Inclusive Leadership

Why organisations work with Leee John He carries the weight of a verifiable cultural archive. The Flashback documentary alone represents over a decade of original interviews with figures including Labi Siffre, Billy Ocean and Pauline Black, giving inclusion conversations a body of named, recorded testimony rather than slogans. His authority on Black British contribution is built on lived participation. He fronted one of the defining British soul acts of the 1980s, which lets him talk about representation, visibility and creative gatekeeping from inside the room rather than the academy. He moves an audience emotionally. A career built on falsetto vocal performance and stage presence translates into keynote energy that DEI sessions, gala dinners and cultural-anniversary moments often lack. His humanitarian work is concrete, not decorative. As an ambassador for SOS Children’s Villages he has campaigned annually for World Orphan Week and was recognised with a Humanitarian award in France, which gives credibility on purpose-led brand and CSR programmes. He brings a reinvention story senior audiences recognise. Singer to producer to documentary director to charity ambassador is a useful proof point for any room thinking about second-act careers, creative longevity or staying commercially relevant across generational shifts in taste. Biography highlights Founding member and lead singer of Imagination, the British soul/funk trio with three UK top 10 singles, including “Just an Illusion” (UK No. 2, 1982). Imagination earned four platinum discs, nine gold discs and over a dozen silver discs between 1981 and 1983. Director of Flashback: The History of UK Black Music, an independent documentary featuring 80+ interviews across jazz, soul, funk, reggae, ska and 2-tone. Ambassador for SOS Children’s Villages and recipient of a Humanitarian award in France for charity work; also holds a UK Lifetime Achievement award. Released the jazz album Feel My Soul on Candid Records in 2005; later solo album Retropia reached No. 1 on UK Soul and UK Reggae charts. Trained at the Anna Scher Theatre School; appeared in the 1983 Doctor Who serial Enlightenment, and went on to host and produce television including ITV’s Night Network strand Leee’s Place. Biography The history of British Black music is mostly told in fragments. Leee John has spent more than a decade pulling those fragments into a single record, with over 80 filmed interviews across jazz, soul, funk, reggae, ska and 2-tone now sitting inside Flashback: The History of UK Black Music. Subjects include Labi Siffre, Billy Ocean, Jaki Graham, Pauline Black and Neville Staple. Before that work, he was the front of Imagination, the British soul/funk trio whose 1982 single “Just an Illusion” reached No. 2 in the UK and No. 1 in Spain. Imagination earned four platinum discs and nine gold discs in a two-year run between 1981 and 1983, which places him inside the small group of Black British artists who broke into mainstream European pop charts in that era. That career is the substance behind his keynote work on inclusion, identity and creative reinvention. He talks about gatekeeping, visibility and longevity from someone who has been on both sides of them, and he extends the same argument into philanthropy as an ambassador for SOS Children’s Villages, where his campaigning was recognised with a Humanitarian award in France. The reinvention thread runs through everything: lead singer, jazz recording artist on Candid Records, film and television producer, documentary director, charity ambassador. Flashback is the current centre of gravity, and it is the body of work that gives a contemporary inclusion conversation a name, a face and a primary source. Key speaking topics Diversity, equity and inclusion Cultural identity and Black British heritage Creative resilience and career reinvention Storytelling and oral history Music, media and representation Purpose, philanthropy and brand Motivation and inspiration Ideal for DEI and ERG leadership programmes seeking a culturally substantive keynote presence rather than a policy-led speaker. CSR, purpose and brand teams marking heritage moments such as Black History Month, World Orphan Week or cultural-anniversary launches. Senior audiences in media, music, entertainment and creative industries debating representation, longevity and the economics of Black British creative output. Conference organisers wanting a closing keynote that combines testimony, performance presence and emotional lift. Audience outcomes A clearer mental map of British Black music history and why it underwrites contemporary conversations about representation. A worked example of creative reinvention across four decades, useful for anyone thinking about second-act careers and staying relevant. A felt understanding of why inclusion is a question of belonging and visibility, not compliance language. Direct exposure to a cultural archive most rooms have never heard, drawn from the Flashback documentary interviews. An emotional close, often involving live vocal performance, that lifts the room rather than ending on a slide.

Why organisations work with Keely Cat-Wells She has built and sold the category. C Talent, the agency she founded in 2018, was acquired by Whalar in 2022 and remains the largest exit of a Disabled-led talent business in the sector. Her current company, Making Space, gives leaders an operating model rather than a manifesto: an employer-backed training and acquisition platform with reported lifetime earnings gains of more than $1.1M per learner. She speaks from inside the boardroom conversation, not next to it. As a Presidential Leadership Scholar, Obama Leader USA, and Forbes contributor, she carries credibility with executive audiences who are tired of generic DEI framing. She connects representation in media to talent strategy in the workforce, drawing on a roster that has placed Disabled creators in projects including The Last of Us, Avatar, and The Hunger Games. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Making Space, a venture-backed talent acquisition and learning platform for Disabled professionals. Founder of C Talent, acquired by Whalar in 2022. Co-founder, Making Space Media, with a first-look deal at Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. 2025 Presidential Leadership Scholar, 2025 Obama Leader USA, inaugural Gloria Steinem Fellow. L’Oreal Paris 2025 Women of Worth, Forbes 30 Under 30, Diana Award, One Young World Entrepreneur of the Year 2022. Forbes contributor on disability, entrepreneurship, and inclusive workforce strategy. Biography The Disabled talent pool is one of the largest underused labour markets in the global economy. Most companies do not have a working strategy for reaching it. Keely Cat-Wells builds the infrastructure that closes that gap. She founded C Talent in 2018 after disability discrimination ended an early career in performing arts. The agency grew into the most prominent home for Deaf and Disabled creators in entertainment, placing talent in The Last of Us, Avatar, and The Hunger Games before being acquired by Whalar in 2022. It remains the largest exit of a Disabled-led talent business in the industry. Making Space, founded in 2023, is the operator-led answer to a different question: how do enterprise employers actually hire and retain Disabled professionals at scale. The platform pairs employer-backed training with talent acquisition, and closed a $2M pre-seed round led by Beta Boom in 2024. Its Ascend program reports projected lifetime earnings gains of more than $1.1M per participant. Cat-Wells writes for Forbes, sits on disability-focused boards, and was named the youngest Presidential Leadership Scholar in the program’s history. Her recognitions include the Diana Award, Forbes 30 Under 30, L’Oreal Paris Women of Worth, and Gloria Steinem Fellow. The credentials matter, but the harder evidence is the line item her work creates on a hiring scorecard. Key speaking topics Disability and workforce strategy Hiring and retaining Disabled professionals Inclusive talent acquisition platforms Representation in media and entertainment Building and scaling mission-led ventures Hidden disabilities in the workplace Founder experience in inclusive entrepreneurship Ideal for CHROs and heads of talent acquisition rebuilding disability hiring strategy Chief diversity and inclusion officers moving from awareness work to operational outcomes Boards and ELTs reviewing workforce, ESG, and human capital reporting Media, entertainment, and creative leaders accountable for on-screen and off-screen representation Audience outcomes A clearer view of where disability inclusion programmes break in practice and what to fix first. Specific tactics for sourcing, onboarding, and retaining Disabled professionals at enterprise scale. A founder’s view of how to translate inclusion strategy into measurable economic outcomes. Language and evidence senior leaders can use with their own boards on disability as a workforce issue.

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

Why organisations work with Griselda Togobo She brings an engineer’s and chartered accountant’s bias for measurement to inclusion work, which is unusually rare in the field and lands credibly with operational and finance audiences. She has run a 20,000-member women’s professional network (Forward Ladies, now Novi) for over a decade, so her view of where female and minority talent gets stuck is grounded in pipeline data, not anecdote. Her client list, Boeing, Shell, HSBC, NatWest, Sage, Cambridge University, Oxford University, indicates senior buyers in technically demanding, male-dominated environments hire her back. Her style is direct and based in psychology rather than moral pressure, which is the only register that survives in rooms where DEI is now politically contested. Biography highlights MPhil, Industrial Systems, Manufacture and Management, Wolfson College, University of Cambridge. Chartered Accountant (ACA); former management consultant at Deloitte LLP. CEO of Forward Ladies (now Novi), a 20,000-member women’s professional network since 2014. Author, Unstoppable Women: Female Entrepreneurs’ Stories to Inspire and Motivate. Founder of Advancing Futures, a non-profit on education and economic empowerment in Ghana. Board member, Northern School of Contemporary Dance; Fellow of the Girls’ Schools Association. Biography The hard part of inclusion inside large organisations is not policy. It is what senior leaders do in the small moments: who they sponsor, who they interrupt, whose ideas they credit, and how they decide who is “ready” for the next role. Togobo’s work sits exactly there. She came to that work through an unusual route. She trained as an electrical and electronic engineer in Ghana, took an MPhil at Cambridge in Industrial Systems, Manufacture and Management, then qualified as a chartered accountant at Deloitte LLP. That technical and financial grounding shapes how she briefs executives. She uses data and behavioural psychology rather than moral argument, which travels better in operations, finance and engineering audiences than the standard DEI register does. Since 2014 she has led Forward Ladies, now relaunched as Novi, growing it into a 20,000-member professional development network for women across the UK. That platform gives her a continuous read on where mid-career women actually stall, which feeds the diagnostic work she does inside client organisations including Boeing, Shell, HSBC, NatWest, Sage, ASDA and Yorkshire Water. Her own writing extends the same theme. Unstoppable Women, published in 2022, profiles female entrepreneurs as case studies in commercial decision-making rather than personal struggle. Outside her commercial practice she founded Advancing Futures to support girls’ education in Ghana and sits on the board of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership inside FTSE-100 organisations Women in STEM and the senior pipeline Behavioural psychology of bias in promotion and sponsorship Building and sustaining women’s professional networks Female entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Cross-cultural leadership and the global workforce Ideal for CEOs and executive committees who have run DEI programmes and are not seeing pipeline movement. CHROs and heads of talent designing succession and sponsorship into senior leadership. Engineering, energy, financial services and industrial businesses with gender-imbalanced senior cohorts. Boards reviewing inclusion strategy in markets where DEI language is now politically contested. Audience outcomes A clearer view of which leadership behaviours actually move representation, and which are theatre. A working diagnostic for where female and minority talent stalls inside their own organisation. Language for inclusion that holds up in finance, engineering and commercial audiences. A more honest read on the gap between stated DEI commitments and how senior leaders behave in week-to-week decisions.

Why organisations work with Anne-Marie Imafidon She has run the experiment at scale. Stemettes has engaged more than 60,000 young women and non-binary young people across the UK, Ireland and Europe since 2013, giving her a live evidence base on what moves technical participation and what does not. Her technical credibility is not borrowed. Master’s in Mathematics and Computer Science from Oxford at 20, Honorary Fellow of Keble College, and guest arithmetician on Channel 4’s Countdown for 60 episodes, so technical audiences engage her as a peer rather than an advocate. She sits inside the UK policy conversation on digital skills. Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work, 2022-2023 President of the British Science Association, and DSIT Women in Tech Envoy, which gives leaders a direct line to how regulation and industrial strategy are likely to land. She has a published thesis. She’s In CTRL (Transworld, 2022) argues that women need to take back tech as users, builders and decision-makers; that frame is portable into strategy conversations about product, customer and workforce. She is comfortable in front of non-technical boards. Her broadcast work and Chancellorship of Glasgow Caledonian University mean she translates between technical reality and senior decision-maker vocabulary without losing either. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Stemettes, social enterprise founded in 2013 that has reached 60,000+ young women and non-binary young people across the UK, Ireland and Europe. Master’s in Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Oxford, aged 20; Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford. Appointed MBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to young women and STEM. Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University; 2022-2023 President of the British Science Association; Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work. Author of She’s In CTRL: How Women Can Take Back Tech (Transworld, 2022). Guest arithmetician on Channel 4’s Countdown across 60 episodes (2021-2022), first Black woman to take the Countdown board; voted Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Woman in UK Tech (2020); Forbes Top 50 Women in Tech. DSIT Women in Tech Envoy, co-chairing a UK government Taskforce with the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (2025). Biography Stemettes was set up in 2013 after its co-founder returned from the Grace Hopper Celebration in 2012 and decided the UK needed its own infrastructure for girls in STEM. More than 60,000 young women and non-binary young people have passed through its programmes since, across the UK, Ireland and Europe. That operating record is the spine of Anne-Marie Imafidon’s authority on technology talent. The technical credentials are unusual. Imafidon took her Master’s in Mathematics and Computer Science at Oxford at 20, is an Honorary Fellow of Keble College, and was the guest arithmetician on Channel 4’s Countdown for 60 episodes in 2021 and 2022, the first Black woman to run the Countdown board. She was appointed MBE in 2017 for services to young women and STEM. Her public roles put her inside the UK conversation on digital skills and industrial strategy. She is Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University, Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work, served as President of the British Science Association in 2022-2023, and in 2025 was appointed the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Women in Tech Envoy, co-chairing a Taskforce with the Secretary of State. Her book She’s In CTRL, published by Transworld in 2022, argues that women should treat technology as something to take control of, not just consume or be represented within. For senior leaders it reframes the DEI-in-tech conversation as a product and capability question: who builds the tools, who governs them, and whose problems they get designed to solve. Key speaking topics Women and underrepresented groups in STEM Technology talent pipelines and digital skills Future of work and AI Inclusive product and technology design Social entrepreneurship at scale UK digital policy and industrial strategy Responsible and inclusive AI Ideal for CHROs, CPOs and heads of talent building technology hiring pipelines beyond the usual funnel. CTOs, CDIOs and engineering leaders under pressure to improve retention and representation in technical teams. Boards and ExCos setting policy on AI, digital skills and workforce strategy, particularly in regulated sectors. Corporate foundations, ESG leads and public-sector partners designing STEM and social mobility interventions. Audience outcomes A sharper read on why conventional diversity-in-tech programmes under-deliver and where the real intervention points sit. A working vocabulary for discussing inclusive AI and technology design at board level without defaulting to platitudes. Concrete examples, drawn from Stemettes and UK policy work, of what moves technical participation and retention. A reframe of women-in-tech as a product, governance and capability issue, not only a hiring issue. A sense of how UK digital skills policy and regulation are likely to shape talent strategy over the next cycle.

Why organisations work with Kim Davis Live broadcast experience that translates directly into stage presence: she presents The Travel Show on BBC News and writes regularly for CNN Travel, CNN Underscored and The Telegraph, so a panel or conference plenary in her hands feels editorially produced rather than improvised. A working marketer’s view of communication, not a theorist’s. Sarsaparilla, the consultancy she founded after moving from New York to London in 2004, operates inside campaigns, brand work and go-to-market decisions for commercial clients. Range across the unlovable formats. After-dinner, awards-night emcee, panel moderation, fireside interview and keynote, performed without the tonal mismatch that normally appears when speakers cross between them. A keynote thesis on arts-led achievement, given on the TEDxLukelyBrook stage in 2022, that gives leadership and culture audiences a route into creativity without the usual self-help register. Biography highlights Presenter, The Travel Show on BBC News. Contributing writer, CNN Travel, CNN Underscored and The Telegraph. Founder and CEO, Sarsaparilla Marketing, London. TEDxLukelyBrook speaker, “How The Arts Can Help You Achieve Anything”, 2022. New York native, London-based for over two decades; works across UK, US and EU markets. Stage and broadcast credits include Carnegie Hall, the O2 Arena and the TED platform (per speaker representation). Biography A live audience makes decisions about a speaker inside the first sentence. Davis was trained for that. Her day job is presenting The Travel Show on BBC News and writing for CNN Travel, CNN Underscored and The Telegraph, work that depends on getting a viewer or reader to lean in before a single fact has been delivered. That broadcast craft is what organisations are buying when they put her on stage. As a host and moderator she structures conversations the way an editor structures a segment: a clear thread, time discipline, and the ability to draw a usable answer out of an executive who would otherwise read from notes. The substantive content sits behind that. In 2004 she moved from New York to London and founded Sarsaparilla, a marketing and communications consultancy that runs campaign, brand and go-to-market work for commercial clients. Her keynote material draws from this practice and from her own performing background, including the TEDxLukelyBrook talk on arts and achievement she delivered in 2022. The combination is unusual. Most marketing speakers cannot present. Most broadcasters cannot speak credibly about commercial growth. Davis is booked when an event needs both in the same person. Key speaking topics Hosting, moderation and emcee craft Media and broadcast communication for executives Marketing and brand building Customer and audience engagement Arts-led approaches to creativity and achievement Female leadership in media, business and culture After-dinner speaking and awards-night presenting Ideal for CMOs, brand directors and marketing leadership teams looking for a working practitioner rather than a marketing academic Conference organisers and internal event leads who need a host or moderator with broadcast credibility Awards nights, gala dinners and customer events that need a confident emcee with editorial range Leadership and culture programmes wanting a session on creativity, communication and presence Audience outcomes A clearer view of how a journalist structures a story, and how to apply that discipline to a board narrative or all-hands talk Specific techniques drawn from broadcast and stage performance for holding attention in high-stakes settings A working framework for using arts and creative practice as a tool for executive communication For events: a tightly run room, a coherent through-line across sessions, and interviews that produce usable quotes rather than safe ones

Why organisations work with Julie Montagu Four published wellness books with a major UK trade publisher, including Recharge: A Year of Self-Care to Focus on You (Little, Brown, 2018), give her wellbeing material a structured, tested foundation rather than a personal-anecdote frame. She runs a live teaching practice through Whole Self Yoga, including 200-hour teacher training, so the content she delivers to a corporate room is the same content she teaches week to week, not a keynote-only construct. Her cross-cultural vantage point, American by upbringing, English Countess by marriage, makes her an unusual host and after-dinner choice for events that need warmth and storytelling alongside subject expertise. She is an experienced broadcast voice, with royal and heritage commentary credits across BBC and CNN coverage of the Sussex wedding, the Platinum Jubilee, the Queen’s funeral and the Coronation, which translates directly into stage presence and live-event composure. Her academic work on American heiresses of the British Gilded Age, completed as an MA with Distinction at the University of Buckingham, gives her a serious second register for heritage, leadership history and women-in-power conversations. Biography highlights Author of Superfoods, Eat Real Food, Superfoods Superfast and Recharge: A Year of Self-Care to Focus on You, published by Little, Brown / Piatkus. Author of Secrets of an English Country House: A Year at Mapperton, published in 2024. Founder of Whole Self Yoga, including a 200-hour yoga teacher training programme. MA with Distinction in English Country House Studies, University of Buckingham, 2021. Royal and heritage commentator for BBC and CNN across the Sussex wedding, Platinum Jubilee, Queen Elizabeth II’s state funeral and the Coronation of King Charles III. Television credits including Bravo’s Ladies of London and Smithsonian Channel’s An American Aristocrat’s Guide to Great Estates. Co-custodian of Mapperton Estate in Dorset alongside Luke Montagu, 12th Earl of Sandwich. Biography Most corporate wellbeing programmes are built by people who have never had to keep one going through a 70-hour week. Julie Montagu is not one of them. She trained and qualified as a yoga teacher and nutrition educator while raising four children, wrote four books with Little, Brown on plant-forward eating and structured self-care, and built Whole Self Yoga, a teaching practice that includes a 200-hour teacher training programme. Recharge, published in 2018, is the title that travels best into corporate rooms. It is built as a month-by-month framework rather than a lifestyle manifesto, which is why it lands with audiences who have heard the wellbeing pitch many times and want something they can actually use on Monday. The second register is heritage. Montagu lives at Mapperton Estate in Dorset, the seat of the Earls of Sandwich, and completed an MA with Distinction at the University of Buckingham on American heiresses of the British Gilded Age. That work fed Secrets of an English Country House: A Year at Mapperton, published in 2024, and a steady run of royal commentary for BBC and CNN across the Sussex wedding, the Platinum Jubilee, the Queen’s funeral and the Coronation. The result is a speaker who can hold a corporate wellbeing keynote with real depth, then host the dinner that follows it with the kind of cross-cultural ease most subject-matter experts cannot offer. For organisations that want both substance and presence, that combination is what makes the booking commercial. Key speaking topics Self-care and wellbeing for high-pressure careers Yoga, nutrition and sustainable energy management Resilience and burnout prevention Female leadership and personal reinvention British heritage, country houses and royal traditions Corporate event hosting and after-dinner speaking Ideal for Corporate wellbeing days and HR-led leadership offsites Women’s leadership networks and ERG events Executive retreats where wellbeing is the headline rather than a side track Awards dinners, hosted panels and after-dinner engagements requiring a heritage or transatlantic register Audience outcomes A clear, month-by-month structure for self-care that survives a real working calendar Practical anchors on nutrition, movement and recovery that do not require a lifestyle overhaul A more honest read on what burnout looks like before it becomes attrition An hour with a speaker who can carry both the substance of wellbeing content and the warmth of a strong host

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

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

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

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

Why organisations work with Dame Katherine Grainger Her perspective on high performance is not borrowed from sport – it is built from two decades of competing at the Olympic level and then eight years as the senior leader responsible for the entire British elite sport system as Chair of UK Sport. The result is a rare, system-level view of what makes performance culture work. She completed a PhD at King’s College London – in law, on whole life sentencing – while training for and winning Olympic gold. That combination is not incidental. It gives her a credible argument about how sustained focus, long-term discipline, and intellectual rigour reinforce rather than compete with each other. Her autobiography Dreams Do Come True is built around the specific psychology of returning to compete after three consecutive near-misses. For any organisation struggling with how to sustain commitment after a setback, or how to build a team that performs when the moment actually comes, this is directly applicable material. As the first female Chair of the British Olympic Association in its 120-year history – and a crossbench Life Peer since 2025 – she carries institutional authority that extends well beyond the speaking circuit. Boards and senior leadership teams treat her not as an external voice but as a peer. She speaks to the leadership question that Olympic sport uniquely tests: how do you create the conditions for someone else to succeed, rather than performing yourself? Her shift from competing to governing elite sport is the lived version of a challenge every senior leader faces. Biography highlights Olympic gold medallist (London 2012) and four-time Olympic silver medallist – the only British woman to win medals at five consecutive Olympic Games (2000-2016) Six-time World Champion with eight World Championship medals; voted Britain’s first “Olympians’ Olympian” by fellow Olympians Chair of UK Sport 2017-2025; Chair of the British Olympic Association from 2025 – the first female chair in the BOA’s 120-year history DBE 2017 for services to sport and charity; Life Peer (Baroness Grainger, crossbench) from 2025 PhD in law (the sentencing of homicide), King’s College London; Fellow of King’s College London; first female Chancellor of the University of Glasgow (2020-) Author of Dreams Do Come True (2013), self-written autobiography reviewed by the Financial Times and The Observer; BBC broadcaster for Rowing World Cup coverage and the 2014 Commonwealth Games Biography Katherine Grainger won an Olympic gold medal at London 2012 – alongside Anna Watkins, setting an Olympic record in the double sculls – after three consecutive Olympic silvers. She then returned to the water, two years after considering retirement, and won a fourth silver in Rio in 2016. Across those sixteen years, she also completed three law degrees, including a PhD at King’s College London, written during the same period she was training for Olympic gold. That combination is her argument. The discipline required to stay in pursuit of a goal across multiple cycles of failure and recommitment – and to do so while building intellectual capability in parallel – is not an athletic phenomenon. It is a leadership one. Her speaking draws directly on that experience: not as inspiration, but as a practical framework for what organisations actually need to sustain performance at the highest level. Her post-competitive career has given that argument institutional weight. As Chair of UK Sport from 2017 to 2025, she was responsible for the strategy and governance of British elite sport as a whole – funding decisions, performance standards, safeguarding, inclusion. As Chair of the British Olympic Association from 2025, the first woman in the role since the BOA’s founding in 1905, she now leads the organisation that governs Team GB’s Olympic programme. She is also Chancellor of the University of Glasgow and, since 2025, a crossbench Life Peer. The result is a speaker who can address boards and senior leadership teams not as a visiting athlete with a story, but as a serious institutional figure with a tested view of what leadership culture requires at the level where it actually matters. Key speaking topics Sustained high performance and long-cycle leadership Resilience and recommitment after setback High-performance team culture Leadership in governance and elite institutions The parallel demands of intellectual and physical excellence Women in leadership and sport governance Purpose, values, and legacy in leadership Ideal for C-suite and board-level audiences wrestling with questions of culture, sustained performance, and long-term strategic commitment CHROs and people leaders building high-performance frameworks that endure beyond individual leadership cycles Leadership development programmes for senior executives seeking a model of performance that integrates governance, accountability, and personal resilience Organisations navigating leadership transition, post-merger culture alignment, or the challenge of maintaining standards after a period of peak achievement Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of why most performance cultures produce one-off results rather than sustained excellence – and the specific conditions that change that Practical perspective on how to lead a team through extended periods of uncertainty and near-miss, without losing commitment or direction A reframed view of setback as structural to high performance, not a deviation from it – with concrete examples of how elite athletes and institutions manage that cycle Insight into what governance of high-performance systems actually requires, drawn from eight years leading UK Sport Renewed clarity on the relationship between personal discipline, intellectual rigour, and sustained team performance