Diversity, Equity & Inclusion speakers

Why organisations work with Ruth Buscombe She has run live race strategy from the pit wall at Ferrari, Haas and Sauber, so the material is operating practice from elite competition, not a borrowed sports metaphor. She led the strategy function during Sauber’s sixth-place Constructors’ finish in 2022, the team’s best result in a decade against far better-resourced rivals, a credible reference point for performance under budget constraint. Her Cambridge engineering background (first-class honours, FIA-supervised thesis on the Drag Reduction System) means technical and analytical audiences extend her credit fast. She is one of a very small number of women to have held senior race strategy responsibility in Formula 1, which gives her STEM and inclusion content lived authority rather than allyship framing. As an F1 TV analyst, she explains decisions to a live general audience every race weekend, so she is unusually fluent at translating specialist judgement into language a board can act on. Biography highlights First-class honours in Aerospace and Aerothermal Engineering, University of Cambridge, with a master’s thesis on the Drag Reduction System conducted with the FIA. Race strategist at Scuderia Ferrari (2013 to 2015), based at Maranello, supporting drivers including Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen. Strategy engineer at Haas F1 during the team’s debut Formula 1 season. Head of Race Strategy at Sauber/Alfa Romeo, leading the strategy function through the team’s sixth-place Constructors’ finish in 2022. On-air strategy analyst and presenter for F1 TV. Ambassador since 2016 for Dare to be Different, now the FIA Girls on Track initiative. Biography The pit wall is one of the few working environments where leaders make consequential calls in public, on a clock, with information that is partial and changing. Ruth Buscombe has spent her career on that wall. As a race strategist at Ferrari, then Haas, then as Head of Race Strategy at Sauber, she has owned decisions where the cost of getting it wrong is measured in championship points within the same hour. Her credibility starts with the technical foundation. A first-class honours engineering degree from Cambridge, with a master’s thesis on the Drag Reduction System conducted with the FIA, gave her the analytical grounding to be taken seriously inside Maranello at twenty-two. She joined Scuderia Ferrari in 2012, was promoted to race strategist within a year, and worked through Sebastian Vettel’s first Ferrari victory before moving to Haas for the team’s debut season. The defining body of work came at Sauber. Running the strategy function for a midfield team against rivals with far larger budgets, she led the call sheet through the team’s sixth-place Constructors’ Championship finish in 2022, its best result in a decade. That is the substance she brings to corporate audiences: how to design decision protocols that hold up when conditions change mid-race, how to allocate scarce attention under live pressure, how to disagree productively inside a senior team in the seconds before a call has to be made. She is also one of the very few women to have held senior race strategy responsibility in Formula 1, and has been an ambassador for Dare to be Different, now the FIA Girls on Track initiative, since 2016. As an F1 TV analyst she now explains the same decision logic to a live audience every race weekend, which is why her keynote lands with general management audiences as cleanly as it does with engineers. Key speaking topics Real-time decision-making under pressure High-performance team operating models Race strategy and competitive advantage under constraint Data-led judgement in elite sport Women in motorsport and STEM Engineering leadership Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams running high-stakes operating decisions on short cycles Strategy, operations and risk leaders responsible for live decision protocols Engineering and technical organisations where analytical credibility is the price of entry Diversity, inclusion and STEM programmes seeking a credible operator rather than an advocate Audience outcomes A clearer mental model for how elite teams separate the call from the data behind it A working sense of how decision rights, role clarity and rehearsal change behaviour under live pressure Specific examples of how a smaller, smarter team can outperform a better-resourced rival Confidence to make and defend a call when information is incomplete and time has run out A credible, non-tokenistic reference for women considering senior technical careers

Why organisations work with Baroness Ruth Hunt She ran the organisation that most large UK employers used as their inclusion benchmark, which means her advice to a C-suite team carries direct operational memory, not theory. She has spent the years since Stonewall inside the House of Lords as a Crossbench peer, watching how legislation, regulation and public mood shape the room a CEO walks into. Her consultancy Deeds and Words is built around collective leadership and humble inquiry as practical methods, giving executive teams a way to make inclusion an operating discipline rather than a statement. She edited The Book of Queer Prophets for William Collins, which gives her a public intellectual register useful when boards want a serious conversation, not a training module. She is comfortable on contested ground. Boards facing trans policy, religious freedom or campaign-group pressure get an adviser who has lived inside the argument from the inside of a national institution. Biography highlights Chief Executive, Stonewall, 2014 to 2019; led campaigns including Rainbow Laces with the Premier League and the No Bystanders schools programme. Crossbench peer, House of Lords, since October 2019, as Baroness Hunt of Bethnal Green. Member, UK delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, focusing on democracy and youth participation. Co-founder and Director, Deeds and Words, advising C-suite teams on collective and inclusive leadership. Visiting Fellow, Jesus College, Cambridge, elected 2023. Editor, The Book of Queer Prophets: 24 Writers on Sexuality and Religion, William Collins, 2020. Named No. 1 on the Independent Pride Power List, 2019; speaker platforms include the Oxford Union, the NHS and Talks At Google. Biography Stonewall under Ruth Hunt’s leadership became the standard against which large UK employers measured their own inclusion work. The Workplace Equality Index moved inclusion from charity advocacy into employer practice, which is why her audience for serious leadership conversations is now the C-suite, not the diversity function. Since leaving Stonewall in 2019 she has taken a Crossbench seat in the House of Lords as Baroness Hunt of Bethnal Green, the youngest Crossbench peer at the time of her appointment. She also sits on the UK delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. That work keeps her read on the operating environment current, particularly on the contested edges of equality policy. Through Deeds and Words, the consultancy she co-founded with Caroline Ellis, she works with senior teams on collective leadership and humble inquiry as practical methods. The argument is that inclusive leadership is a way of running an organisation, not an HR position, and that the leaders who treat it as the latter tend to lose ground when the politics gets harder. Her published work runs alongside the advisory practice. She edited The Book of Queer Prophets for William Collins in 2020, a collection of 24 essays on sexuality and religion that signalled an interest in difficult ground rather than safe ground. In 2023 she was elected a Visiting Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, where she has spoken on faith, identity and public leadership. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership in a contested political environment Collective leadership and humble inquiry as executive practice Building credible culture change in large organisations LGBTQ+ rights, politics and the new culture wars Allyship as a workplace discipline Faith, identity and public life Ideal for CEOs and executive committees who need to take a credible position on inclusion under public and political pressure Chief People Officers and Chief Diversity Officers moving from advocacy framing to operating discipline Board directors handling reputational risk on equality, faith or values-based policy Public sector and uniformed service leaders managing inclusion in hierarchical, mission-led organisations Audience outcomes A sharper read on why the inclusion consensus of the 2010s has fractured and what that means for leadership decisions A working definition of collective and inclusive leadership that a senior team can actually use the following week A clearer view of where allyship adds operating value and where it becomes performance A more confident position on how to hold contested ground without retreating into corporate neutrality

Why organisations work with Ruth Pearson She speaks to hidden disability from inside it. A leader who built a 25-year senior education career while managing lupus brings a credibility on long-term illness at work that policy decks and HR training cannot manufacture. Her coaching framework, 5STEPS2LEARN, set out in Say Yes To New Opportunities!, gives line managers and individuals a shared vocabulary for the conversations they usually avoid: stress, capacity, and reasonable adjustment. She has stood in the room with both audiences a wellbeing strategy is meant to serve: senior leadership teams who set the policy, and frontline staff who have to live inside it. She translates between them. As a verifier of The London Healthy Workplace Charter, she has assessed wellbeing claims against organisational reality, which sharpens how she diagnoses the gap between intent and behaviour. Her broadcast work with GoodNewsBritain.com, including hosting Tomorrow News Today, gives her a register that holds a non-specialist audience, useful for all-staff sessions where the room is mixed seniority and mixed engagement. Biography highlights Founder of Listening To Your Voice Ltd, a wellbeing, coaching and training consultancy serving business and education leaders. Former Deputy Headteacher with over 25 years in UK secondary education. Author of Say Yes To New Opportunities! Be Motivated to L.E.A.R.N. (2015), which introduces the 5STEPS2LEARN coaching strategy, and Listening for God’s Voice. Television presenter and broadcaster with GoodNewsBritain.com, host of Tomorrow News Today. Verifier of The London Healthy Workplace Charter; founding member of Cornerstone Counselling Services. Has spoken at The Business Show, ExCeL London. Biography The hardest wellbeing problem in most organisations is not absence. It is the senior employee who never goes off sick, but who is quietly running at half capacity through a condition no one knows about. Lupus is one such condition. Ruth Pearson has lived with it since 1996 and continued, through that period, to lead teams in UK secondary schools up to deputy headteacher level. That experience is the spine of her work. Through Listening To Your Voice, she coaches leaders, runs sessions for boards and frontline teams, and writes for managers who want a vocabulary for the conversations wellbeing policy assumes are already happening. Her coaching framework, 5STEPS2LEARN, is set out in her 2015 book Say Yes To New Opportunities! Be Motivated to L.E.A.R.N. and is built around motivation, capacity and the practical mechanics of asking for help at work. Her credibility on workplace standards is not only personal. As a verifier of The London Healthy Workplace Charter, she has assessed how organisations actually deliver against the wellbeing claims they publish, which informs how she diagnoses the gap between policy and behaviour. She is also a founding member of Cornerstone Counselling Services and a regular broadcaster with GoodNewsBritain.com, including hosting the live show Tomorrow News Today. She is most useful to organisations that already have a wellbeing strategy on paper and want to know why it is not landing with the people it was written for. The answer is usually behavioural, not structural, and it tends to surface most clearly in how managers talk to employees with conditions they cannot see. Key speaking topics Workplace wellbeing and burnout prevention Hidden disabilities and chronic illness at work Stress, resilience and personal capacity Motivation and engagement through change Inclusive leadership in education and corporate settings Communication between managers and employees on health Personal narrative as a workplace inclusion tool Ideal for HR and wellbeing leads designing or relaunching a wellbeing strategy DEI and inclusion leads addressing hidden disability and chronic illness Education sector leaders, MAT executives and headteachers All-staff or whole-school events where the room is mixed seniority and engagement Audience outcomes A clearer view of what hidden disability looks like at senior levels and where current policy misses it. A working vocabulary, drawn from 5STEPS2LEARN, for the manager-employee conversations stress and chronic illness require. A sharper read on why their existing wellbeing strategy lands well in some teams and not in others. Renewed energy and a sense of permission, especially for staff currently managing a condition they have not disclosed at work.

Why organisations work with Ryan Tillman Conflict and de-escalation content built from real shifts on patrol and in crisis negotiation, not adapted from a corporate training module. A direct, lived perspective on bias and inclusion from someone who once distrusted policing and chose to join it, which lands with audiences who have tuned out of standard DEI sessions. Author of Happy Eyes: Becoming All Things To All People, with a foreword by Dak Prescott and afterword by Gordon Graham, giving the keynote a published spine that leaders can read and pass on. Founder of Breaking Barriers United, a programme used by law enforcement agencies and corporate clients to rebuild communication between groups that have stopped trusting each other. Significant earned reach through the #ITSNEEDED podcast and a social audience that has accumulated over 100 million views, which lifts internal engagement before and after the event. Biography highlights Police Officer, Chino Police Department, Southern California, since 2013. Founder and CEO, Breaking Barriers United LLC. Author, Happy Eyes: Becoming All Things To All People, foreword by Dak Prescott, afterword by Gordon Graham, endorsed by Michael Strahan. Host, #ITSNEEDED podcast, with more than one million downloads. Featured on FOX 11 Los Angeles, NBC Los Angeles, ABC News and Voyage LA. Training and content partnerships with Lexipol, Open Sesame and the Heal America Movement. Biography Most organisational fractures begin as a communication problem. A manager misreads a team member, a customer interaction tips into hostility, a difficult conversation gets postponed until it becomes a grievance. The skills that prevent those failures are the same ones a patrol officer learns in the first minute of a call, and they are rarely taught inside corporate training. Ryan Tillman built his career inside that gap. A serving officer with the Chino Police Department in Southern California, he founded Breaking Barriers United to address what he saw on both sides of the badge: a breakdown in trust between people who needed to understand each other to function. The work began in policing and quickly moved into workplaces, where the underlying dynamics, bias, fear, misread intent, were identical. His book, Happy Eyes: Becoming All Things To All People, with a foreword by Dak Prescott and afterword by Gordon Graham, sets out the operating philosophy: meet people where they are, lead with respect, and use empathy as a practical tool rather than a slogan. The #ITSNEEDED podcast has carried that material into more than a million downloads, and his social channels have accumulated over 100 million views across appearances on FOX 11 LA, NBC Los Angeles and ABC News. What he brings into a corporate room is not motivation. It is a working method for the conversations that decide whether a culture holds together: how to read a situation before it escalates, how to disagree without losing trust, how to lead across difference without retreating into policy. Senior teams take from him the same thing his colleagues do on patrol, a steadier set of instincts for the moments that matter most. Key speaking topics Communication and trust at work De-escalation and conflict resolution Bias, inclusion and bridging divides Leadership under pressure Crisis response and personal safety Culture change in operational environments Empathy as a practical leadership skill Ideal for CHROs, heads of culture and DEI sponsors looking for content on inclusion that lands with sceptical audiences. Safety, security and risk leaders responsible for de-escalation, customer-facing conflict and frontline workforce protection. Senior leadership teams in operationally complex sectors (healthcare, retail, transport, public services) where communication failures carry real cost. Internal events focused on rebuilding engagement and trust after restructure, layoffs or visible cultural strain. Audience outcomes A clearer read on how everyday interactions either build or erode trust inside a team. Specific techniques for de-escalating conflict before it becomes a formal incident. A more confident vocabulary for talking about bias and difference without defaulting to slogans. A practical model for leading across viewpoints that disagree, drawn from policing and negotiation practice. A renewed sense among managers that culture is set in their own conversations, not in the policy document.

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

Why organisations work with Sacha Romanovitch She has actually done what most purpose-led leadership talks describe. As CEO of Grant Thornton UK she capped her own pay at 20 times the firm’s average salary, introduced firm-wide profit sharing, and gave 4,500 staff a stake in how the partnership was run. She left Grant Thornton having grown it past £500m in revenue and finished her tenure in the Glassdoor Top 50 CEOs with a 94% approval rating, two places behind Tim Cook. Boards listening to her hear an operator, not an advocate. She built Fair4All Finance from a standing start into the UK’s recognised body on financial inclusion, working across HM Treasury, the Cabinet Office, regulators, lenders, and the voluntary sector. Few speakers can demonstrate cross-sector convening at that scale. She is willing to discuss the political and partner-level backlash she faced for refusing to back down on shared enterprise. That candour is rare from former CEOs and unusually useful to boards anticipating their own pushback. Biography highlights First woman to lead a major UK accounting firm, as CEO of Grant Thornton UK LLP from 2015 to 2019. OBE awarded in 2020 for Services to Business, recognising her work on financial wellbeing through Fair4All Finance. Founding CEO of Fair4All Finance, the UK financial inclusion body backed by dormant assets funding, from September 2019. Member of the UK Government’s Levelling Up Advisory Council from February 2022, leading the Social Infrastructure working group. Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford; Honorary Doctorate, University of York; Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Independent Non-Executive Director of the Association of British Insurers; Non-Executive Director, LeapFrog Investments; inaugural Chair of Access Accountancy. Biography In 2015 the partnership at Grant Thornton UK voted in a CEO who told them their pay should be capped, profits should be shared with every employee, and the firm should drop clients whose work it could not defend. By the end of her tenure the firm had grown past £500m in revenue, was sitting in the Glassdoor Top 50 CEOs ranking with a 94% staff approval rating, and the same partnership that elected her had fractured over the cost of what it had agreed to. That tension is the substance of Sacha Romanovitch’s leadership work. She is one of the few senior UK operators who has put a recognisable shared enterprise model inside a major professional services firm and then absorbed the partner-level resistance it produced. Boards that say they want a purpose-led culture often have not faced the moment when their senior earners discover what purpose costs them. She has, and she will discuss it directly. Since 2019 she has been building Fair4All Finance, the body set up under the Dormant Assets Scheme to extend access to affordable credit, insurance, and savings for people in vulnerable financial circumstances. Under her the organisation has become the convening point for the financial services sector, HM Treasury, the Cabinet Office, and the voluntary sector on financial inclusion. She co-chairs the Inclusive Economy Partnership and served on the Government’s Levelling Up Advisory Council from 2022, leading its Social Infrastructure working group. The thread across both roles is the same. Values claims are tested by the decisions a leader takes when those values cost something. Romanovitch is unusually credible on that test because she has been on both sides of it: as the CEO who held the line at Grant Thornton, and as the founding chief executive who has had to make the case for financial inclusion to commercial lenders, regulators, and ministers in turn. Key speaking topics Purpose-led leadership in commercial organisations Shared enterprise and employee ownership models Financial inclusion and the social contract of financial services Inclusive leadership in regulated and professional services sectors Cross-sector partnership between government, business, and civil society Social mobility and access to professional careers Leading change against partner-level or shareholder resistance Ideal for Boards and ExCos in professional services, financial services, and partnership-structured firms reviewing their culture and ownership model CEOs and CHROs designing reward, voice, and stake structures for purpose-led strategies Financial services leaders, regulators, and policy audiences working on financial inclusion and consumer vulnerability Industry social mobility programmes and DEI sponsor groups setting concrete targets rather than statements Audience outcomes A direct account of what shared enterprise looks like when it is operating, costing, and contested inside a major firm A working model for testing whether a stated value will hold under commercial pressure before it is publicly committed to A clear picture of how financial inclusion gets built in practice across regulators, banks, fintechs, and the voluntary sector An honest reading of the partner-level and shareholder dynamics that derail purpose-led change, and the moves that protect it A sense of what the next decade of financial services accountability looks like from inside the policy conversation

Why organisations work with Sahar Hashemi She has built three commercial ventures from a standing start. Coffee Republic (110 stores, £50 million market cap), Skinny Candy (acquired by Glisten Plc) and Buy Women Built (2,000+ businesses, £2.5 billion combined turnover) give her a working library of how entrepreneurial behaviour actually feels day to day. Her Start Up Forever framework breaks the entrepreneurial mindset down into a small set of repeatable daily behaviours, which is what lets it survive contact with corporate hierarchy. The book was named a Financial Times Business Book of the Month. She translates between two worlds that rarely speak the same language: founders running on instinct and customer obsession, and senior executives running on process and structure. Most speakers can describe one of those worlds; she has lived both. Her credibility on women-led growth is operating credibility, not advocacy. Buy Women Built is a commercial channel built with major retailers, and she co-chaired the UK government’s Scale Up Taskforce on growing SMEs. Biography highlights Co-founder, Coffee Republic; scaled to 110 stores and a £50 million market capitalisation Founder, Skinny Candy (50% acquired by Glisten Plc) and Buy Women Built Author, Anyone Can Do It (Wiley, 2003) and Start Up Forever (Troubador, 2019, Financial Times Business Book of the Month) OBE for services to the UK economy and to charity, 2012 Birthday Honours Co-chair, UK government Scale Up Taskforce; board member, Scale Up Institute Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum Biography Coffee Republic opened on South Molton Street in 1995, the first US-style coffee bar chain in the UK. Within five years it ran 110 stores at a £50 million market capitalisation. Sahar Hashemi co-founded the business with her brother Bobby after leaving a career in law, and the speed of the build became the basis of everything she has worked on since. The question that has occupied her for two decades is why large companies struggle to act on what they already know. Most have the people, the capital and the data to behave entrepreneurially. They rarely behave that way in practice. Her book Start Up Forever, named a Financial Times Business Book of the Month, breaks that gap into a set of daily habits that survive inside corporate structure rather than dying in workshop rooms. The work has weight because it is grounded in three operating businesses she actually built, not consulting case studies. Skinny Candy, the sugar-free confectionery brand, was acquired by Glisten Plc. Buy Women Built, launched in 2020, now represents more than 2,000 women-built businesses with combined turnover above £2.5 billion and has become a working channel inside major UK retailers. She co-chaired the UK government’s Scale Up Taskforce and sits on the board of the Scale Up Institute. Senior teams at Microsoft, L’Oreal, LinkedIn, Procter & Gamble and Sky have brought her in for the same reason: she gives a leadership group a usable answer to the question of what entrepreneurial behaviour looks like on a Tuesday afternoon at a 50,000-person company. She was awarded an OBE in 2012 for services to the UK economy and to charity, and named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Key speaking topics Entrepreneurial mindset inside large organisations Innovation and creativity as everyday discipline Building start-up culture in established businesses Intrapreneurship and behaviour change at scale Women-led entrepreneurship and scale-up growth Customer obsession as a leadership behaviour Courage, action and the founder’s bias to start Ideal for Executive teams running innovation, transformation or culture-change programmes CHROs and learning leaders who want behaviour change, not awareness Strategy and growth leaders trying to build new businesses inside an existing one Sales, marketing and customer teams rebuilding around customer obsession Audience outcomes A practical model of entrepreneurial behaviour that translates into Monday-morning habits Specific examples of how founder instincts (customer obsession, bias to act, comfort with ambiguity) operate inside corporate structure A clearer view of why innovation programmes stall, and what to remove rather than add Renewed confidence in personal agency: what an individual contributor or senior leader can change without permission Frameworks from Start Up Forever that teams can apply to their own products, customers and decisions

Why organisations work with Sallie Krawcheck She has run wealth management at the largest scale in the industry, leading Smith Barney, Citi Private Bank, US Trust and Merrill Lynch, then built a venture-backed fintech from scratch around a gap she watched the incumbents miss. Her thesis on the gender wealth gap is quantified, not rhetorical. Ellevest’s portfolio construction takes gender-specific salary curves, career breaks and longevity into account, which gives her a concrete answer to the “what would you actually change” question that most diversity speakers cannot give. Fortune called her “The Last Honest Analyst” for refusing to soften research calls and for reimbursing retail clients during a downturn. That reputation is what makes her credible to senior boards on questions of conflict of interest and product integrity. Her book “Own It: The Power of Women at Work” (Crown Currency, 2017) is a Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller, and her LinkedIn writing has built one of the largest executive followings on the platform. She arrives with a real audience and a real argument, not a stock keynote. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Ellevest, a digital investment platform for women. Former president of Global Wealth and Investment Management, Bank of America, overseeing Merrill Lynch and US Trust. Former CEO of Citi Global Wealth Management and former chairman and CEO of Sanford C. Bernstein and Co. Author of “Own It: The Power of Women at Work” (Crown Currency, 2017), Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller. Called “The Last Honest Analyst” by Fortune; multiple appearances on the Forbes “100 Most Powerful Women” list; named to Time “Global Influentials”. BA summa cum laude, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; MBA with honors, Columbia Business School. Biography The gender wealth gap is wider than the gender pay gap, and for many cohorts, it is still moving in the wrong direction. Closing it is not a marketing problem for financial services. It is a product, advice and capital allocation problem, and the people best placed to solve it are the people who have run the businesses on the other side of the gap. Krawcheck spent two decades doing exactly that. She rose from equity analyst to chairman and CEO of Sanford C. Bernstein and Co, then ran Smith Barney and Citi Global Wealth Management, then led Bank of America’s combined Merrill Lynch and US Trust wealth business. Fortune called her “The Last Honest Analyst” for protecting research independence and reimbursing retail clients during a downturn, which remains the cleanest single line on her professional integrity. In 2016 she co-founded Ellevest, a digital investment platform built around the financial reality of women’s careers and lifespans. The investing algorithm factors in salary curves that peak earlier, more frequent career breaks and longer retirement horizons. Ellevest is the only modern fintech that uses gender as an input to portfolio construction rather than a marketing layer on top of a generic product. Her book “Own It: The Power of Women at Work” (Crown Currency, 2017) became a Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller. Her LinkedIn following puts her among the most-read business writers on the platform, and Inc. has named her a Top Female Founder. She speaks to financial services boards, leadership teams and consumer brands on what it actually takes to design products and careers around a customer base the industry has historically underserved. Key speaking topics Closing the gender wealth gap Designing financial products for underserved customer segments Women, leadership and career capital Building a fintech inside a regulated industry Trust, conflict of interest and integrity in financial advice Entrepreneurship after a corporate career Capital, investing behaviour and the future of advice Ideal for Financial services CEOs, CMOs and heads of wealth and private banking are rethinking their women-client strategy. Boards and ExCos of consumer-facing businesses where female customer segments are under-monetised. Founders, investors and leadership teams in fintech and consumer finance. Senior women’s leadership programmes, CHRO sponsors and ERG executive sponsors at large enterprises. Audience outcomes A specific read on where the gender wealth gap actually sits in product design, pricing and advice, not in HR policy. A Wall Street insider’s honest account of how integrity, advice quality and conflicts of interest play out at the top of the industry. A practical view of what it takes to build a regulated fintech around an underserved segment, told by an operator who has done it. A direct, unhedged set of arguments on women, money and career capital that senior audiences can act on.

Why organisations work with Sam Quek A first-hand account of how a team becomes the first British women’s hockey side to win Olympic gold, told from inside the defensive line that held the Netherlands in a penalty shootout final. Credibility on composure under pressure that comes from two careers, 125 international caps and a live broadcasting schedule across the BBC, Channel 5, and TNT Sports. A perspective on team culture shaped by a squad that won European gold, captained England with two broken ribs, and converted four years of preparation into a single result. Hosting and moderation experience suited to awards nights, conference panels, and high-profile event presentation, including the Eurovision 2023 opening ceremony. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist, Rio 2016, women’s hockey, Great Britain. MBE, 2017 New Year Honours, for services to hockey. 125 international caps for England and Great Britain; captained England at the 2014 Champions Trophy. First permanent female team captain on BBC One’s A Question of Sport, alongside Ugo Monye. Co-host of BBC One’s Morning Live with Gethin Jones; co-anchor of BBC’s Olympic Breakfast for Tokyo 2020. Author of Hope and a Hockey Stick (2018) and Roar: A Celebration of Great Sporting Women (Allen and Unwin, 2024). Biography The British women’s hockey team had never won an Olympic gold medal until August 2016. They beat the Netherlands, the reigning world and Olympic champions, on penalties after a 3-3 draw in Rio. Quek played in the defensive line that kept the score close enough for the shootout to matter. Her playing career produced 125 international caps, a European Championship gold in 2015, and a stretch captaining England through the 2014 Champions Trophy with two broken ribs that she did not know she had until the tournament ended. The MBE followed in the 2017 New Year Honours. The second career began almost immediately. By 2021 she was the first permanent female team captain on A Question of Sport. In 2022 she joined Morning Live as co-host. The broadcasting roster now spans NFL on Channel 5, hockey on TNT Sports, football on Channel 4 and LFC TV, and a stint on BBC Radio 5 Live’s 606. She co-anchored BBC’s Olympic Breakfast for Tokyo and co-hosted the Eurovision 2023 opening ceremony. For corporate audiences, that combination provides something unusual. The Olympic experience is direct evidence of what high-performing teams do under terminal pressure. The broadcasting career adds the discipline of live performance, daily, without the option of a second take. Both feed the same material when she works with organisations on resilience, team culture, and composure when the stakes are visible. Key speaking topics Resilience and performance under pressure Team culture in high-stakes environments Olympic preparation and the four-year cycle Women in elite sport and broadcasting Career transition from athlete to broadcaster Self-leadership and composure Event hosting and panel moderation Ideal for Conference and awards hosting briefs requiring a recognised broadcaster. Sales kick-offs and all-hands events focused on team performance and resilience. Leadership programmes addressing composure and high-pressure decision-making. Diversity and women in leadership audiences seeking a senior sporting voice. Audience outcomes A specific account of what a winning team does in the hours and minutes before a terminal moment. A working sense of how composure is built before it is needed. Language for talking about team culture grounded in elite sport rather than business abstraction. Energy and credibility from a speaker comfortable in front of large rooms and television cameras.

Why organisations work with Samantha Johnson Few presenters have actually conducted the FIFA World Cup Final Draw. Samantha has done it twice, including the 2026 ceremony at the Kennedy Center alongside Rio Ferdinand. She holds dual credibility across two registers organisations rarely find in one person: marquee sports broadcasting and substantive global current affairs. The same week she fronts a federation event, she can moderate a policy discussion at the United Nations. As the creator and presenter of Al Jazeera English’s Game Theory, Now You Know and Centre Stage, she runs her own editorial. She does her own research and writes her own questions. A British-Jamaican woman fronting the FIFA World Cup draw signals to a global audience that the organisation has actually changed who occupies authority on its biggest stage. That representation is part of what an organisation buying global visibility is actually paying for. Biography highlights Conductor of the Final Draw for the FIFA World Cup 2026 alongside Rio Ferdinand, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington DC. Member of the conducting team for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Final Draw in Doha, and presenter at The Best FIFA Football Awards 2022 in Paris. Presenter and producer at Al Jazeera Media Network, where she created and hosts Game Theory, Now You Know and Centre Stage. Former Sports Anchor at TRT World in Istanbul, fronting flagship programme Beyond the Game across seven years. Past on-air roles with Sky Sports News, beIN Sports, Eurosport and Chelsea TV. Moderator for United Nations policy discussions, including the launch of UN Women’s ‘Awake Not Sleeping’ initiative. Biography The Final Draw for the FIFA World Cup 2026 was conducted at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington DC, in front of heads of state and a global broadcast audience. Samantha Johnson was the broadcaster on stage with Rio Ferdinand, leading the procedure that revealed the group-stage matchups for the first 48-team tournament. Few presenters have ever been trusted with that role. Even fewer have done it twice. The 2026 ceremony followed her work on the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Final Draw in Doha and The Best FIFA Football Awards in Paris. Outside FIFA, she moderates UEFA conferences, anchors policy discussions at the United Nations, and hosted the launch of UN Women’s ‘Awake Not Sleeping’ initiative. The pattern is consistent. Federations and institutions that need a live moment to land at the level their audience expects come back to her. At Al Jazeera English she has built a body of work that runs deeper than presenting. Game Theory examines the politics, power and economics shaping world sport, from betting scandals in the NBA to Africa’s investment in football infrastructure. Now You Know is the network’s vodcast amplifying women’s voices across health, sport and technology. Centre Stage carries her long-form interviews with global change makers, including a recent conversation with Mozambique’s President Daniel Chapo. Born in Birmingham to a British-Jamaican family, she has built her career across London, Istanbul and Doha, where she now lives. Before Al Jazeera, she spent seven years anchoring TRT World’s flagship Beyond the Game programme, after starting out at Chelsea TV and moving through on-air roles with Sky Sports News, beIN Sports and Eurosport. The composure that comes from doing live television in three languages and three time zones is what makes her a natural choice for a federation board, an awards stage or a United Nations convening. Key speaking topics Live event hosting and moderation Diversity, representation and women’s voices Sport, politics and power Global storytelling and communication Cultural intelligence in international media Women in sport and broadcasting Ideal for Federations, awards bodies and global brands seeking a credible host for high-profile live moments DEI and Women’s Network leads commissioning conversations on representation and visibility International conferences requiring a moderator who can hold senior speakers and multilingual audiences Media, sport and policy organisations staging events where substance and signal both matter Audience outcomes A view from inside the highest-stakes moments in live global broadcasting, told by someone who has had to deliver them. A perspective on representation in sport and media built from doing the job on stage in front of millions. An honest account of working as a journalist across cultures, from London to Istanbul to Doha. Specific material on how senior figures get interviewed for global broadcast: the editorial preparation, the question design, the on-air control.

Why organisations work with Samira Ahmed More than three decades in senior British journalism, including current presenting roles on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row and BBC One’s Newswatch, give her the instinct to read a room and the standing to hold it. Her January 2020 equal pay tribunal win against the BBC gives her direct, lived authority on workplace fairness that few moderators can claim. She has chaired panels for the British Museum, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the United Nations, the Cabinet Office and KPMG, and handles contested material without flattening it into talking points. Stonewall Broadcaster of the Year in 2009 and a current trustee of the Centre for Women’s Justice, she brings a journalistically tested base in equality and gender topics that few corporate hosts can claim. Biography highlights Presenter, Front Row, BBC Radio 4, and Newswatch, BBC One and BBC News Channel. British Broadcasting Press Guild Audio Presenter of the Year, 2020. Stonewall Broadcaster of the Year, 2009, for Channel 4 News reporting on the “corrective” rape of lesbian women in South Africa. Brought and won the landmark equal pay tribunal against the BBC, January 2020. Honorary Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford; honorary doctorates from City University of London, the University of East Anglia, Kingston University and the University of Winchester. Trustee, Centre for Women’s Justice; former Channel 4 News presenter and correspondent and former BBC Los Angeles correspondent. Biography In January 2020, an employment tribunal in central London ruled that Samira Ahmed had been paid less than a male colleague for the same broadcasting work. The judgment set a new reference point in British equal pay law and triggered pay reviews across the BBC. That case sits inside more than three decades of senior British journalism. It also explains why organisations book her to chair the conversations they cannot easily host themselves. She has been the named subject in a public fight over pay and gender, where most professional moderators have only commented from outside. She presents Front Row on BBC Radio 4 and Newswatch on BBC One. Before that came eleven years at Channel 4 News, plus an earlier BBC posting to Los Angeles to cover the OJ Simpson trial. Her honours include the 2020 British Broadcasting Press Guild Audio Presenter of the Year. A Stonewall Broadcaster of the Year award followed in 2009 for her Channel 4 News reporting on “corrective” rape in South Africa. She has chaired live discussions for the British Museum, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the British Film Institute, the United Nations and the Cabinet Office. She presented the Civil Service Awards for five consecutive years. In April 2023, on Front Row, she announced the earliest known complete recording of a Beatles concert in Britain. The tape was made by a fifteen-year-old pupil at Stowe School in 1963 and is now held by the British Library. Key speaking topics Equal pay and workplace fairness Gender equality and women’s rights Public trust in journalism and institutions Cultural intelligence in public discourse Senior conference chairing and panel moderation Diversity and representation in public life Ideal for Award ceremonies, leadership summits and AGMs requiring a credible senior chair CHROs and pay equity committees hosting public discussions on workplace fairness DEI leads, communications directors and ESG officers running events on gender equality and fair pay Cultural institutions and public-sector bodies briefing audiences on contested or sensitive material Audience outcomes A direct, journalist-trained perspective on equal pay and workplace fairness, drawn from her own landmark BBC tribunal A working understanding of how the BBC weighs editorial trust and audience scrutiny, from the presenter of Newswatch A discussion that keeps its substance when the material is sensitive, with senior contributors tested rather than handled A model of senior public chairing where the room is led with authority and contested material given space to land

Why organisations work with Samuel Kasumu He led the cross-government vaccine confidence programme during COVID-19. As Special Adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, he worked with vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi to take uptake in some communities from under 30% to around 75%. A working understanding of how board composition actually changes. Through Inclusive Boards, the executive search firm he co-founded, he has placed non-executive directors across more than 150 sports governing bodies and led culture change work with organisations including the Royal Horticultural Society and the Rugby Football League. A serious editorial thesis on the strategic value of outsider perspective, set out in The Power of the Outsider (Hodder & Stoughton, 2023). The book gives boards a usable frame for treating difference as a commercial asset, drawn from his own experience inside Downing Street. Direct exposure to the political and reputational risks senior leaders face when public trust fractures. Few speakers have served at the centre of UK government during a comparable period of institutional pressure. Biography highlights Special Adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson with the Civil Society and Communities brief, 2019 to 2021. The most senior Black adviser in the Prime Minister’s Office during this period. Co-founder of Inclusive Boards, an executive search firm specialising in non-executive and board appointments. Named Third Sector and Public Sector Recruiter of the Year at the 2023 National Recruiter Awards. Author of The Power of the Outsider: A Journey of Discovery (Hodder & Stoughton, 2023), with cover endorsement from ITV political editor Robert Peston, and Winning the Race (RoperPenberthy, 2012). Member of the Race Disparity Audit Advisory Board under Prime Minister Theresa May, chaired by Lord Simon Woolley. Recognised on the MIPAD Top 100 list (Most Influential People of African Descent), a UN-aligned global initiative. Regular UK political commentator on programmes including Question Time and Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. Publishes Future-proof Politics on Substack. Biography In early 2021, vaccine uptake in some UK communities sat below 30 per cent. By the time Samuel Kasumu left Downing Street in May that year, it had climbed to around 75 per cent. The cross-government confidence programme he led, working alongside vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi, had reached audiences the rest of government could not. That campaign captures the practical question Samuel works on. As Special Adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson with the Civil Society and Communities brief, he was the most senior Black adviser in the Prime Minister’s Office. The role required both political instinct and credibility with communities Whitehall does not naturally reach. His commercial work runs in parallel. Inclusive Boards, the executive search firm he co-founded, has placed non-executive directors across more than 150 sports governing bodies. The firm has worked with organisations including the Royal Horticultural Society and the Rugby Football League on culture change. It was named Third Sector and Public Sector Recruiter of the Year at the 2023 National Recruiter Awards. His 2023 book The Power of the Outsider (Hodder & Stoughton) makes the case underpinning the rest of his work. Outsiders, he argues, see what insiders miss, and organisations that learn to value that perspective gain a strategic edge. The book carries a cover endorsement from ITV political editor Robert Peston. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership and board diversity Trust between institutions and communities Civil society and government relations Outsider perspective as a strategic asset Cultural intelligence in policy and corporate communication Race and identity in the modern workplace Crisis communication with hard-to-reach audiences Ideal for Chief People Officers and DEI leads responsible for board composition and culture change at scale Chairs and CEOs working through institutional trust challenges with employees and external stakeholders Public sector and government audiences engaged in community engagement and behaviour change Corporate leadership teams seeking a sharper frame on how to treat difference as a strategic asset Audience outcomes A clearer view of why institutional trust collapses with specific communities, and what kinds of leadership and engagement actually rebuild it Inside lessons on how government and large organisations make decisions when public confidence is fragile A sharper editorial frame for treating difference as a commercial asset across boards and executive teams Direct insight into what changes board composition in practice, drawn from work with hundreds of organisations through Inclusive Boards