Diversity, Equity & Inclusion speakers

Why organisations work with Reshma Saujani She has founded and scaled two of the most recognised gender-equity institutions in the United States, Girls Who Code and Moms First, and can speak to what actually moved the numbers in each. She brings a working policy and product track record, including federal Marshall Plan for Moms legislation and the PaidLeave.ai tool used by tens of thousands of parents in its New York pilot. Her argument on perfectionism, drawn from “Brave, Not Perfect” and her TED stage, gives senior leaders a concrete diagnosis of why high-performing women self-select out of risk and visibility. “Pay Up” reframes the future of women and work around the motherhood penalty rather than individual ambition, useful for CHROs designing caregiver policy that holds under scrutiny. A New York Times bestselling author with a Yale JD and Harvard MPP, recognised by Fortune, Forbes and Fast Company, which travels with senior boardroom and executive-program audiences. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Moms First, the national advocacy movement for paid leave, affordable childcare, and pay equity for caregivers. Founder and former CEO of Girls Who Code, which has reached hundreds of thousands of girls through in-person programming and a New York Times bestselling book series. New York Times bestselling author of “Pay Up”, “Brave, Not Perfect”, “Women Who Don’t Wait in Line”, and the Girls Who Code series. TED2016 speaker, “Teach girls bravery, not perfection”, one of the most viewed TED talks on women in technology. McGraw Prize in Education; Fortune World’s Greatest Leaders; Forbes Most Powerful Women Changing the World; WSJ Magazine Innovator of the Year. Yale Law School (JD), Harvard Kennedy School (MPP). First Indian American woman to run for US Congress. Biography The female pipeline in technology and senior leadership does not leak in the places organisations assume. It leaks at the points where the workplace stops accommodating risk-taking and caregiving. Reshma Saujani has spent fifteen years building the institutions that address both of those failures directly. Girls Who Code, which she founded in 2012 after running for Congress and seeing the gender gap in computing classrooms first-hand, became one of the most recognised pipeline interventions in American technology, with hundreds of thousands of girls reached through in-person programmes and a New York Times bestselling book series. Her 2016 TED talk “Teach girls bravery, not perfection” reframed the problem as cultural, not technical, and is one of the most cited talks on women in tech. Moms First, which Saujani launched in 2021 as the Marshall Plan for Moms, moved her work upstream into the structural economics of caregiving. The organisation has driven federal legislation, the creation of a New York City task force, and PaidLeave.ai, a working AI tool that helps parents claim benefits they are owed and processed tens of thousands of users in its first New York pilot. Her arguments land in boardrooms because they come with proof of execution. “Brave, Not Perfect” and “Pay Up”, both New York Times bestsellers, give senior leaders a usable diagnosis of why their female talent stalls and what to change. A Yale JD and Harvard MPP, recognised by Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, and WSJ Magazine, she is read by the policy world and the executive audience at the same time. Key speaking topics Women in technology and leadership The motherhood penalty and caregiver economics Paid leave, childcare, and workplace policy design Perfectionism, risk, and the career consequences for women Building gender-equity institutions at scale AI applied to social policy and benefits access Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers redesigning caregiver, parental leave, and return-to-work policy Boards and executive committees benchmarking gender representation against credible structural interventions Heads of DEI, women’s leadership networks, and high-potential women’s development programmes Technology leaders responsible for early-career pipeline and retention of women in engineering Audience outcomes A clear structural account of why women stall in senior pipelines, separating cultural drivers from policy drivers Concrete examples of paid leave, childcare, and pay-equity interventions that have moved measurable outcomes A working diagnosis of perfectionism as a career-limiting pattern, with language leaders can use with high-potential women Evidence of how AI can be applied to benefits access and social policy, drawn from PaidLeave.ai A sharper view of the business case for caregiver infrastructure, beyond the standard wellbeing framing

Why organisations work with Rikki Arundel A category-defining UK voice on trans and non-binary inclusion at work, with the rare combination of an MSc in Gender Research from the University of Hull and twenty years of lived experience as an openly trans speaker. Inaugural recipient of The Speaker Awards Lifetime Achievement Award (2024) and a PSAE Speaker Hall of Fame inductee, signals that this is a senior practitioner, not a first-person-story booking. Founder and first president of the UK and Ireland Professional Speaking Association, which means a level of platform craft that allows hard subject matter to land with executive audiences without defensiveness. Practical content for managers and ERG sponsors: what to say when someone comes out, how policy holds up under challenge, and where unconscious bias actually shows up in promotion and customer-facing decisions. A track record across police forces, NHS trusts, financial services and government, including Sussex and Surrey Police, University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust, Fidelity International and the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Biography highlights Founder and first president, Professional Speaking Association (UK and Ireland). MSc in Gender Research, University of Hull. PSAE Speaker Hall of Fame, Professional Speaking Association. Inaugural Speaker Awards Lifetime Achievement Award, 2024. Named one of 50 LGBT Icons in the 2017 UK Pride 50th anniversary list. TEDx speaker, including “Why is Gender Identity so Important?” at TEDxFidelityInternational. Biography Most organisations have a trans inclusion policy. Far fewer have managers who know what to do when an employee comes out at work, when a customer files a complaint about pronouns, or when a journalist asks how the company will hold its position. Rikki Arundel’s work sits in that gap between policy language and operational practice. The credibility for that work is unusually layered. Rikki founded the Professional Speaking Association in the UK and Ireland and served as its first president, then publicly transitioned in 2002 and rebuilt a speaking career around gender and inclusion. An MSc in Gender Research from the University of Hull underpins the content, and a PSAE Speaker Hall of Fame induction reflects the platform craft. The substance is practical. Rikki separates sex from gender for non-specialist audiences, walks managers through the moments where inclusion is actually tested, and addresses how policy holds up when challenged externally. The aim is behavioural change inside teams, not awareness for its own sake. Recognition has tracked the work. The Speaker Awards named Rikki the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award recipient in 2024, and Rikki was listed among 50 LGBT Icons during the 2017 UK Pride 50th anniversary. Clients include Sussex and Surrey Police, University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust, Fidelity International, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, and Atalian Servest UK and Ireland. Key speaking topics Trans and non-binary inclusion in the workplace Sex, gender and social identity LGBTQ discrimination and harassment Unconscious bias in recruitment and promotion Inclusive leadership for managers ERG enablement for Pride and LGBT History Month Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads designing inclusion programmes that need to survive external scrutiny. ERG and Pride network sponsors planning LGBT History Month, Pride and Trans Day of Visibility events that have to do more than mark a date. Line managers and people partners in regulated sectors, including policing, healthcare, financial services and government. Boards and executive teams seeking a credible briefing on trans inclusion before a public position is required. Audience outcomes A working separation of sex, gender identity and gender expression that managers can use in real conversations. Specific scripts and behaviours for the moment a colleague comes out as trans or non-binary at work. A clearer view of where unconscious bias actually shows up in hiring, promotion and customer-facing decisions. A framework for ERG leaders to plan inclusion content that is substantive rather than performative.

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

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

Why organisations work with Rob Halford A first-person account of addiction and 40 years of sobriety from a public figure who chose to speak about it rather than manage it privately. Lived experience of coming out in 1998 in an industry built on machismo, which gives weight to inclusion conversations that policy slides cannot. A memoir, Confess, named a Best Music Book of 2020 by Rolling Stone and Kirkus Reviews, that anchors his talks in a published account audiences can read alongside. A Grammy-winning career across five decades, which earns him the attention of a room before he has said a word about the harder material. Biography highlights Lead vocalist of Judas Priest, Grammy Award-winning heavy metal band. Author of Confess: The Autobiography, Headline Publishing Group, 2020, co-written with Ian Gittins. Named one of the Best Music Books of 2020 by Rolling Stone and Kirkus Reviews. First openly gay heavy metal musician of his stature, coming out publicly in 1998. Marked 40 years of sobriety in January 2026, having spoken openly about addiction and recovery in NME, Rolling Stone, Louder Sound and Fox News. Side projects across his career include Fight, 2wo and the solo project Halford. Biography The metal world in the 1980s did not invite confession. Rob Halford had built one of its biggest voices, fronting Judas Priest through the band’s commercial peak, while privately working through alcoholism and a sexuality he could not name in public. The break came in early 1986. Halford got sober and has now marked four decades without a drink. He has spoken about that decision in interviews with NME, Louder Sound and Fox News, framing it in plain language about humility, honesty and living one day at a time. In 1998 he came out, the first heavy metal singer of his stature to do so. Confess, his 2020 memoir written with Ian Gittins and published by Headline, set the full account on record. Rolling Stone and Kirkus Reviews named it a Best Music Book of the year. For corporate audiences, the value is the voice behind the story. Mental health, addiction and inclusion conversations land differently when the person at the front has lived all three and is willing to talk about them without softening the edges. Key speaking topics Addiction and recovery Mental health and resilience LGBTQ+ inclusion in hostile environments Life and career lessons from five decades in music Coming out and identity at work Sustained sobriety as a daily practice Ideal for Employee resource group events and Pride programming Wellbeing, mental health and recovery awareness days Leadership offsites where a human story is the anchor of the day After-dinner and conference keynote slots for large mixed audiences Audience outcomes A first-person reference point on addiction and long-term recovery that policy material rarely provides. A more honest baseline for internal conversations about mental health and what disclosure costs. A grounded account of what inclusion looks like from the inside of a hostile industry. A memorable session that signals the organisation takes these topics seriously enough to put a public figure in front of staff.

Why organisations work with Robbie Lyle He built the category. AFTV is the largest football fan channel globally, with 1.7 million YouTube subscribers and over a billion views, created without external investment. Most speakers on community-led media describe the trend; he set the benchmark. He owns the commercial reality of audience-first media. GFN turns over more than £1.4 million a year on a self-financed model, which gives him a working answer to the questions boards actually ask: how do you monetise community without breaking trust, and where does the margin sit. He has taken on incumbent broadcasters and won audience share on their core territory. That is a useful perspective for any organisation watching a digital-native competitor erode a category it used to dominate. His ITV documentary Football Fans Under Their Skin and his work on representation in sport give him a serious second register on race, inclusion and who gets heard in mainstream media, beyond the entrepreneurship story. Biography highlights Founder and Group CEO of Global Fan Network, parent company of AFTV and DR Sports. Founded AFTV in October 2012, now the largest football fan channel worldwide with 1.7 million YouTube subscribers and over a billion total views. Host of Channel 4’s The Real Football Fan Show, which premiered in April 2018. Subject of the 2020 ITV documentary Robbie Lyle: Football Fans Under Their Skin, on race and Black supporters in UK football. Speaker at TEDx Warwick and the Oxford Union. Listed in TechRound’s BAME 50 entrepreneurs. Biography Most of the people who broadcast football matches have never paid for a ticket. Robbie Lyle noticed that gap in 2012, borrowed a camera, and started filming Arsenal supporters outside the Emirates after every game. The channel he launched as Arsenal Fan TV is now AFTV: 1.7 million YouTube subscribers, more than a billion views, and the dominant fan media platform in world football. The business case is more interesting than the YouTube numbers. Lyle has never taken external investment. Global Fan Network, the parent company he founded and runs as Group CEO, now houses AFTV alongside DR Sports and a growing roster of fan-led channels, with turnover above £1.4 million reinvested back into the business. He has done what most legacy media companies are still trying to work out: build a direct relationship with an audience, hold it, and make it pay. That gives him a particular kind of authority on community-led commercial strategy. He can describe, from inside, how a fan channel competes with Sky and BT Sport for the same attention, why authenticity is a working business model rather than a marketing line, and what happens to the economics of a category when the most engaged audience decides it would rather watch other supporters than paid presenters. Channel 4 commissioned The Real Football Fan Show off the back of that argument in 2018. ITV’s Football Fans Under Their Skin, in 2020, used the same platform to examine race in English football and the experiences of Black supporters. He speaks at TEDx Warwick and the Oxford Union, and his TechRound BAME 50 listing reflects the entrepreneurial side of the story. The line his work draws is a useful one for any organisation thinking about audience ownership: communities that already exist are worth more than communities you try to build, and the operators who understand that tend to win the next decade of commercial media. Key speaking topics Fan-led media and audience ownership Community as a commercial model Entrepreneurship without external investment Digital disruption of incumbent broadcasters Representation and race in sports media Authentic content and brand trust Building a category-defining platform Ideal for Media, entertainment and sports businesses rethinking direct-to-audience strategy CMOs and brand leaders working on community, loyalty and creator partnerships Founders and commercial leaders scaling content businesses without venture capital DEI and culture leads programming sessions on representation in media and sport Audience outcomes A working view of how a fan-first platform takes audience share from established broadcasters A concrete commercial framework for community-led businesses that do not rely on external investment An honest read on what authenticity costs and earns inside a content business at scale Sharper questions for any organisation trying to convert audience attention into a defensible commercial position A first-hand account of representation in sport and what changes when underrepresented voices control the platform

Why organisations work with Roberta Lucca She has built a multi-million dollar VC-backed business from scratch and won a BAFTA doing it. Few speakers in the innovation category can show that operational record. As a Venture Partner at Octopus Ventures, she sees what an early-stage company that actually has traction looks like, and translates that pattern recognition into how corporates should evaluate their own internal bets. Her AI material is shaped by founding BOLDR, an AI-powered coaching product, not by commentary at a distance. She speaks about deployment, user behaviour and product reality. She works fluently across gaming, AI and consumer technology, which lets her unpack why game-industry mechanics (engagement loops, iteration speed, distributed teams) increasingly apply to non-games businesses. Visible UK platform credibility through BBC One’s The Apprentice and Amazon Prime’s Ready Set StartUP makes her recognisable to senior internal audiences and easy to position to a wider all-hands. Biography highlights Co-founder of Bossa Studios, the London games studio behind BAFTA-winning Monstermind, Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread BAFTA Games Award winner (Online-Browser category, 2012) Venture Partner at Octopus Ventures, the UK fund whose portfolio includes Zoopla, Cazoo and Depop Co-founder and CEO of BOLDR, an AI-powered virtual coaching product Judge and angel investor on BBC One’s The Apprentice; mentor on Amazon Prime’s Ready Set StartUP Forbes Top 50 Women in Tech; named London’s Most Influential in Creative Arts by the Evening Standard Biography Bossa Studios was a blank canvas in 2010. A decade later it was a VC-backed multi-million dollar games business with a BAFTA on the shelf for Monstermind and global hits in Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread. Roberta Lucca was the co-founder and CMO who shaped that arc, and the experience defines the perspective she brings to corporate audiences. She has since repeated the founder cycle. WonderLuk was an early move into on-demand 3D-printed consumer goods. BOLDR, her current company, is an AI-powered coaching product where she sits as co-founder and CEO. The pattern matters: she has built across gaming, consumer hardware-adjacent commerce and applied AI, which is unusual range for a speaker booked into innovation slots. As a Venture Partner at Octopus Ventures, she sees the deal flow from inside one of the UK’s most active early-stage funds. That vantage point sharpens her view of what genuine traction looks like and how corporates routinely misread it. It also gives her language that lands with executive teams trying to decide whether their innovation programmes are working. She is visible on the UK platforms that senior internal audiences recognise, BBC One’s The Apprentice as a judge and angel investor, and Amazon Prime’s Ready Set StartUP as a mentor. Forbes named her in its Top 50 Women in Tech list, and the Evening Standard named her among London’s Most Influential in Creative Arts. The recognition matters less than the operating record behind it: she is, demonstrably, someone who has built the kind of company most corporate innovation teams say they want to learn from. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurship and scale-up discipline Applied AI and emerging technology Innovation inside large organisations High-performance team building Creative industries and gamification Diversity in technology and venture Futurism, Web3 and the metaverse Ideal for Boards and ExCos shaping innovation portfolios and corporate venture programmes CMOs, CDOs and product leaders facing decisions on AI and emerging tech investment CHROs and talent leaders rethinking team composition and entrepreneurial capability Conferences and internal summits in technology, media, financial services and consumer goods Audience outcomes A working definition of what early traction looks like inside a new venture, drawn from venture capital deal flow A sharper view of which corporate innovation pilots are worth doubling down on and which are quietly stalling Specific examples of how gaming mechanics and AI products are built, taken from companies she has founded Language to use with boards about risk, capital allocation and team design for innovation bets A more confident point of view on where AI is genuinely changing product, and where it is hype

Why organisations work with Robin Ince Sixteen years co-hosting The Infinite Monkey Cage with Brian Cox gave him a working method for translating serious ideas into language a general audience can act on. Few speakers have practised that craft at that scale. His account of late-diagnosed ADHD in Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal is one of the most widely read first-person treatments of adult neurodiversity from a recognisably high-functioning public figure. That makes him useful to leadership audiences who do not see themselves in standard neurodiversity training. He brings genuine comedy timing to material that is usually delivered flat. Boards and senior leadership offsites can absorb difficult content from him that they would resist from a clinical speaker. He carries credentials that survive scrutiny in any room: Honorary Fellow at UCL, honorary doctorate from Royal Holloway, Fellow of the British Science Association, Booksellers Association Author of the Year. Biography highlights Co-host of BBC Radio 4’s The Infinite Monkey Cage with Professor Brian Cox, 2009 to 2025; the show won the 2011 Sony Gold Award for Best Speech Programme. Honorary Fellow of University College London and honorary Doctor of Science of Royal Holloway, University of London. Author of I’m a Joke and So Are You, The Importance of Being Interested, Bibliomaniac, and Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal: My Adventures in Neurodiversity; co-author with Brian Cox of How to Build a Universe. Booksellers Association Author of the Year, 2022; Time Out Outstanding Contribution to Comedy, 2006; multiple Chortle Awards including Best Compere. Co-founder of the Cosmic Shambles Network and creator of Nine Lessons and Carols for Curious People, the annual science variety show that has run since 2008. Public advocate on adult ADHD and neurodiversity following his own late diagnosis, anchoring his current touring show The Universe and the Neurodiverse. Biography The Infinite Monkey Cage ran on BBC Radio 4 for sixteen years and won the Sony Gold Award for Best Speech Programme along the way. Robin Ince co-presented it with the physicist Brian Cox throughout, and the working method he developed there sits at the centre of what he now offers organisations: serious science, philosophy and literature delivered in language a general audience will actually use. That method has produced four solo books and one co-authored with Cox. The Importance of Being Interested and Bibliomaniac established him as a writer on curiosity and reading culture. Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal, published by Macmillan in 2025, did something different. Following his own late ADHD diagnosis, he wrote a first-person account of adult neurodiversity that has been unusually well received by readers who do not see themselves in standard workplace material on the subject. The credentials behind the work are real. He is an Honorary Fellow of University College London and an Honorary Doctor of Science of Royal Holloway. He is a Fellow of the British Science Association and was Booksellers Association Author of the Year in 2022. He co-founded the Cosmic Shambles Network and has curated the Nine Lessons and Carols for Curious People science variety show every December since 2008. For corporate audiences the proposition is specific. He is useful when a leadership team wants to talk seriously about neurodiversity and curiosity without flattening either into HR language, and he is one of very few speakers who can take a room from a research finding to a usable insight to a genuine laugh in the same minute. Key speaking topics Adult neurodiversity and late ADHD diagnosis Scientific curiosity as a habit of mind Communicating complex ideas to non-specialist audiences Humour and humanity Reading culture and the value of attention Science, music and comedy as a single conversation Ideal for Leadership teams and HR directors building neurodiversity work that goes beyond policy Boards and senior offsites looking for substantive content delivered with comedy timing Innovation, R&D and learning functions who want to reset what curiosity looks like in practice Conference organisers programming a science, culture or curiosity strand Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for talking about adult ADHD and neurodiversity in senior settings A clearer sense of why attention, not information, is the scarce resource in their organisation Specific examples from sixteen years of putting scientists in front of general audiences, with the lessons that translate Permission to be more interested in their own work, which most leaders need more than they admit

Why organisations work with Rodney Williams He has built two venture-backed fintech companies from concept to scale, including SoLo Funds, the only Black-led Certified B Corp fintech in the US, with over 1 million loans funded for 1.5 million users. He raised more than $40M for LISNR with clients including Visa, Ticketmaster, Jaguar Land Rover, and Lenovo, giving him operating experience inside the commercial functions of global brands rather than a venture-capital perspective from the outside. He brings a working operator’s view of financial inclusion that does not collapse into advocacy, anchored in his testimony to federal regulators and direct experience designing products for working and middle-class consumers. Named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 list five times across nine years, a recurrence that is unusual and signals durable founder relevance rather than one moment of attention. Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, with the framing capacity that programme selects for, which translates to a keynote that argues rather than just narrates. Biography highlights Co-founder and President, SoLo Funds, the largest community finance platform in the US, with over 1 million loans funded since 2018. Founder and Chair, LISNR, an ultrasonic data-transmission company backed by Visa with over $40M raised. Former Brand Manager, Procter & Gamble, leading digital strategy and ecommerce for Pampers North America. 2019 Henry Crown Fellow, Aspen Global Leadership Network. CNBC Disruptor 50 honouree in 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2023. Cannes Gold Lion (2015); Ad Age 40 Under 40 (2012); Black Enterprise Tech Entrepreneur of the Year (2016); Ebony Power 100 (2018). Biography SoLo Funds has facilitated more than a million loans to working and lower-middle-class Americans since 2018, and it did so by treating its users as both borrowers and lenders to each other. The business depends on a functioning peer community, not on a marketing community. That distinction sounds semantic until a leadership team tries to operationalise it. Rodney Williams co-founded SoLo Funds after building LISNR, an ultrasonic data-transmission platform he scaled to over $40M in funding with commercial deployments at Visa, Ticketmaster, Jaguar Land Rover, and Lenovo. Before LISNR, he ran digital and ecommerce strategy for Pampers North America at Procter & Gamble, which is where he learned how large consumer organisations actually think about customer acquisition, retention, and brand economics. That sequence matters. He has built community-led commercial models inside a $300B consumer goods business, inside a B2B technology company selling to global brands, and inside a fintech that has become the only Black-led Certified B Corp in its category. The arguments he makes about community as a commercial mechanism are operating arguments, not theoretical ones. He has been named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 list five times across nine years, including 2023, and is a 2019 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. His most pointed contribution for a corporate audience is on what financial inclusion actually requires from product, regulatory, and capital partners once advocacy ends and operations begin. SoLo’s growth has placed him in direct conversation with federal regulators, congressional offices, and tier-one investors including Serena Ventures, ACME Capital, and Endeavor Catalyst, and he speaks from inside those conversations rather than from a panel about them. Key speaking topics Community as commercial operating model Founding and scaling venture-backed fintech Financial inclusion and the underserved consumer Brand building inside large consumer organisations Inclusive capital raising and founder ecosystems Disruptive product strategy in regulated markets Black entrepreneurship and category creation Ideal for CMOs, brand leaders, and growth executives at consumer-facing organisations rethinking community as a commercial channel. Boards and leadership teams of banks, fintechs, and financial services firms reassessing the underserved-consumer opportunity. Founders, venture investors, and corporate venture units focused on inclusive innovation and scale-up discipline. DEI, ESG, and impact leaders looking for a founder-operator voice on inclusive commercial outcomes rather than advocacy framing. Audience outcomes A concrete view of how community functions as an operating mechanism inside a commercial business, not as a brand layer. A founder-operator perspective on building, financing, and defending an inclusive product inside a regulated category. Arguments and case material on why the working and lower-middle-class consumer is structurally underserved, and what product responses actually move the market. Direct experience and pattern recognition from raising capital as a Black founder, applicable to inclusive investment and founder-development programmes.

Why organisations work with Rohit Bhargava He brings a decade of annual trend research, distilled into the Non-Obvious and Megatrends book series, into a board or strategy off-site as a working method, not a slide deck. The SIFT framework gives marketing, innovation and strategy teams a shared language for separating durable shifts from passing noise, which most trend keynotes leave unresolved. His client list (NASA, Disney, World Bank, Intel, American Express) signals a track record with organisations that have to make capital decisions on long horizons, not just generate quarterly campaigns. Beyond Diversity, co-authored with Jennifer Brown, gives him a credible second register on inclusion as a commercial and cultural question, useful when a single keynote needs to cover both growth strategy and people. He works as a trained marketer (15 years at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett), which means innovation and trend content lands with sales, brand and customer leaders rather than staying at the level of abstract foresight. Biography highlights 3-time Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of ten books, including #1 WSJ bestseller Non-Obvious Megatrends. Adjunct professor of marketing and storytelling at Georgetown University. Co-founder of Ideapress Publishing and founder of the Non-Obvious Company. Co-author of Beyond Diversity with Jennifer Brown (Simon & Schuster / Ideapress); WSJ bestseller. Keynote and workshop work for NASA, Disney, Intel, American Express, World Bank, Coca-Cola, Microsoft. Featured speaker at five SXSW events; keynote at SXSW Sydney 2023, the first SXSW outside the United States. Biography Trend forecasting is crowded. Most of what circulates inside large organisations is a recycled version of the same six themes: AI, sustainability, hybrid work, generational change, geopolitics, the consumer. The harder question for a senior team is which of those headlines actually changes how they should allocate capital next year, and which signals further out are not yet on anyone’s deck. That gap is the work Rohit Bhargava has built a decade-long research practice around. His Non-Obvious book series, published annually from 2015 and culminating in the WSJ and USA Today #1 bestseller Non-Obvious Megatrends in 2020, reached more than a million readers. The follow-up, The Future Normal, co-authored with Henry Coutinho-Mason and launched at SXSW in 2023, covers thirty shifts shaping the next decade, from generative AI to biophilic design. The 2024 book Non-Obvious Thinking, written with Ben duPont, formalises the SIFT method, a four-step habit for curating ideas that audiences can take into their own teams. Before becoming a full-time author and speaker, Bhargava spent 15 years in brand strategy roles at Ogilvy and Leo Burnett, advising consumer brands on behaviour and storytelling. He teaches marketing and storytelling at Georgetown University as an adjunct professor, and writes a monthly column for Inc. on books that matter. With Jennifer Brown he co-authored Beyond Diversity, a Wall Street Journal bestseller published by Simon & Schuster and Ideapress, which examines inclusion across twelve domains including workplace, leadership and technology. The client list, NASA, Disney, the World Bank, Intel, American Express, Microsoft, signals where the work lands hardest: organisations that need to translate cultural and technological signals into product, capital and brand decisions on multi-year horizons. The point is not to predict the future but to teach a working team to spot it earlier than the competition. Key speaking topics Trend forecasting and the non-obvious method Innovation as a research discipline Marketing and brand in low-trust markets AI and the future of trust The Future Normal: thirty shifts reshaping commerce Inclusive growth and Beyond Diversity Storytelling for senior leaders Creative thinking and curation as a managed habit Ideal for Chief marketing officers, brand teams and customer experience leads navigating attention and trust in saturated markets Chief strategy officers, innovation leads and corporate development teams setting multi-year direction Boards and executive committees commissioning a sharper view of how cultural and technological shifts will hit their category Sales and partner kickoffs where a strategy team wants a working method, not a trend slide Audience outcomes A working knowledge of the SIFT method and how to use it inside a team A named set of cultural and commercial shifts that are relevant to the audience’s specific industry, not generic trend lists A shared vocabulary for separating durable signals from passing noise Practical examples of how organisations including NASA, Disney and World Bank have translated trend research into operating decisions Confidence that trend work can be a repeatable internal habit, not a one-off external report

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

Why organisations work with Rosie and Mollie Kmita They host with the fluency of working broadcasters. Both co-front Sky Sports’ Barclays Women’s Championship Show and the Broadcast Award-winning show The Dub, and bring the same standard to corporate stages, awards nights, and panels. They built The Powerhouse Project from inside the game. Not a sponsorship vehicle. A working leadership pipeline that has supported more than 60 women through the UEFA B Prep Programme since 2022, with Nike, the FA, and Google Pixel as operating partners. They speak credibly on representation because they are the data point. Rosie’s career as a British Asian professional footballer makes their advocacy specific rather than general. They convert lived industry experience into actionable talking points for HR, ED&I, and brand audiences who are tired of generic diversity content. Biography highlights Co-founders of The Powerhouse Project, a women’s leadership initiative in football and sports media, partnered with Nike, The FA, Football Beyond Borders, and Google Pixel Co-hosts of Sky Sports’ Barclays Women’s Championship Show Hosts of The Dub, the Sky Sports and Snapchat show that won a Broadcast Award Former professional footballers with playing time at Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham United, Brighton and Hove Albion, and others Regular contributors to Soccer AM, BBC One’s MOTDx, and Sky Sports News’ The Football Show Brand work with Nike, Google Pixel, FIFA, Pepsi, Expedia, Snapchat, SoccerX Biography Women’s football has changed faster in the last five years than in the previous fifty. The pipeline behind it has not kept pace. Coaching qualifications, broadcast access, media production roles, and senior executive routes remain structurally narrow, particularly for women from ethnically diverse backgrounds. The Kmita twins built The Powerhouse Project to widen that pipeline from inside the industry. Rosie and Mollie grew up in north London and played professionally at Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham United, Brighton and Hove Albion, and other clubs across the women’s pyramid. Rosie was one of two existing players retained when West Ham received their FA Women’s Super League franchise in 2018. Both retired into broadcasting and now co-host Sky Sports’ Barclays Women’s Championship Show and The Dub, the Sky Sports and Snapchat show that took a Broadcast Award. The Powerhouse Project, launched in 2021, is the substantive work. The UEFA B Prep Programme run with the FA and Nike has supported more than 60 women coaches since 2022. The Pixel FC Academy, run with Google, develops young women into sports media careers across broadcast, production, and written press. The partners are operating partners, not logo sponsors, and the cohort numbers grow each year. For corporate audiences they bring two things at once. Hosting craft built on national broadcast experience, and a substantive, working point of view on representation, female leadership, and how to actually move people through an industry pipeline rather than just talk about it. Key speaking topics Women’s leadership in sport and media Representation and ethnically diverse pathways in male-coded industries Building leadership pipelines through programme partnerships Female empowerment and career progression Awards hosting, panel moderation, and event facilitation Broadcasting and on-camera presence Ideal for ED&I, HR, and people leaders building representation pipelines beyond awareness campaigns Brand and marketing teams designing women’s sport and youth-facing activations Conference organisers needing a host or moderator with broadcast fluency on women’s leadership and sport panels Internal women’s network events and ERG showcases Audience outcomes A clearer view of what an operating leadership pipeline looks like compared to a sponsorship-led ED&I programme Direct industry perspective on the barriers women from ethnically diverse backgrounds face in sport and media, and what removes them A worked example of building an external initiative alongside a primary career Energy and craft on stage from two practitioners who host professionally for a living