to 200,000 people. Running diversity and inclusion across that operation was not a values exercise. It was a delivery problem under intense political and media scrutiny, and Stephen Frost was the person who owned it. The workforce that resulted was 46 per cent female, 40 per cent from minority ethnic backgrounds and 9 per cent with a disability, on numbers that few corporates have come close to since. After the Games, he was hired by KPMG as Head of Diversity and Inclusion, where he set the firm’s targets on gender, ethnicity, social mobility and sexual orientation. He went on to found Included, a global consultancy that now advises governments, multinationals, media organisations and universities. Earlier in his career he had built much of the modern UK D&I infrastructure at Stonewall, including the Workplace Equality Index now used as a benchmark across most leading employers. The argument in his four Kogan Page books is consistent. Inclusion is a decision-making system, not a culture campaign. The Inclusion Imperative draws on the Olympic work to set out how it can be embedded into procurement, recruitment, leadership and operations. Building an Inclusive Organization, co-authored with Raafi-Karim Alidina, extends the case into the cognitive and behavioural mechanics of how inclusion succeeds or fails inside a firm. That body of work is reinforced by teaching positions at Harvard Business School, Singapore Management University and Sciences Po, and by his selection as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. For boards under pressure on inclusion at the same time as they are under pressure on cost, regulation and political risk, the value of Frost’s perspective is that it treats inclusion as an operating capability that can be measured, defended and improved. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership Embedding inclusion into organisational strategy The business case for diversity and inclusion Inclusive talent management and hiring Culture change and behaviour design Cognitive load and decision-making in diverse teams Building an inclusive organisation at scale Ideal for CHROs and Chief Diversity Officers under pressure to show measurable outcomes from inclusion investment. Boards and executive committees navigating DEI in politically contested or regulatory-heavy environments. Talent, recruitment and leadership development leads redesigning processes around inclusion. Senior leadership teams in firms scaling internationally across multiple cultural and legal contexts. Audience outcomes A working definition of inclusion as a decision-making discipline, not a values statement. Specific levers leaders can pull inside recruitment, promotion and team design to improve inclusion outcomes. A clearer language for defending inclusion work to sceptical boards and shareholders. Examples drawn from enterprise-scale deployments at the London Olympics, KPMG and Included’s client base. A grounded view of where inclusion programmes commonly fail and how to design them to last.

Why organisations work with Monica McCoy She built her practice from inside a Fortune 100 procurement and strategy function, not from advocacy. Her recommendations work because they account for how large companies actually source. Her trademarked Pitch University and Global Supplier Diversity Conference are operating programmes with named corporate partners, including Microsoft, Porsche, and Santander, not concepts. She works upstream of typical DEI conversations, on the pipeline of founders that procurement teams can credibly contract with, which is where most inclusion strategies break down. Her non-profit Pivot Purposefully extends the same discipline to formerly incarcerated women founders, giving her a defensible position on inclusion that goes beyond corporate audiences. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Monica Motivates, LLC (2017 to present); supports 38 Fortune 500 clients on supplier diversity and inclusion delivery Fifteen years at The Coca-Cola Company, most recently Acting Global Director of Strategy and Innovation, McDonald’s Division Creator of Pitch University, the Annual Global Supplier Diversity Conference, and a Microsoft-backed accelerator for commercial real estate founders Founder, Pivot Purposefully, non-profit supporting formerly incarcerated women entrepreneurs Recognitions include American Express Founder of Change (2020), Porsche Driven Women (2021), Iconic Women Creating a Better World for All (Women’s Economic Forum), YWCA Corporate Woman of Achievement (2015) BA Psychology, Emory University; Oxford College Alumni Board Biography Most corporate inclusion programmes fail at the seam between policy and procurement. The policy gets signed. The procurement function keeps sourcing from the same qualified vendor pool. The pipeline of underrepresented founders never reaches contract size. This is the gap Monica McCoy spent fifteen years observing from inside The Coca-Cola Company, and the one her firm now exists to close. Monica Motivates, founded in 2017, works with 38 Fortune 500 clients, including Microsoft, Porsche, and Santander, on the practical mechanics of bringing underrepresented founders into corporate supply chains. The firm’s programmes are operating, not conceptual. Pitch University trains founders for the specific pitch standards large companies use. The Annual Global Supplier Diversity Conference puts buyers and suppliers in the same room at scale. A Microsoft-backed accelerator focuses on commercial real estate, where founder access has historically been narrowest. The corporate credentials sit underneath this work. McCoy was Acting Global Director of Strategy and Innovation for the McDonald’s Division at Coca-Cola, a role that gave her direct exposure to how a Fortune 100 firm sources, qualifies, and contracts at scale. That experience is what makes her programmes legible to procurement leaders, not just to inclusion officers. Her non-profit, Pivot Purposefully, applies the same discipline to a harder constituency, formerly incarcerated women founding businesses. Recognition from the Women’s Economic Forum, American Express, Porsche, and the YWCA tracks the same throughline: inclusion treated as a delivery problem. Key speaking topics Supplier diversity programme design Founder pipeline and access for underrepresented entrepreneurs Inclusion as procurement capability Entrepreneurial pitch and storytelling discipline Corporate strategy and innovation at Fortune 100 scale Personal brand and executive presence for senior women Ideal for CHROs, chief diversity officers, and heads of supplier diversity at large corporates Procurement and category leaders responsible for diverse sourcing targets Founder networks and accelerator audiences focused on underrepresented entrepreneurs Senior women’s leadership programmes inside Fortune 500 organisations Audience outcomes A clearer view of where inclusion policy stalls inside procurement and category management Specific programme structures that have moved underrepresented founders into Fortune 500 supply chains A defensible position on inclusion grounded in operating mechanics, not advocacy framing Practical pitch and access standards founders need to clear to win corporate contracts