Future Skills

Why organisations work with Leland Melvin He has lived two career-ending events and returned from both. A hamstring injury ended his NFL prospects; a training accident left him partially deaf and medically grounded before he was cleared to fly. Leaders running fatigued teams listen to him because the material is earned. He is the only person drafted into the NFL who has flown in space, and he uses that arc as a working case study on reinvention, not as a curiosity. The narrative carries weight in rooms that have heard most astronaut and athlete talks before. He ran NASA Education as Associate Administrator and co-chaired the White House STEM Task Force. He speaks credibly to boards and CHROs on future skills and pipeline strategy, not only on inspiration. His STS-122 mission delivered Europe’s Columbus laboratory to the ISS. The crew was American, French, German, and led a delicate international handover. He draws on that for executives managing multinational teams under public scrutiny. Author of Chasing Space with HarperCollins, with a Young Readers edition still in active use across US school systems. The book is a working reference for the keynote, not a souvenir. Biography highlights Retired NASA astronaut, mission specialist on STS-122 and STS-129 aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis, with over 565 hours in space. NASA Associate Administrator for Education and head of NASA’s education portfolio at the Senior Executive Service level. Co-chair of the White House Federal Coordination in STEM Education Task Force and chair of the International Space Education Board. Drafted by the Detroit Lions in 1986; the only person drafted into the NFL to have flown in space. BSc Chemistry, University of Richmond; MSc Materials Science Engineering, University of Virginia. Specialist in optical fibre sensors at NASA Langley before astronaut selection. Author of Chasing Space: An Astronaut’s Story of Grit, Grace, and Second Chances (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2017). Biography A training tank at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston ended Leland Melvin’s astronaut career before it started. A water-pressure incident during EVA training left him partially deaf and medically disqualified from flight. NASA assigned him to its education office. Three years later, a flight surgeon cleared him on a waiver, and he flew to the International Space Station on STS-122 to deliver the Columbus laboratory module. The path to that flight ran through two earlier identities. Chemistry at the University of Richmond on a football scholarship. A masters in Materials Science Engineering at the University of Virginia. A research career at NASA Langley working on optical fibre sensors for composite structures, while training camps with the Detroit Lions, Dallas Cowboys, and Toronto Argonauts closed one by one through hamstring injuries. Selection as a NASA astronaut came in 1998. Two missions followed, STS-122 in 2008 and STS-129 in 2009, totalling more than 565 hours in orbit. What gives the speaking work its weight is what came after the flights. As NASA Associate Administrator for Education from 2010 to 2014, Melvin oversaw the agency’s national education portfolio and co-chaired the White House Federal Coordination in STEM Education Task Force. He sat at the senior level on US STEM policy. Chasing Space, published by HarperCollins in 2017, took the personal account into wider circulation and remains in use as a school text in its Young Readers edition. He works now with executive audiences on the operating content of resilience: how a leader keeps a fatigued team functioning when the people in it are quietly carrying serious setbacks, and how to design a pipeline that pulls talent from places most organisations do not yet look. Key speaking topics Resilience and recovery after career-altering setbacks High-performing teams in high-consequence operating environments Inclusive leadership and multinational crew dynamics STEM education, future skills, and pipeline strategy Lessons from human spaceflight for executive teams Personal reinvention and second-act careers Ideal for CHROs, chief people officers, and learning leaders building resilience and inclusion programmes with substance Senior teams emerging from restructure, redundancy, or burnout cycles Education, public sector, and STEM-focused organisations setting talent pipeline strategy Conferences seeking a credentialed plenary voice on inspiration that withstands scrutiny Audience outcomes A working sense of what resilience looks like as a leadership behaviour, not a personal trait A specific account of how international crew performance is built and maintained under pressure A clearer view of the pipeline question: where future technical talent is found and what blocks it A vivid Earth-observation perspective that lifts the room without softening the argument

Why organisations work with Toni Kent She makes social mobility a concrete operating question rather than a values statement, drawing on a decade running major UK partner relationships at Microsoft and a personal history that maps directly onto the barriers her audience is trying to remove. She is one of a small number of UK speakers who can carry both the hosting craft of a large awards night and the substantive keynote inside it, evidenced by twice hosting the UK Social Mobility Awards. Audiences get an unusual combination of stand-up comic timing and corporate fluency, which makes uncomfortable conversations about class, education and access land without defensiveness. The Common Good Network gives her keynote a follow-through mechanism: a directory of UK organisations that the audience can actually route their employee resource groups, CSR teams and emerging-talent programmes towards. Biography highlights Ten years at Microsoft UK, managing several of the company’s largest partner relationships. Founder of The Common Good Network, an interactive directory of UK social mobility organisations. Twice host of the UK Social Mobility Awards (2021, 2023). Author of four books, including Reasons to be Cheerful, Part One. Host of the Challenging University podcast; co-host of KAYBE Talks and The Partnership Path Podcast. Keynote and hosting clients include AWS, KPMG, PwC, Direct Line Group, Baker Hughes, ForHousing, Smart Works Reading and the University of East London. Biography Most large UK employers now have a social mobility position. Far fewer can show what it has changed inside their recruitment funnel, their early-careers programme, or their promotion patterns. The work of turning a stated commitment into an operating change is where Toni Kent has spent the last decade. She came to the question through a decade at Microsoft UK, where she ran several of the company’s largest partner relationships. Before that, a council-estate upbringing in Basingstoke, a father who died when she was fourteen, a family on state benefits, no university route. The combination matters commercially because she can speak with equal fluency to the chief people officer and to the apprentice in the second row. The Common Good Network is the operating layer underneath the keynote: an interactive directory of UK organisations working on socioeconomic barriers, designed to give corporate audiences a route from intention to partnership. Her hosting of the UK Social Mobility Awards in 2021 and 2023 sits in the same body of work, as do her four published books and her podcasts Challenging University, KAYBE Talks and The Partnership Path. The reason organisations book her for the room and not only for the content is that she is also a working stand-up comedian. The craft shows in how she handles a difficult brief: she can name class, access and education without making the audience flinch, and she can host an awards night for two thousand people without losing the thread of why it matters. Key speaking topics Social mobility in the workplace Inclusive hiring and early-careers access Storytelling and authentic personal narrative Imposter syndrome and confidence in corporate environments Mindset and decision-making under change Event hosting and panel moderation Women in technology Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and emerging-talent leads who need a credible voice on social mobility as an operating discipline. Employee resource group chairs and ERG sponsors briefing senior leadership on socioeconomic inclusion. Awards programmes, internal recognition events and large all-hands meetings requiring a confident, comic-timed host. Technology, professional services and financial services audiences engaging with inclusion content for the first time. Audience outcomes A working definition of social mobility that distinguishes class-based access from broader DEI categories. A clear sense of where the typical corporate social mobility commitment breaks down between policy and practice. Specific organisational entry points: ERG design, early careers, mentoring, supplier diversity and procurement. A directory of UK partner organisations, via The Common Good Network, to route follow-through activity through. Permission to discuss class openly inside the organisation without defensiveness.

Why organisations work with Harry Ife He speaks from the operational floor of UK construction, a sector where DEI and employability conversations are usually held about site managers rather than by one. Twice awarded the NHBC Pride in the Job quality benchmark, in 2021 and 2022, giving him credibility with operational leadership that a pure training specialist rarely has. Runs The I.F.E Foundation, a registered UK entity sponsoring schooling at Uwani Secondary School in Enugu, Nigeria and direct-support schemes in London, so his DEI argument is backed by his own delivery record. Works regularly with the University of Westminster, University of East London, City University London and University of Greenwich, which gives him a direct read on how students from underrepresented backgrounds experience the transition into professional life. Useful for internal audiences who tune out generic DEI training: his material is built around self-advocacy, mentorship and career mechanics rather than awareness. Biography highlights Senior construction professional working in build management and the delivery of mixed-use developments. NHBC Pride in the Job Award winner, 2021 and 2022. Founder of The I.F.E (Independence For Everyone) Foundation, UK company number 15038338. Guest speaker and lecturer at the University of Westminster, University of East London, City University London and University of Greenwich. Corporate speaking clients include Mimecast, where he has presented for the global DEI function. Holds a BA in Business Management, an MSc in International Management, and an NVQ Level 7 in Senior Construction Management. Biography Construction is one of the clearest tests of whether an organisation’s DEI commitments survive contact with an operational environment. The policies are written centrally. The behaviour that decides whether a twenty-five-year-old from an underrepresented background stays or leaves is set on site, in offices, and in the first few conversations with a line manager. That is the ground Harry Ife works on. A senior construction professional specialising in build management and mixed-use developments, he has been recognised with the NHBC Pride in the Job Award in both 2021 and 2022, the industry’s main quality benchmark for site managers. He speaks to corporate and educational audiences from that vantage point rather than from a consulting or academic one. His public work is built around self-advocacy, mentorship and employability for early-career professionals, with particular focus on the experience of ethnic minority entrants into industries where they remain underrepresented. He has taken this into corporate DEI functions, including Mimecast, and into university audiences at Westminster, East London, City University London and Greenwich. Alongside his construction career he founded The I.F.E (Independence For Everyone) Foundation, which sponsors education at Uwani Secondary School in Enugu, Nigeria, and runs the Christmas in a Card initiative for low-income households in London. For a buyer, the useful point is that his speaking content and his delivery record are the same argument. Key speaking topics Self-advocacy in the workplace Early-career progression in underrepresented industries Mentorship and career mechanics Diversity, equity and inclusion in construction and engineering Employability and future skills Rehabilitation and second-chance employment pathways Ideal for CHROs, DEI leads and early-careers teams in construction, engineering, property and other trade-heavy sectors University careers services and student-experience teams running employability programmes Corporate ERG and employee-network events where the audience has heard the standard DEI talk before Foundations, CSR teams and charity partners working on youth employability Audience outcomes A sharper picture of where DEI intent actually breaks down for early-career talent on site and in the office. Concrete language for self-advocacy that junior professionals can use in real situations rather than in a training setting. A working view of what effective mentorship looks like from both sides of the relationship. An operational rather than theoretical frame on DEI in construction, engineering and similar industries.

Why organisations work with Kimberly Bryant She built Black Girls CODE from a single San Francisco workshop into an organisation that reached more than 100,000 students across the US and South Africa, which gives her concrete authority on what scales in early-career technical pipeline work and what does not. Her current platform, the Black Innovation Lab at Ascend Ventures, puts her in active deal flow with founders working in AI, climate, healthcare, and femtech, so her view of inclusive innovation is grounded in capital decisions, not advocacy. The Black Girlboss Paradox is her own framework for the specific leadership progression problem Black women hit at senior levels, and it gives audiences a usable concept rather than a general DEI message. A 20-plus year engineering career at Genentech, Novartis, Merck, and Pfizer means she can hold a serious conversation with technical leaders about pipeline, R&D culture, and progression in regulated, complex organisations. Recognition by the Obama White House as a Champion of Change for Tech Inclusion and a Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award places her in a small group of named, vetted voices on this subject for senior audiences. Biography highlights Founder, Black Girls CODE (2011), reaching more than 100,000 students across the US and South Africa. Founder and CEO, Black Innovation Lab at Ascend Ventures Tech, based in Memphis on the historic Griggs College campus, investing in Black founders in AI, climate, healthcare, and femtech. White House Champion of Change for Tech Inclusion, 2013. Smithsonian Magazine American Ingenuity Award for Social Progress, 2014. BE Electrical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, 1989. Twenty-plus year career in engineering leadership roles at Genentech, Novartis, Merck, and Pfizer. Forthcoming book, “Ascending: Black Women and the Power Paradox,” Tiny Reparations Books / Penguin Random House. Biography In 2011 a Memphis-born electrical engineer ran a coding workshop for fourteen girls in San Francisco because her own daughter could not find a class that looked like her. The workshop became Black Girls CODE. Inside a decade it had reached more than 100,000 students across the US and South Africa, with Smithsonian and White House recognition attached. Kimberly Bryant came to that work after twenty years as an engineering manager inside Genentech, Novartis, Merck, and Pfizer. That matters for buyers, because her view of inclusion is shaped by R&D budgets, validation cycles, and Fortune 100 promotion ladders, not by the language of advocacy alone. Her current platform, the Black Innovation Lab at Ascend Ventures Tech, is based on the historic Griggs College campus in her hometown of Memphis. The fund writes cheques into Black-led companies in AI, climate, healthcare, and femtech, which keeps her thesis on inclusive innovation tied to live capital decisions. The framework she now brings to senior audiences is the Black Girlboss Paradox: the structural reason Black women who reach the threshold of executive power encounter heightened scrutiny, narrower capital access, and confinement to lower-leverage roles. It is also the subject of her forthcoming book, “Ascending: Black Women and the Power Paradox,” from Tiny Reparations Books at Penguin Random House. Key speaking topics Inclusive innovation and venture capital The Black Girlboss Paradox and Black women in leadership Building and scaling tech-equity organisations Diversity in AI development and AI for social impact Pipeline and talent strategy in technical organisations Founder journeys and accidental social entrepreneurship Ideal for CHROs and chief diversity officers responsible for moving senior representation, not just hiring numbers Boards and executive teams reviewing the credibility of their inclusion strategy Heads of innovation, R&D, and venture units allocating capital to underrepresented founders Women in leadership programmes, particularly those focused on senior progression for women of colour Audience outcomes A clear, named framework, the Black Girlboss Paradox, for the leadership-progression problem that generic DEI language misses A practitioner view of what scales in tech-equity work, drawn from running an organisation that reached 100,000 students Specific signals to apply when assessing inclusive innovation strategies, sourced from active venture practice A re-set on the difference between access initiatives and structural change in promotion, capital, and culture

Why organisations work with Richard Gerver He has a verifiable case study that most leadership speakers do not. Grange Primary School moved from near-failure to a nationally referenced model of learning under his leadership, recognised by the National Teaching Awards in 2005. His books are read by operating audiences, not just educators. Change: Learn to Love It, Learn to Lead It and Simple Thinking are published by Penguin and Wiley/Capstone, respectively, and held shelf positions in business charts. LinkedIn Learning commissioned him to build Smart Thinking and Developing Mental Toughness for a global business audience. The courses have reached learners at scale across multiple languages. He worked closely with Sir Ken Robinson on human potential and creativity, and is cited in Robinson’s The Element. That intellectual lineage gives his leadership works a depth most motivational speakers cannot claim. He has been named UK Business Speaker of the Year on more than one occasion, including a confirmed 2011 win cited in his University of Derby honorary doctorate commendation. Biography highlights Headteacher of Grange Primary School, Derbyshire, where he developed the «Grangeton» model and led a documented institutional turnaround. National Teaching Awards Head Teacher of the Year, 2005. Honorary Doctor of Education, University of Derby, 2016. Author of Creating Tomorrow’s Schools Today (Bloomsbury Education), Change: Learn to Love It, Learn to Lead It (Penguin) and Simple Thinking (Wiley/Capstone). LinkedIn Learning instructor: Smart Thinking and Developing Mental Toughness. Foreword by Sir Ken Robinson on his first book; later cited in Robinson’s The Element. Biography Grange Primary School was on the verge of failure when Richard Gerver took it over. Within two years, the school was being studied as a national model, with a curriculum built around a pupil-run virtual town called Grangeton. The work earned him the National Teaching Awards Head Teacher of the Year in 2005 and shaped the rest of his career. He has spent the two decades since translating that experience for business audiences. Change: Learn to Love It, Learn to Lead It, published by Penguin, argues that leaders fail at change because they manage it as a project rather than a behaviour. Simple Thinking, published by Wiley/Capstone, attacks the bureaucratic clutter that senior teams build around their own decisions. Both books found shelf space in mainstream business sections, not just education. His thinking sits in the lineage of Sir Ken Robinson, who wrote the foreword to his first book and cited him in The Element. He has worked with UNESCO, the British Council, Skanska and the Welsh Government, and was commissioned by LinkedIn Learning to build two courses, Smart Thinking and Developing Mental Toughness, that have reached a global business audience. The University of Derby awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Education in 2016, citing his ability to humanise complex organisational issues through a leadership philosophy built on communication, empowerment and impact. He has been named UK Business Speaker of the Year on more than one occasion. Key speaking topics Human leadership and behaviour change Organisational transformation Resilience and mental toughness Curiosity, creativity and innovation Future skills and human potential Change management Executive development Ideal for CEOs and executive teams are asking why a recent transformation programme has stalled CHROs and L&D directors rebuilding leadership development for a fatigued workforce Senior leaders preparing a workforce for restructure, integration, or operating-model change Boards looking for an outside voice on the human side of strategic execution Audience outcomes A sharper view of why most change programmes fail at the leader’s own behaviour, not at the strategy Specific tools for stripping complexity out of decisions and communication Confidence that resilience and mental toughness can be built deliberately, with examples from sport and education A reframing of curiosity as an organisational capability, not a personal trait Renewed clarity on what senior leaders should personally commit to during a period of change

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

Why organisations work with Corinna Pommerening Specific authority in the German Mittelstand and regional banking layer, where most international leadership speakers have no credible footprint. Two Springer Gabler and GABAL books arguing a structured thesis on leadership change inside the financial sector, not a generic leadership platform applied to banking. Treats employer brand and leadership culture as one programme rather than two HR projects, which is how regional banks actually experience the talent problem. Customer advisory seat at HASPA, Germany’s largest savings bank, anchors the work in a real institutional setting rather than a consultancy abstraction. Delivers in German and English, with formats from keynote to working session, suited to bank executive committees and supervisory-board offsites. Biography highlights Author of “New Leadership im Finanzsektor,” Springer Gabler, 2020; second edition 2022. Author of “Digitale Regionalokonomie,” GABAL Verlag, 2023. Host of “Leadership neu gedacht!” podcast, 140+ episodes. Co-founder of Ecosystems 4 Business AG. Member of the customer advisory board, Hamburger Sparkasse (HASPA). Certified employer brand manager; guest lecturer at the University of Wismar; Industry Insider with trend-research firm TRENDONE. Biography Most regional banks in Germany are running two redesigns at once. The business model is being rebuilt around digital and platform competition, and the workforce that has to deliver that rebuild is harder to keep and harder to recruit than at any point in the sector’s history. Treating those as separate projects is why so many programmes stall. Corinna Pommerening’s argument, set out in “New Leadership im Finanzsektor” (Springer Gabler, 2020; second edition 2022), is that leadership culture and employer brand are the same problem in a regional bank. Courage and responsibility have to move down from the executive layer, silo working has to give way to networked teams, and the institution has to become legible to the talent it wants. Her second book, “Digitale Regionalokonomie” (GABAL Verlag, 2023), extends the case to the regional economy these banks sit inside. The work has institutional grounding. She sits on the customer advisory board of Hamburger Sparkasse, Germany’s largest savings bank, co-founded Ecosystems 4 Business AG, and runs the “Leadership neu gedacht!” podcast across more than 140 episodes with senior practitioners in the financial sector. A certified employer brand manager and guest lecturer at the University of Wismar, she works in German and English, with formats running from board-level keynote to executive working session. What she gives a Sparkassen, Volksbank, or Mittelstand executive team is rare in the wider speaker market: an authoritative outside voice that already understands the regulatory, cultural and talent context they operate in, and that has written the book on the leadership shift the institution has to make. Key speaking topics New leadership in the financial sector Leadership culture in mid-market and regional banks Employer branding for the Mittelstand Future skills and workforce capability Digital and cultural transformation in regional economies Distributed responsibility and networked working Ideal for Executive boards and supervisory boards of Sparkassen, cooperative banks and regional commercial banks CHROs and HR directors in mid-market financial institutions Mittelstand CEOs running combined leadership and talent agendas Regional economic development bodies and bank-association events Audience outcomes A clearer read on why leadership culture and employer brand fail when run as separate programmes A working model for moving responsibility and decision-making down through a bank’s hierarchy Specific positions to take on future skills, lifelong learning and knowledge-sharing inside the institution A view of the regional bank as part of a regional economic ecosystem, not an isolated operator Language that supervisory boards and executive committees can use to align on the leadership shift

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

Why organisations work with Sandra Navidi She wrote the book on how the financial elite actually operates. SuperHubs maps the people, institutions and personal networks that move capital and policy, and gives a board a working model of where systemic risk concentrates rather than a list of headlines. She is a member of Columbia University’s Center on Capitalism and Society, founded by Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps, which gives her line of sight to academic research on capitalism, innovation and inequality alongside her practitioner work. Her second book, Future IQ, treats AI as a workforce and strategy question, not a technology demo. That makes her unusually well placed to take a board through the macro and the AI conversation in a single session. Bilingual delivery in English and German, paired with two decades of n-tv commentary, gives DACH and transatlantic audiences a speaker who works natively in both regulatory and cultural contexts. A licensed attorney in New York and Germany with prior roles in investment banking, fund counsel work and macro advisory at Roubini Global Economics. The credential stack maps directly to the rooms she is asked to speak in. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of BeyondGlobal, a New York-based strategic advisory firm. Author of SuperHubs, a Bloomberg Best Book of the Year and 2018 Axiom Business Book Awards Silver Medal winner. Author of Future IQ: Your Success Strategies in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Die DNA der USA: Wie tickt Amerika. Member of the Center on Capitalism and Society, Columbia University. LinkedIn Top Voice (Executive Blue Badge) and long-standing n-tv (RTL) expert commentator on business and politics. Co-host of the Biz and Beyond podcast with Ulrich Reitz, interviewing senior decision-makers and international experts. Biography The 2008 financial crisis exposed something most risk frameworks had missed. The shocks did not travel through markets in the abstract; they travelled through a small, interlocking network of bankers, regulators, central bankers and policy figures who knew each other personally. SuperHubs, written with a foreword by Nouriel Roubini, is the book that mapped that network and named it. It was selected as a Bloomberg Best Book of the Year and won a Silver Medal in the 2018 Axiom Business Book Awards. Sandra Navidi spent the years before that book inside the rooms she went on to describe. She worked as an investment banker, as general counsel at Muzinich and Co., as a Deloitte consultant, and then as a director of research strategies at Roubini Global Economics, where she briefed clients on macroeconomic and geopolitical risk. She is admitted to the bar in New York and Germany, holds an LL.M. in banking, corporate and finance law from Fordham, and is a member of Columbia University’s Center on Capitalism and Society, founded by Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps. Her second book, Future IQ, takes the same network thinking into the AI conversation. It treats AI as a workforce and capital-allocation problem, not a technology demonstration, and asks how individuals, organisations and economies stay relevant when machine intelligence absorbs more of the cognitive work. It is the bridge between her macro authority and the questions boards are now being asked by their own people. Through BeyondGlobal she advises corporates, financial institutions and ultra-high-net-worth clients; through n-tv (RTL) and the Biz and Beyond podcast she keeps a working line into German and European business audiences. The result is a speaker who can move between Washington-style macro analysis, frankfurt-style risk culture and a Silicon Valley AI brief inside the same keynote, in either English or German. Key speaking topics Systemic risk and the architecture of global finance Geopolitics, sanctions and transatlantic exposure AI as a strategy and workforce question Macroeconomic volatility and capital allocation Future-proofing leadership and human capital US political and economic intelligence for European boards Ideal for Boards and executive committees of banks, asset managers and insurers CEOs, CFOs and CROs in globally exposed corporates Family offices and private wealth platforms with cross-border allocation decisions DACH and transatlantic leadership audiences requiring bilingual delivery Audience outcomes A working mental model of where systemic risk concentrates in the global financial system, named by institution and actor. A clearer read on how geopolitical fracture, sanctions and US policy shifts reach their own balance sheet. A practitioner view of AI as a capital and workforce question, not a tooling debate. A briefing on what US business and political dynamics mean for European strategy in the next cycle.

Why organisations work with Lisa Ventura An MBE-recognised authority on the cultural and behavioural side of cyber security, the area boards now name as their largest residual exposure once tooling is in place. Founder of Cyber Security Unity, a global community of practitioners, which gives her live cross-industry visibility into what is actually working against social engineering, phishing, and insider risk. A practical voice on neurodiversity and inclusion in cyber security hiring, useful for organisations trying to widen a tight talent pool without diluting capability. Speaks to the human cost inside security teams, burnout, imposter syndrome, and workplace harassment that quietly degrade incident response and retention. Author of “The Rise of the Cyber Women” series, with credibility built through the practitioner community rather than vendor marketing. Biography highlights MBE, King Charles III Birthday Honours 2023, for services to cyber security and diversity and inclusion. Founder, Cyber Security Unity (formerly the UK Cyber Security Association). Author of “The Rise of the Cyber Women: Volume One and Two” and “The Varied Origins of the Cyber Men: Volume One”. Winner, “Outstanding Contribution to Cyber Security”, SC Magazine Awards Europe. Winner, “Cyber Security Personality of the Year”, UK Cyber Security Awards. Listed on IT Security Guru’s Most Inspiring Women in Cyber Security (2022, 2024), We Are Tech Women Top 100, and IFSEC Global Influencers. Biography The cybersecurity industry sells controls. What has been slower to sell is culture. Most organisations now have endpoint protection, SIEM platforms, and incident response retainers. The breaches that still happen are almost always human, a click, a credential, a process gap, an exhausted analyst missing a signal at 3 am. That is the territory Lisa Ventura works in. She founded Cyber Security Unity, a global community organisation for cyber security practitioners, on the view that the industry remains fragmented and works in silos. Her consulting work with security leadership teams focuses on collaboration, awareness, and the cultural conditions that determine whether a security programme actually changes behaviour or just produces compliance evidence. Her books “The Rise of the Cyber Women,” Volumes One and Two, and “The Varied Origins of the Cyber Men,” Volume One, profile the routes practitioners take into the industry. The point is practical, not celebratory. Cybersecurity has a hiring problem, and one of the cheapest ways to widen the pipeline is to take neurodiversity and non-linear career paths seriously. Ventura is openly autistic and uses that experience to make the business case to CISOs and HR teams who are losing talent they could keep. In 2023, she received an MBE for services to cyber security and to diversity and inclusion. The recognition is useful shorthand for what she actually does in a room: she translates cybersecurity from a technical risk into a leadership and culture problem, and she has the practitioner network to back the argument. Key speaking topics Cyber security awareness and culture change The human layer of cyber risk Neurodiversity in cybersecurity hiring and retention Social engineering and phishing defence Burnout, stress, and mental health in security teams Cloud security collaboration Women and underrepresented groups in cybersecurity careers Ideal for CISOs and security leadership teams running awareness programmes that have stalled CHROs and talent leads trying to widen the cybersecurity hiring pipeline Boards and audit committees treating cyber as a culture and conduct issue, not only a control issue Industry conferences and corporate events on cybersecurity, technology workforce, and inclusion Audience outcomes A clearer view of where human factors sit inside the organisation’s actual cyber risk picture Specific, applicable approaches to awareness training that move behaviour, not just completion rates A practical case for treating neurodiversity as a hiring advantage in security teams Recognition of the burnout patterns that quietly damage incident response capability Cross-sector reference points from a practitioner community rather than a vendor stack

Why organisations work with Raven Baxter She brings the credibility of a working scientist with a doctorate in the science of learning, which means her communication advice rests on evidence about how people actually absorb technical content, not marketing instinct. She has hosted Pfizer’s flagship podcast Science Will Win across two seasons, giving her demonstrated experience translating drug discovery and oncology research for general audiences inside a regulated commercial environment. Her body of work, including viral hip-hop science videos and TEDx talk “You Don’t Look Like a Scientist,” gives her unusual reach into communities most science communication never touches. She founded Fervae, the first social media management platform built specifically for working scientists, which positions her as a builder of the infrastructure science communication has been missing, not only a practitioner. Her recognitions, Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science, Fortune 40 Under 40 in Health, Ebony Power 100, signal credibility across science, health, and culture audiences in a way few single speakers can claim. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Fervae, a social media management platform for scientists, announced at Science Talk 2026. President and Executive Director of The Science Haven, a 501(c)(3) advancing STEM equity through programmes including Stellar Dreams, an astronomy education partnership with Celestron, CuriosityStream, and NASA. Host of Pfizer’s Science Will Win podcast (Seasons 5 and 6) and creator-host of The Science of Life with Dr. Raven Baxter. Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science (2022), Fortune 40 Under 40 in Health (2020), Ebony Power 100 (2022), AAUW Woman of Distinction (2022). Director of Development and Partnerships, and Chair of the Ethics Consortium, at the Association of Science Communicators. Ph.D. in Curriculum, Instruction, and the Science of Learning, University at Buffalo, with a dissertation on culturally responsive science communication. Biography Most science communication still treats audiences as a problem to be managed: simplified, talked down to, or routed through a press release. The result is that technical organisations are surprised, repeatedly, by how little of their work is understood outside their own walls. Raven Baxter’s career has been built on closing that gap with method, not charisma alone. Trained as a molecular biologist at Buffalo State College and as a learning scientist at the University at Buffalo, she earned her doctorate with a dissertation on culturally responsive science communication, anchoring her practice in research about how technical content actually lands. She went on to host Pfizer’s Science Will Win across two seasons, taking drug discovery and oncology research to audiences a regulated pharmaceutical company could not reach through conventional channels. She is now Founder and CEO of Fervae, a social media management platform built specifically for working scientists, announced at Science Talk 2026. Alongside Fervae, she leads The Science Haven, a 501(c)(3) advancing STEM equity, and serves as Director of Development and Partnerships and Chair of the Ethics Consortium at the Association of Science Communicators. The recognitions track her dual reach across science and culture: Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science, Fortune 40 Under 40 in Health, the Ebony Power 100, the AAUW Woman of Distinction Award, and the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence. Her TEDx talk “You Don’t Look Like a Scientist” is her clearest single statement of why representation matters to the credibility of science itself. Key speaking topics Science communication strategy Inclusive STEM representation Health and biomedical communication Diversity in scientific research and innovation Public trust in science Culturally responsive communication and education Building infrastructure for science communicators Ideal for Heads of communications, public affairs, and corporate affairs at pharma, biotech, and healthcare organisations Chief diversity officers and CHROs in science-led and technical industries University and research institution leaders responsible for public engagement and outreach Foundations and nonprofits investing in STEM education, equity, and workforce pipeline Audience outcomes A clearer view of why technical credibility and cultural credibility have to live in the same person for science to be trusted across audiences. Specific examples of how working scientists and communicators are using digital platforms to reach communities that traditional outreach has missed. A working sense of what culturally responsive science communication looks like in practice, drawn from her own research and field work. A more honest read of where institutional science communication is falling short, and what infrastructure has been missing.

Why organisations work with Sue Black A sitting computer science professor who has also run a social enterprise that retrains women into tech roles at scale, so the talent argument is grounded in operational evidence, not advocacy. Author of the Saving Bletchley Park campaign and book, a working case study in using social media to mobilise public, political and corporate support around a single goal. Founded BCSWomen in 2001 and TechUPWomen in 2019, giving her two decades of named programmes to draw on when discussing pipeline, retention, and reskilling. OBE for services to technology, FBCS CITP, FRSA; the credentials boards expect when commissioning a technology keynote, without the corporate-speaker generic register. Bridges technical authority and lived experience. Left school at 16, returned through adult education to a PhD in software engineering, which gives the talent and inclusion argument personal weight that lands with mixed audiences. Biography highlights Professor of Computer Science and Technology Evangelist, Durham University. OBE for services to technology, 2016 New Year Honours. Founder, BCSWomen (2001), the UK’s first online network for women in technology. Founder, #techmums (2013) and TechUPWomen (2019), retraining women into tech careers. Author, Saving Bletchley Park (Unbound, 2015), Amazon UK bestseller and record-setting Unbound crowdfund. First recipient of the BCS John Ivinson medal; Lovie Awards Lifetime Achievement winner, 2018. Biography The technology talent gap is not principally a recruitment problem. It is a pipeline problem, an inclusion problem and a retraining problem, and most organisations are not structured to address any of the three. Sue Black has spent twenty-five years building the practical answers in public, on national platforms, and inside the British computer science establishment. She is Professor of Computer Science and Technology Evangelist at Durham University, where her academic work sits alongside the operational delivery of TechUPWomen, the retraining programme she founded in 2019. TechUPWomen reports nearly 600 women retrained into technology careers with an average salary uplift of around GBP 6,000, a rare instance of a tech-inclusion initiative reporting measurable economic outcomes for participants. Her track record on mobilisation is equally specific. Between 2008 and 2011 she led the Saving Bletchley Park campaign, which used early social media to recruit politicians, journalists and corporate sponsors behind the restoration of the WWII codebreaking site. Her account of the campaign, Saving Bletchley Park, became the fastest-funded title on Unbound and an Amazon UK bestseller. She founded BCSWomen in 2001, served as its chair until 2008, and was the first recipient of the BCS John Ivinson medal. She holds an OBE for services to technology, is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and Chartered IT Professional, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. The 2018 Lovie Awards recognised her career with a Lifetime Achievement award, and she has been invited to address the United Nations on women’s rights twice. The credentials are unusual in combination: a sitting academic chair, a national campaigning record, and two operational social enterprises with named outputs. Key speaking topics Women in technology and the future tech workforce Digital skills and reskilling at scale Diversity and inclusion in computer science Social media as a tool for organisational and public campaigns The history and legacy of Bletchley Park Future of technology and digital transformation Personal reinvention and adult learning into tech careers Ideal for CHROs and heads of talent rebuilding the technology pipeline beyond traditional graduate channels Technology and digital transformation leaders accountable for diversity, retention and reskilling targets DEI and ERG sponsors who need an evidenced voice on women in tech rather than a motivational one Conferences in technology, financial services and public sector seeking a senior keynote with academic and operational credibility Audience outcomes A clearer view of what works in retraining women into technology roles, drawn from named programmes with reported outcomes A grounded picture of the UK technology pipeline and where corporate intervention has measurable effect A working example, Bletchley Park, of how a small team can mobilise public and corporate support around a single objective using digital channels Personal credibility for the reskilling case: an academic who reached a chair through adult education herself Confidence to challenge the standard “women in tech” narrative with evidence rather than aspiration