Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Why organisations work with Joss Stone A first-hand global perspective from a singer who performed in all 193 UN member states and partnered with local charities in each, a frame of reference very few keynote speakers can claim. A Grammy winner and double BRIT Award winner whose presence brings cultural weight and warmth to a corporate, charity, or values-led event. A founder’s account of running the Joss Stone Foundation, which supports more than 200 charities, told without corporate distance. A speaker who draws on Live 8, One Young World, and two decades inside the music industry to talk about purpose, resilience, and creative independence in plain language. Biography highlights Grammy Award winner for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals (2007), with John Legend and Van Hunt. Two BRIT Awards (2005): British Female Solo Artist and British Urban Act; Guinness World Records as youngest BRIT solo winner at age 17. Debut album The Soul Sessions shortlisted for the 2004 Mercury Prize; approximately 14 million records sold worldwide. Performed at Live 8 (2005) and the One Young World Summit (2012). Completed The Total World Tour (2014 to 2019), performing in over 200 countries including all 193 UN member states, collaborating with local artists and charities. Founder of the Joss Stone Foundation, supporting more than 200 charities globally. Biography Most artists at the peak of a recording career do not put it down to spend five years performing in every country on earth. Joss Stone did. The Total World Tour ran from 2014 to 2019, reached all 193 UN member states, and paired every show with a charity visit and a local-artist collaboration. The Joss Stone Foundation grew directly out of it. Stone arrived at this work with credentials already in place. Her debut record was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize when she was sixteen. By seventeen she held two BRIT Awards and a Guinness World Records entry as the youngest solo winner of the prize. A Grammy followed in 2007 for her collaboration with John Legend and Van Hunt. Roughly 14 million records sold worldwide put her among the best-selling British soul artists of her generation. What she now brings to a stage is the rarer asset. She has sat with charity workers, musicians, and communities in places most senior leaders only see in briefing notes. She has built and run an international foundation. She has done it while staying recognisably herself, with the directness that audiences at One Young World, Live 8, and corporate summits have responded to. For organisations talking about purpose, global responsibility, or the human side of a values agenda, Stone offers proof that the work is doable and worth doing. The argument lands because she has done it. Key speaking topics Purpose and humanitarian leadership Global perspective through music and travel Founding and running a charitable foundation Creative independence and career longevity Cultural collaboration across 193 countries Resilience inside the music industry Ideal for Charity galas, foundation events, and CSR or ESG conferences Corporate summits on purpose, values, and employee engagement Awards dinners and after-dinner keynote slots Women’s leadership, young leaders, and One Young World style platforms Audience outcomes A vivid first-hand account of building a global humanitarian project from the ground up A reset of what purpose looks like when it is lived rather than messaged Specific stories from 193 countries that translate abstract values into human terms A reminder, from someone who has done it, that creative independence and commercial success can coexist

Why organisations work with Linda Mabhena-Olagunju She has actually built and operates a 244MW utility-scale wind farm in the Northern Cape, not advised on one. Her authority on the energy transition comes from owning the asset, raising the capital, and running it. A legal foundation in oil and gas law from Aberdeen, applied to renewable energy operations in Africa. That sequence gives her a sharper view than most operators on how regulation, project finance, and offtake contracts actually shape what gets built. Direct line of sight on what local ownership looks like in practice. DLO acquired the engineering services and operations capability behind its plants, making it the rare African IPP with both equity and technical control. Sits at the table where African energy policy is shaped: advisor to South Africa’s Minister of Energy, University of Oxford International Advisory Board, founder of the DLO Africa Power Roundtable. Recognised by named bodies, not bureau hype: Choiseul 100 (multi-year), Forbes Woman Africa, CNBC All Africa Business Leaders Award, Veuve Clicquot. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, DLO Energy Resources Group, owner and operator of a 244MW wind farm in South Africa’s Northern Cape. LLB, University of Cape Town (Dean’s Merit List); LLM in International Commercial Law with oil and gas specialisation, University of Aberdeen (First Class). Admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa. Member of the University of Oxford International Advisory Board since 2018. External contributor to Institut Montaigne on African energy and infrastructure. Recognition: Choiseul 100 Africa Economic Leaders for Tomorrow (multi-year); Forbes Woman Africa Best Emerging Entrepreneur; CNBC All Africa Business Leaders Award; Veuve Clicquot Businesswomen Award; Oprah Power List of 20 most powerful women in Africa. Biography Africa’s renewable energy build-out is shaped less by technology than by who can hold a project together long enough to reach financial close. DLO Energy Resources Group, founded by Linda Mabhena-Olagunju and now the operator of a 244MW wind farm in the Northern Cape, is one of the few independent power producers on the continent that owns both the equity and the engineering capability behind its assets. Her route into the sector is unusual. She read law at the University of Cape Town, then took an LLM in International Commercial Law at Aberdeen with a specialism in oil and gas. She is an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa. That legal grounding, in the contracts and regulation that govern energy projects, is what allowed DLO to acquire an EPC and O&M operation and bring operational control in-house, a step most African IPPs never take. The recognition has followed the work, not the other way round. The Choiseul 100 has listed her among Africa’s economic leaders of tomorrow across multiple years. Forbes Woman Africa named her Best Emerging Entrepreneur; CNBC named her Young Business Leader for Southern Africa. She sits on the University of Oxford International Advisory Board, contributes to Institut Montaigne on African energy policy, and advises the South African Minister of Energy. For audiences working on energy transition strategy, climate-related disclosures, or capital allocation to emerging markets, she is one of the very small group who can describe the path from policy ambition to a generating asset, with the receipts to back it up. Key speaking topics Africa’s energy transition Renewable energy project finance and ownership Independent power producers in emerging markets Local content and black ownership in energy Women in energy and infrastructure Climate policy and capital allocation in Africa Ideal for Boards and investment committees with African or emerging-market energy exposure CFOs, treasury, and capital allocators reviewing climate transition strategy Energy, utilities, and infrastructure executives planning African projects DEI sponsors and women-in-leadership programmes in capital-intensive sectors Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what it takes for an African renewable project to reach financial close, told by someone who has done it. A working understanding of where policy ambition on energy transition diverges from project finance reality on the continent. Concrete answers on how local ownership, EPC control, and offtake structures change the economics of a generation asset. A sharper view of where African renewable capacity is actually being built, by whom, and at what cost of capital.

Why organisations work with Helen Richardson-Walsh A first-hand account of the cultural reset that took GB women’s hockey from Olympic underachievers to Rio 2016 gold, told by a senior player who was inside the leadership group for 11 years. A working performance psychologist’s view of how psychological safety, belonging and honest feedback are engineered in a daily training environment, drawn from her current role with Tottenham Hotspur Women. A credible voice on mental health at the top of high-pressure environments, grounded in her own documented recovery from clinical depression and career-threatening back surgery between London 2012 and Rio 2016. A practical perspective on inclusion as a performance variable, informed by being part of the first same-sex married couple to win Olympic gold on the same team and the cultural work that made that possible inside the squad. Co-author of “Winning Together” (Hachette, 2020), a book leaders cite as a tactical, behaviour-level account of building a winning team, not a memoir. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist, Rio 2016, with Team GB women’s hockey; one of only two players to score in the shootout that beat the Netherlands in the final. Youngest woman ever to represent GB hockey at an Olympic Games, on debut at Sydney 2000, aged 18. Olympic bronze, London 2012; European champion, 2015; 293 caps for England and Great Britain across four Olympic Games. MBE for services to hockey, 2017 New Year Honours. Co-author of “Winning Together: An Olympic-Winning Approach to Building Better Teams” (Hachette, 2020), with Kate Richardson-Walsh. Performance Psychologist with Tottenham Hotspur Women since 2021; holds a Master’s in Organisational Psychology from City, University of London, and trains as a sport psychologist with elite teams. Biography GB women’s hockey arrived at London 2012 with a bronze medal and an open question about whether the squad could ever win at the level its talent suggested. The four years that followed were not a story of more training. They were a story of a deliberate cultural rebuild: explicit team values, leadership shared across the senior players, hard conversations about behaviour, and a willingness to treat psychology as a daily performance system. Rio 2016 produced the first Olympic gold for British women’s hockey. Helen Richardson-Walsh made her Olympic debut at Sydney 2000 as the youngest woman ever to represent GB hockey, and sat inside that leadership group for 11 of her 18 years in the squad. Her experience is unusually specific. Between the two Olympics she also went through two ruptured discs, multiple back and ankle surgeries, and a period of clinical depression severe enough to require professional treatment. The Rio gold was won by a player who had been told she might not play again, who had used therapy and mindfulness to come back, and who was one of only two players to score in the shootout that won the final against the Netherlands. That combination of operating inside an elite team culture and rebuilding her own performance from the inside is the content she now works with. She is co-author, with Kate Richardson-Walsh, of “Winning Together” (Hachette, 2020), a working manual on team building drawn directly from the Rio cycle. She is a Performance Psychologist with Tottenham Hotspur Women, where her brief includes individual mindset work and squad culture, and she holds a Master’s in Organisational Psychology from City, University of London. For senior teams the value is in the precision of her examples. How psychological safety actually shows up in a meeting. What belonging looks like when a married couple are competing for the same shirt. How a high performer talks about depression without losing their place in the team. What inclusion does to performance when the pressure is on. The credibility is the medal; the substance is what she did to get there and what she does now. Key speaking topics High-performance team culture Psychological safety and belonging Inclusion in elite performance environments Resilience after injury, setback and depression Mental health and wellbeing at senior level Leadership inside high-pressure teams Performance mindset Ideal for CHROs, heads of talent and culture leads building team norms in pressured commercial environments. Executive teams and senior leadership groups going through performance reset or post-restructure rebuild. Wellbeing, DEI and people leaders working on inclusion and psychological safety as performance issues, not compliance. Sales, trading floor and operating leadership groups where sustained pressure is the working environment. Audience outcomes A concrete account of how an elite team rebuilt its culture in four years, with the specific behaviours that changed. A working definition of psychological safety drawn from a team where the cost of getting it wrong was visible in performance. Language for talking about mental health and recovery at senior level without softening or sensationalising it. A view of inclusion as a performance variable, not a values statement. Practical mental tools used by elite athletes that translate to commercial high-pressure roles.

Why organisations work with Divyanshu Ganatra He brings clinical psychology training together with a record of firsts in adventure sport, so the conversation about resilience is grounded in evidence rather than in motivational narrative alone. He runs Adventures Beyond Barriers Foundation, a working inclusion organisation, which means his content on inclusive leadership comes from operating practice with cross-disability teams, not from a deck. He is recognised by the Vice President of India through the National Award for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, which gives senior buyers a defensible credential when positioning the session internally. He speaks credibly to CXO forums and Fortune 500 audiences on attitudinal barriers, the specific tension that stalls most inclusion programmes once policy and quotas have been set. His material translates between personal decision-making under pressure and organisational decision-making under restructure, which makes him a fit for leadership offsites that need both registers. Biography highlights Founder, Adventures Beyond Barriers Foundation (ABBF), 2014, an inclusive adventure-sports organisation working across cross-disabilities. India’s first blind solo paraglider pilot, 29 April 2014. First blind tandem cyclist to complete the Manali to Khardung La route, 2016, the world’s highest motorable road, now ABBF’s flagship M2K expedition. First blind Indian to summit Mount Kilimanjaro, 2018. Master’s in Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pune, where he was the first blind student to graduate in the field; clinical psychologist by training. National Award for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, presented by the Vice President of India; named among the Ten Outstanding Young Indians by the Junior Chamber International. Biography Most inclusion programmes inside large organisations stall at the same point. Policy is in place, quotas are tracked, and senior leaders still cannot describe what changed in how the organisation actually works. The blockage is rarely structural. It is attitudinal, and it sits with the leadership group itself. That is the tension Divyanshu Ganatra was trained to read. He lost his sight to glaucoma at nineteen and went on to become the first blind student to complete a Master’s in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pune. He works as a clinical psychologist, and the discipline shapes how he frames inclusion to senior audiences: as a behavioural and decision-making problem, not a values statement. In 2014 he founded Adventures Beyond Barriers Foundation, an inclusive adventure-sports organisation that puts people with and without disabilities into the same physical task. The same year, he became India’s first blind solo paraglider pilot. In 2016 he led the first blind tandem cycling crossing from Manali to Khardung La, the world’s highest motorable road, which now anchors ABBF’s annual M2K expedition. In 2018 he became the first blind Indian to summit Mount Kilimanjaro. The Vice President of India presented him with the National Award for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, and the Junior Chamber International named him among the Ten Outstanding Young Indians. With CXO forums and Fortune 500 audiences he treats those firsts as case material, not biography, working back from each one to the decision sequence that made it possible for a leadership team to use. Key speaking topics Inclusion as a leadership capability Attitudinal barriers and behavioural change Decision-making after personal and organisational shock Resilience grounded in cognitive neuroscience Disability and workplace inclusion Innovation through cross-ability collaboration Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads designing inclusion strategy beyond compliance Executive committees and leadership offsites focused on resilience and composure under pressure CXO forums and Fortune 500 leadership audiences working on culture change Boards and senior teams setting the inclusion agenda for the next reporting cycle Audience outcomes A reframing of inclusion from policy mechanic to leadership behaviour, with named attitudinal barriers to look for in their own organisation. A working model for decision-making in the period that follows acute personal or organisational shock. A clearer view of what cross-ability collaboration produces operationally, drawn from ABBF’s M2K expedition and other inclusive programmes. A direct first-person account of building competence after sight loss, used as case material for senior leaders managing reinvention in their own teams.

Why organisations work with Jacquie Davis Direct operational authority on decisions made under live threat, including hostage rescue work in Pakistan and Iraq, that no academic or consultant voice can claim. Four years as personal protection officer to JK Rowling at the height of Harry Potter publicity, with a wider client list including Nicole Kidman, the Beckhams, and Middle Eastern royalty, which gives her credibility with audiences used to operating in a public eye. A reference point that few keynote speakers can offer: a Netflix feature film, Close (2019), built around her professional life, on which she served as the operational consultant. A perspective on team performance and trust forged inside small units where a wrong call has physical consequences, rather than abstracted from a leadership framework. An unusually credible voice on women operating at the senior end of a male-dominated profession, drawn from her own working life rather than a research project. Biography highlights Author of The Circuit, first published by Penguin and reprinted in 2020, an autobiographical account of her work from Metropolitan Police service to international close protection. Personal bodyguard to JK Rowling for four years during the peak of the Harry Potter phenomenon. The protagonist of the 2019 Netflix film Close, directed by Vicky Jewson and starring Noomi Rapace, is based on her career. Operational record includes hostage rescue work freeing a British woman held in Pakistan, and rescuing men held by Uday Hussein in Iraq. Trained in counter-surveillance, firearms, restraint tactics, bomb search, defensive driving, and hostage survival. Consults for television and film production companies and appears regularly as a security commentator on UK and US broadcast media. Biography Penguin published The Circuit in 1998 and reprinted it in 2020. The memoir is an operational account of close protection work, from a 1970s start in the Metropolitan Police through hostage rescues abroad and protection of named celebrity principals, by one of the few female operators to write the story down. Her career began in the Metropolitan Police in the 1970s and moved into close protection at a point when the field had almost no women in it. Over the following three decades she protected JK Rowling for four years at the peak of Harry Potter publicity, worked principals including Nicole Kidman, Diana Ross, and the Beckhams, and conducted hostage rescue operations in Pakistan and Iraq. The reason a boardroom listens is not the celebrity client list. It is that Davis has had to make consequential decisions, fast, in environments where information was partial and the cost of error was physical. She speaks about how composure is built, how small teams hold together when conditions deteriorate, and what trust actually looks like when it is being tested in real time. In 2019 Netflix released Close, a feature film directed by Vicky Jewson and starring Noomi Rapace, with a protagonist based on Davis’s working life and with Davis herself consulting on the production. The result is a speaker who arrives with operational evidence, a published account of the work, and a cultural artefact that anchors the story for an audience. Key speaking topics Decision-making under extreme pressure Risk assessment and crisis planning Small-team performance in hostile environments Leadership composure and self-management Women in male-dominated professions Personal and organisational security awareness Ideal for Boards and executive committees building crisis decision-making capability Security, risk, and resilience leadership functions Women’s leadership programmes and senior development audiences Conferences with a substantive focus on personal and organisational composure under threat Audience outcomes A working sense of how field operators reach decisions when information is incomplete and consequences are immediate A more practical reference point for what crisis planning and small-team trust look like outside the training-room version A concrete account of how women operate at the senior end of a profession that resisted them, useful for leadership programmes that handle that subject substantively A reset on what risk awareness means in personal and organisational settings, drawn from operational experience rather than checklists

Why organisations work with Carrie Gracie Two decades reporting from inside China, including the role of BBC News’ first China Editor based in Beijing, give her a read on Party politics and economic policy that few Western commentators can match. She translates Chinese political signals into the questions a board actually needs to answer: market access, supply chain exposure, regulatory direction, and the real shape of the US-China contest. Her Peabody-winning “White Horse Village” reporting, a decade-long series tracking one community through China’s modernisation, is evidence of the long-horizon judgement she brings to shorter-cycle corporate questions. On a separate brief, her public resignation from the BBC over unequal pay, and the £361,000 settlement she donated to the Fawcett Society and Equal Pay Advice Service, make her one of the few speakers who has forced structural change at a named employer and can talk about it first-hand. She is a working broadcaster, not an academic: she handles live Q&A with senior audiences, difficult journalists, and hostile questions with the composure of someone who has presented BBC News on air for over a decade. Biography highlights Former BBC News China Editor (2013 to 2018), based in Beijing, and the first person to hold that role 33-year career at the BBC as correspondent, presenter, and editor, including Beijing bureau chief and presenter of BBC News Channel and the BBC World Service programme “The Interview” Peabody Award for the “White Horse Village” documentary series following a Chinese village through a decade of modernisation Author of “Equal: A Story of Women, Men and Money” (Virago, Little Brown) Resigned as BBC China Editor in January 2018 over unequal pay; the BBC issued a public apology and back pay settlement, which she donated in full (£361,000) to the Fawcett Society and the Equal Pay Advice Service Educated at Hertford College, Oxford (PPE) and the University of Westminster (BA Chinese); honorary graduate of the University of Exeter (2022) Biography The BBC’s first China Editor was appointed in 2013 and based in Beijing. The job was created because Western news organisations had concluded that China could no longer be covered as a regional story. Carrie Gracie held that role until January 2018, and she had already been reporting from China, on and off, for more than twenty years before it was given to her. Her reporting record in the country is unusually long for a Western journalist. She taught English and economics in Yantai and Chongqing in the mid-1980s, before joining the BBC. She covered the death of Deng Xiaoping, the 1997 Hong Kong handover, and the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Her “White Horse Village” series, which tracked a single village in Chongqing through a decade of displacement and rebuilding, won a Peabody Award for the way it read national policy through one community. That long-horizon approach is what senior audiences draw on now. She reads Chinese political and economic signals with the eye of a reporter who has watched Party congresses, five-year plans, and leadership transitions over multiple cycles. For boards exposed to Chinese markets or supply chains, this is closer to intelligence than commentary. She has a second, distinct body of work. In January 2018 she resigned as China Editor after learning that male international editors were paid substantially more for equivalent jobs. The BBC apologised publicly, backdated her pay, and Gracie donated the full £361,000 to the Fawcett Society and the Equal Pay Advice Service. Her book “Equal: A Story of Women, Men and Money” (Virago) is the account of that case and what it took to force an institution to move. Key speaking topics China’s political direction under Xi Jinping US-China strategic competition Geopolitical risk for boards and supply chains Chinese economy and market access Media, free speech, and authoritarian states Gender pay equality and institutional accountability Equal pay as a governance issue Ideal for Boards and executive committees with significant exposure to China or Asia-Pacific markets CROs, general counsel, and strategy leads pressure-testing geopolitical scenarios CHROs and reward committees reviewing pay equity, transparency, and disclosure practice Leadership audiences at financial services, industrial, technology, and consumer firms navigating the US-China contest Audience outcomes A clearer read on how Beijing makes decisions and what that means for the next three to five years of market access and regulatory risk A sharper set of questions to take into the next board or strategy review on China exposure An unvarnished account of how pay inequality survives inside a high-profile, regulated employer, and what actually shifted the institution A working journalist’s framework for distinguishing signal from noise in Chinese state communications Confidence to brief non-specialist colleagues on the commercial stakes of the US-China relationship

Why organisations work with Richard Coles He is one of the very few public figures in Britain who can speak about bereavement, faith and sexuality in front of a corporate audience without the room flinching. Audiences trust him because he has lived each subject in public. Twelve years co-presenting BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live gives him the interviewer’s craft: he can host an awards night, chair a panel of executives, or turn a CEO conversation into something a room actually wants to listen to. He is a Sunday Times number one bestselling novelist, the writer of The Madness of Grief, and the inspiration for the BBC comedy Rev. The cultural recognition gets him in the door; the substance is why he is asked back. His pop-to-pulpit story (member of The Communards, “Don’t Leave Me This Way” at number one in 1986, then ordination as an Anglican priest) is the most genuinely unusual second-career narrative on the speaking circuit, and he tells it without nostalgia. Biography highlights Co-presenter, BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live, 2011 to 2023 Church of England priest, ordained 2005; former vicar of Finedon, Northamptonshire Multi-instrumentalist in The Communards with Jimmy Somerville; UK number one with “Don’t Leave Me This Way” in 1986 Author of twelve books, including the Sunday Times bestseller The Madness of Grief (2021) and the Canon Clement crime series, optioned by ITV Regular panellist on Have I Got News For You, QI, and Would I Lie To You? Inspiration and consultant for the BBC comedy Rev Biography “Don’t Leave Me This Way” was the best-selling single in the UK in 1986. The man playing the keyboards on it is now a Church of England priest, a Sunday Times bestselling novelist and one of the most recognisable broadcasters on British radio. Few public lives have travelled this far between chapters, and fewer still have done so with the same lack of edit. Coles spent twelve years co-presenting BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live, the long-form Saturday morning programme heard by more than two million listeners. The role made him a national interviewer: a priest who could draw a stranger out, hold a difficult moment on air, and make space for the kind of conversation British broadcasting often avoids. The Communards, the priesthood, the radio, the books, the dachshunds, the dance floor on Strictly: each chapter brought a new audience without losing the previous one. The writing has become its own career. The Madness of Grief, published in 2021 after the death of his civil partner David, is a Sunday Times bestseller and one of the rare popular books on bereavement written from inside the experience rather than around it. The Canon Clement Mysteries, beginning with Murder Before Evensong in 2022, became a Sunday Times number one cosy crime series and an ITV drama starring Matthew Lewis. For corporate audiences, the value is the combination most public figures cannot offer: a hosting craft built over twelve years of live radio, lived experience of the subjects organisations now want to discuss honestly (grief, faith, identity, sexuality, mental health), and a sense of timing that comes from working a microphone for three decades. The result is a speaker who can carry a black-tie dinner, a leadership offsite or a memorial event with the same register. Key speaking topics Grief and bereavement in public life Faith, ethics and the modern workplace Identity, sexuality and being openly gay in public roles Reinvention and second careers The craft of conversation and interviewing Mental health and the inner life Public broadcasting and cultural commentary Ideal for Awards ceremonies, gala dinners and milestone events seeking a host who can carry the room Leadership and culture conferences addressing grief, mental health, identity or inclusion Internal employee events tied to wellbeing, faith networks or LGBTQ+ programming Membership organisations and professional bodies booking a literary, cultural keynote Audience outcomes A frank, unsentimental treatment of grief and bereavement that gives leaders language they can actually use at work A model of public conversation about faith and sexuality that does not retreat into either piety or politics A reframing of mid-career reinvention drawn from one of the most unusual second-career trajectories in British public life An event hosted or anchored with the timing, warmth and interviewing craft of a senior BBC broadcaster

Why organisations work with Swarzy Macaly A working broadcaster with a current BBC Radio 1Xtra Weekend Breakfast slot, which gives her live editorial reflexes that most corporate moderators do not have. Track record on the largest UK live-TV moments, including the London New Year’s Day Parade in 2022 and 2024, and panel hosting at COP26 and the BBC Climate Creative Forum. A founder credential that supports the editorial content. Too Much Source, her annual exhibition for Black British creatives, has run since 2017 with the Barbican and Roundhouse. Substantive moderation history with Unilever, Ofcom, GroupM, ITV, Nike, TikTok and DAZN, so brand and regulator audiences are familiar territory. Recognition from named bodies: Best Presenter at the UK Entertainment Awards 2021 and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s 2020 Next Generation Trailblazers list. Biography highlights Presenter, BBC Radio 1Xtra Weekend Breakfast, Saturdays 7-10 am. Founder, Too Much Source, an annual exhibition celebrating Black British creatives, established in 2017. Trustee, My Life My Say, the youth-led democratic participation charity. Best Presenter, UK Entertainment Awards 2021. Named to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Next Generation Trailblazers list for Black History Month 2020. Panel host at COP26 and the BBC Climate Creative Forum; live-TV host of the London New Year’s Day Parade in 2022 and 2024. Biography Most corporate inclusion conversations fail on stage long before they fail in policy. The voice in the room is usually too polished, too cautious, or too far from the audience to land. Swarzy Macaly is one of the few broadcasters in the UK who can run that conversation in front of a live brand audience and keep it honest. Her main work is at the BBC. She presents the Weekend Breakfast Show on Radio 1Xtra and contributes across BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC Sounds, including the Daily Service and Sunday Worship strands. She came into broadcasting through a national presenter competition at KISS FM in 2016, then moved into the BBC and onto live television, hosting the London New Year’s Day Parade in 2022 and 2024. The editorial spine sits alongside that hosting career. She founded Too Much Source in 2017, an annual exhibition for Black British creatives that has run with the Barbican and Roundhouse. She is a trustee of My Life My Say, the youth-led democratic participation charity, where she has interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, Sadiq Khan and John Podesta on its Question Time series. Her panel work at COP26 and the BBC Climate Creative Forum extends the same instinct into climate. Brands and institutions book her for the same reason. Unilever, Ofcom, GroupM, ITV, Nike, TikTok and DAZN have used her as a moderator on internal and public events where the conversation could easily go wrong. The work earned her Best Presenter at the UK Entertainment Awards in 2021 and a place on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s 2020 Next Generation Trailblazers list. Key speaking topics Inclusion and representation in UK media Social mobility and access to the creative industries Womanhood and intersectional identity Climate communication for general audiences Faith, community and public life Panel moderation and conference hosting Ideal for Brand, marketing and ER leaders running employee, partner or consumer events where inclusion content has to be credible. Communications and policy teams at regulators and broadcasters convening external panels on representation, access or climate. Conference programmers and chairs need a host who can chair contested topics without flattening them. Foundations, charities and youth-focused organisations are running flagship public conversations with senior political guests. Audience outcomes A live conversation that holds editorial weight, with named guests, real disagreements, and no PR varnish. Sharper framing of inclusion and social mobility messaging that audiences under 40 actually believe. Confident chairing across sensitive subjects: race, faith, climate, gender, and generational difference. A high-craft moderator who can shift register between corporate, broadcast and youth audiences in the same event.

Why organisations work with Maggie Alphonsi A first-hand account of what seven consecutive Six Nations titles and a World Cup actually required, told by someone who was on the field for all of it. Inclusion grounded in lived institutional experience: the first woman to win the Pat Marshall Award in its 50-year history, the first former female player to commentate on men’s international rugby for ITV, an elected RFU Council member working inside the governance structure she came up through. A published account, “Winning the Fight,” shortlisted for Autobiography of the Year at the 2024 Sports Book Awards, that grounds the cultural narrative in specific decisions, not platitudes. A practitioner view of high-performance teams that names the mechanics behind sustained dominance, not the highlight reel. Biography highlights 74 caps and 28 tries for England between 2003 and 2014, playing flanker for Saracens. Member of the England squad that won the 2014 Women’s Rugby World Cup; named in the tournament’s Dream Team. Inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame in November 2016. MBE for services to rugby, 2012 Birthday Honours. First female recipient of the Rugby Union Writers’ Club Pat Marshall Award (2011); first former female player to commentate on men’s international rugby for ITV (2015 Rugby World Cup). Elected member of the Rugby Football Union Council, active on the RFU Diversity and Inclusion steering group; author of “Winning the Fight” (Polaris, 2023). Biography Seven consecutive Six Nations titles, six of them Grand Slams, plus a Rugby World Cup. That is the England team Maggie Alphonsi played in between 2003 and 2014. The achievement was structural, not accidental, and she has spent the years since explaining what that kind of sustained performance actually requires inside a team environment. The credentials line up. 74 caps, 28 tries, MBE in 2012, World Rugby Hall of Fame in 2016. What matters more for organisational audiences is what she did next. In 2011, she became the first woman to win the Pat Marshall Award from the Rugby Union Writers’ Club, ahead of Richie McCaw, in the prize’s 50-year history. In 2015, she became the first former female player to commentate on men’s international rugby for ITV. In 2016, she was elected to the Rugby Football Union Council and joined its Diversity and Inclusion steering group. Each of those firsts came inside an institution that had not previously built a place for someone like her. Her 2023 autobiography, “Winning the Fight,” sets out the specifics: a club foot at birth, North London council estates, racism and sexism encountered along the way, and the operational decisions that produced a World Cup. The book was shortlisted for Autobiography of the Year at the 2024 Sports Book Awards. For senior leaders working on inclusion, performance culture, or how teams hold standards across long cycles, she brings the rare combination of having executed at the top of her sport and then sat on the governance body that runs it. Key speaking topics High-performance team culture Inclusion in male-dominated institutions Sustained excellence under pressure Diversity and inclusion in sport and business Resilience and identity through career change Breaking institutional norms Mentoring and developing emerging talent Ideal for CHROs and heads of D&I building inclusion programmes that have to produce measurable cultural change, not optics. Leadership teams responsible for sustained high performance over multi-year cycles. Boards and senior leaders confronting representation gaps in their governance structures. Talent and learning leaders running development programmes for women and underrepresented groups. Audience outcomes A working picture of what produced seven Six Nations titles and a World Cup, drawn from inside the squad. A first-hand account of being the first woman in three different institutional settings and what that took week to week. Specific reference points for how inclusion and high performance reinforce each other in practice. Frank perspective on the gap between stated organisational values and lived employee experience.

Why organisations work with Belinda Parmar She created the Global Empathy Index, a quantitative framework published in the Harvard Business Review, that links corporate empathy directly to earnings, productivity, and retention. Most culture-change work lacks a measurement baseline; her work provides one. Her “Empathy-In-Residence” model, embedded at Barclays, Lloyds, and Centrica over extended engagements, means her frameworks have been tested at operational scale inside major institutions, not only delivered from a keynote stage. Work with AGL produced a 20.9% reduction in customer complaints and $1.7 million in cost savings, giving finance and operations leaders a commercial language for empathy that sits alongside a P&L, not just a people strategy. She has developed an AI-powered Empathy Index combining large language models with sentiment analysis, positioning organisations to measure their human culture in real time as AI transformation programmes change the surrounding landscape. As a Non-Executive Director at the UK Ministry of Defence, she brings board-level governance experience in a complex institutional environment, giving her work a credibility context that most leadership and culture speakers do not hold. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of The Empathy Business (formerly Lady Geek), a consultancy specialising in embedding empathy into organisational leadership, culture, and operations Creator of the Global Empathy Index, published in the Harvard Business Review: the first index to establish a quantitative correlation between corporate empathy and commercial performance Appointed OBE in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to Women in Technology World Economic Forum Young Global Leader; keynote speaker at Davos (2019) Empathy-In-Residence at Barclays, Lloyds, and Centrica; established the first Empathy Hub in Europe’s largest bank Non-Executive Director, UK Ministry of Defence (appointed 2023) Author of Little Miss Geek and The Empathy Era: Women, Business and the New Pathway to Profit Featured in the Financial Times (2025); has written for The Guardian and the World Economic Forum Biography Organisations have spent a decade investing in AI while underinvesting in the human layer that AI cannot replace. Belinda Parmar’s work starts from a specific and uncomfortable question: if empathy is genuinely valuable to business performance, why can almost no organisation measure it? The Global Empathy Index, published in the Harvard Business Review, was built to answer that question. It ranks companies by empathy and connects those rankings directly to earnings, productivity, and retention. What makes her approach distinct is its operational depth. Through Empathy-In-Residence engagements at Barclays, Lloyds, and Centrica, she has deployed hundreds of evidence-based behavioural nudges: targeted interventions designed to shift culture from the inside rather than impose it from above. Work with AGL produced a 20.9% reduction in customer complaints, establishing empathy-led transformation as a driver of cost reduction, not only a people programme. AI has sharpened the question she has always asked. As generative AI absorbs more cognitive tasks, organisations face a practical leadership problem: how to identify, build, and retain the distinctly human capabilities that remain. Parmar has developed an AI-powered version of the Empathy Index, combining large language models with sentiment analysis, giving organisations a live measure of empathy in their culture as the technology landscape shifts around them. As a Non-Executive Director at the UK Ministry of Defence, she brings governance experience at an institutional level that most culture and leadership specialists do not access. She was appointed OBE for services to Women in Technology and named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Her books – Little Miss Geek and The Empathy Era – sit alongside her HBR contributions as a published body of argument for the commercial case for empathy. Key speaking topics Human leadership in an AI world Empathy as a measurable leadership capability Behavioural science and organisational culture change Responsible AI and human-centred technology Customer experience transformation Inclusive cultures and belonging at scale Diversity and inclusion in technology Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams navigating AI transformation who need a human leadership framework alongside their technology strategy CHROs and People Directors seeking to connect culture change to measurable commercial outcomes Customer Experience and Operations leaders in consumer-facing industries where complaint reduction and loyalty are live performance metrics Board and governance audiences where responsible AI and organisational values are on the agenda Audience outcomes A practical understanding of the Global Empathy Index methodology and how empathy can be measured and tracked within their own organisation A working toolkit of “empathy nudges” – evidence-based behavioural interventions that can be deployed without a large-scale transformation programme A commercial language for empathy: specific case references linking culture change to cost reduction and measurable operational improvement Clarity on where AI enhances human connection rather than replaces it – and what that distinction requires of leaders A working definition of human leadership applicable to their own AI deployment context

Why organisations work with Karun Chandhok He has lived inside two of the most exposed environments in elite sport: the cockpit of a backmarker F1 team trying to build a car around him, and a Sky Sports broadcast booth analysing the same paddock in real time. He sits on the Motorsport UK Board and the FIA Drivers’ Commission, so the governance, safety and DEI conversations he brings into the room are ones he is actively shaping, not commenting on from the outside. He translates how F1 teams turn millions of data points per race into decisive calls that engineers, strategists and a driver all act on within seconds, with examples a non-motorsport audience can follow. He is one of only two Indians ever to race in Formula One, which gives weight to his work on talent pipelines, representation and what it takes to break into a closed competitive system. He is a working broadcaster for a global audience, so the keynote is paced and structured for the room rather than delivered as a career retrospective. Biography highlights 11 Formula One Grand Prix starts for Hispania Racing in 2010 and Team Lotus in 2011. Sky Sports F1 analyst, co-commentator and pit-lane reporter, full-time since 2019. Board Director, Motorsport UK, and member of its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Founding member of the FIA Drivers’ Commission since 2013, with further roles on the FIA Single Seater Commission and Driver Grading Committee. Williams Heritage driver since 2016, demonstrating the team’s championship-winning cars. Author of “Drive to Victory: Incredible True Stories from the Fastest Sport in the World”, Hachette Children’s, 2025. Biography A modern Formula One team is roughly a thousand engineers, strategists and operations staff who have to redesign their product every two weeks, inside a moving regulatory frame, while a driver they have never met executes the result on television. Karun Chandhok has been the driver in that picture, the analyst describing it for Sky Sports F1, and a director on the boards that write the rules around it. He raced 11 Grands Prix for Hispania Racing and Team Lotus, becoming the second Indian to compete in the championship. From there he moved into the FIA World Endurance Championship and five starts at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, then drove for Mahindra Racing in the inaugural Formula E season. The breadth matters: very few people have raced across the three categories actively reshaping motorsport’s relationship with technology, sustainability and global audiences. Since 2019 he has been part of the core Sky Sports F1 line-up as analyst, co-commentator and pit-lane reporter. The role is unusual because it sits between the engineers and the public; he has to read live telemetry, strategy calls and team radio quickly enough to explain them on air, and accurately enough that the paddock will keep talking to him next weekend. His governance work gives the keynote its third dimension. He has served on the FIA Drivers’ Commission since 2013 and joined the Motorsport UK board in 2021, where he sits on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Those seats are why his material on talent pipelines, safety reform and competitive integrity carries authority that most sports speakers cannot match. Key speaking topics Decision-making in high-pressure performance environments Leadership and team coordination in elite motorsport Data, technology and human judgement in Formula One Safety, governance and regulatory change Diversity, inclusion and talent pipelines in closed competitive systems Continuous transformation under external pressure Global sport as a commercial and operational system Ideal for Executive teams and boards working through sustained operational or regulatory change. CHROs, DEI leads and talent functions building pipelines into historically closed industries. Engineering, technology and data leadership audiences interested in how F1 turns data into action. Sales conferences and client events where a credible, broadcast-quality headline speaker is needed. Audience outcomes A clearer view of how elite teams sustain judgement and coordination when conditions keep shifting. A working sense of how F1 organisations turn data and technology into faster human decisions. Specific examples of how regulation, safety and competitive performance trade against each other inside a sport. A more honest picture of what genuine inclusion looks like in a sector that historically locked talent out.

Why organisations work with Niven Postma She gives executive teams a vocabulary and method for organisational politics that most leadership programmes refuse to address directly, anchored in her Harvard Business Review article and her best-selling book on the subject. She has run the function from the inside: Head of Leadership and Culture at Standard Bank Group, Head of the South African Reserve Bank Academy, CEO of the Businesswomen’s Association of South Africa. Her work travels across financial services, retail, media, transport and manufacturing, so the politics framework is tested against very different operating environments rather than one sector’s habits. She holds a recognised platform in African leadership development as Programme Director of the Archbishop Tutu Leadership Fellowship, run by the African Leadership Institute in partnership with Oxford University. She codified her approach into a LinkedIn Learning course aimed at senior leaders, which means the content is structured for executive use, not anecdote-driven keynote material. Biography highlights Author, If You Don’t Do Politics, Politics Will Do You (2020). Harvard Business Review contributor; “You Can’t Sit Out Office Politics” (2021), selected for HBR Press collection Bosses, Coworkers and Building Great Relationships (2024). LinkedIn Learning instructor, Navigating Organizational Politics as a Senior Leader. Former CEO, Businesswomen’s Association of South Africa; former Head, South African Reserve Bank Academy; former Head of Leadership and Culture, Standard Bank Group. 2007 Archbishop Tutu Leadership Fellow; Programme Director of the Tutu Fellowship Programme from 2025 (African Leadership Institute, with Oxford University). Lecturer at Henley Business School and managing director of Niven Postma Inc. Biography Office politics are usually treated as something serious leaders should rise above. Niven Postma’s argument, set out in her Harvard Business Review article and her 2020 book If You Don’t Do Politics, Politics Will Do You, is the opposite. At senior levels, politics is the work. Influence capital and relationship currency decide which strategies get resourced, which leaders get promoted, and which decisions actually stick. Her credibility on the subject comes from having held the seat. She was Head of Leadership and Culture for Standard Bank Group, the largest bank by assets in Africa, after running the South African Reserve Bank Academy and serving as the founding CEO of the Businesswomen’s Association of South Africa. From those roles, she saw which executives understood how organisations really work and which ones did not, and built her practice around closing that gap. Today she advises executive teams across financial services, retail, media, transport and manufacturing through her firm Niven Postma Inc., lectures at Henley Business School, and teaches Navigating Organizational Politics as a Senior Leader on LinkedIn Learning. Her HBR piece “You Can’t Sit Out Office Politics” was selected for the HBR Press collection Bosses, Coworkers and Building Great Relationships in 2024. In 2025 she became Programme Director of the Archbishop Tutu Leadership Fellowship, the African Leadership Institute’s flagship programme run with Oxford University, having been a Fellow herself in 2007. That role situates her work in a wider conversation about how African senior leaders develop the practical political judgement complex organisations require. Key speaking topics Organisational politics for senior leaders Leadership and culture in complex organisations Executive presence and influence Women’s leadership and systemic gender equity Leading through disruption and change Culture transformation in financial services and large enterprises Ideal for C-suite and executive committees in banking, insurance and large regulated enterprises CHROs, chief people officers and heads of leadership development are designing senior-leader curricula High-potential leadership cohorts and women’s executive networks Boards and management teams operating across multiple geographies or post-merger contexts Audience outcomes A direct, non-euphemistic vocabulary for the political dynamics that shape decisions in their organisation A practical reading of where their own influence capital sits and which relationships are under-invested A framework for engaging in politics ethically without retreating into “I just focus on the work” Sharper judgement about how strategy, culture and politics interact at the top of complex organisations Specific moves senior leaders can use the next week, drawn from her HBR work and the LinkedIn Learning course