Inclusive Leadership

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 Britteny Floyd-Mayo She built a recognised consumer wellness brand, Trap Yoga Bae®, that reaches audiences who feel ostracised by standard wellness content. That gives her credibility with employees who tune out the corporate version. Her work sits at the intersection of wellbeing and inclusion, two budgets that increasingly need to be defended together. She speaks to both without separating them. She delivers in formats most wellness speakers cannot: a 45-minute movement and music-led experience as comfortably as a keynote or workshop. That makes her useful for offsites, conferences, and ERG events where a talk alone would not move the room. She has been programmed alongside mainstream consumer brands (Lululemon, Eventbrite, Essence Festival), which signals she can hold a corporate stage without softening the cultural specificity that makes the work distinctive. Biography highlights Founder of Trap Yoga Bae®, a trademarked inclusive wellness brand combining yoga, hip-hop culture, and self-care. Studied Positive Psychology and Social Behavioral Studies at Dillard University and Holy Names University. Certified in Vinyasa yoga in India. Named in Forbes among the top 8 Black Wellness experts to watch. Featured in Issa Rae’s HBO Max series Sweet Life. Speaker and featured artist for Lululemon, Eventbrite, Brit + Co, Black Girls Code, Black Joy Parade, and the 25th Annual Essence Festival. Biography Most corporate wellness and inclusion programming is built for a default employee. The people it most needs to reach, those who already feel like outsiders in the room, are the ones who quietly opt out. Britteny Floyd-Mayo built her brand inside that gap. Trap Yoga Bae® started as a response to feeling unwelcome in standard yoga studios. It grew into a trademarked wellness movement that pairs yoga and meditation with hip-hop, cultural specificity, and direct language. The work is taken seriously enough that Forbes has named her among the top Black wellness experts to watch, and that Issa Rae cast her in the HBO Max series Sweet Life. The educational backbone is real. She studied Positive Psychology and Social Behavioral Studies at Dillard University and Holy Names University, and trained for Vinyasa certification in India. That foundation is why the talks travel beyond the yoga mat into burnout, boundary-setting, and the working conditions that shape mental health for women and employees of colour. For organisations, the practical question she answers is uncomfortable but useful. Why are the people your wellbeing and inclusion programmes were designed for the ones most likely to disengage from them, and what does a version look like that they would actually choose? She has built a partnership list (Lululemon, Eventbrite, Black Girls Code, Essence Festival) that suggests the answer travels. Key speaking topics Inclusive wellbeing and self-care Burnout prevention for women founders and leaders Boundary-setting at work Mental health and resilience Cultural relevance in DEI and wellness programming Entrepreneurship and personal brand-building Employee Resource Group (ERG) keynotes and experiences Ideal for Heads of DEI, ERG leads, and culture teams running inclusion or wellbeing programming for Black employees and other under-served groups. CHROs and benefits leaders looking to refresh wellbeing offerings that have stopped landing. Women’s leadership networks and founder communities focused on burnout and boundary-setting. Conference and offsite programmers needing an experiential keynote rather than a panel discussion. Audience outcomes Practical language for setting boundaries without apology, drawn from her No Is A Full Sentence framework. A different reference point for what inclusive wellbeing looks like in practice, not in policy. Specific tools from the From Pain to Paradise method for processing setback and burnout. An experience employees describe afterwards as theirs, not the company’s, which is the test most wellbeing programmes fail.

Why organisations work with Candice Matthews Brackeen She invests her own fund’s capital into the same founder profile most institutions struggle to reach, which makes her perspective on deal flow operational rather than advocacy-led. She built and now owns Black Tech Week, the largest US convening of Black founders, investors and corporate partners, giving her direct visibility on which company-building patterns are working at scale. She testified before the US House Financial Services Committee in 2025 on expanding capital access beyond Silicon Valley, a credibility marker few speakers on this topic hold. She translates between corporate procurement, venture capital and underrepresented founder communities, the three groups that rarely sit in the same conversation despite all needing each other. Wall Street Journal named her one of the Top 10 Women in Venture Capital in 2020, a recognition that signals investor peers, not bureau marketing, rate her work. Biography highlights General Partner, Lightship Capital, a Cincinnati venture fund backing underrepresented founders in CPG, e-commerce, sustainability, AI and healthcare. Founder and CEO, Lightship Foundation, whose accelerator alumni have raised more than $100M in follow-on funding. Co-founder, Hillman Accelerator, the first Midwest accelerator dedicated to underrepresented tech founders. Witness before the US House Financial Services Committee, March 2025, on access to capital beyond Silicon Valley. Named to the Wall Street Journal’s Top 10 Women in Venture Capital, 2020. Member of NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium; advisory roles with the Cincinnati Innovation District and Endeavor Northwest Arkansas. Contributing author at TechCrunch. Biography Less than one percent of US venture capital goes to Black-led companies. That number has been broadly stable for years, despite every major institutional commitment to change it. The interesting question for senior leaders is no longer whether the gap exists. It is what mechanism actually closes it. Lightship Capital is one of the small number of funds built specifically to answer that question with capital rather than commentary. As General Partner, Candice Matthews Brackeen invests in early-stage companies across consumer packaged goods, e-commerce, sustainability, artificial intelligence and healthcare, with a focus on founders outside coastal networks. She also founded Lightship Foundation, whose accelerator programmes have helped portfolio companies secure more than $100M in follow-on funding. Before Lightship she co-founded Hillman Accelerator in 2016, the first Midwest programme dedicated to underrepresented tech founders, and Hello Parent, a school-safety app that became a national partner of the Brady Campaign. She has since acquired Black Tech Week and moved it to Cincinnati, anchoring it next to Fortune 500 corporate partners including Kroger and Procter and Gamble. Her authority on this subject is institutional, not rhetorical. The Wall Street Journal named her one of the Top 10 Women in Venture Capital in 2020. In March 2025 she testified before the US House Financial Services Committee on expanding capital access beyond Silicon Valley. She also serves on NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium and writes for TechCrunch on venture and entrepreneurship. Key speaking topics Venture capital outside Silicon Valley Building inclusive innovation ecosystems Access to capital for underrepresented founders Corporate partnerships with early-stage companies Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Public policy and capital markets Diversity, equity and inclusion in technology Ideal for Chief investment officers, corporate venture leads and innovation heads designing pipelines into underrepresented founder markets Procurement and supplier diversity leaders building substantive routes to minority-led suppliers Boards and CEOs of large corporates with stated commitments on capital, supplier or workforce inclusion Public sector and economic development leaders working on regional innovation strategy Audience outcomes A clearer picture of where credible deal flow from underrepresented founders actually sits and how to access it. A working view of what corporate partnerships with founder communities look like when they generate revenue, not just press. Specific language for boards on why capital access is an economic question, not only an inclusion one. Direct exposure to a working venture model that has produced documented follow-on funding outcomes.

Why organisations work with Cheryl Campos She has built the largest global community of Latine venture capitalists, VCFamilia, and has used it to channel more than $10M of LP funding to emerging Latine fund managers. That is an operating result inside venture capital, not a panel statement. She knows how to take a FinTech platform from early stage to unicorn. As employee #10 at Republic, she led venture growth and partnerships through the company’s run to a $1BN valuation. Her LaFamilia Foundation work is backed by J.P. Morgan, AWS, Comcast and Gunderson Dettmer, which gives corporate audiences a credible reference point for what serious inclusion investment looks like in practice. She holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Harvard economics degree, and pairs that with an investor’s view of where capital actually flows. Her speaking range covers FinTech, venture, identity and community building, which makes her usable for inclusion programming, leadership offsites and FinTech-sector events without changing speakers. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO, LaFamilia Foundation, backed by J.P. Morgan, AWS, Comcast and Gunderson Dettmer. Co-founder of VCFamilia, the largest global community of Latine venture capitalists, and FounderFamilia, a network of 500+ Latine venture-backed founders. Former Head of Venture Growth and Partnerships at Republic, employee #10, scaling the platform to a $1BN valuation. Scout for Lightspeed Venture Partners and investment partner at The Community Fund. Former Investment Banking Analyst at Barclays, Financial Institutions Group and Structured Finance. BA in Economics with honours, Harvard University. MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business. Named to HBCUvc’s 31 Under 31. Biography Latine founders raise less than 2 percent of venture capital, despite Latine consumers being one of the fastest-growing economic groups in the United States. Closing that gap is not a marketing problem. It needs operators who can build new pipelines of investors, founders and limited partners, and move real money through them. LaFamilia Foundation was set up to do that work. As co-founder and CEO, Campos runs two communities under the foundation: VCFamilia, the largest global community of Latine venture capitalists, and FounderFamilia, a network of 500+ Latine venture-backed founders. VCFamilia has facilitated more than $10M of LP funding into emerging Latine fund managers. FounderFamilia has directed over $1M into early-stage startups through its national pitch competition. Corporate backers include J.P. Morgan, AWS, Comcast and Gunderson Dettmer. The operating credibility comes from Republic. Campos joined the FinTech investment platform as employee #10 in 2018 and led venture growth and partnerships during its run to a $1BN valuation. She is also a scout for Lightspeed Venture Partners and an investment partner at The Community Fund, with prior experience as an investment banking analyst at Barclays in the Financial Institutions Group and Structured Finance team. Her academic background sits on top of that operating record. Campos holds a BA in economics with honours from Harvard University and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. She was named to HBCUvc’s 31 Under 31 list of emerging venture capital talent, and is a frequent voice in FinTech and venture programming on inclusion, community building and capital access. Key speaking topics Community as a capital-access mechanism in venture and FinTech Latine representation in venture capital and entrepreneurship Inclusion in financial services and technology Building investor and founder pipelines from scratch FinTech growth and scale-up operating lessons Identity, career path and reinvention Ideal for DEI, talent and ERG leaders inside banks, asset managers and FinTech firms looking for substance beyond sentiment programming. Venture capital firms, family offices and corporate venture teams building Latine or wider underrepresented founder pipelines. Heads of community, marketing and partnerships at FinTech and platform businesses scaling user and investor networks. Industry conferences on FinTech, entrepreneurship and capital markets that need a credible voice on inclusion as an operating discipline. Audience outcomes A working view of how community structures inside venture and FinTech move capital and talent, not just sentiment. Specific reference points for what corporate-backed inclusion programmes look like when J.P. Morgan, AWS and Comcast are the partners. Practical lessons from inside a FinTech platform that scaled from employee 10 to unicorn status. A clearer read on how Latine founder and investor networks are forming and where corporates can plug in usefully.

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 Russell Beck His 6C© model (Compensation, Career, Cause, Community, Culture, Company) gives people teams a structured, actionable framework for talent strategy: not a list of principles, but a diagnostic and planning tool organisations can apply directly. His career spans engineering project leadership across 25 countries, European Head of Talent at Yahoo!, MD of a £120m talent outsourcing business, and Global Head of Consulting at Impellam Group: a level of operational depth that most future-of-work commentators do not have. The World of Work to 2030 was recognised by the Financial Times as a business book to read and won the Institute of Leadership’s Book of the Year giving his frameworks independent, named validation rather than self-asserted authority. He translates megatrend analysis into specific commercial decisions. His sessions leave teams with a clear view of what the talent market will require of them by 2030, not just why it matters. Biography highlights Author of The World of Work to 2030, published by Bloomsbury Business (2024) Winner, Institute of Leadership Leadership Book of the Year 2024 Recognised by the Financial Times as a business book to read; regular interviewee in the FT Former European Head of Talent, Yahoo! – built one of the first pan-European talent functions Former Managing Director, Carlisle Managed Solutions – grew business to £120m turnover in 30 months; former Global Head of Consulting, Impellam Group Engineering project leader across 25+ countries, including a USD500m programme; co-owner and Director of Inspiration, ImagineThinkDo Biography Work is changing faster than most organisations’ talent strategies can keep up with. The labour market that defined hiring and retention practices for the last thirty years has shifted structurally, and the organisations still winning on compensation alone are discovering the limits of that approach. Russell Beck has spent three decades working through this tension as an operator running large-scale engineering programmes across 25 countries to building Yahoo!’s first pan-European talent function, to leading a £120m talent outsourcing business as Managing Director. His book, The World of Work to 2030, published by Bloomsbury Business, maps the megatrends reshaping organisations and careers and translates them into a practical action framework. It won the Institute of Leadership’s Leadership Book of the Year in 2024 and was recognised by the Financial Times as a business book to read. The book’s argument is not that change is coming, it is that most organisations are already behind, and that closing that gap requires deliberate, structured action on people strategy now. The 6C© model (Compensation, Career, Cause, Community, Culture, Company) is Beck’s proprietary framework for diagnosing and rebuilding talent strategy in a market where employees hold structural leverage. It has been deployed with organisations across sectors including Vodafone, the NHS, Cambridge University Press and the Top Employers Institute. Through ImagineThinkDo, the consultancy and development firm he co-owns with Alison Beck, he works directly with senior leadership teams on workforce transformation, leadership development and cultural change. His perspective combines the research discipline of an engineer, the strategic experience of an operator who has led at scale, and the practical tools of a practitioner who has done the work inside organisations, not just advised on it from outside. Key speaking topics Future of work and workforce strategy Talent attraction, retention and the 6C© model Organisational culture and belonging The multigenerational workforce Purpose-led leadership Leadership in uncertainty Future skills and employability Megatrends and their organisational implications Ideal for CHROs and people directors designing future-fit talent strategy Senior leadership teams navigating workforce transformation Talent, learning and organisational development functions CEOs and MDs seeking a commercially grounded view of the future labour market Audience outcomes A structured view of the megatrends reshaping work, and their specific implications for organisational and talent strategy Familiarity with the 6C© model as a practical tool for rebuilding attraction and retention approaches Clearer understanding of why belonging – not diversity alone – determines whether inclusion strategies deliver measurable outcomes Practical steps leaders can take to close the gap between current people strategy and what the labour market will require by 2030 A leadership lens for embedding purpose and meaning at work in ways that affect retention and performance

Why organisations work with Anna Allerton She built her authority inside a 17-year operational career at Sky, including founding and producing Sky’s Sportswomen programme, so she speaks about high-pressure performance from inside it rather than outside it. Her Management Today 35 Women Under 35 listing and editorial track record give buyers a credible name on the panel for senior internal audiences who are sceptical of the wellness market. She is qualified through the Academy of Executive Coaching, the triple-accredited UK training body, and runs a 1:1 executive coaching practice alongside the speaking work, which means workshop content lands as coaching, not awareness. Her client list, including Workday, IMG, the Premier League, Sky, The Forward Trust and NBCU New York, shows she has tested the same content across financial, sports, media and broadcast environments at senior level. She writes on the topic for serious audiences, including a co-authored chapter in Myths of Menopause (Sequoia Books, edited by Dr Nicky Keay), giving organisations published material they can circulate internally after the session. Biography highlights Founder and Director of Allerton Coaching & Consulting 17-year career at Sky, including roles at Sky Sports News from Sub-Editor through to Global Head of Internal Communications Founder and producer of Sky’s Sportswomen, launched in 2012 as the first dedicated women’s sport TV programme of its kind Named in Management Today‘s 35 Women Under 35 Trained and qualified executive coach with the Academy of Executive Coaching Co-author of a chapter in Myths of Menopause (Sequoia Books, edited by Dr Nicky Keay) Clients include Workday, IMG, Sky, the Premier League, The Forward Trust, Whisper, NBCU New York and Age UK Featured in Grazia, Stylist, Times Radio and We Are The City Biography Sportswomen launched on Sky Sports in 2012 as the first British TV programme dedicated entirely to women’s sport. Anna Allerton founded and produced it, and it ran inside one of the most demanding live broadcast environments in UK sport. That credit, alongside seventeen years of editorial and production roles at Sky Sports News, is the reason her work on women in the workplace lands differently from most. She came back from her second maternity leave at 38 with debilitating symptoms that took a year to be correctly diagnosed as perimenopause. The experience pushed her to retrain through the Academy of Executive Coaching, the UK’s triple-accredited training body, and to build a practice specifically around keeping experienced women in senior roles through their forties and fifties. The work now runs on two tracks. A 1:1 executive coaching practice for senior women, and a consulting and speaking offer for organisations on what a menopause-inclusive workplace actually looks like in operating terms. Clients to date include Workday, IMG, the Premier League, Sky, The Forward Trust, Whisper, NBCU New York and Age UK. She co-authored a chapter in Myths of Menopause, edited by Dr Nicky Keay and published by Sequoia Books, and has written and spoken in Grazia, Stylist and Times Radio. What makes her useful in a boardroom rather than a wellness slot is the angle. She frames menopause as a talent-retention question first and a wellbeing question second. She was named in Management Today‘s 35 Women Under 35 for her work in sports journalism, not for her current specialism, and that older credential is part of why senior internal audiences take the newer one seriously. Key speaking topics Perimenopause and menopause in the workplace Talent retention of women in their 40s and 50s Women’s leadership and career navigation through midlife Women in sport and women’s sports journalism Returning to senior roles after maternity leave Menopause-inclusive workplace policy and practice Mental health and wellbeing for senior women Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and talent leaders designing retention strategy for women in senior roles Executive teams and ERGs in financial, professional services, media and sport launching menopause workplace programmes Senior women’s networks and leadership development cohorts in the 35 to 55 age range Boards and ExCos commissioning a credible non-clinical voice on menopause as a business issue Audience outcomes A clear reframing of perimenopause and menopause as a talent-retention and performance issue, with management implications Practical language for line managers and senior women to use when the conversation comes up at work An honest account, drawn from a high-pressure broadcast career, of what symptoms actually do to focus, confidence and decision-making Specific organisational examples from work with Workday, IMG, the Premier League, Sky and others Reference material from Myths of Menopause and Allerton’s published writing for internal follow-up

Why organisations work with I. Stephanie Boyce She led a 200-year-old national professional body through regulatory change, constitutional debate, and sector-wide reform. Her argument for accountable governance is drawn from operational experience, not advisory distance. Her AI ethics position is governance-first: as Law Society President, she led the development of a published set of principles for the ethical use of AI in legal practice, connecting AI adoption directly to legal accountability, bias mitigation, and public trust, among the earliest profession-led frameworks to do so. On inclusion, she does not argue from the outside. She held the most senior elected role in a major regulated institution as its first Black president and first person of colour, which gives her a precise read on the structural distance between a diversity commitment and a genuinely diverse institution. She connects topics most organisations treat separately, AI accountability, DEI governance, reputational integrity, crisis leadership, through the single governance question boards most often defer: when an institutional decision causes harm, who is responsible? The PUSH framework (Persevere Until Something Happens) gives leadership teams a named, teachable approach to resilience grounded in her own documented professional journey through institutional exclusion and resistance at every level of a major profession. Biography highlights 177th President of the Law Society of England and Wales (2021-2022); sixth woman, first Black office-holder and first person of colour to hold the role in the institution’s 200-year history LLM in Public Law and Global Governance, King’s College London; King’s Alumna of the Year 2022 CBE (2026 New Year Honours) for services to the Legal Profession, Diversity, and Access to Justice Commissioner, National Preparedness Commission; Commissioner, Shinkwin Commission; member, HM Treasury and BEIS independent taskforce on socio-economic diversity in UK financial and professional services Named in the Power List 100 Most Influential Black People in the UK in 2021, 2022, and 2023; Governance Hot 100 Board Influencer (2020) Paris Bar Medal from the Ordre des avocats de Paris (2024), awarded for contributions to human rights and the rule of law Fellow of the Chartered Governance Institute; Fellow of King’s College London; Fellow of the RSA Biography It took the Law Society of England and Wales two centuries to elect its first Black president. I. Stephanie Boyce became the 177th in March 2021, with 20 years of practising solicitor experience and an LLM in Public Law and Global Governance from King’s College London, qualifications that gave her both the legal standing and the governance framework for what the role required. Her presidency ran through the pandemic, sharp parliamentary attacks on the legal profession, and the most significant solicitor qualification reform in 30 years. During that time, she led the development of the Law Society’s published lawtech principles, a governance framework for the ethical use of AI in legal practice. The framework connected AI adoption to legal accountability and bias governance at a time when most profession-led work in this area had not advanced beyond aspiration. Boyce’s governance argument rests on an experience most governance advisers do not hold. As the first Black president of a 200-year-old institution, she has encountered the structural gap between stated values and leadership composition from inside the institution itself. That shapes her work on DEI accountability: framing inclusion not as a moral commitment but as a governance question: who decides, and who is responsible when structural inequality persists? She holds a CBE and the Paris Bar Medal from the Ordre des avocats de Paris, awarded for contributions to human rights and the rule of law. She is a commissioner of the National Preparedness Commission and was named in the Power List 100 Most Influential Black People in the UK in 2021, 2022, and 2023. She now works with boards and executive teams across regulated industries through Stephanie Boyce Consulting. Key speaking topics Governance and institutional accountability Ethical AI and responsible technology adoption Inclusion, representation, and belonging at leadership level Rule of law and public trust in regulated environments Social mobility and access to professional careers Resilience and leadership under scrutiny Crisis leadership and institutional change Ideal for Boards, governance committees, and general counsel in regulated industries Executive teams in financial services, legal, and public sector organisations CHROs and DEI leadership navigating the gap between policy and structural change Professional services firms managing reputational risk and stakeholder accountability Audience outcomes A clearer framework for assessing whether governance structures are built for ethical accountability rather than regulatory compliance alone Board-level questions to test whether AI adoption decisions have genuine accountability assigned, not just policy language A more precise read of the structural distance between a DEI commitment and a measurably inclusive institution Practical thinking on what institutional trust requires from those at the top, particularly during crisis and reputational pressure The PUSH framework as a named, teachable approach to institutional resilience for leaders navigating complex or high-scrutiny environments

Why organisations work with Wema Hoover She ran global DEI inside four of the most scrutinised employers in the world: Google, Pfizer, Sanofi and Bristol-Myers Squibb. The advice is shaped by what survives in regulated, multinational environments. She separates the politics of DEI from the operating substance, which lets boards keep the practice going without the labels that now invite litigation and activist pressure. Her work covers the full stack: hiring, promotion, belonging, manager capability, and how leadership teams behave under public scrutiny. Not awareness training. She writes for Fast Company on the structural questions, gender investment, leadership double standards, beyond the DEI backlash, which means buyers get a thinker, not a workshop facilitator. Coqual Hidden Brain Drain Task Force membership signals she works alongside the most serious researchers in this field, not adjacent to them. Biography highlights Former Global Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Google Former Chief Diversity Officer / Global Head of DEI at Pfizer, Sanofi and Bristol-Myers Squibb Published contributor at Fast Company, Inc. and Diversity Magazine Member, Coqual Hidden Brain Drain Task Force Board member, Ten By Three MSc Human Resource Management and Master’s Certificate in Organizational Change Management, The New School; BA Psychology, Rutgers; GPHR certified Biography The DEI conversation has fractured. Court rulings, shareholder activism and political pressure have made the language toxic in some markets, while the underlying organisational questions, who gets hired, who gets promoted, who feels they belong, are now more commercially material than they have been in a decade. Wema Hoover spent the last fifteen years running that practice inside large, regulated, global employers. As Global Head of DEI at Google, and in equivalent senior roles at Pfizer, Sanofi and Bristol-Myers Squibb, she designed and operated inclusion programmes in the kinds of environments where the work has to clear legal, board, regulator and workforce scrutiny. That operator background is what makes her useful now. She is not arguing for DEI as a value; she is showing leadership teams how to keep the operating substance, hiring discipline, manager capability, advancement pipelines, belonging metrics, without the rhetorical scaffolding that has become a liability. Her Fast Company writing and her “Beyond the DEI Backlash” work track the same argument in public. She holds an MSc in Human Resource Management and a Master’s-level Certificate in Organizational Change Management from The New School, a BA in Psychology from Rutgers, and a Global Professional in Human Resources certification. She sits on Coqual’s Hidden Brain Drain Task Force, the working group most senior corporate DEI heads consult on talent equity research. Key speaking topics Inclusion strategy after the DEI backlash Belonging and culture inside global, regulated employers Women’s advancement, sponsorship and the leadership double standard Manager capability for inclusive teams Cross-cultural leadership in multinational workforces Executive coaching for senior leaders navigating cultural change Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers managing inclusion programmes through political and legal headwinds Boards and ExCos that need to reset their position on DEI without abandoning the substance Global employers with regulated workforces (pharma, tech, financial services) where inclusion is tied to talent risk Senior leadership development programmes for newly promoted women and underrepresented executives Audience outcomes A clear read on what has changed in the DEI landscape, in the US and globally, and what that means for their own programme design A working distinction between inclusion as compliance theatre and inclusion as operating capability Practical decisions on which existing initiatives to keep, which to retire and which to rename Confidence in how to brief their board on DEI in the current environment without overpromising or retreating A sharper view of where sponsorship and advocacy, not training, actually move the dial on women’s advancement

Why organisations work with Onyeka Nubia Brings primary-source historical research to a conversation that has become dominated by opinion and ideology, giving inclusion content intellectual credibility rather than activist framing. Has spent a decade rewriting how British history teaches diversity, with seminars in roughly half of UK universities that teach history, so the methodology travels into corporate contexts with academic weight. Author of Blackamoores and England’s Other Countrymen, the two reference works most cited in debates on Black presence in pre-modern Britain. Reframes a contested topic on factual ground. Equally comfortable at the Houses of Parliament, the National Portrait Gallery and on BBC and Channel 4 history programming, which means the register adjusts to the room without losing substance. Useful precisely because he does not sound like a DEI consultant. The frame is historical, cultural and intellectual, which is the register many boards now prefer. Biography highlights Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Nottingham Fellow of the Royal Historical Society Advance HE National Teaching Fellow, recognised for embedding diversity in university history curricula Author of Blackamoores: Africans in Tudor England (2013) and England’s Other Countrymen: Black Tudor Society (2019) PhD by publication, University of East Anglia Keynote presenter at the Houses of Parliament, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland Television contributor for BBC’s Digging for Britain and History Cold Case, Channel 5’s Walking Victorian Britain, and Channel 4’s London’s Lost Graveyard and The Queens Who Changed the World Over fifty articles in History Today, BBC History Magazine, European History Quarterly and the Times Literary Supplement Biography For most of the last decade, the inclusion conversation inside large organisations has been carried by HR language and political framing. That register is now strained. Boards want substance, not slogans, and the people leading inclusion work need a deeper well to draw from. Onyeka Nubia offers that well. As Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nottingham and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, his research has rewritten what is known about Black presence in pre-modern Britain. Blackamoores and England’s Other Countrymen are now standard references on Tudor diversity, drawn from parish registers, court records and primary archives rather than secondary commentary. The Advance HE National Teaching Fellowship recognises a parallel achievement: a body of curriculum work, delivered in roughly half of the UK universities that teach history, that has changed how the subject is taught. The methodology, evidence first, identity later, is exactly what corporate audiences are reaching for as the DEI conversation moves out of advocacy and into substance. His broadcasting work, from Digging for Britain to The Queens Who Changed the World, sharpens the public-facing register. The audience he is most useful to is a senior leadership team that wants to keep talking about inclusion seriously, without the language that has stopped working. Key speaking topics Black British history and the Tudor period Cultural intelligence and national identity Diversity, equity and inclusion grounded in historical evidence Decolonising knowledge and curriculum Race, otherness and the British imagination Renaissance and pre-modern multiculturalism Storytelling and historical method Ideal for CHROs and heads of inclusion looking to reset the intellectual frame for their DEI work Boards and executive teams under pressure on the politics of inclusion who want substance over signalling Cultural and educational institutions reviewing how they curate history, identity and audience Leadership development programmes that want a serious treatment of cultural intelligence Audience outcomes A historically grounded language for diversity and identity that holds up to scrutiny A clearer view of how British national identity has been constructed, and what that means for inclusion now Confidence to lead inclusion conversations on evidence rather than ideology Exposure to the primary sources that reshape commonly held assumptions about race in British history A sharper sense of how curriculum and culture change actually happens inside institutions

Why organisations work with Rachel DeAlto She brings a working framework for relatability that translates a soft concept into specific leader behaviours, sourced from her own research and applied across Fortune 500, government and nonprofit settings. Her dual training in law and psychology gives her credibility with both legal-minded executives and people-function leaders, two audiences that often talk past each other on culture work. As Chief Connection Officer at Match Group, she works inside a business whose product is human connection at scale, which gives her examples that land with commercial audiences rather than HR-only ones. She holds the Certified Speaking Professional designation and has worked across more than 200 national media platforms, so the delivery is polished without sliding into performance. The work is built for multigenerational teams specifically, which is where most leadership programmes fail in practice. Biography highlights Chief Connection Officer at Match Group, parent company of Match.com, Tinder and Hinge. Author of The Relatable Leader and relatable, both published by Simon & Schuster. TEDx speaker; Being Authentic in a Filtered World featured on TED.com. Television expert on Lifetime’s Married at First Sight and TLC’s Kate+Date. Certified Speaking Professional, National Speakers Association. JD, Seton Hall University; MA in Psychology, Arizona State University; BA in Communications, Syracuse University. Biography Most organisational culture problems present as engagement problems first. People stop volunteering ideas, hand-offs get sloppy, turnover ticks up in the wrong roles. The diagnosis is usually slower than the decline. Rachel DeAlto’s argument is that what looks like disengagement is often a relational deficit at the leader level, and that the deficit is fixable with specific skills rather than slogans. Her two books, relatable and The Relatable Leader, both published by Simon & Schuster, build the case. The first sets out how people connect with each other under conditions of distraction, filtering and fatigue. The second turns the argument toward leadership and the practical question of how a senior manager builds trust quickly across a workforce that spans five generations and several working modes. DeAlto’s background is unusual for the topic. She trained as an attorney at Seton Hall, holds a master’s in psychology from Arizona State, and now serves as Chief Connection Officer at Match Group, where connection is the commercial product. That combination shapes the work. She speaks the language of executives, draws on psychological research rather than anecdote, and tests her frameworks against a business whose users vote on connection every day. The audience is corporate, but the substance is granular. Whitepapers on the multigenerational workforce, signature programmes on customer experience and sales relatability, and a Certified Speaking Professional designation that signals a craft-level investment in delivery. The closing claim is not that culture is everything. It is that culture is built from countable leader behaviours, and those behaviours can be taught. Key speaking topics Relatability and human connection Leadership and team performance Multigenerational workforce dynamics Communication and emotional intelligence Customer experience and relatable sales Organisational culture and engagement Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers building engagement and retention strategy Senior leaders managing newly hybrid or distributed teams Sales and customer experience leaders rebuilding trust in long-cycle buyer relationships Leadership development teams designing programmes for multigenerational workforces Audience outcomes A vocabulary and a framework for relatability that turns a soft concept into observable leader behaviours A clearer view of where engagement breaks down inside multigenerational teams and what to do about it Specific tactics for building trust at speed in hybrid and high-turnover environments A shift in how senior leaders think about communication, from broadcast to connection

Why organisations work with Furkan Karayel She speaks to engineering leaders as a former engineer. Ten years across multinational tech firms in Ireland gave her a working vocabulary for the room. Inclusive Intelligence, her book, gives line managers a behavioural framework rather than a values statement. It is the artefact she leaves with leadership teams. She lectures on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Master’s programme at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology. The academic grounding sits alongside the practitioner experience. She has been recognised by named bodies including the WomenTech Global Awards and the International Diversity Leadership Awards, and sits on the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director, Diversein.com Author, Inclusive Intelligence: How to be a Role Model for Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace Associate lecturer, EDI Master’s programme, Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology Board member, Women For Election Ireland Speaker of the Year, WomenTech Global Awards Member, Harvard Business Review Advisory Council Biography Most inclusion programmes inside technology companies are designed by people who have never written production code. That gap shows up in the language, the metrics and the interventions. Furkan Karayel started her career as a software systems test engineer in Athlone, then spent a decade across multinational tech firms in Ireland in DevOps, automation, integration and support roles. She founded Diversein.com when she realised that, in her words, the action piece behind the diversity vocabulary was missing. The work that followed is documented in Inclusive Intelligence, a book written for line managers rather than chief people officers. It treats inclusion as a leadership behaviour, observable and learnable, not a values position. The framework has carried into her teaching on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Master’s programme at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, where she lectures alongside her commercial work. Her credentials sit across academic, commercial and civic categories. She holds a seat on the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, serves on the board of Women For Election Ireland, and was named in the EUClid Network’s Top 100 Women in Social Enterprise. Named awards include Speaker of the Year at the WomenTech Global Awards and the Diversity and Inclusion Role Model in Business honour from the International Diversity Leadership Awards. For technology businesses that have already invested in DEI and want a more useful conversation than the one they have been having, Karayel offers a practitioner’s argument rooted in the realities of engineering culture. Key speaking topics Inclusive leadership in technology organisations Women in tech retention and progression Cultural intelligence across multilingual teams Bias-free decision-making for line managers Authentic leadership development Female founder and entrepreneur enablement Ideal for Engineering and product leadership teams inside multinational tech businesses CHROs and heads of DEI under pressure to convert programme spend into behavioural outcomes Women-in-tech networks and ERGs seeking content with technical credibility Conferences serving founders, female entrepreneurs and STEM professionals Audience outcomes A behavioural definition of inclusion managers can apply on Monday Specific practices for reducing bias inside engineering and product decisions A clearer view of why technical women leave, and what changes the equation Language for inclusive leadership grounded in lived practitioner experience