Inclusive Leadership speakers

Why organisations work with Annicken R. Day She built the culture inside Tandberg, the Norwegian video conferencing company acquired by Cisco for $3.5 billion, which gives her a rare operator’s view of what a high-trust, high-performance culture actually looks like at scale. She held the Chief Culture Officer role before the title was fashionable, so she speaks about culture as a built system, not a brand exercise. Her Scandinavian leadership lens gives executive teams a working alternative to command-and-control models, grounded in trust, autonomy and psychological safety as commercial mechanisms rather than soft values. She is a published thinker as well as a practitioner, with co-authorship of Creative Superpowers, a bestselling novel translated into multiple languages, and columns in Forbes, Business Insider and Huffington Post. She is fluent in the hybrid and remote question, having advised leadership teams in over 50 countries on how culture survives when proximity disappears. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Corporate Spring, advising leadership teams from startups to Fortune 500 organisations. Former Chief Culture Officer at Tandberg, the Norwegian technology company acquired by Cisco for $3.5 billion in 2010. Co-author of Creative Superpowers: Equip Yourself for the Age of Creativity. Author of the bestselling novel Fly, Butterfly, translated into multiple languages. TEDx speaker and speaker at the United Nations. Columnist for Forbes, Business Insider and Huffington Post. Biography Most companies talk about culture. Far fewer can show the operating choices, leadership habits and team rituals that produce one. Annicken R. Day spent the formative part of her career inside that gap. As Chief Culture Officer at Tandberg, the Norwegian video conferencing business later acquired by Cisco for $3.5 billion, she helped build a workplace that won repeated Best Place to Work recognition while the company became a global category leader. That experience shaped her thesis. Culture is not the residue of value statements. It is a deliberate system of leadership behaviour, communication norms and trust mechanisms that determines whether strategy converts into performance. Her work at Corporate Spring, the consultancy she founded after Tandberg, applies that thesis to executive teams in more than 50 countries. Her writing has reached a wider audience. She co-authored Creative Superpowers: Equip Yourself for the Age of Creativity and wrote the bestselling novel Fly, Butterfly. She has contributed columns to Forbes, Business Insider and Huffington Post, and spoken at TEDx and the United Nations on culture, creativity and the human side of business. What sets her apart in a crowded culture-and-leadership field is the combination of operator credibility and a Scandinavian frame. Trust, autonomy and joy show up in her work as commercial levers, with the trail of retention, engagement and performance to back them up. Key speaking topics Culture as a strategy for growth High-trust, high-performance teams Scandinavian leadership models Hybrid and remote culture design Employee engagement and retention Creativity and innovation in the workplace Executive leadership development Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers and CEOs reframing culture as a commercial mechanism Leadership teams managing distributed and hybrid workforces across geographies Founders and executive teams in scale-up companies are inheriting a culture they did not design Boards and executive committees preparing for, or recovering from, post-acquisition cultural integration Audience outcomes A working definition of culture as a system of behaviours, decisions and rituals, not a values statement Leadership habits that build trust at the speed required by hybrid and distributed teams A view of Scandinavian leadership principles, including autonomy and psychological safety, as commercial mechanisms Concrete examples from a $3.5 billion exit story of how culture compounded into competitive advantage A vocabulary for diagnosing where culture is undermining strategy and what to address first

Why organisations work with Annie Emmerson A live event host who can carry a main-stage running order with the timing of a BBC Olympic broadcaster, then close the day with a personal keynote from elite sport. First-hand authority on managing anxiety and self-doubt during selection and qualification cycles, drawn from competing at the top of triathlon and duathlon under Brett Sutton. A credible voice for women’s leadership sessions, having built an elite career and a broadcast career in two male-dominated industries without making that the only story she tells. Practical, unshowy fluency in mental health conversations earned through years co-hosting Her Spirit with Louise Minchin and The Be Braver podcast. Biography highlights Retired in 2006 as the world’s number one ranked duathlete. Represented Great Britain in triathlon, duathlon, cross-country, track, and half marathon. BBC commentator across three Olympic Games, most recently Paris 2024, and Commonwealth Games coverage. Lead reporter and commentator for Super League Triathlon since 2018. Co-host of the Her Spirit podcast (2019 to 2021) with Louise Minchin and co-host of The Be Braver podcast. MC and host for Le Blanq cycling tours since 2020 and Channel 4 sports reporter. Biography Most people who reach the top of an endurance sport start young. Annie Emmerson did not. She came into triathlon late, trained under Brett Sutton, and retired in 2006 as the world’s number one duathlete after representing Great Britain across triathlon, duathlon, cross-country, track, and half marathon. That route shapes the content she now brings to corporate audiences. The pressure of late-career qualification, the management of injury, and the experience of being one of the only women in a coaching environment dominated by men became the working material for her speaking on resilience, mental health, and women in high-performance settings. Broadcasting is where she now spends most of her professional life. She has commentated on three Olympic Games for the BBC, including Paris 2024, covered Commonwealth Games, and been a lead voice on Super League Triathlon since 2018. She reports for Channel 4 and hosts Le Blanq cycling tours. Two podcasts sit alongside the broadcast work. Her Spirit, co-hosted with Louise Minchin from 2019 to 2021, focused on women’s mental health and physical activity. The Be Braver podcast continues that thread. The combined effect is a speaker and host who can hold a main-stage room with broadcast pacing, then talk about anxiety, scrutiny, and recovery with the credibility of someone who has lived through them. Key speaking topics Resilience under sustained pressure Mental health and anxiety in high-performance environments Women in male-dominated industries Motivation and late-career reinvention Event hosting and moderation Sport, performance, and recovery Ideal for Leadership conferences and women’s networks looking for a keynote anchored in lived performance, not theory Wellbeing and mental health summits seeking a speaker who can talk about anxiety credibly without clinical framing Annual conferences and awards evenings needing an MC who can host the day and deliver a personal keynote in the same brief Sports, endurance, and cycling brand events seeking a recognised BBC broadcast voice Audience outcomes A clearer sense of what resilience looks like as a daily working practice rather than a slogan Permission to talk about anxiety and self-doubt in performance settings without treating them as weakness A concrete account of how a woman built authority inside two male-dominated industries Sharper appreciation of the link between physical practice, recovery, and sustained mental performance

Why organisations work with Aquayemi-Claude G. Akinsanya He brings first-hand experience of being denied SEN provision in the UK system and has translated that into a named legislative campaign, The Claudes SEN Law, that gives inclusion conversations real political and personal weight. His advocacy is documented through founder roles, not commentary alone: Garnetts Clothing Brand & Range on sustainable fashion and The Claudes SEN Law Campaign on disability rights and inclusive education. He sits inside the awards and rankings ecosystem that boards recognise: Forbes Under 30 nominee, ForbesBLK contributor, and Effie Awards Europe 2026 jury member, giving him credibility with marketing and brand-led audiences. He speaks credibly across young-leader and SDG platforms, including YOUNITE 2024 on SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities), making him relevant to organisations that have signed up to global goals and need authentic voices to back the commitment. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Garnetts Clothing Brand & Range, a sustainability-focused fashion venture Founder, The Claudes SEN Law Campaign, an advocacy initiative calling on UK Parliament to reform Special Educational Needs legislation Forbes Under 30 (2024) nominee and ForbesBLK member Jury member, Effie Awards Europe 2026 Speaker at YOUNITE 2024 on UN Sustainable Development Goal 10 (Reduced Inequalities) Author of The Truth Behind Self Isolation and this Crazy Climate of Lockdown Biography Inclusion is one of the most contested terms in corporate language. Boards have signed off on statements, training cycles and reporting frameworks. Many still struggle to explain what changes in everyday practice for a neurodivergent or disabled employee. Aquayemi-Claude G. Akinsanya works in exactly that gap. He was denied Special Educational Needs provision as a young person in the UK system, and built The Claudes SEN Law Campaign in response, pushing UK Parliament for a statutory framework that recognises neurodiversity and extends support beyond age 25 for those with Education, Health and Care Plans. The campaign has been documented through Change.org, his own publishing platform, and bureau profiles. He also founded Garnetts Clothing Brand & Range, a sustainability-led fashion venture, and contributes to the marketing and brand world through ForbesBLK and an Effie Awards Europe 2026 jury seat. That second track matters: it places him in front of senior commercial audiences and gives him a vocabulary that connects sustainability and inclusion to brand and consumer strategy, not just to compliance. For organisations under real scrutiny on whether their DEI claims have substance, his value is specific. He carries the experience of the people DEI policy is meant to serve, the founder discipline of running ventures with social objectives, and the platforms (Forbes, YOUNITE, Effie) that make boards take the conversation seriously. Key speaking topics Neurodiversity and Special Educational Needs in education and work Disability inclusion and advocacy Sustainability and social impact in brand strategy Social entrepreneurship and purpose-led ventures Mental health and resilience in young leaders Campaign building and movement leadership Ideal for CHROs and heads of DEI seeking authentic voice rather than process-led inclusion narratives Brand and marketing leaders integrating sustainability and inclusion into commercial strategy Social impact and ESG teams working against SDG-aligned reporting commitments Youth, education and graduate audiences exploring purpose-led careers Audience outcomes A sharper view of how invisible disability and neurodivergence are experienced in education and employment, and why current policy frameworks fail Direct exposure to a founder building inclusion and sustainability into commercial ventures rather than describing them in policy terms A framework for connecting brand, social impact and SDG commitments without falling into surface-level signalling Renewed energy in younger audiences considering social entrepreneurship as a route to both commercial and civic contribution

Why organisations work with Arlan Hamilton She built and capitalised a venture firm from nothing, sleeping on the floor at SFO between meetings, then deployed roughly $30 million into more than 200 companies. That is operator credibility on entrepreneurship and capital, not theory. Her investment thesis at Backstage Capital is a working commercial argument that underestimated founders are a mispriced asset class. Audiences leave with a specific framework for how that misallocation happens and where it produces opportunity. Two books with major trade publishers, It’s About Damn Time (Penguin Random House) and Your First Million (Hachette), give her a body of written work that travels with the booking and gives audiences a way to extend the conversation. She is one of a small number of Black women operating at fund-principal level in US venture, and the first non-celebrity Black woman on the cover of Fast Company. That visibility matters for organisations briefing her in front of leadership, founder, or investor audiences. Her register is direct and personal rather than corporate. She is bookable for founder events, investor summits, and leadership conferences where the audience wants honesty about how capital actually gets allocated. Biography highlights Founder and managing partner of Backstage Capital, established 2015; the firm has raised approximately $30 million and backed more than 200 startups led by underrepresented founders. Author of It’s About Damn Time (Penguin Random House, 2020) and Your First Million (Hachette, 2023). First non-celebrity Black woman on the cover of Fast Company (2018). Named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business (2016). Named to Business Insider’s 23 most powerful LGBTQ+ people in tech (2019). Host of Your First Million, a long-running podcast on building wealth and businesses from the ground up. Biography Backstage Capital was founded in 2015 by a single operator with no finance background, no MBA, and, at the time, no permanent address. The firm has since deployed around $30 million across more than 200 startups led by Black, women, and LGBTQ+ founders. That track record is the central claim of Arlan Hamilton’s work, and it is the basis on which serious organisations book her. Hamilton’s argument is commercial before it is moral. Capital flows to founders who look familiar to the people allocating it, and entire categories of viable business get priced as risk when they are simply unfamiliar. Backstage exists to test that thesis in the market. The portfolio is the proof point, and the books extend the argument into method. The biographical detail is by now well-documented: she built the fund while sleeping on the floor at San Francisco International Airport, doing Silicon Valley meetings by day. It’s About Damn Time (Penguin Random House, 2020) and Your First Million (Hachette, 2023) set out the operating system she developed across that period: how to identify unmet need, how to raise capital without a network, how to build multiple income streams, how to keep going when the room does not yet believe you. She is most useful to organisations and audiences working on early-stage investing, founder development, inclusive capital, and the structural question of how decisions about funding actually get made. Her authority in those conversations is operator authority, not advocacy, which is what makes the work travel. Key speaking topics Venture capital and underestimated founders Entrepreneurship from zero Building and scaling new funds Inclusive investing as commercial strategy Personal resilience and self-belief in business Wealth building and ownership for first-generation founders Ideal for Founder, scale-up and accelerator audiences Venture capital and private equity teams looking at deal flow beyond their networks Corporate venture and innovation leads, particularly those working on supplier diversity or new-market entry Leadership audiences on inclusion who want a commercial frame rather than a compliance frame Audience outcomes A specific argument for why underrepresented founders are a structurally mispriced opportunity, with portfolio evidence A concrete account of how a venture fund gets built without an existing network or institutional backing Practical method on identifying unmet need and turning lived experience into a fundable business Honest perspective from a Black, queer fund principal on how capital decisions are actually made inside the room

Why organisations work with Ashley Edwards She has built, funded, and scaled a care model specifically for the populations most wellbeing strategies fail to reach, and can translate that design logic into enterprise benefits and DEI programmes. MindRight is one of the few mental health platforms to make a non-clinical, text-based coaching service Medicaid-reimbursable, a proof point leaders can use to argue for culturally responsive care inside their own benefits stack. She is the first Black woman founder in New Jersey to raise over $1M in venture capital, which gives her an unusually credible voice on what it takes to back and build underrepresented leaders. As the inaugural Visiting Social Entrepreneur at Stanford GSB’s Center for Social Innovation, she brings a practitioner view sharpened by coaching the next wave of founders, not a consulting framework. She speaks from inside the problem: an operator running payroll, payer contracts, and clinical safety decisions, not a commentator. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of MindRight Health, a venture-backed mental health startup delivering text-message coaching for underserved youth, with Medicaid-reimbursable pathways. First Black woman founder in New Jersey to raise over $1M in venture capital. Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur; named by Forbes among “Healers” shaping the next century. Inaugural Visiting Social Entrepreneur, Center for Social Innovation, Stanford Graduate School of Business. MBA and MA in Education, Stanford University (Miller Social Change Leadership Award); BA in Economics, Yale University. Previous platforms include Aspen Ideas, US Chamber of Commerce, Google, the WNBA, Harvard Business School, Stanford, and Yale; work covered in ELLE, Business Insider, and Inc. Biography Most young people in underserved communities never touch the clinical mental health system. They text. MindRight Health was built around that fact. Founded by Ashley Edwards in 2019 after she watched her students in Newark carry untreated trauma into school every day, the company delivers non-clinical mental health coaching by text, meets users where they already are, and has engineered its service to be reimbursed by Medicaid and commercial payers. That design choice is where the organisational lesson sits. Benefits and wellbeing programmes built for a narrow group of users rarely work for everyone else. MindRight’s published retention and usage data with BIPOC youth, which exceed industry benchmarks, make a concrete argument for culturally responsive, preventative care as the first line of support, not the fallback. Edwards brings the credentials to be heard by serious buyers. An MBA and MA in Education from Stanford, where she received the Miller Social Change Leadership Award, and a BA in Economics from Yale. She is the first Black woman founder in New Jersey to raise over $1M in venture capital, one of a small group to have done so in the United States, and serves as the inaugural Visiting Social Entrepreneur at Stanford GSB’s Center for Social Innovation, coaching a new cohort of social impact founders. For leaders responsible for employee wellbeing, DEI, and benefits strategy, her value is practical. She has made the trade-offs between clinical rigour, cultural fit, affordability, and scale, and she can explain, with numbers, what it takes to reach the workforce a wellbeing policy is supposed to serve. Key speaking topics Mental health in the workplace Employee wellbeing and benefits design Health equity and access to care Inclusive leadership and DEI strategy Social entrepreneurship and venture-backed impact Digital health and care delivery innovation Building and funding underrepresented founders Ideal for CHROs, Heads of Benefits, and Chief Wellbeing Officers redesigning mental health support for a multigenerational, multicultural workforce. Chief Diversity Officers and DEI leads connecting wellbeing strategy to equity outcomes. Healthcare payers, providers, and employer coalitions evaluating non-clinical, preventative, culturally responsive care models. Foundations, investors, and corporate venture teams backing social impact and health equity founders. Audience outcomes A sharper picture of why current mental health benefits fail the employees who most need them, and what design choices close that gap. A working understanding of how non-clinical, digital, culturally responsive care models fit alongside clinical pathways inside a benefits strategy. Specific evidence from MindRight’s payer partnerships and retention data that leaders can use to pressure-test their own wellbeing and DEI investments. A direct view from an operator-founder on what it takes to fund, build, and scale services for underrepresented populations.

Why organisations work with Ashley Rhodes-Courter A clinical credential behind the personal story. She is an LCSW running a mental health agency, the Foundation for Sustainable Families, which means her work on resilience and wellbeing is grounded in clinical practice, not motivational framing. A specific account of what trauma-informed care looks like in real institutions. Nine years across 14 foster placements gives her a rare credibility on systems that fail vulnerable people, and on what it takes to redesign them. Authority on schools, social services, and helping professions. Her talks for educators and frontline workers address abuse identification, burnout, and self-care with the precision of a practitioner, not a guest speaker. A New York Times bestselling memoir used in college curricula nationally, plus a published children’s book on a transgender sibling listed on the 2022 ALA Rainbow Book List. The body of work is taught, not just sold. Biography highlights New York Times bestselling author of Three Little Words (Simon & Schuster, 2008), with sequel Three More Words and the picture book Sam Is My Sister (Albert Whitman & Company, 2021). Licensed Clinical Social Worker. MSW from the University of Southern California; undergraduate degree from Eckerd College. Founder of the Foundation for Sustainable Families, a non-profit mental health agency providing trauma-informed care. Featured on CNN, Good Morning America, Today, The New York Times, USA Today, and Glamour, including selection as one of Glamour’s Top Ten College Women and to USA Today’s All-USA Academic Team. Profiled on NBC’s Women of Worth (December 2021). Sam Is My Sister included on the American Library Association’s 2022 Rainbow Book List. Biography Most public conversations about resilience treat it as a personal trait. In organisations that depend on people doing emotionally demanding work, teachers, social workers, healthcare staff, HR leaders, that framing breaks down. Resilience is built or eroded by systems, supervision, and the quality of care that workers themselves receive. Ashley Rhodes-Courter’s work begins from that point. She is unusual among speakers on this subject in holding the credential that matches the content. As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a Master’s from the University of Southern California, she runs the Foundation for Sustainable Families, a mental health agency providing trauma-informed care. The clinical work informs the talks, and the talks track current practice rather than stories from a decade ago. Her authority on the subject is also biographical. Three Little Words, published by Simon & Schuster in 2008, traces nine years across 14 foster placements in Florida. The book began as an essay in The New York Times Magazine, became a New York Times bestseller, and is now used in collegiate social work and education programs. Three More Words extends the account into adulthood and adoptive parenting. Sam Is My Sister, her 2021 picture book with Albert Whitman, was placed on the American Library Association’s 2022 Rainbow Book List. The combination matters for serious buyers. A leadership team that wants a substantive session on burnout, on what schools and social services actually need from staff, or on inclusion as a duty of care, gets a speaker who has lived inside failing systems and now treats people inside the current ones. The argument is not that adversity creates strength. It is that institutions decide whether the people inside them recover or break. Key speaking topics Trauma-informed leadership and organisational practice Burnout and self-care in helping professions Resilience after adverse experience Foster care, child welfare, and adoption Mental health in the workplace Inclusion and family diversity Educator and frontline-worker wellbeing Ideal for CHROs, heads of wellbeing, and people leaders designing trauma-informed support Education sector leaders, district superintendents, and school principals Healthcare, social care, and non-profit boards DEI and inclusion leads working on family diversity and lived-experience inclusion Audience outcomes A clearer working definition of trauma-informed practice and what it asks of managers Specific signals of burnout and abuse that frontline staff and leaders can act on A frame for resilience that holds institutions, not only individuals, accountable A more confident vocabulary for inclusion conversations involving family identity and lived experience

Why organisations work with Aubrey Blanche-Sarellano She built the Balanced Teams Diversity Assessment used inside the Atlassian Team Playbook, giving People teams a measurement framework they can run themselves rather than a workshop they have to repeat. She has held the senior internal seat twice, at Atlassian and Culture Amp, so her recommendations come from running the function at scale, not from observing it. Her work on AI ethics is grounded in current academic study at Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre, which means the responsible-AI content is current with regulation rather than recycled from 2021 DEI decks. She treats equity as a product and operations problem. That makes her useful to CHROs, Heads of Product, and AI leads, not only to DEI specialists. She speaks credibly to the post-DEI-backlash context: how to keep inclusion outcomes when the political signalling has to come down. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of The Mathpath, advising on equitable operations, responsible AI, and ESG. Former Global Head of Equitable Design & Impact, Culture Amp. Former Global Head of Diversity & Belonging, Atlassian. Built the function from scratch. Inventor of the Balanced Teams approach and the Balanced Teams Diversity Assessment in the Atlassian Team Playbook. Master’s candidate in AI Ethics and Society, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, University of Cambridge. Board director at Circle of Blue and the Culture Amp Foundation; limited partner at Operator Collective. Featured in Wired, Wall Street Journal, Australian Financial Review, and USA Today. Biography Diversity programmes were designed for a political environment that no longer exists. Budgets are smaller, scrutiny is sharper, and the language that worked five years ago now invites litigation in some markets and ridicule in others. The companies that still want inclusion outcomes have a problem: they need the results, but they cannot keep running the programme in its original form. Aubrey Blanche-Sarellano works on that problem from the operations side. She built Atlassian’s Diversity & Belonging function from scratch and scaled it across the company’s international expansion, then joined Culture Amp as the first Global Head of Equitable Design & Impact. The Balanced Teams Diversity Assessment she developed at Atlassian became part of the company’s public Team Playbook, which is why her frameworks are familiar to People teams who have never met her. Through The Mathpath, her consultancy, she now advises leaders on the same question at a higher altitude: how to embed equity into talent processes, product decisions, and AI deployment so that the outcomes survive without the political infrastructure. Her current academic work at Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence sits behind the responsible-AI content, which has become a larger share of her client engagements. She is direct about what does not work. Unconscious bias training is not, in her reading, a solution. Equitable design is. Her audiences leave with a clearer view of where inequity is actually produced inside their organisation and which operating levers, talent process, product practice, AI tooling, will move it. Key speaking topics Equitable operations and organisational design Responsible AI and algorithmic bias Talent process redesign and ERG programmes Inclusion in a post-DEI-backlash context Equitable product development ESG and ethical business operations Ideal for CHROs and Heads of People rebuilding inclusion strategy under new constraints Heads of Product and AI leads embedding fairness into model deployment and product practice ERG sponsors and DEI leads under pressure to demonstrate operating impact, not activity Executive teams reviewing where to take DEI investment next Audience outcomes A clearer map of where inequity is produced inside your own talent and product systems A working definition of equitable design, with examples of where it replaces conventional DEI activity Specific guidance on evaluating AI tools for fairness risk before deployment A read on how to keep inclusion outcomes when the political signalling has to come down Language for talking about equity that holds up in front of a sceptical board

Why organisations work with Azeem Rafiq Primary-source authority on how a major British institution mishandled a discrimination complaint, with the parliamentary record, Cricket Discipline Commission outcomes, and governance changes to evidence it. A working answer to the question every CHRO privately asks: what happens to the person who reports, after they report? Rafiq describes the years that followed his disclosure, not only the moment of speaking out. Lived credibility on the gap between policy and practice. The policies at Yorkshire existed. They were not implemented. The reform conversation he triggered is now standard reading for sport, regulators, and corporate ER teams. A name that lands with sceptical audiences. Boards and senior teams who have seen too many polished DEI keynotes engage differently with a speaker whose testimony is a matter of parliamentary record. Biography highlights Former professional cricketer for Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire CCC; captained England under-15 and under-19 sides. Appointed Yorkshire CCC’s youngest captain and first of Asian heritage in 2012. Gave evidence to the DCMS Select Committee in November 2021; witness statement published by the committee. Triggered a Cricket Discipline Commission process that upheld charges and led to the resignation of Yorkshire’s chair and a board reset under Lord Kamlesh Patel. Author of It’s Not Banter, It’s Racism (Hachette, 2024), longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2024. Submitted further written evidence to Parliament’s Sport Governance inquiry in 2022. Biography Yorkshire County Cricket Club had policies for racism, bullying and player welfare. They were not enforced. When a complaint was raised internally in 2018, the institutional response was to manage the complainant rather than the complaint. That is the gap most organisations underestimate, and it is the gap Azeem Rafiq has spent the past five years describing in evidence. His professional record is on the public file: junior international captain for England, professional contracts at Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire, and the youngest captain in Yorkshire’s history. The reason senior audiences listen now is not the career. It is the witness statement, published by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, and the Cricket Discipline Commission findings that followed. The reform consequences are documented. Yorkshire’s chair resigned. Lord Kamlesh Patel was installed to rebuild the board. The England and Wales Cricket Board was forced to confront governance failures it had previously minimised. Rafiq’s 2024 book with Hachette, It’s Not Banter, It’s Racism, was longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and remains one of the more honest published accounts of what happens after a whistleblower stops being useful to the institutions briefly aligned with them. What he offers senior audiences now is closer to a case study than a story. He talks about the specific points at which a complaint becomes politically inconvenient, about the role of HR, legal and PR functions in absorbing or deflecting it, and about the human cost on the person at the centre. It is the content most diversity programmes do not have access to. Key speaking topics Institutional racism and culture reform Whistleblowing and speak-up systems in practice Inclusion when policy and practice diverge Governance and accountability in sport Mental health and family impact of public disclosure The aftermath of speaking out Ideal for CHROs, employee relations leads and DEI heads in organisations re-examining their speak-up architecture. Boards and audit committees with whistleblowing oversight responsibilities. Sports governing bodies, regulators and member organisations confronting culture inquiries. Senior leadership offsites where the inclusion conversation has gone stale. Audience outcomes A concrete picture of how a major institution failed to act on its own policies, and the operational reasons why. A more accurate read on what protection a whistleblower actually receives once a complaint enters the system. Specific questions to test inside their own organisation, drawn from cricket’s governance failures. Renewed seriousness about the personal cost of disclosure, useful for anyone designing or sponsoring a speak-up channel.

Why organisations work with Barjis Chohan A founder’s view of brand discipline built over more than 25 years. She has run a designer label long enough to have seen the failure modes of growth, dilution, and trend-chasing, and to speak credibly about the cost of each. Hard-won sustainability substance. Seven years rebuilding supply chains, materials, and product lifecycles inside a working business, not a sustainability practice attached to a marketing function. A bicultural commercial perspective most boards do not have access to. She has financed and sold into the GCC, manufactured in the UK, and served Muslim, Western, and luxury hospitality clients inside one operating model. Verifiable entrepreneurial credentials, including Designer in International Trade from the Financial Mail on Sunday, Entrepreneur of the Year (London, Shell LiveWIRE), and the Global MSME Champion Award from the Global Council for the Promotion of International Trade. Inclusion content with a practitioner’s edge. Her work on identity and cultural difference is shaped by running a multicultural business, not by a corporate DEI mandate. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of BARJIS London, established 1999, with bespoke luxury rugs preceding the womenswear line launched in 2011. Luxury hospitality clients include Marriott Hotels, IHG [CONFIRM], The Montcalm (Autograph Collection), Emirates Towers Dubai, Japan Airlines, and K+K Hotels. Studied fashion design at London College of Fashion and Central Saint Martins; interned with Vivienne Westwood before founding her label. Award record includes Designer in International Trade (Financial Mail on Sunday), Entrepreneur of the Year (London), Business of the Year (Islam Channel, 2019), and the Global MSME Champion Award from the Global Council for the Promotion of International Trade. Featured in Vogue and profiled by The Guardian; subject of a London Film Academy documentary. Work exhibited at Fashion Weeks in London, Paris, and Dubai, and in museums in New York, Frankfurt, and San Francisco. Biography Most fashion businesses that survive their first decade do not survive their second with the same ethos intact. BARJIS London is an exception. Founded in 1999 with bespoke luxury rugs, the brand extended into womenswear in 2011 and has operated continuously across UK manufacturing, GCC investment, and hospitality clients including Marriott and Emirates Towers Dubai, with a sustainability programme rebuilt inside the business rather than added to its marketing. Chohan trained at London College of Fashion and studied at Central Saint Martins. She interned with Vivienne Westwood and worked with a French fashion house in Monte Carlo before founding her own label. The Guardian described her as a Westwood prodigy. Her early commercial decisions, including writing to oil companies for investment at seventeen and travelling to the Middle East with a young family, set the bicultural pattern her business has followed since. Recognition has come from credible bodies. She holds the Financial Mail on Sunday Designer in International Trade award, Entrepreneur of the Year (London), Business of the Year from the Islam Channel, and the Global MSME Champion Award from the Global Council for the Promotion of International Trade. The Barjis Initiative, launched in 2018, supports creative entrepreneurs and enterprise education in schools. Boards and leadership audiences book her for the operator’s lens, not the celebrity-founder presentation. Her talks examine brand erosion under growth pressure, creativity as a managed discipline rather than a slogan, and the specific commercial value of cultural fluency in markets where most British brands struggle to operate. Audiences at JP Morgan, the London School of Economics, Fonterra, and the Ministry of Culture of Colombia have heard versions of the same argument: ethos is a commercial asset, but only if it is defended structurally as the business scales. Key speaking topics Brand integrity and ethos at scale Reinvention and resilience in founder-led businesses Failure and risk in team culture Creativity as a growth discipline Sustainability in product, supply chain, and operations Cultural identity as commercial strength Modest fashion and bicultural consumer markets Ideal for Founders, CEOs, and senior brand leaders in consumer-facing businesses L&D and talent leaders running leadership-development days, graduate schemes, and high-potential cohorts CMOs and creative directors managing brand dilution risk under growth Heads of sustainability and product development in fashion, retail, and luxury DEI and people leaders looking for practitioner-led content on cultural inclusion and belonging Audience outcomes A healthier relationship with failure and risk that changes how people decide under pressure A working definition of brand ethos that holds up under commercial pressure A founder’s view of where sustainability programmes succeed and where they stall A reframing of cultural identity as commercial capability rather than compliance Reference points for entering GCC and modest-fashion markets without misreading them

Why organisations work with Baroness Grey-Thompson She chaired the government’s independent Duty of Care in Sport review (2017), producing recommendations on athlete welfare, safeguarding, and governing body accountability. Her authority on organisational responsibility comes from having produced the policy, not just commented on it. Her perspective on inclusion is grounded in decades of lived experience as a disabled person navigating institutions not designed for her – which gives her a precision and candour on the subject that no theoretical framework produces. As a sitting crossbench peer, she debates welfare reform, disability rights and sport governance in Parliament. Her understanding of how policy accountability functions – or fails to – is current, not retrospective. She has held board-level positions across sport, transport, broadcasting and the public sector. She speaks to senior decision-makers from a position of peer-level governance experience, not from outside it. Eleven Paralympic gold medals and six London Wheelchair Marathon victories represent one of the most demanding sustained performance records in British sporting history. Her insight into resilience and long-term excellence comes from a context that most performance speakers cannot match. Biography highlights 11 Paralympic gold medals across five Games (Seoul 1988 to Athens 2004); six London Wheelchair Marathon victories; over 30 world records Baroness Grey-Thompson DBE; crossbench member of the House of Lords since 2010; debates welfare reform, disability rights and sport governance Led the government-commissioned independent Duty of Care in Sport review, published April 2017 Chancellor of Northumbria University since 2015; honorary Doctor of Law, University of Cambridge (2016) Member of the Laureus World Sports Academy; BBC Sports Personality of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award, 2019 Board experience includes Transport for London, London Legacy Development Corporation, ukactive (Chair), BBC and UK Athletics Biography The question of how organisations balance the drive for performance with the duty to protect the people inside them is one that Tanni Grey-Thompson has spent three decades navigating – first as an elite athlete competing in systems rarely designed with her in mind, then as a legislator and governance lead responsible for changing them. Her athletic record is the foundation of her credibility. Across five Paralympic Games between 1988 and 2004, she won 11 gold medals in wheelchair racing, set over 30 world records, and won the London Wheelchair Marathon six times. What that record represents, beyond the numbers, is sustained excellence under physical and institutional pressure. She competed with spina bifida in an era when structural support for disabled athletes was limited, and she won anyway – a fact that shapes everything she says about resilience and the conditions that enable long-term achievement. In 2017, the government commissioned her to lead an independent review into duty of care in sport. The resulting report set out recommendations on athlete welfare, safeguarding, mental wellbeing, and the accountability of governing bodies for the people in their systems. It remains the most authoritative published framework on institutional responsibility in British sport, and it gave her a body of work that no other speaker in the inclusion space can claim. She joined the House of Lords as a crossbench peer in 2010, where she debates welfare reform, disability rights and sport governance. Her board experience spans Transport for London, the London Legacy Development Corporation, ukactive, the BBC, and UK Athletics. She has been Chancellor of Northumbria University since 2015. What she brings to a senior audience is not a motivational narrative – it is a working knowledge of how accountability for people actually functions, or fails to, in large organisations. Key speaking topics Elite performance and sustained achievement Inclusion and disability in organisational life Duty of care and institutional accountability Leadership under pressure Governance and board responsibility Disability rights and welfare policy Sport governance and athlete welfare Ideal for Senior leadership and board teams where performance expectations and inclusion commitments are in tension HR, people and DEI leaders responsible for disability inclusion and employee wellbeing strategy Public sector, sport and charitable sector boards with governance and accountability responsibilities Corporate audiences undergoing culture change where the gap between stated values and daily practice is a live concern Audience outcomes A sharper understanding of where performance culture and duty of care come into structural conflict – and what resolving that actually requires First-hand perspective on what inclusion looks like beyond policy, drawn from lived experience in systems not designed for disability Grounded insight into board-level accountability for the wellbeing of people inside an organisation An honest account of sustained high performance – what enabled it, what threatened it, and what the institutions around her got right and wrong Practical framing for the gap between an organisation’s stated commitments and the culture leaders actually sustain

Why organisations work with Baz Moffat She runs the consultancy that adidas, The Gym Group and England Netball use to redesign female-health training and policy. Buyers get an operator with live commercial programmes, not a speaker reading the literature. Co-author of The Female Body Bible, the Sunday Times bestseller now published in five languages, written with an NHS GP and a former Head of Physiology at the UK Sports Institute. The credentialled trio is what gives her positions weight inside HR, medical and performance functions. Translates female physiology into manager behaviour, line manager conversations, training plans and return-to-work protocols. Audiences leave with language and decisions, not slogans. Speaks from inside the system she is critiquing. Former GB rower, 20 years in coaching and high performance, World Championship medallist, mother of two. The lived ground makes the policy argument harder to dismiss. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of The Well HQ, female-health consultancy to brands, governing bodies and corporates including adidas, The Gym Group, England Netball and The Fitness Group. Co-author, The Female Body Bible (Yellow Kite, Hachette, 2023), Sunday Times bestseller, published in five languages. GB Rowing Team member 2005 to 2008; raced in the women’s eight at the 2007 World Rowing Championships, Munich. BSc Sports Science, First Class, University of Birmingham; MSc Health Related Behaviour Change, University of Bristol. Spoke at the Council of Europe International Women’s Day roundtable on female health in sport. Twenty years’ experience as a coach, personal trainer and Holistic Core Restore practitioner. Biography Most workplace wellbeing programmes are still calibrated to a male default. Female-specific health sits inside a thin band of policy and a generic resilience strand, with little connection to performance, retention or management practice. The Well HQ, the consultancy Baz Moffat co-founded in 2021 with Dr Emma Ross and Dr Bella Smith, exists to close that gap by treating female health as part of the operating system, not the wellness budget. The consultancy now works with adidas on the Breaking Barriers Academy, with The Gym Group and The Fitness Group on training personal trainers in female-health literacy, and with national governing bodies including England Netball and English Football on changing how the sport supports women from grassroots through to elite. The same logic applies to corporates. Policy, manager training and protocols for menstruation, fertility, pregnancy, return to work and menopause are rebuilt on the science rather than on assumption. Baz brings the operator side of that argument. She rowed for Great Britain from 2005 to 2008, raced in the women’s eight at the 2007 World Rowing Championships, and spent two decades coaching women through pelvic, core and perinatal health. Her academic credentials sit in behaviour change, an MSc from Bristol on top of a First in Sports Science from Birmingham, which is why her work translates into adoption rather than slide decks. Her co-authored book, The Female Body Bible, written with an NHS GP and a former Head of Physiology at the UK Sports Institute, became an instant Sunday Times bestseller and now appears in five languages. It functions as the public version of the consultancy’s argument: that the failure to design for half the workforce is no longer defensible on cost, evidence or talent grounds. Key speaking topics Female health as an operating system inside organisations Menopause, perimenopause and the workplace Pelvic, core and perinatal health Return to work after pregnancy and postnatal recovery Female-specific high performance in sport and corporate environments Designing wellbeing policy beyond the male default Building and scaling a mission-led consultancy Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and wellbeing leads rebuilding female-health policy beyond a generic wellness offer. Boards and executive teams of sports governing bodies, federations and clubs reviewing female participation and performance pathways. Senior leaders in health, fitness and consumer brands targeting the female market. Founders and operators seeking a live case study in building a mission-led commercial business. Audience outcomes A working model for treating female health as a workforce capability, not a benefits line item. Clear language for line managers and HR on menstruation, pregnancy, postnatal return and menopause. A grounded picture of what changes when policy, manager training and protocols are redesigned on female physiology. A first-hand account of the cultural and commercial barriers to female health in sport and corporate life, and what shifts them.

Why organisations work with Beatrice Kabutakapua A journalist’s discipline applied to leadership voice. A decade as a London-based foreign correspondent gives her a working method for turning messy human material into a clear, defensible narrative that holds up in a boardroom. A published methodology, not a workshop format. Lead With Your Story sets out a usable framework for converting lived experience into leadership content, which DEI and L&D teams can build a programme around rather than a single session. Harvard’s “Public Narrative” training behind the work. The frame she uses sits inside an established discipline of civic and organisational storytelling, not a personal brand exercise. A specific answer to the diversity-at-the-top problem. She works with the leaders companies have invested in for years and still struggle to promote, and gives them language for authority on their own terms. A multilingual operator. Sessions delivered in English, French and Italian, with experience across European, North American and Middle Eastern audiences (Los Angeles to Istanbul). Biography highlights Founder and CEO of The Business Storytelling Centre. Author of Lead With Your Story: How to Turn Your Lived Experience Into Your Leadership Superpower (Amazon bestseller, 2025). Harvard University certificate in Public Narrative: Leadership, Storytelling and Action. MA in international journalism, Cardiff University; MSc in social research methods, University of Sussex. Former foreign correspondent covering human rights, international development and African affairs. Client roster includes WPP Media, Aviva, Save the Children, Booking.com, Holland & Barrett, the Lankelly Chase Foundation and the Pacific Council on International Policy. Biography Most diversity strategies stop working at the threshold of the senior team. The pipeline is full, the sponsorship budget is spent, and yet the same kind of leader keeps getting promoted. The block is rarely capability. It is that the people coming through have spent their careers translating themselves into a voice the organisation already trusts, and that translation runs out at the point where authority needs to feel personal. Beatrice Kabutakapua works on that exact gap. Trained as a journalist at Cardiff, with a Harvard certificate in public narrative and a decade as a London-based foreign correspondent behind her, she founded The Business Storytelling Centre to give senior and emerging leaders a method for leading from their own material rather than someone else’s template. Her 2025 book Lead With Your Story, an Amazon bestseller, sets out the system she uses with clients. Her client roster is built around the buyers who feel this problem most directly. WPP Media, Aviva, Save the Children, Booking.com, Holland & Barrett, the Lankelly Chase Foundation, the European Journalism Centre and the Pacific Council on International Policy all sit inside her recent work, typically commissioned through DEI, People and Culture, or L&D leads. Sessions run in English, French and Italian. The editorial background matters. She does not treat storytelling as motivation. She treats it as a discipline for extracting the specific, defensible argument inside a leader’s experience and giving it commercial form, which is why her sessions tend to land with senior audiences who are sceptical of softer leadership content. Key speaking topics Business storytelling for leaders Authentic leadership and lived experience Visibility and voice for under-represented leaders Inclusive leadership pipelines Internal communication and culture Coaching for newly promoted leaders Cross-cultural leadership communication Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers redesigning the senior leadership pipeline Heads of DEI and inclusion leads commissioning substantive, capability-led inclusion work L&D directors building authentic leadership and executive presence programmes Internal communication leads working on leader visibility and culture narrative Audience outcomes A working method for turning their own lived experience into a leadership argument that holds up with a senior audience Specific language for the moments where existing executive communication training falls short A clearer view of why their current diversity-at-the-top interventions are not converting, and what to change Practical structures for coaching newly promoted leaders through the visibility threshold A vocabulary for inclusion work that senior leaders can use without political signalling