Inclusive Leadership

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 Sarah Moshman Her documentary Nevertheless is in active use as a sexual harassment prevention tool by employers and educators through distributor Indieflix, giving HR and DEI leads a piece of external content that has survived independent review. The Empowerment Project has been screened more than 700 times for corporate and education audiences and has been picked up as programming by Nordstrom, American Girl, Microsoft and Charles Schwab, which is a working track record for women’s leadership events rather than a speculative pitch. She brings a regional Emmy in the Human Interest category and a NASA CineSpace first-place win for UNBOUND, which gives her credibility as a maker, not only as a speaker telling stories about her own life. She has been booked into difficult rooms, including a US Air Force women’s symposium at Hill Air Force Base and the opening keynote at the PEI Women Conference, where the audience is not the converted. Her commercial film work for SPANX, Samsung, AT&T and Mattel means she understands the brief from a marketing buyer’s side and can speak credibly to internal communications and brand teams about storytelling that performs. Biography highlights Emmy Award winner, NATAS Chicago/Midwest Chapter, 2013, for Growing up Strong: Girls on the Run. Director of three feature documentaries: The Empowerment Project (2014), Losing Sight of Shore (Netflix, 2017) and Nevertheless (2020). UNBOUND won First Place at NASA’s CineSpace Global Short Film Competition. Author of Empowered Filmmaking: How To Make a Documentary On Your Own Terms (2020). Branded content work for SPANX, Samsung, AT&T and Mattel. Featured on CNN, Good Morning America, Marie Claire, Upworthy and PBS; TEDx speaker; adjunct professor in documentary film. Biography Compliance-led harassment training is the work environment most employees have come to mistrust. The films Sarah Moshman has made for the same audience take the opposite route. Nevertheless, her 2020 feature documentary, follows seven survivors across industries from a tech CEO to a 911 dispatcher, and is now distributed by Indieflix as part of structured prevention education in workplaces and schools. That outsider craft is what organisations are actually booking. The Empowerment Project, her 2014 feature on women in leadership across the US, has been screened more than 700 times for audiences from corporates to schools, and has carried sponsorship from Nordstrom, American Girl, Microsoft and Charles Schwab. Losing Sight of Shore (Netflix, 2017) follows four women rowing more than 8,000 miles across the Pacific and gives her a second register: endurance and team performance under conditions where every easy out has been removed. The credentials behind the work are specific. A regional Emmy in 2013 for Growing up Strong: Girls on the Run. First place at NASA’s CineSpace competition for the short UNBOUND. A book, Empowered Filmmaking, that documents how the films were funded, made and licensed to Netflix. Branded content commissions from SPANX, Samsung, AT&T and Mattel that confirm she can produce inside a marketing brief, not only on her own terms. In a room, she works from her own footage. The PEI Women Conference opened with her in 2019, the US Air Force hosted her at the Hill women’s symposium, and her TEDx delivery is on public record. The result is the rare speaker on these topics whose primary asset is film that an organisation can keep using long after the keynote ends. Key speaking topics Workplace sexual harassment prevention Women’s leadership and the next generation pipeline Storytelling for brand and internal communications Inclusion and allyship after #MeToo Courage and risk-taking in early careers Documentary craft and the business of independent film Ideal for CHROs, DEI leads and ER teams running harassment prevention or culture programmes Internal communications and employer brand leaders looking for narrative content Women’s leadership networks and ERG anchor events CMOs and brand teams interested in long-form storytelling as a commercial asset Audience outcomes A documentary screening or curated clips package that gives employees a shared piece of content to discuss, rather than a slide-led training A clear account of how the Nevertheless survivors describe what allyship looked like in practice, including from peers and managers Specific examples of how women profiled in The Empowerment Project moved into senior roles, useful as case material for internal mentoring conversations A working method for using story to make uncomfortable workplace conversations possible without defensiveness

Why organisations work with Nicola Green She brings firsthand observation of how power, identity and leadership operate at the highest level, drawn from sustained artistic access to Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and Jonathan Sacks. Her work is held in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress and the Obama Presidential Center, which gives any inclusion conversation she leads an authority that consultancy-led sessions cannot match. She treats allyship as a discipline with daily behaviours, not as a values statement, which lands with senior leaders who are tired of slogans and want something they can act on. She founded the Khadija Saye Arts Programme and co-founded the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, so the institution-building she talks about is institution-building she has actually done. Biography highlights Co-founder and director, Diaspora Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale (2017), with David A. Bailey, David Lammy and Peter Clayton. In Seven Days…, her artistic record of the 2008 Obama campaign, is held by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, the Obama Presidential Center and the UK Government Art Collection. Encounters, a fifty-portrait series with Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, Justin Welby, Jonathan Sacks, Ali Gomaa and Desmond Tutu, exhibited at St Martin-in-the-Fields; book published by Brepols. Founder, Khadija Saye Arts Programme at IntoUniversity, addressing underrepresentation of Black and minority ethnic communities in the creative industries. Principal Artist on The World Reimagined, a UK-wide public art project on racial justice and the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. Co-founder and Chair, Sophia Point Rainforest Research Centre, Guyana. Biography Allyship has become one of the most used and least understood words in the workplace. Many leaders have signed up to it in principle while still being unsure what it asks of them in practice. Green’s work begins in that gap. Drawing on a decade of direct access to the figures who define modern leadership and faith, she treats allyship as something senior leaders do, not something they declare. Her portrait series In Seven Days… documented Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign from the Democratic Convention through to the inauguration. Sets are held by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress and the Obama Presidential Center. A second body of work, Encounters, sat her across the table from Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Justin Welby and Jonathan Sacks. The accompanying book, Encounters: The Art of Interfaith Dialogue, was published by Brepols. Beyond the studio, Green has built institutions for the conversation she leads on stage. She co-founded the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, featuring twenty-two artists from culturally diverse backgrounds, and founded the Khadija Saye Arts Programme at IntoUniversity in memory of her mentee, the artist Khadija Saye, who died in the Grenfell Tower fire. As Principal Artist on The World Reimagined, she created public work confronting the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade across the UK. For senior teams, the value is that Green has spent twenty years studying how leaders actually behave around questions of identity, power and faith. She does not arrive with a framework borrowed from elsewhere. She arrives with primary observation, recorded in works that now sit inside the national collections of two countries. Key speaking topics Allyship as leadership practice Identity, race and power in organisations Inclusive leadership Visual storytelling and narrative change Diversity in the creative industries Representation and institution-building Interfaith dialogue and leadership Ideal for Chief executives, CHROs and DEI leads rebuilding inclusion strategy after the post-2020 backlash. Boards and executive committees setting tone on identity, representation and culture. Senior leadership conferences in financial services, professional services, media and the public sector. Cultural institutions, universities and faith-based organisations working on representation and access. Audience outcomes A clearer working definition of allyship, expressed as behaviours leaders can hold each other to. A direct view of how high-stakes leaders, political and religious, handle identity and power in practice. A sharper sense of how visual culture and representation shape what an organisation looks like from the outside. Practical reference points for inclusion work that has stalled or lost credibility internally.

Why organisations work with Nicolas Hamilton First disabled driver to compete in the BTCC, a UK series where the field has won at Le Mans and Formula One; the credential is verifiable and singular. Brings a working operator’s view of high-performance teamwork from inside a competitive racing garage, not a retired-career retrospective. Author of Now That I Have Your Attention with Radar, an Octopus imprint, structured around seven applied lessons rather than memoir, which gives corporate audiences usable material. Speaks from the experience of being told as a child he would not walk and building a professional racing career anyway; the story carries weight without rhetorical lift. Has delivered to Nomad Foods, GSK, Grant Thornton, Dentons, McCormick, and Shell Energy UK across financial services, healthcare, and consumer industries. Biography highlights First disabled driver to compete in the British Touring Car Championship, debuting in 2015 with AmD Tuning. Scored his first BTCC championship point in 2020 with ROKiT Racing and Team HARD, and his strongest season in 2023 with Go-Fix and Autoaid Breakdown. Channel 4 Formula One analyst from 2016. Author of Now That I Have Your Attention: 7 Lessons in Leading a Life Bigger Than They Expect, Radar / Octopus Books, 2024, acquired in a seven-way publisher auction. Subject of the BBC documentary Racing with the Hamiltons: Nic in the Driving Seat. Has spoken at Nomad Foods, GSK, Grant Thornton, Dentons, McCormick, Shell Energy UK, and Active Care Group. Biography Most leadership stories about overcoming odds end with the protagonist’s achievement. Nicolas Hamilton’s begins with it. Told as a toddler he would never walk because of cerebral palsy, he became the first disabled driver to compete in the British Touring Car Championship, the same series whose alumni have won at Le Mans and reached Formula One. The racing itself is the substance, not the symbol. Hamilton entered the BTCC in 2015 with AmD Tuning in an Audi S3, returned with ROKiT Racing and Motorbase in 2019, scored his first championship point in 2020 with Team HARD, and posted his strongest season in 2023 with Go-Fix and Autoaid Breakdown in a Cupra Leon. He continues to race competitively, sharing grids with reigning champions. That working knowledge of a professional racing garage is what corporate audiences buy. Hamilton speaks from inside an environment where preparation, recovery, and competitive feedback are non-negotiable and where his physical setup has to be engineered differently from every other driver on the grid. He has been a Channel 4 Formula One analyst since 2016 and has spoken to Nomad Foods, GSK, Grant Thornton, Dentons, McCormick, and Shell Energy UK. His book, Now That I Have Your Attention: 7 Lessons in Leading a Life Bigger Than They Expect, was acquired by Radar at Octopus Books in a seven-way auction and published in 2024. It is structured as applied lessons, not memoir, which is how he treats his keynotes too: a working argument about what high performance demands when the conditions are not on your side. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained constraint High-performance teamwork in elite motorsport Self-leadership and mental strength Disability and representation in competitive environments Goal-setting and long-horizon ambition Inclusion in high-performance cultures Ideal for Senior leadership teams running multi-year change or transformation programmes HR, talent, and L&D leaders shaping resilience and inclusion programmes Sales conferences and commercial kick-offs anchoring a growth-mindset theme Disability employee resource groups and DEI council audiences Audience outcomes A working frame for what sustained performance looks like when conditions cannot be improved, only adapted to. Specific lessons from elite motorsport on teamwork, preparation, and feedback cycles. A sharper view of what disability representation looks like inside a high-performance environment rather than a policy conversation. A reset on the gap between what people are told they can do and what is actually possible under disciplined effort.

Why organisations work with Naomi Sesay She has run inclusion from inside the commissioning machine of a major UK broadcaster, not as an external consultant, so her advice carries the weight of decisions she has actually had to make and defend. Her training portfolio inside FTSE 100 clients and at Google, YouTube, NBC Universal, Deloitte and Lloyds Bank means she has tested her approach against the realities of regulated, scaled corporate environments. She frames inclusion as a leadership capability tied to commercial output, drawing on a 30-year broadcasting career where audience, talent and brand decisions were never separable. She brings a builder’s perspective on equity through her Sierra Leone smart-city project, which gives keynotes a concrete reference point beyond the standard DEI canon. Biography highlights Head of Creative Diversity, Channel 4, 2022 to 2025; previously On Screen Diversity Executive and Interim Head of Diversity & Inclusion at the broadcaster. Earlier television career as Producer, Director and Presenter at MTV News, and among the early producers on Channel 4’s Big Brother. Former Head of Innovation and Diversity, Media Trust. Senior Lead Trainer in Race Fluency and Inclusive Leadership with APS Intelligence, delivering programmes inside FTSE 100 organisations. Training and keynote work for Google, YouTube, NBC Universal, Amazon, Deloitte, Lloyds Bank, Warner Bros, Viacom, UN Women, Harvard Medical School and the Met Police. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; author of The Human Upgrade: The Power to Create Your Future; leads a female-centric sustainable smart-city project in Sierra Leone. Biography Most diversity work in large organisations is built by people who have never had to make a commissioning decision, hire a senior leader, or sign off a brand campaign. The view from inside those rooms is different. It is harder to be theoretical when the choice is in front of you and the budget is real. Naomi Sesay spent three years as Head of Creative Diversity at Channel 4, with two earlier spells at the broadcaster as On Screen Diversity Executive and Interim Head of Diversity & Inclusion. Her remit covered commissioning, training, talent and the broadcaster’s relationships with culturally and ethnically diverse creative communities across the UK. Before Channel 4 she ran innovation and diversity at Media Trust, and worked at APS Intelligence as a senior trainer in race fluency and inclusive leadership for FTSE 100 clients. Her television career started at MTV News during the channel’s European peak as a producer, director and presenter, and continued through one of the original production teams on Channel 4’s Big Brother. That broadcasting grounding shapes the way she talks to corporate audiences. Inclusion is not framed as a values statement; it is framed as an editorial, hiring and commercial discipline that decides which work gets made and which people get heard. Outside the broadcaster she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, author of The Human Upgrade: The Power to Create Your Future, and leads a network of architects and investors developing a female-centric sustainable smart city in Sierra Leone. The combination gives her keynotes for Google, Deloitte, UN Women, Harvard Medical School and others a practical edge: she has built things, not only advised on them. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership Diversity, equity and inclusion in practice Cultural intelligence Creative industries and representation Emotional intelligence for senior teams Storytelling and human connection Social enterprise and equitable city design Ideal for CHROs, chief people officers and heads of DEI under pressure to show operating impact, not statements. Boards and ExCos reassessing inclusion strategy after political shifts and ESG scrutiny. Commissioning, editorial and creative leaders in media, entertainment, publishing and advertising. Senior leadership programmes inside FTSE 100 and equivalent corporates rebuilding inclusive leadership capability. Audience outcomes A clearer test for distinguishing inclusion that changes decisions from inclusion that performs them. Specific language for talking to senior leaders about race, identity and culture without retreating into either jargon or platitude. Working examples from broadcasting, FTSE 100 corporates and global brand environments that translate into the audience’s own commissioning, hiring and team practices. A way to connect inclusive leadership to commercial output, audience reach and talent retention rather than to compliance reporting.

Why organisations work with Mohsin Zaidi He speaks about inclusion from inside the institutions that struggle most with it: the English Bar, the UK Supreme Court, magic-circle law, and a global strategic advisory firm. The argument carries because the credentials are the audience’s own. A Dutiful Boy is the only memoir to win both the Lambda Literary Award and the Polari First Book Prize while also being named Book of the Year by The Guardian, GQ and New Statesman. That literary standing changes how a corporate audience receives a personal story. His subject is the specific friction between social mobility, faith, race and sexuality, not a single identity strand. Useful for organisations whose inclusion conversations have plateaued on single-axis framing. He has done the unglamorous work alongside the writing: trustee of Stonewall, former board member of London Pride, named on The Lawyer Hot 100 and the FT future LGBT leaders list. The advocacy is institutional, not performative. He translates lived experience into questions a leadership team can act on, particularly on mental health stigma in ethnic minority communities, where most corporate wellbeing programmes are weakest. Biography highlights Author of A Dutiful Boy (Penguin, 2020), winner of the Lambda Literary Award and the Polari First Book Prize. Book of the Year selections from The Guardian, GQ, New Statesman and Attitude. BA Law with European Legal Studies, Keble College, Oxford; qualified as a solicitor at Linklaters and a New York attorney. Judicial Assistant to Lord Sumption and Lord Wilson at the UK Supreme Court; criminal barrister at 6 King’s Bench Walk. Management consultant at Hakluyt & Company since 2021. Trustee of Stonewall; Financial Times top future LGBT leader; The Lawyer Hot 100. Biography Walthamstow to Keble College, Oxford was the first improbable journey. Linklaters, then the UK Supreme Court as Judicial Assistant to Lord Sumption and Lord Wilson, then the criminal Bar at 6 King’s Bench Walk, were the next. The institutions Mohsin Zaidi passed through are the same institutions that most struggle to retain people who look and sound like him. A Dutiful Boy, published by Penguin in 2020, is the memoir of how those journeys actually felt from the inside. It won the Lambda Literary Award and the Polari First Book Prize, and was named Book of the Year by The Guardian, GQ, New Statesman and Attitude. The literary reception matters because it sets the register: this is not a corporate diversity talk dressed up as a story. The argument Zaidi makes to organisations is narrow and useful. Single-axis inclusion frameworks (race, or class, or sexuality, or faith) miss what most people from minority backgrounds actually carry into work, which is the interaction effect. He is direct on mental health stigma inside ethnic minority communities, an area corporate wellbeing programmes routinely under-serve. He is a trustee of Stonewall and a former board member of London Pride, so the institutional knowledge sits alongside the personal one. Since 2021 he has been a management consultant at Hakluyt & Company, alongside his writing and advocacy. The combination is what makes the work travel into senior commercial rooms: he is asking the same questions the partners and executives in front of him are asking, from a position that takes their context seriously. Key speaking topics Intersectionality at work Social mobility in professional services Mental health stigma in ethnic minority communities LGBTQ+ inclusion in conservative cultures Race, faith and workplace identity Belonging and authenticity in elite institutions Ideal for CHROs, heads of D&I and culture leads at professional services firms Law firm and financial services leadership audiences working on retention of minority talent ERGs, Pride networks and multicultural networks at large corporates Executive committees reviewing the substance, rather than the optics, of their inclusion programmes Audience outcomes A clearer view of how race, faith, class and sexuality interact in the daily experience of minority staff. Specific language for talking about mental health in communities where the topic is stigmatised. A sharper sense of why retention of senior minority talent stalls in firms that recruit well. Permission for senior leaders to engage personal identity as a leadership question, not a compliance one.

Why organisations work with David Lammy Direct, recent experience of conducting British foreign policy at Cabinet level, including engagement with the Trump administration, the EU, China and the Ukraine response, which is rare in a speaker market dominated by retired diplomats and academic commentators. Authored the Lammy Review, the independent UK government review on race in the criminal justice system that produced 35 recommendations and remains a working reference for government and the Prison Reform Trust years after publication. Wrote «Tribes: A Search for Belonging in a Divided Society», a published argument on identity, polarisation and what holds plural societies together, which gives audiences more than a politician’s stump speech on division. Operates across justice, foreign affairs and domestic equity, so a single conversation can move from US relations to workforce inclusion without losing depth in either. Visiting academic appointments at LSE and SOAS sit alongside the Cabinet role, which signals that the analysis is grounded in legal and policy substance rather than soundbite. Biography highlights Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice of the United Kingdom since September 2025. Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom from July 2024 to September 2025. Member of Parliament for Tottenham since 2000; admitted to the Privy Council in 2008. Author of the 2017 Lammy Review for HM Government on BAME outcomes in the criminal justice system. Author of «Tribes: A Search for Belonging in a Divided Society» and «Out of the Ashes: Britain after the Riots», both published by Hachette UK. First Black Briton to study at Harvard Law School (LLM, 1997); called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn, 1994. Visiting Professor in Practice, LSE Department of Law; Visiting Lecturer, SOAS. Biography The conduct of British foreign policy in 2024 and 2025 ran through one office. As Foreign Secretary, David Lammy handled the UK response to the war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza, the second Trump administration and a recalibrated relationship with the European Union, before being moved in September 2025 to Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. Few speakers can describe how governments make those decisions, because few have made them. That seniority sits on a long parliamentary record. Elected for Tottenham in 2000 at the age of 27, Lammy held ministerial roles in higher education, culture and skills under the last Labour government, and was admitted to the Privy Council in 2008. The constituency itself, scene of the 2011 riots, shaped his book «Out of the Ashes: Britain after the Riots» and his work on policing, justice and inequality. In 2017 he authored the Lammy Review, the independent government review of how Black, Asian and minority ethnic people are treated in the criminal justice system. Its 35 recommendations and its costing of disproportionality at over 309 million pounds a year remain a working reference for ministers and reform bodies. «Tribes: A Search for Belonging in a Divided Society», published the following year, sets out a wider thesis on identity, polarisation and what plural societies need to hold together. The credentials are unusually broad for a frontline politician. Harvard Law School (LLM, 1997), called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn, visiting professor at LSE, visiting lecturer at SOAS. Audiences get a Cabinet minister who can argue the legal and historical substance of what he is describing, not only the politics. Key speaking topics UK foreign policy and the transatlantic relationship Geopolitical risk and political volatility Justice, the rule of law and constitutional reform Race, identity and social cohesion Tribalism and polarisation in plural societies UK domestic politics and public policy Leadership in fractured political environments Ideal for Boards and executive committees stress-testing geopolitical, regulatory and political-risk assumptions. Chief sustainability, public affairs and government relations leaders working at the policy interface. Chief people officers and CHROs working on inclusion, cohesion and the politics of identity at work. General counsel and chief risk officers tracking justice reform, rule of law and sanctions exposure. Audience outcomes A current read of UK and US policy direction from someone who has sat across the table from the principals. A clearer view of how government actually weighs sanctions, alliances and domestic politics in foreign policy decisions. A sharper frame for talking about identity, race and cohesion inside organisations without defaulting to slogans. Specific named reference points (the Lammy Review, «Tribes») that audiences can take back into their own policy and people work.

Why organisations work with Claire Harper She has run senior marketing inside three of the UK’s most scrutinised retail brands, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, and Argos, during periods of leadership change and digital pivot. She has also done the founder’s job: built IndiaCoco from a dining-table operation to an award-winning multi-channel children’s brand, with the cash-flow scars to prove it. She translates board-level brand strategy into the operating decisions marketing teams actually face the next morning, on pricing, range, channel mix, and acquisition. Her current commercial leadership at London Pulse Netball gives her live material on building a consumer brand in women’s sport, a sector under significant commercial expansion. One credential that travels: first female board director at Mamas & Papas, brought in to scale the brand domestically and internationally. Biography highlights First Head of Customer Acquisition and PR at Ocado, later Head of Marketing during the company’s grocery delivery breakthrough. Head of Online Marketing at Sainsbury’s during Justin King’s turnaround programme. First female board director at Mamas & Papas, with international brand remit. Founder of IndiaCoco childrenswear; winner of Theo Paphitis Small Business Sunday and Jacqueline Gold WOW awards. Non-Executive Director at Blue Diamond Garden Centres; former Marketing Director at Frosts Garden Centres. Currently leading commercial and marketing for London Pulse Netball in the Netball Super League. Biography Ocado was a niche online grocer when Claire Harper joined at 26 as its first Head of Customer Acquisition and PR. By the time she had been promoted to Head of Marketing, the company was redrawing what UK households expected from a weekly shop. That early bet on customer behaviour, before the category had a name, set the pattern for the rest of her career. She moved into Sainsbury’s as Head of Online Marketing during Justin King’s “Make Sainsbury’s Great Again” turnaround, and into Argos during a hostile-takeover period that forced the brand to confront multi-channel reality. Both roles asked the same question: how do you keep a customer proposition coherent while the leadership and operating model are being rebuilt around it. At Mamas & Papas she became the first female board director, charged with scaling the brand internationally. She then founded IndiaCoco, a British childrenswear brand that grew from her dining room into a multi-channel business and picked up backing from Theo Paphitis and Jacqueline Gold. The founder years gave her the commercial discipline that corporate marketing budgets rarely teach. She now sits on the board at Blue Diamond Garden Centres and leads commercial and marketing for London Pulse Netball, one of the fastest-growing franchises in the Netball Super League. Audiences get a speaker who has run the brand from inside the boardroom and from inside a single-founder profit and loss, in retail categories where the customer is the only honest scoreboard. Key speaking topics Customer-led brand strategy in multi-channel retail Marketing leadership through restructure and ownership change Building consumer brands from founder stage to scale Commercial growth in women’s sport Non-executive contribution to consumer businesses Women’s leadership in retail and consumer industries Ideal for CMOs, brand directors, and customer experience leaders in consumer retail Boards and NEDs at consumer-facing businesses navigating ownership or strategic change Founders and scale-up leadership teams in DTC and consumer categories Sponsors, commercial partners, and leadership in women’s sport Audience outcomes A working view of how customer insight should sit at the centre of commercial decisions, not at the end of them Practical reference points from inside Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Argos, and Mamas & Papas during periods of strategic change A clearer sense of where founder discipline and corporate scale-marketing diverge, and what each can borrow from the other A current read on the commercial mechanics of women’s sport as a consumer category

Why organisations work with Catherine Mayer She has reported on power at the most senior editorial level, as Europe Editor and Editor at Large of TIME, and then tried to rebuild it, by founding a national political party. Few speakers on inclusion have done both. Her book Attack of the Fifty Foot Women reframes gender equality as an economic and institutional argument, not a values statement, which makes it usable in a boardroom conversation about strategy and risk. She can talk about royal institutions, political parties and global newsrooms from the inside, which gives senior audiences a sharper read on how hierarchical organisations actually work. Her writing on ageing (Amortality) and grief (Good Grief) gives her authority on two subjects most workplaces handle badly: longer working lives and bereavement in the workforce. She is a working journalist by training, which shows in the room. Arguments are specific, sourced and willing to be challenged. Biography highlights Senior editor at TIME magazine from 2004 to 2015, serving as London Bureau Chief, Europe Editor and Editor at Large. Co-founder, with Sandi Toksvig, of the UK Women’s Equality Party in March 2015, and its President. Author of Attack of the Fifty Foot Women, Amortality, Charles: The Heart of a King and Good Grief. Winner of the Foreign Press Association «Story of the Year» award, 2010, and shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, 2011. Co-founder of the Primadonna Festival of ideas, writing and music, and advisory board member of NOON. Former President of the Foreign Press Association in London, 2003 to 2005; began her career at The Economist. Biography Gender equality inside large institutions has become a paradox. Reports, networks and policies have multiplied, yet the shape of senior power has moved far less than the paperwork suggests. Catherine Mayer has spent her career watching this pattern from two very different sides. For more than a decade at TIME magazine, she reported on presidents, prime ministers and royal courts as Europe Editor and Editor at Large, with her 2010 cover story on David Cameron’s first US visit winning the Foreign Press Association «Story of the Year» and her writing shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2011. Her biography Charles: The Heart of a King drew on years of access to the British royal household and generated international headlines for what it revealed about how closed institutions actually operate. In March 2015, with Sandi Toksvig, she co-founded the Women’s Equality Party and served as its President until the party was dissolved in 2024. Attack of the Fifty Foot Women grew out of that work and argues, in hard economic and political terms, that closing the gender gap is the single largest lever available to most societies. Amortality examines the other structural story reshaping workplaces: longer lives and the collapse of age-based expectations about careers. Good Grief, written with her mother Anne Mayer Bird after they were widowed within 41 days of each other at the start of the pandemic, has made her one of the more candid public voices on bereavement at work. She co-founded the Primadonna Festival in Suffolk in 2019 and sits on the advisory board of NOON. Senior teams book her when they want an argument about institutional change that has been tested against real media, real politics and real loss. Key speaking topics Gender equality as institutional and economic strategy Power, hierarchy and how closed institutions operate Media, journalism and political accountability Ageing, longevity and the multigenerational workforce Grief and bereavement in the workplace Founding and running a new political organisation Culture change inside legacy organisations Ideal for Executive teams and boards reviewing gender, inclusion and cultural change strategy CHROs and Chief People Officers looking beyond policy to institutional redesign Leadership conferences on media, politics and public trust Employee network summits and international women’s events with a senior audience Audience outcomes A sharper account of why most inclusion programmes stall, drawn from politics, media and royal institutions, not consultancy theory An economic and institutional case for gender equality that a CFO or board member can use A clearer view of how longer lives and multigenerational workforces change talent strategy Usable language for how organisations should talk to staff about grief and bereavement A journalist’s scepticism about the difference between corporate announcement and actual structural change

Why organisations work with Simon Wheatcroft He offers a working case study, not a metaphor, of operating without the information channel most leaders treat as non-negotiable, with named technology partners including IBM and WearWorks behind the work. He has translated personal adaptation into shipped product: the Wayband haptic navigation device, piloted unaided across the 2017 New York City Marathon in 5:17:40, and the IBM-built eAscot corrective navigation app used in the 4 Deserts ultramarathon in Namibia. He pairs the keynote story with a credentialed teaching practice, holding the 2022 Pearson National Teaching Gold Award for Outstanding New Teacher in his first year teaching computer science at Outwood Academy Adwick. He gives technology and product audiences something rare: an accessible-design perspective from someone who is both the end user and a hands-on collaborator on the engineering, including data sonification work and the hackcessible accessible hackathon format. Biography highlights 2022 Pearson National Teaching Awards Gold Award for Outstanding New Teacher, computer science, Outwood Academy Adwick First blind person to run the 4 Deserts ultramarathon in Namibia solo, May 2016 Completed the 2017 New York City Marathon unaided using the Wayband haptic device, 5:17:40 Ran 260 miles solo from Boston to New York over nine days in 2014 Collaborator with IBM on the eAscot corrective navigation app and with WearWorks on the Wayband haptic navigation system Created hackcessible, a user-led accessible hackathon format Featured by CBS News Sunday Morning, BBC Click, CNN and the New York Times Biography Most leadership content treats adversity as a chapter to be survived. The harder question is what an organisation does when the conditions producing the adversity do not pass. That is the conversation Simon Wheatcroft is qualified to lead. He was registered blind at 17 with Retinitis Pigmentosa. The relevant fact is what came next. He taught himself to run outdoors using only a smartphone GPS app and his remaining senses, and progressed inside seven months to a hundred-mile race. The work to remove the guide dog and the helper from the route turned into a research practice. He partnered with IBM on eAscot, a corrective navigation app named after his guide dog, and with WearWorks on the Wayband, a haptic device that holds a user inside a virtual corridor through small vibrations. He ran the 2017 New York City Marathon with the Wayband, unaided, in 5:17:40. The teaching career runs in parallel and sharpens the speaking work. He teaches computer science at Outwood Academy Adwick in Doncaster, and in 2022 won the Pearson National Teaching Gold Award for Outstanding New Teacher in his first year in the classroom. He runs enrichment clubs in gaming and physical computing, and has built a separate body of work on data sonification and on hackcessible, a user-led accessible hackathon format that opens the design process to disabled participants. That combination, an endurance discipline that ships product, gives him a useful brief in front of senior teams. The keynote is not a story about courage. It is a working account of how to set achievable tasks, how to minimise risk inside a route you cannot fully see, and how to rebuild a team’s confidence around new sources of information. For technology and product audiences he can also speak with authority on inclusive design from inside the engineering, an angle most accessibility keynotes cannot offer. Key speaking topics Decision-making and risk under sustained adversity Self-leadership and adaptation when information channels fail Inclusive design and accessible technology Human-computer interaction and assistive wearables Resilience as an operating discipline Diversity in technology and engineering teams Ideal for Leadership and senior team offsites focused on resilience and judgement under pressure Product, engineering and design organisations working on inclusive and accessible technology Transformation, HR and DEI leaders rebuilding cultures of confidence and adaptation Conferences on the human side of AI, wearables and assistive technology Audience outcomes A concrete model for setting achievable tasks when the path ahead is uncertain A first-hand view of how accessible technology is actually built, tested and used A rebuilt sense of what a team can do when its usual information channels are degraded Sharper questions for inclusive-design briefs, grounded in a real end-user practice A working language for talking about risk, adaptation and recovery without slipping into metaphor

Why organisations work with Caroline Criado-Perez She built the public evidence base on the gender data gap. Invisible Women sits on the desks of regulators, engineers, and policy teams in more than thirty languages and is the default reference when the question is raised. She has won both the Royal Society Science Book Prize and the FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year for the same work, a combination almost no other author can claim, and one that signals her rigour to both technical and commercial audiences. She translates the gender data problem into concrete operating examples: car crash test dummies, medical dosing, voice recognition, AI training data, urban infrastructure, workplace tools. Audiences leave with examples they recognise from their own organisation. She has actually changed policy. The Jane Austen banknote and the Millicent Fawcett statue are her campaigns; the credibility she brings to a corporate room is built on shifting state institutions, not commentary. Biography highlights Author, Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, winner of the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize and the 2019 FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year. OBE for services to equality and diversity, 2015. Author, Do It Like a Woman, profiling pioneering women globally. Founder of the campaigns that put Jane Austen on the Bank of England £10 note and Millicent Fawcett’s statue in Parliament Square. Liberty Human Rights Campaigner of the Year, 2013; Finland’s HÄN Honour, 2020; winner of the inaugural Unwin Award, 2025. Honorary doctorates from the University of Lincoln, the University of Westminster, and The Open University. Host of the Visible Women podcast with Tortoise Media; writes the Invisible Women Substack newsletter. Biography The crash test dummy used to certify most cars on the road is modelled on the body of an average male. Medical drug trials, voice recognition systems, office temperatures, and stab vests share a similar history. Invisible Women assembled this evidence into a single argument and made it impossible to ignore. Caroline Criado-Perez wrote the book that did this. It won the Royal Society Science Book Prize and the FT and McKinsey Business Book of the Year in the same year, a dual recognition that signals scientific rigour and commercial relevance at once. It has been translated into more than thirty languages and is used by policymakers, engineers, and product teams looking for a defensible account of where their data is incomplete. Her credibility with corporate audiences comes from changing institutions, not commenting on them. She ran the campaign that placed Jane Austen on the Bank of England £10 note. She campaigned for the Millicent Fawcett statue in Parliament Square, the first statue of a woman to stand there. An OBE, a Liberty Human Rights Campaigner of the Year award, and the inaugural Unwin Award are the public record of work that altered what the state chose to put in front of its citizens. Her current focus is on the operating consequences of the data gap for businesses making decisions about AI, product design, workforce policy, and customer experience. Through her Invisible Women Substack and Visible Women podcast with Tortoise Media, she continues to surface the specific cases where missing data on women becomes a material business risk. Key speaking topics The gender data gap Bias in AI training data and algorithmic systems Inclusive product and service design Workforce data and policy design Gender bias in medical and safety research Campaigning, influence, and institutional change Ideal for CHROs, chief diversity officers, and people analytics leaders auditing workforce data Heads of product, design, and data science teams in consumer-facing or safety-critical industries AI and machine learning leaders responsible for model bias and training data quality Boards and ESG committees reviewing how the organisation evidences its claims about inclusion Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for naming where the gender data gap shows up in their own products, policies, and decisions A clear view of the commercial and safety risks created by data that under-represents half the customer or workforce base Specific examples from medicine, automotive, technology, and infrastructure that translate the problem into terms their teams will recognise An understanding of how AI inherits and amplifies existing data bias, and what that means for governance A grounded sense of how institutional change actually happens, drawn from campaigns that succeeded

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.