Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Why organisations work with Tanya Menon A research voice on inclusion that starts with network structure, hiring data, and decision bias rather than identity language, useful for leadership teams that need substance under a contested topic. Tenured academic credibility: Stanford PhD, Fisher College professorship, Associate Editor at Management Science, a decade teaching Power and Influence at Chicago Booth. Co-author of Stop Spending, Start Managing (Harvard Business Review Press), which names five specific organisational traps including expertise lock-in and conflict avoidance, applied directly to senior team behaviour. A TED Talk with 1.8 million-plus views that translates weak-tie network research into a behaviour senior leaders and their teams can immediately recognise in themselves. Equally fluent on team performance, persuasion, and hiring, which makes her a credible single speaker across an HR or culture programme rather than one topic in a series. Biography highlights Professor of Management and Human Resources, Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University. PhD, Stanford Graduate School of Business; BA, Harvard University. Associate Editor, Management Science. Co-author, Stop Spending, Start Managing: Strategies to Transform Wasteful Habits, Harvard Business Review Press. TED Talk listed among TED.com’s most popular of 2018, with over 1.8 million views. Faculty for over a decade at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, teaching Power and Influence. Research cited in The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Guardian, The Times of London, Chicago Tribune, and Boston Globe. Biography Most senior teams know who they talk to every day. Far fewer can name who they have stopped talking to, and what that has cost the organisation. Tanya Menon’s research starts in that gap. Her work at Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business, supported by a Stanford PhD and a decade teaching at Chicago Booth, focuses on how relationships at work shape decisions, hiring, and innovation. Her TED Talk, “The secret to great opportunities? The person you haven’t met yet,” reframes networking as a structural problem rather than a personal one. Drawing on Mark Granovetter’s classic work on weak ties, she shows why the routines that feel efficient inside an organisation quietly narrow the people, ideas, and candidates a leader ever encounters. Over 1.8 million people have watched it. With Leigh Thompson of Kellogg, she wrote Stop Spending, Start Managing for Harvard Business Review Press. The book identifies five concrete traps, including the Expertise Trap, the Winner’s Trap, and the Agreement Trap, that explain why competent teams burn time and money on the wrong problems. It is built for leaders who run real teams, not for a general management audience. She has been an Associate Editor at Management Science, and her research has been cited by The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Guardian, The Times of London, the Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe. The through-line is a usable diagnostic vocabulary for the parts of organisational life that look like soft skills until they start producing hard losses. Key speaking topics Networks and weak ties at work Inclusion through hiring and network design Team decision-making and productive conflict Power, persuasion, and influence Innovation and pattern-breaking Wasteful organisational habits and managerial traps AI and human decision-making in hiring Ideal for CHROs and Heads of Talent rethinking hiring pipelines and selection bias. Heads of DEI and culture leaders looking for a research-led, non-ideological frame for inclusion. Senior leadership teams under pressure to improve cross-functional collaboration. Learning and development leads designing executive programmes on influence, networks, and team performance. Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the network and hiring habits that quietly limit inclusion and innovation. Five named organisational traps senior teams can test their own behaviour against. A research-grounded view of weak ties as a hiring, learning, and idea-generation lever. Specific tactics for breaking routine social patterns inside large organisations. A more defensible inclusion narrative grounded in network structure and decision data.

Why organisations work with Sarah Culberson A first-person story that does the work belonging-themed talks usually fail at: foster care, transracial adoption, and the discovery at 28 that her father was a Mende prince in Sierra Leone. Audiences disengage from abstract DEI framing; this is concrete. Co-author of A Princess Found (St. Martin’s Press, 2009), in development as a Disney live-action film with producer Stephanie Allain. The story has cultural reach beyond the corporate room. President and co-founder of Sierra Leone Rising, an operating nonprofit running water, sanitation, education and coding programmes in the Bumpe Chiefdom. Allyship is something she builds, not theorises. Recipient of the Impact Award at Bounce TV’s 30th Trumpet Awards (2022), with sustained media coverage on CNN, Good Morning America, BBC and The New York Times. Pairs the inspirational keynote with practical content on assumptions, uncomfortable conversations and inclusive team-building, drawn from over 15 years presenting in schools, universities and corporations. Biography highlights Co-author, A Princess Found: An American Family, an African Chiefdom, and the Daughter Who Connected Them All (St. Martin’s Press, 2009) President and co-founder, Sierra Leone Rising (founded 2006, formerly the Kposowa Foundation) Mahaloi (granddaughter of the Paramount Chief) of the Bumpe-Gao Chiefdom, Sierra Leone Disney development deal (2019) for a live-action film adaptation of her memoir, with Stephanie Allain as producer Impact Award, Bounce TV 30th Trumpet Awards (2022) BFA, West Virginia University; MFA, American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco Featured on CNN, Good Morning America, BBC, NPR, The New York Times, People and Newsweek Biography In 2004, an adopted theatre student in San Francisco hired a private investigator to trace her birth family. The trail led from West Virginia to a chiefdom in Sierra Leone still recovering from a brutal civil war. Sarah Culberson’s father was a Mende prince. Her grandfather had been Paramount Chief. The discovery rewrote her sense of identity and gave her a public platform she has been working with ever since. That platform produced a memoir, A Princess Found, co-written with Tracy Trivas and published by St. Martin’s Press in 2009. Disney signed a development deal in 2019 to adapt the book into a live-action film, with Stephanie Allain producing and Culberson serving as executive producer. The story has been covered on CNN, Good Morning America, BBC and The New York Times. The substantive work, though, sits inside Sierra Leone Rising, the nonprofit she co-founded in 2006. It runs sanitation, clean water, education and coding programmes in the Bumpe Chiefdom. The nonprofit is what gives her belonging keynote its weight. She is not asking organisations to consider allyship as a concept; she has spent two decades building it across two cultures. For corporate audiences she translates that experience into the practical content of belonging: how assumptions form, how uncomfortable conversations are conducted, how cross-cultural teams move past politeness into trust. In 2022 she received the Impact Award at Bounce TV’s 30th Trumpet Awards, recognition for a body of work that joins a personal story to operating institutions on two continents. Key speaking topics Belonging and allyship in the workplace Cross-cultural identity and biracial experience Inclusive team-building Diversity, equity and inclusion Personal transformation and purpose Humanitarian leadership and social impact Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and culture leads commissioning belonging or inclusion programmes Employee resource groups and women’s leadership networks Annual company conferences and kick-offs seeking an inspirational anchor with substantive content Education and nonprofit sector audiences working on equity and social impact Audience outcomes A vivid, memorable narrative that grounds inclusion conversations in lived experience rather than policy language A working vocabulary for assumptions, allyship and cross-cultural difference inside teams Concrete examples of how a Western-educated outsider built trust and impact in a post-conflict community in Sierra Leone Renewed commitment to belonging as a daily leadership practice, not a programme

Why organisations work with Amelia Rose Earhart Her “Aviate, Navigate, Communicate” protocol, drawn directly from aviation’s standard emergency sequence, gives organisations a practical, step-ordered model for distributing responsibility and maintaining forward momentum when conditions destabilise. The 2014 circumnavigation she planned and executed required close to $2 million in corporate partnerships across 28 organisations, custom FAA engineering approval for an aircraft modification, and 17-stop coordination across 14 countries, making her case study in mission execution verifiable and specific, not metaphorical. A genealogy investigation, published by a colleague just before her departure, revealed no traceable connection to her famous namesake and triggered public accusations of fraud; the fact that she proceeded and completed the flight gives her resilience argument a dimension most speakers cannot replicate. Learn to Love the Turbulence (2023) extends her “pilot in command” framework into a structured leadership methodology – passengers react while pilots decide – providing a reference architecture that client teams can apply long after the event. Audiences include Boeing, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, United Healthcare, Lockheed Martin, Capital One, and the United States Air Force Academy, giving her both commercial credibility and access to high-stakes operational contexts. Biography highlights Youngest woman to circumnavigate the globe in a single-engine aircraft (Pilatus PC-12 NG, 2014); first to do so in that aircraft type Self-funded and managed the 24,300-nautical-mile, 17-stop global flight, raising close to $2 million across 28 corporate partnerships and securing custom FAA engineering approval Holds private, instrument, and commercial pilot certificates Approximately 15 years as a broadcast news anchor and reporter: KUSA-TV (9NEWS, NBC affiliate, Denver) and Los Angeles television Author of Learn to Love the Turbulence (2023, with Kristin Clark Taylor); keynote clients include Boeing, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, United Healthcare, and the United States Air Force Academy Amelia Earhart Pioneering Achievement Award (2013, Atchison, Kansas Chamber of Commerce); Jaycees Top Ten Young Americans (2014) Biography Aviation has a decision protocol for moments when a flight goes wrong: aviate first, navigate second, communicate third. Amelia Rose Earhart spent two years designing a circumnavigation that would test that protocol under real conditions. Closed borders, a custom FAA-engineered fuel system, and a public genealogy scandal nearly derailed the flight before it left California. In June 2014, she departed Oakland in a single-engine Pilatus PC-12 NG. Across 17 stops and 24,300 nautical miles through 14 countries, she landed back in California on July 11. The mission required close to $2 million in corporate partnerships across 28 organisations, custom FAA engineering approval, and open-water survival training. She became the youngest woman to circumnavigate the globe in a single-engine aircraft, and the first to do it in a PC-12 NG. Her 2023 book, Learn to Love the Turbulence, codifies what that flight revealed about organisational decision-making. Preparedness, not optimism, is what keeps teams airborne when conditions deteriorate. The “pilot in command” framework – passengers react, pilots decide – is now the architecture of her work with Fortune 500 clients and the United States Air Force Academy. Before the circumnavigation, she spent approximately 15 years as a news anchor and reporter, at KUSA-TV (NBC’s Denver affiliate) and in Los Angeles. That background sharpens her communication under pressure and her ability to hold a senior audience, which are not the same skill. Key speaking topics High-stakes decision-making and mission execution Resilience and adaptive leadership Strategic planning under uncertainty Risk assessment and contingency thinking Goal setting and organisational accountability Women in aviation and STEM leadership pathways Team performance under pressure Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams navigating high-stakes execution challenges or strategic pivots Sales and commercial teams preparing for stretch targets or significant market disruption Women’s leadership programmes and DEI-focused executive conferences Annual leadership conferences and kick-offs requiring both narrative coherence and audience energy Audience outcomes A practical decision sequence – aviate, navigate, communicate – for maintaining clarity and distributing responsibility when a plan breaks down in real time A clearer distinction between reactive and decisive leadership, with a specific framework for building the latter as a team habit Concrete tools for forecasting risk and planning contingencies, drawn directly from aviation mission-planning discipline A reframing of disruption as a navigable condition rather than an exceptional one – and the mindset shift required to operate accordingly A reference framework from Learn to Love the Turbulence that extends the conversation beyond the event itself

Why organisations work with Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton Her Decision Control Process derived from helmet-camera research on real operational commands, not simulation, is the only evidence-based framework of its kind adopted nationally, now embedded in UK National Operational Guidance and JESIP doctrine governing all blue-light services at major incidents. Her central research finding – that 80% of decisions made by experienced commanders are instinctive, and that goal-oriented training can increase situational awareness up to five times – gives leadership teams a specific, measurable basis for redesigning how they develop judgement under pressure. She is both a serving Chief Fire Officer and an active researcher at Cardiff University, meaning her framework is continuously stress-tested against real operational consequences – not archived after publication. Her second book, The Gender Bias (2023), extends the same empirical approach to the structural barriers holding women back at work – giving CHROs and boards a research-grounded contribution to progression strategy rather than advocacy. Her awards span operational command and academic research: the King’s Fire Service Medal, the APA Early Career Award, the APA Raymond Nickerson Best Paper Award, and the BBSRC Innovator of the Year honour represent recognition from named bodies across both domains. Biography highlights Chief Fire Officer, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service (first woman to hold this post); formerly CFO, West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service; Deputy Assistant Commissioner, London Fire Brigade PhD in Behavioural Neuroscience, Cardiff University; Honorary Professor of Behavioural Neuroscience, Cardiff University; Chartered Psychologist, British Psychological Society; Chartered Companion, Chartered Management Institute Developed the Decision Control Process – adopted by every UK fire and rescue service, embedded in National Operational Guidance for incident command and in JESIP doctrine King’s Fire Service Medal (King’s Birthday Honours); APA Early Career Award (2016); APA Raymond Nickerson Best Paper Award (2018); BBSRC Innovator of the Year (2018) Author: The Heat of the Moment (Penguin Books, 2019) and The Gender Bias (2023) Featured on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs; named among Marie Claire’s Future Shapers; Cosmopolitan Millennial Power List; Big Issue Top 100 Changemakers Biography When researchers at Cardiff University fitted helmet cameras to experienced incident commanders during live operational responses, the footage was unambiguous: eight in ten decisions were made on instinct, with structured analytical frameworks bypassed entirely. That finding became the foundation of the Decision Control Process: a rapid mental checklist developed by Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton and subsequently adopted by every UK fire and rescue service. The research reshaped National Operational Guidance for incident command and is embedded in JESIP doctrine, the framework governing decision-making across all blue-light services at major incidents. It is a rare case of behavioural science research moving directly from peer-reviewed publication to national policy. Dr Cohen-Hatton holds a PhD in Behavioural Neuroscience from Cardiff University, where she is an Honorary Professor, and is currently Chief Fire Officer of Hampshire and Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service: the first woman to lead that service. Her operational career spans South Wales, Surrey, London, and West Sussex, and includes command roles during the Westminster Bridge and Finsbury Park terror attacks and in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire. She is a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society and a Chartered Companion of the Chartered Management Institute. Her second book, The Gender Bias (2023), applies the same empirical lens to structural barriers in organisational progression: a data-led analysis of why women are judged differently at work and what organisations can do to address it. Alongside the King’s Fire Service Medal, the APA Early Career Award, the APA Raymond Nickerson Best Paper Award, and the BBSRC Innovator of the Year honour, her profile extends well beyond emergency services audiences: Desert Island Discs, Marie Claire, and Cosmopolitan have all featured her work. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Behavioural neuroscience and leadership judgement Incident command and human factors Organisational learning from high-stakes incidents Crisis command and situational awareness Gender bias and structural barriers to progression Social mobility and leadership resilience Ideal for C-suite and board-level leadership teams in regulated, risk-critical, or high-consequence sectors CHROs and senior talent leads focused on women’s progression at executive level Risk, safety, resilience, and business continuity officers Senior leadership development programmes addressing performance and judgement under pressure Audience outcomes A concrete understanding of how instinct and intuition dominate decision-making under pressure, and where that creates measurable organisational risk Familiarity with the Decision Control Process and its evidence base, with direct implications for how leadership development programmes should be designed A research-grounded framework for diagnosing and addressing structural barriers to women’s progression in senior roles Greater awareness of how human factors – not just technical failure – contribute to adverse outcomes in complex, high-stakes environments A perspective on leadership judgement formed from decades of active operational command at the most senior level in UK emergency services

Why organisations work with Makala Green She holds the Chartered Financial Planner credential, the senior qualification of the UK financial advice industry, which gives employee audiences a regulated voice they can actually trust on money decisions. She is the first black woman in the UK to achieve that chartered status, which makes her a credible speaker on inclusion in financial services and on the confidence gap that disproportionately affects women and minority employees. Her book The Money Edit (Yellow Kite, Hachette UK) sets out a deliberately jargon-free framework, which lets her translate pensions, investing and budgeting into language a mixed-seniority audience can act on the same week. She has worked with Waitrose, John Lewis and Metro Bank on financial wellbeing programmes, so the content has been tested inside large UK employers rather than only on a public stage. Her ITV This Morning, BBC Radio and Financial Times appearances mean she can hold a room of non-finance professionals without losing the technical accuracy a regulated topic demands. Biography highlights UK’s first black female Chartered Financial Planner, the senior credential of the Chartered Insurance Institute’s financial advice qualification track. Founder of Green Wealth Planning and the consumer platform The Wealth Check. Author of The Money Edit: Your No Shame, No Blame Guide to Taking Control of Your Money, published by Yellow Kite (Hachette UK), 2022. Named Financial Adviser of the Year, South East England, Professional Adviser, 2021. Resident financial expert on ITV’s This Morning, with further appearances on BBC Radio and contributions to the Financial Times, Spear’s, FinTech Magazine, Glamour, Stylist and Women’s Health. Corporate financial wellbeing work with Waitrose, John Lewis and Metro Bank. Host of the Your Financial Journey podcast. Biography Financial anxiety inside a workforce rarely shows up as a line item, but it shows up in absence, in retention, and in the quality of decisions people make under pressure. Most employers respond with a benefits brochure and an EAP phone number. Few have a voice that employees actually trust on money. Makala Green is that voice. She is a Chartered Financial Planner, the senior qualification of the UK financial advice industry, and the first black woman in the country to hold that status. She built Green Wealth Planning as a regulated advisory practice, then founded The Wealth Check as the consumer-facing platform that translates the same discipline into language employees and entrepreneurs can act on. Her book The Money Edit, published by Yellow Kite at Hachette UK, sets out the framework she uses on stage and inside corporate programmes. Waitrose, John Lewis and Metro Bank have run her into their workforces. ITV’s This Morning, BBC Radio, the Financial Times and Spear’s have used her as a financial expert on air and in print. Professional Adviser named her Financial Adviser of the Year for the South East of England in 2021. What she gives a corporate audience is the rare combination of regulatory standing and plain English. She can talk about pensions, investing and household resilience without either patronising the room or hiding behind jargon, and she can do it from a position that audiences hearing from a woman of colour in senior financial expertise still find unusual. That is the substance behind the inclusion claim, and it is also why her financial wellbeing work travels into mixed-seniority rooms that more conventional adviser-speakers struggle to hold. Key speaking topics Employee financial wellbeing Financial confidence and the gender and ethnicity wealth gap Cost-of-living resilience for workforces Inclusion in financial services Investing, pensions and long-term wealth planning Entrepreneurship and personal finance for founders Money mindset and behavioural finance Ideal for HR, reward and benefits leaders designing financial wellbeing programmes DEI leads and employee resource groups focused on women, Black and minority employees Retail, consumer and financial services employers with large mixed-seniority workforces Founder and scale-up communities where personal finance and business finance overlap Audience outcomes A clearer picture of how financial anxiety is currently affecting their workforce and where regulated input would change behaviour. A jargon-free vocabulary for talking about pensions, investing and debt that employees of any seniority can use. Specific moves employees can make in the weeks after the session on savings, pensions and household budgeting. A more honest conversation about the gender and ethnicity dimensions of financial confidence inside the organisation.

Why organisations work with Sophie Carrigill Her sports psychology credentials (first-class degree from the University of Worcester and an MSc from Sheffield Hallam) mean she can explain what high-performance teams actually do under pressure, not just illustrate it with personal stories. That distinction matters when leaders are making structural decisions, not looking for inspiration. She captained the GB women’s wheelchair basketball squad for four consecutive years, and was the first captain to lead the team through a centralised programme and a full relocation. The leadership challenge she navigated is directly analogous to what organisations face in transformation: maintaining accountability, cohesion and performance through structural disruption. Forbes named her on its 30 Under 30 Europe list for Sports and Games in 2021 specifically for her sporting achievements alongside her work advancing inclusion; a recognition that positions her as a practitioner of inclusion, not a spokesperson for it. Her ten-year international career – across six European Championships, three World Championships, and three Paralympic Games – gives her a perspective on sustained performance that is qualitatively different from speakers whose credibility rests on a single defining event. She does not separate the inclusion argument from the performance argument. Organisations that have struggled to make either case benefit from an approach where both are argued from the same evidence base. Biography highlights Three-time Paralympian, representing Great Britain at Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 World Championship silver medallist (2018, Hamburg) and six-time European Championship competitor, with bronze medals (2013, 2015, 2017) and silver medals (2019, 2021, 2023) U25 World Championship gold medallist (2015, Beijing) Named on Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list, Sports and Games category (2021), recognising sporting achievement and inclusion work First-class honours degree in Sports Psychology, University of Worcester; MSc in Sport and Exercise Psychology, Sheffield Hallam University Captain of the GB women’s wheelchair basketball squad for four consecutive years; first captain to lead the team through a centralised programme and squad relocation Women’s Sport Trust Unlocked programme contributor (2021–2023) Biography High-performance culture and genuine inclusion are managed as separate agendas in most organisations. Resolving that tension – rather than attempting to manage it – is what separates leadership teams that perform under genuine pressure from those that perform only when conditions are stable. Sophie Carrigill has been at the heart of the GB women’s wheelchair basketball programme for over a decade. A three-time Paralympian across Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, she captained the squad for four consecutive years, becoming the first captain to lead the team through a centralised programme and a full relocation to Sheffield. The 2018 World Championship silver medal, three European bronzes, three European silvers, and a U25 World gold came from a team built under conditions of continuous structural change. The leadership test was not exceptional circumstances; it was the job. Her academic formation distinguishes her from speakers with comparable competitive records. A first-class honours degree in Sports Psychology from the University of Worcester, followed by an MSc in Sport and Exercise Psychology at Sheffield Hallam, equips her to explain the mechanisms behind elite performance, rather than to simply describe what it felt like. Forbes recognised that combination in 2021, placing her on its 30 Under 30 Europe list for Sports and Games for her record on court and her work advancing inclusion in sport. Off the court, she has contributed to the Women’s Sport Trust Unlocked programme and worked at Whisper, a sports and entertainment media production company. In a board or leadership team conversation about resilience, inclusion, or sustained performance under pressure, she does not present three separate cases. She presents one. Key speaking topics Resilience and performance under pressure Leadership through structural change Disability inclusion as competitive advantage High-performance team culture Sports psychology and elite mindset Sustained performance across long competitive cycles Identity, adversity and recovery Ideal for Senior leadership and executive teams examining the relationship between culture, inclusion and performance CHROs and people leaders building inclusion strategies that are anchored in performance outcomes, not compliance frameworks Organisations in transformation or restructuring, where team cohesion and leadership accountability are under active pressure DEI conference audiences seeking a performance-led argument for inclusion rather than a values-led one Audience outcomes A reframed understanding of resilience, as a practised, structural discipline rather than an individual personality trait Concrete examples of how inclusion decisions affect team performance at elite level, drawn from a decade of Paralympic competition A direct challenge to the assumption that high performance and genuine diversity are competing priorities Practical insight into how accountability operates in teams under structural change, including relocation, new systems and shifting leadership A model for sustaining performance across long cycles, not just optimising for peak moments

Meet Sonya Barlow Sonya Barlow is an award-winning BBC Presenter, Author, Keynote Speaker, Entrepreneur, TEDxSpeaker, Content Creator and Writer. She hosts her talk show The Sonya Barlow Show where she interviews world leaders on the stories behind their success, with high-profile names such as Princess Lamia of Saudi Arabia and Footballer Gilberto Silva. In 2022, Sonya was named a LinkedIn Top Voice for Gender Diversity and her BBC show The Everyday Hustle, was The Best Radio Show in the UK. Sonya is the CEO of the Like Minded Females (LMF) Network, an inclusion consultancy and social networking platform redesigning workplace policies and professional careers to encourage diversity and inclusion. Sonya has also written the popular book “Unprepared to Entrepreneur” and won multiple awards, including Europe’s Top 50 Women in Tech, Marie Claire’s Future Shaper, UK Entrepreneur of the Year and Asian Women of Achievement. She is one of the youngest South Asian females to have two TEDx talks, titled “Please Come Online” and “Failure Comes Before Resilience”. Sonya’s energetic and captivating personality has seen her invited to Keynote at The House of Commons on gender diversity and delivering global keynotes on business, technology and inclusion in Germany, Lithuania, Romania, Kenya, Pakistan, Amsterdam, France, the UK, Portugal and Mauritius, to name a few. Sonya’s background in technology, business and travel provides her with the unique ability to understand technical terms, share innovative solutions and advocate allyship. She has a great sense of cultural communication and is often told that her power is summarising large bits of information into notable smaller action steps that the audience can easily takeaway. She has worked with household brands such as Lloyds banking group and Capital One on their technology podcast, led campaigns for Loreal, HP, Rolls Royce, Fiverr, Logitech and Linkedin and delivered talks to high-profile stakeholders across industries such as Fintech, Technology, Finance, Hospitality, Public Sector, Higher Education, Government, Fashion, Retail and Corporate. Sonya Barlow is a neurodivergent British Pakistani woman with chronic migraines, ADHD and mental health conditions. Diversity, resilience, and neurodiversity are topics close to her heart when delivering keynotes. She is able to deliver workshops and keynotes about her own experiences of ADHD, with advice on coping mechanisms and how your neurodiversity can be an asset if channeled in the right way. Sonya has worked in the technology sector since 2015 and is currently building an app to encourage professional working women to build their networks and knowledge, whilst supporting workplaces to retain diverse talent.

Why organisations work with Adele Bates Her classroom experience covers every major UK school setting: mainstream primary and secondary, pupil referral units, alternative provision, and special schools. School leaders can bring her to a mixed-audience CPD day knowing the examples hold up across every context in the room. Her approach is informed by funded comparative international research. In 2019, she received a full grant to research Finland’s inclusive education system. Research in the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica followed. What she recommends draws on documented practice from functioning systems across three countries. Her book, published by Corwin/SAGE, has been used by headteachers to rewrite whole-school behaviour policies from scratch. It provides a structured, chapter-by-chapter framework that school leaders can put to immediate institutional use. She writes for TES, SecEd, and Headteacher Update, reaching school leaders at scale. Audiences in her sessions often arrive knowing her work, which changes the quality of the conversation. Her TEDx 2020 talk and BBC Radio 4 appearances as the network’s expert on teenagers and behaviour give her name recognition well beyond the education conference circuit. Biography highlights Author, “Miss, I Don’t Give A Sh*t”: Engaging with Challenging Behaviour in Schools (Corwin/SAGE) TEDx 2020 speaker BBC Radio 4 expert on teenagers and behaviour Trainer for the National Education Union and Amnesty International Education WeAreTheCity Rising Star Award, Education category Funded international researcher in behaviour and inclusion: Finland (2019), Dominican Republic, and Costa Rica Biography Behaviour policies give teachers a sequence of steps. They rarely explain what to do when those steps stop working. For more than 20 years, Adele Bates taught in the settings where that gap matters most: mainstream primary and secondary schools, pupil referral units, alternative provision, and special schools. Her book, “Miss, I Don’t Give A Sh*t”: Engaging with Challenging Behaviour in Schools, is published by Corwin/SAGE. It gives school leaders a structured framework for rebuilding behaviour culture from the ground up. Headteachers have used it to rewrite their school’s behaviour policy from scratch. In 2019, she received a full grant to research Finland’s inclusive education system, observing classes and interviewing teachers across several schools. She has since carried out school-based research in the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica. Those visits inform how she frames what is achievable, with reference to systems that have solved problems UK schools are still working through. She is BBC Radio 4’s expert on teenagers and behaviour and gave a TEDx talk in 2020. She writes regularly for TES, SecEd, and Headteacher Update. She trains for the National Education Union and Amnesty International Education. School leaders who book her often know her work before she arrives. Key speaking topics Inclusive behaviour in schools Social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) in education Trauma-informed practice Whole-school behaviour culture and consistency Pupil engagement and relationship-led teaching Equality, bias, and inclusion in education Staff confidence and wellbeing in schools Ideal for Headteachers and senior leadership teams in mainstream and specialist schools Classroom teachers and subject leaders seeking practical behaviour frameworks Multi-academy trust (MAT) CPD and professional development leads National education organisations and education conference organisers Audience outcomes A clearer account of why SEMH-driven behaviour does not respond to sanctions, and what the evidence suggests actually works Practical strategies for rebuilding positive relationships with disengaged pupils, applicable from the next lesson A framework for evaluating whether a school’s behaviour policy is built to support or to separate A sharper understanding of how equality, bias, and inclusion connect to behaviour patterns across a whole school Tools for strengthening staff confidence and consistency in challenging classroom situations

Why organisations work with Dave Steele He turns an abstract inclusion agenda into a room of people who have felt something specific. Poetry, song and personal testimony land with audiences in a way a policy deck cannot. He brings a named platform behind the message: the Stand By Me RP community he founded in 2015 is one of the largest RP groups in the world, and his trilogy topped poetry charts in the US and Australia. He has been trusted by serious institutions to represent the patient and lived-experience voice, including the American Foundation for the Blind (Helen Keller Achievement Awards emcee) and the National Eye Institute at NIH. Brand and product work with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Navilens and OrCam gives him direct fluency in how large companies are approaching accessibility in practice, not just in principle. He delivers as a performer as well as a speaker, which makes him suited to conference mainstage, awards nights and internal culture events where a standard keynote would not move the room. Biography highlights Author of the “Stand By Me RP” poetry trilogy (2016-2018); Volume I reached number one poetic release in the US and Australia in its first week. Founder of the Stand By Me RP online community (2015), one of the largest Retinitis Pigmentosa support groups on social media. Emcee of the 24th Annual Helen Keller Achievement Awards, American Foundation for the Blind. Invited speaker at the National Institutes of Health, where he opened the National Eye Institute Intramural Program retreat in April 2024. Patron of Henshaws; 2018 Henshaws Impact Award; 2018 Pride of Bury Community Hero Award; 2023 National Diversity Award shortlist (Positive Role Model for Disability). Global Ambassador for Two Blind Brothers; collaborator with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Parfums de Marly, Navilens and OrCam. Biography Most inclusion work still treats disability as an HR category. A poem, delivered in a room of executives, does something a training module cannot. It gives the audience a few minutes inside someone else’s life, and that is what Dave Steele’s work depends on. Steele was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa in 2014. He had been a singer and a car salesman; the diagnosis ended both careers and left him at home in Manchester with four children and serious debt. In 2015 he started a Facebook page called “Stand By Me RP,” named after a song he had rewritten for a support group. It became one of the largest RP communities on social media and the seed of everything that followed. The poetry came next. His “Stand By Me RP” trilogy, released annually between 2016 and 2018, reached the top of poetry charts in the United States and Australia. He has since written more than 700 poems and songs about sight loss. That body of work is why serious institutions invite him in: he emceed the 24th Helen Keller Achievement Awards for the American Foundation for the Blind, and in April 2024 opened the National Eye Institute’s Intramural Program retreat at NIH at the invitation of its scientific director. The organisational value is different from a typical DEI speaker. Steele does not offer a framework. He offers a specific voice that leaders can put in front of their people when they want an inclusion conversation to stop feeling procedural, supported by active work with Apple, Meta, Audi, Kellogg’s, Navilens and OrCam on how accessibility actually shows up in product and brand. Key speaking topics Disability inclusion and lived experience Sight loss and visual impairment advocacy Resilience after a life-changing diagnosis Accessibility in product, brand and workplace Poetry and storytelling as communication Mental health and identity through chronic illness Patient voice in medical and research settings Ideal for CHRO, DEI and employee experience leaders running disability inclusion or accessibility programmes Healthcare, life sciences and ophthalmology audiences wanting an authentic patient voice Awards nights, conference mainstage slots and internal culture events that need a performer as well as a speaker Consumer, tech and retail brands working on accessibility in product and communications Audience outcomes A first-hand account of what a progressive sight loss diagnosis does to work, family and identity A sharper sense of where stated inclusion policies diverge from daily employee experience Specific references from brand and product work with companies like Apple, Meta and OrCam on accessibility in practice Poetry and spoken-word performance that anchors the message in memory long after the event A reframing of disability as an active contribution to an organisation, not a compliance line

Why organisations work with Azeem Rafiq Primary-source authority on how a major British institution mishandled a discrimination complaint, with the parliamentary record, Cricket Discipline Commission outcomes, and governance changes to evidence it. A working answer to the question every CHRO privately asks: what happens to the person who reports, after they report? Rafiq describes the years that followed his disclosure, not only the moment of speaking out. Lived credibility on the gap between policy and practice. The policies at Yorkshire existed. They were not implemented. The reform conversation he triggered is now standard reading for sport, regulators, and corporate ER teams. A name that lands with sceptical audiences. Boards and senior teams who have seen too many polished DEI keynotes engage differently with a speaker whose testimony is a matter of parliamentary record. Biography highlights Former professional cricketer for Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire CCC; captained England under-15 and under-19 sides. Appointed Yorkshire CCC’s youngest captain and first of Asian heritage in 2012. Gave evidence to the DCMS Select Committee in November 2021; witness statement published by the committee. Triggered a Cricket Discipline Commission process that upheld charges and led to the resignation of Yorkshire’s chair and a board reset under Lord Kamlesh Patel. Author of It’s Not Banter, It’s Racism (Hachette, 2024), longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2024. Submitted further written evidence to Parliament’s Sport Governance inquiry in 2022. Biography Yorkshire County Cricket Club had policies for racism, bullying and player welfare. They were not enforced. When a complaint was raised internally in 2018, the institutional response was to manage the complainant rather than the complaint. That is the gap most organisations underestimate, and it is the gap Azeem Rafiq has spent the past five years describing in evidence. His professional record is on the public file: junior international captain for England, professional contracts at Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire, and the youngest captain in Yorkshire’s history. The reason senior audiences listen now is not the career. It is the witness statement, published by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, and the Cricket Discipline Commission findings that followed. The reform consequences are documented. Yorkshire’s chair resigned. Lord Kamlesh Patel was installed to rebuild the board. The England and Wales Cricket Board was forced to confront governance failures it had previously minimised. Rafiq’s 2024 book with Hachette, It’s Not Banter, It’s Racism, was longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and remains one of the more honest published accounts of what happens after a whistleblower stops being useful to the institutions briefly aligned with them. What he offers senior audiences now is closer to a case study than a story. He talks about the specific points at which a complaint becomes politically inconvenient, about the role of HR, legal and PR functions in absorbing or deflecting it, and about the human cost on the person at the centre. It is the content most diversity programmes do not have access to. Key speaking topics Institutional racism and culture reform Whistleblowing and speak-up systems in practice Inclusion when policy and practice diverge Governance and accountability in sport Mental health and family impact of public disclosure The aftermath of speaking out Ideal for CHROs, employee relations leads and DEI heads in organisations re-examining their speak-up architecture. Boards and audit committees with whistleblowing oversight responsibilities. Sports governing bodies, regulators and member organisations confronting culture inquiries. Senior leadership offsites where the inclusion conversation has gone stale. Audience outcomes A concrete picture of how a major institution failed to act on its own policies, and the operational reasons why. A more accurate read on what protection a whistleblower actually receives once a complaint enters the system. Specific questions to test inside their own organisation, drawn from cricket’s governance failures. Renewed seriousness about the personal cost of disclosure, useful for anyone designing or sponsoring a speak-up channel.

Why organisations work with Helle Thorning-Schmidt She brings direct, first-hand experience of governing at national level – the pressures, trade-offs, and decision logic of political leadership that no management theory course can replicate. Her role as co-chair of the Meta Oversight Board is live, not historical. She is actively making binding, precedent-setting decisions on content moderation, AI-generated material, and free speech – and publicly challenging Meta’s leadership where she disagrees. That currency is rare in any speaker on digital governance. Her current board seats span cybersecurity (Palo Alto Networks, Governance and Security Committees), clean energy (Vestas Wind Systems), and communications (Edelman). She is not describing corporate governance from the outside; she is practising it across sectors simultaneously. She can translate the logic of European regulatory thinking – from platform accountability to energy policy to humanitarian law – into terms a corporate board can act on, drawing on relationships across the US Council on Foreign Relations, the European Council on Foreign Relations, and the Atlantic Council International Advisory Board. Her three years leading Save the Children International – 17,000 staff, 120 countries, active conflict zones – gives her an operational understanding of how international systems function and where they fail that is directly relevant to any organisation with complex, exposed global operations. Biography highlights Prime Minister of Denmark, 2011-2015; Denmark’s first female Prime Minister and first female leader of the Social Democratic Party Member of the European Parliament, 1999-2004; Member of the Danish Parliament, 2005-2015 CEO, Save the Children International, 2016-2019, overseeing 17,000 staff across 120 countries Co-chair, Meta Oversight Board, since 2020 – the independent body issuing binding content moderation decisions for Facebook and Instagram Board member, Palo Alto Networks (Governance and Sustainability Committee; Security Committee); board member, Vestas Wind Systems; board member, Edelman Named to Fortune’s World’s 50 Greatest Leaders, 2017; co-chair, World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Davos, 2017 Member: US Council on Foreign Relations, European Council on Foreign Relations, Atlantic Council International Advisory Board, Berggruen 21st Century Council Biography The decisions that most challenge senior leadership teams today – how to govern AI, how to navigate geopolitical disruption, how to respond when digital regulation rewrites the rules of global commerce – were once considered the exclusive domain of governments. Helle Thorning-Schmidt has worked on both sides of that divide. As Denmark’s first female Prime Minister from 2011 to 2015, she led a government through the aftermath of the financial crisis while managing complex European and international relationships from the highest level of executive authority. From 2016 to 2019, she served as CEO of Save the Children International, overseeing 17,000 staff in 120 countries and engaging governments, multilateral institutions, and civil society on live humanitarian crises in Yemen, Syria, and Myanmar. That experience gave her an operational understanding of how international systems function – and where they fail – that no advisory role provides. Since 2020, she has co-chaired the Meta Oversight Board, the independent body that makes binding content moderation decisions for Facebook and Instagram and issues policy recommendations directly to Meta’s leadership. She has publicly challenged Meta’s practices where the board disagrees – including on the company’s 2025 decision to drop independent fact-checking – making her perspective on platform accountability distinctly independent. Her appointment in February 2025 to the board of Palo Alto Networks, where she sits on both the Governance and Sustainability Committee and the Security Committee, extends that reach into live cybersecurity governance. She also serves on the boards of Vestas Wind Systems and Edelman. Her foreign policy engagements include membership of the US Council on Foreign Relations, the European Council on Foreign Relations, the International Crisis Group, and the Atlantic Council International Advisory Board. Named to Fortune’s World’s 50 Greatest Leaders in 2017, she co-chaired the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos that same year. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and international governance Corporate governance and board accountability Platform governance and digital regulation Leadership under political and institutional pressure Cross-sector governance across government, business, and civil society Diverse and inclusive board leadership Humanitarian risk and operating in complex global environments Ideal for Boards and non-executive directors navigating geopolitical complexity and regulatory pressure Senior leadership teams in technology, energy, financial services, and other heavily regulated sectors Public affairs, government relations, and risk functions in multinational organisations International policy forums, governance conferences, and executive leadership summits Audience outcomes Clearer understanding of how political and regulatory decisions affecting business are actually made at government level Practical context for board-level governance in an environment of increasing digital, geopolitical, and regulatory complexity Insight into the logic of platform regulation and what it means for corporate accountability and communications strategy A more grounded framework for assessing geopolitical risk and its direct implications for organisational decision-making Perspective on what effective leadership under genuine institutional pressure – rather than corporate simulation of it – actually looks like