Inclusive Leadership

Why organisations work with Myrto Legaki She translates clinical mindfulness research, trained at the University of Massachusetts and Brown University programmes, into language and practice that corporate leaders accept and apply She speaks to senior audiences as a former MBA-trained consultant who spent 15 years in marketing and consulting roles across New York, London and Athens, not as an external wellness coach Her programmes have been deployed inside Microsoft, Google, GlaxoSmithKline, Nestlé, Roche, Novartis, AbbVie, Bayer and Coca-Cola HBC, giving her a working view of what corporate wellbeing actually requires at scale She treats psychological safety as a leadership behaviour problem, with specific practices, rather than a culture-survey output Biography highlights Founder and director, One Breath Mindfulness Center, Athens Certified MBSR instructor, trained at the University of Massachusetts (OASIS Mindfulness Center) and the Brown University Mindfulness Center Trained directly by Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli, the clinical founders of the MBSR field TEDx speaker, TEDxUniversityofMacedonia, on the role of silence and mindfulness in leadership MBA, Boston University; BSc Corporate Finance, University of Piraeus Member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council Implemented leadership and wellbeing programmes inside Microsoft, Google, GlaxoSmithKline, Nestlé, Roche, Novartis, AbbVie, Bayer, MSD, Philip Morris and Coca-Cola HBC Biography Most corporate wellbeing programmes do not change leadership behaviour. They sit alongside it. Yoga sessions, app subscriptions and resilience workshops run in parallel with the same executive operating norms that produce the stress in the first place. The gap between wellbeing spend and wellbeing outcome is, in practice, a gap in what leaders model and reward. Myrto Legaki works in that gap. After 15 years in management consulting and marketing across New York, London and Athens, including senior roles at multinationals, she trained as a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction instructor at the University of Massachusetts and the Brown University Mindfulness Center, under Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli. She founded One Breath Mindfulness Center in Athens to bring that clinical training into corporate leadership programmes. Her work integrates neuroscience, applied psychology and contemplative practice into formats senior leaders accept: programmes on self-leadership, psychological safety, stress regulation, communication under pressure and team culture. Inside organisations such as Microsoft, Google, GlaxoSmithKline, Nestlé, Roche, AbbVie and Bayer, she has worked with leaders and teams on the specific behaviours that determine whether a culture supports performance or quietly erodes it. She is a TEDx speaker, a member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, and holds an MBA from Boston University and a finance degree from the University of Piraeus. The combination matters: corporate audiences engage with her because she has held the operating roles they hold now, and applies clinical wellbeing science with the precision a senior buyer expects. Key speaking topics Mental health in the workplace Psychological safety and trust Self-leadership and executive composure Resilience and stress regulation Mindful leadership Inclusive leadership and unconscious bias Women’s leadership Ideal for CHROs and heads of people designing leadership and wellbeing programmes with measurable behavioural outcomes C-suite and senior leadership teams under sustained delivery pressure Heads of culture, DEI and learning embedding psychological safety into management practice Audience outcomes A clear distinction between wellbeing as a perk and wellbeing as a leadership operating capability Specific, evidence-based practices for stress regulation and composure under pressure A working vocabulary for psychological safety that connects daily leadership behaviour to mental health outcomes Confidence to address mental health and burnout in their organisation without defaulting to programme-speak

Why organisations work with Stef Sword-Williams She gives quiet, high-performing employees a working method for being seen, which directly affects retention and promotion equity rather than abstract confidence. Her material is built from eight years inside advertising, so self-promotion is taught as a brand and storytelling discipline, not a motivational frame. F*ck Being Humble has trained workforces at Apple, Google, Unilever, Nike, Adidas, Microsoft, the BBC, NatWest, L’Oreal, Aviva, and Amazon, giving her a wide read on where internal visibility fails. The book F*ck Being Humble: Why Self-Promotion Isn’t a Dirty Word has sold over 10,000 copies and gives her a defined point of view that audiences can follow into workshops and team practice. Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, useful as signal for senior buyers screening a younger speaker against a leadership-level audience. Biography highlights Founder of F*ck Being Humble, a global training consultancy working with Apple, Google, Unilever, Nike, Adidas, Microsoft, the BBC, NatWest, L’Oreal, Aviva, and Amazon. Author of F*ck Being Humble: Why Self-Promotion Isn’t a Dirty Word, published by Quadrille and reported to have sold over 10,000 copies. TEDx speaker, with a talk titled “F*ck being humble!” delivered at TEDxAreni. Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe honouree. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), recognising the social impact of her work. Featured in Vogue, BBC World News, the Financial Times, and The Times, and a regular speaker at industry events including Advertising Week. Biography The people who get promoted are not always the people doing the best work. Inside large organisations, visibility shapes who progresses and who plateaus, and most employees have never been taught how to make their contribution legible to the people deciding their next role. Stef Sword-Williams spent close to eight years in advertising telling stories for global brands before noticing how rarely the same craft was applied to individual careers. She founded F*ck Being Humble in 2018 to close that gap, and in 2020 published the book of the same name with Quadrille, setting out a method for self-promotion that treats it as professional skill rather than personality trait. The work has scaled into a training practice used by Apple, Google, Unilever, Nike, Adidas, Microsoft, the BBC, NatWest, L’Oreal, Aviva, and Amazon. She has been recognised as a Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe honouree and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, with media coverage across Vogue, BBC World News, the Financial Times, and The Times. Her TEDxAreni talk, “F*ck being humble!”, is the short form of the same argument. Organisations that want to keep their best people, close promotion gaps, and grow a stronger internal pipeline cannot rely on quiet competence to surface itself. Sword-Williams gives them a vocabulary and a practice for fixing that. Key speaking topics Self-promotion as a workplace skill Personal branding inside organisations Imposter syndrome and confidence at work Pitching, presenting, and making ideas heard Negotiation and asking for more Networking and internal visibility Feedback culture Storytelling for individuals in a brand-driven world Ideal for CHROs, CPOs, and L&D leaders working on retention, promotion equity, and internal mobility. DEI and ERG leads designing programming for women, early-career talent, and underrepresented groups in promotion pipelines. Heads of Talent and managers running high-potential and emerging-leader cohorts. Conference programmers building tracks on workplace confidence, personal brand, or future skills. Audience outcomes A practical method for talking about their own work without sounding self-serving or scripted. A clear view of where internal visibility breaks down and which behaviours close that gap. Language for handling feedback, negotiation, and self-advocacy conversations with managers. Permission and pattern for ambitious self-presentation in cultures that default to humility. Tools managers can use to surface quieter talent and rebalance who gets seen.

Why organisations work with Nayla Al Khaja She is the first woman to direct a feature film in the UAE, which means her observations on inclusion in restrictive professional cultures come from lived practice, not commentary. She built and runs her own production company, Nayla Al Khaja Films, and founded The Scene Club, the UAE’s first independent film club, giving her a track record of standing up creative institutions where none existed. Her debut feature Three premiered at the Red Sea International Film Festival and released theatrically across the GCC and MENA, evidence of commercial credibility alongside cultural pioneering. Variety named her one of the 50 Most Powerful Personalities in Arab Cinema, a useful external marker for buyers who want a credentialled voice on the Gulf creative economy. She works in Arabic and English at native level, which makes her usable for regional events in the UAE and Saudi Arabia as well as international audiences. Biography highlights First female film director in the United Arab Emirates and CEO of Nayla Al Khaja Films since 2005. BA in film studies, Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University), Canada, on a UAE government scholarship. Founder of The Scene Club, the UAE’s first independent film club, established 2007. Director of Three (2024), her debut feature, which premiered at the Red Sea International Film Festival and released theatrically across the GCC and MENA. Director of BAAB, scored by two-time Academy Award winner A.R. Rahman, with cinematography by Rogier Stoffers ASC. Named to Variety’s 50 Most Powerful Personalities in Arab Cinema (2020); Visionary of the Year, Arabian Business Awards (2011); TEDx speaker on women in Arab cinema. Biography The UAE had no female film director before Nayla Al Khaja. She became the first, then built the production company, the film club and the audience that the country needed for a domestic film industry to be possible at all. That is the work she draws on when she speaks. Al Khaja studied mass communication at Dubai Women’s College, then took a UAE government scholarship to Ryerson University in Toronto for a degree in film studies. She returned and founded what is now Nayla Al Khaja Films in 2005, and in 2007 opened The Scene Club, the country’s first independent film society. Both still operate. Her debut feature Three premiered at the Red Sea International Film Festival in December 2023 and released across the GCC and wider MENA region in early 2024. Her second feature, BAAB, was scored by A.R. Rahman and shot by Rogier Stoffers ASC, two collaborators with serious international standing. Variety placed her in its 50 Most Powerful Personalities in Arab Cinema. For corporate audiences, her usefulness is direct. She is asked how a woman builds a career inside an industry that has no women in it, how a creative business gets capitalised in a market that does not yet exist, and how cultural representation actually shifts when someone takes the job rather than waits for the policy. Her answers come from doing it. Key speaking topics Women in male-dominated industries Creative entrepreneurship in the Gulf Cultural representation in film and media Building a career under restrictive cultural conditions The UAE and Saudi creative economy Storytelling and brand communication Resilience and the long arc of a creative career Ideal for Conferences on women in leadership and inclusion, particularly in the GCC and Levant Corporate diversity, talent and ERG events for organisations operating across the Middle East Creative industry summits, brand and marketing leadership audiences Regional government, tourism and cultural authority programmes on the Gulf creative economy Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how women break through in industries where there is no precedent for them. A clearer view of how the Gulf creative economy actually functions, from someone who built inside it. Specific stories about getting a feature film made in a market that did not previously support one. Practical observations on cultural representation that are usable for brand, marketing and communications teams. A keynote presence that audiences in the region recognise and respond to.

Why organisations work with Rikki Arundel A category-defining UK voice on trans and non-binary inclusion at work, with the rare combination of an MSc in Gender Research from the University of Hull and twenty years of lived experience as an openly trans speaker. Inaugural recipient of The Speaker Awards Lifetime Achievement Award (2024) and a PSAE Speaker Hall of Fame inductee, signals that this is a senior practitioner, not a first-person-story booking. Founder and first president of the UK and Ireland Professional Speaking Association, which means a level of platform craft that allows hard subject matter to land with executive audiences without defensiveness. Practical content for managers and ERG sponsors: what to say when someone comes out, how policy holds up under challenge, and where unconscious bias actually shows up in promotion and customer-facing decisions. A track record across police forces, NHS trusts, financial services and government, including Sussex and Surrey Police, University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust, Fidelity International and the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Biography highlights Founder and first president, Professional Speaking Association (UK and Ireland). MSc in Gender Research, University of Hull. PSAE Speaker Hall of Fame, Professional Speaking Association. Inaugural Speaker Awards Lifetime Achievement Award, 2024. Named one of 50 LGBT Icons in the 2017 UK Pride 50th anniversary list. TEDx speaker, including “Why is Gender Identity so Important?” at TEDxFidelityInternational. Biography Most organisations have a trans inclusion policy. Far fewer have managers who know what to do when an employee comes out at work, when a customer files a complaint about pronouns, or when a journalist asks how the company will hold its position. Rikki Arundel’s work sits in that gap between policy language and operational practice. The credibility for that work is unusually layered. Rikki founded the Professional Speaking Association in the UK and Ireland and served as its first president, then publicly transitioned in 2002 and rebuilt a speaking career around gender and inclusion. An MSc in Gender Research from the University of Hull underpins the content, and a PSAE Speaker Hall of Fame induction reflects the platform craft. The substance is practical. Rikki separates sex from gender for non-specialist audiences, walks managers through the moments where inclusion is actually tested, and addresses how policy holds up when challenged externally. The aim is behavioural change inside teams, not awareness for its own sake. Recognition has tracked the work. The Speaker Awards named Rikki the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award recipient in 2024, and Rikki was listed among 50 LGBT Icons during the 2017 UK Pride 50th anniversary. Clients include Sussex and Surrey Police, University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust, Fidelity International, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, and Atalian Servest UK and Ireland. Key speaking topics Trans and non-binary inclusion in the workplace Sex, gender and social identity LGBTQ discrimination and harassment Unconscious bias in recruitment and promotion Inclusive leadership for managers ERG enablement for Pride and LGBT History Month Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads designing inclusion programmes that need to survive external scrutiny. ERG and Pride network sponsors planning LGBT History Month, Pride and Trans Day of Visibility events that have to do more than mark a date. Line managers and people partners in regulated sectors, including policing, healthcare, financial services and government. Boards and executive teams seeking a credible briefing on trans inclusion before a public position is required. Audience outcomes A working separation of sex, gender identity and gender expression that managers can use in real conversations. Specific scripts and behaviours for the moment a colleague comes out as trans or non-binary at work. A clearer view of where unconscious bias actually shows up in hiring, promotion and customer-facing decisions. A framework for ERG leaders to plan inclusion content that is substantive rather than performative.

Why organisations work with Lorraine Hariton Six years leading Catalyst, the global nonprofit whose research and benchmarks Fortune 500 boards already use to evaluate their own progress on women’s advancement. Operating background that buyers in male-dominated executive teams take seriously: 15 years at IBM, CEO of two Silicon Valley start-ups, Obama-appointed State Department official. Specific authority on the measurement question. Catalyst’s frameworks on emotional tax, empathic leadership, and inclusion assessment were developed and scaled during her tenure. Credible on the intersection of bias and emerging technology, including how gender and racial bias enter AI systems through data and design choices. Biography highlights President and CEO of Catalyst from 2018 to 2024. Special Representative for Commercial and Business Affairs at the US State Department under President Obama. CEO of two venture-backed Silicon Valley companies, Beatnik and Apptera. Senior Vice President of Global Partnerships, New York Academy of Sciences; co-founder of the Global STEM Alliance and the 1000 Girls, 1000 Futures programme. Inaugural Women’s Leadership Champion Award, University of Virginia Darden School of Business, 2022. Crain’s New York Business Women of Influence, 2023. BS Stanford University, MBA Harvard Business School. Biography Catalyst is the research organisation whose data Fortune 500 boards quote back to themselves when they discuss the women-in-leadership gap. For six years that organisation was run by Lorraine Hariton, an operator with credentials those same boards understand: fifteen years at IBM, two CEO roles at venture-backed Silicon Valley companies, an Obama-administration appointment representing US commercial interests at the State Department. That mix matters because the audience for serious DEI work has shifted. Senior teams now want practitioners who can speak the language of operating performance and capital discipline, not advocacy. At Catalyst, Hariton oversaw the development of frameworks used inside member companies on emotional tax, empathic leadership, and inclusion measurement, the kind of artefacts that survive contact with a sceptical executive committee. Her work addresses the credibility gap between public DEI commitments and observable workplace outcomes. She speaks directly to the failure mode senior leaders fear most, performative policy that produces no change and erodes employee trust. She also works on how gender and racial bias enter AI systems through training data, an issue most executive teams are still under-prepared for. The University of Virginia Darden School of Business presented her with its inaugural Women’s Leadership Champion Award in 2022. Crain’s named her to its Women of Influence list the following year. Her holistic view of where women’s advancement sits within an organisation, alongside compensation strategy, capital allocation, and technology governance, is what makes her useful in a boardroom rather than at a conference panel. Key speaking topics Gender equity and women’s advancement in senior leadership Inclusion measurement and DEI accountability Bias in artificial intelligence and emerging technology Workplace culture transformation Future of work and flexible workplace design Empathic and inclusive leadership practice Ideal for CHROs, Chief Diversity Officers, and CEO offices commissioning a measurable advancement strategy for women in senior leadership Boards and nominating committees evaluating their own pipeline credibility Senior leadership teams in male-dominated industries (financial services, technology, energy, industrials) working on inclusion outcomes that hold up to scrutiny Companies building governance around bias and fairness in AI deployment Audience outcomes A clearer picture of what credible DEI measurement looks like, drawn from Catalyst’s published frameworks A sharper grasp of where bias enters AI systems and what executive teams should be asking about it Direct exposure to a practitioner who has worked with the leadership teams of many of the world’s largest employers on this agenda A more confident vocabulary for senior leaders, particularly men in executive roles, to engage with women’s advancement as a business strategy issue rather than a compliance one

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 Paula Stone Williams A first-person comparative account of professional life as a senior man and a senior woman, drawing on lived experience that almost no other speaker can offer at the executive level. A memoir published by Simon & Schuster (As a Woman, 2021), four TED talks with combined viewership over nine million, and sustained coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR and CNN. Substantive content on the mechanics of allyship for male leaders, framed as a practical capability rather than a values statement. A speaker who can address gender equity and LGBTQ+ inclusion in the same keynote without flattening either, useful to organisations where these conversations are usually held in separate rooms. Biography highlights Author of As a Woman: What I Learned About Power, Sex, and the Patriarchy After I Transitioned (Simon & Schuster, 2021), optioned by Cannonball Productions for a limited series. Co-author of She’s My Dad with her son Jonathan Williams. TED, TEDWomen, TEDSummit and TEDxMileHigh speaker; four talks with combined viewership over nine million. Featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, ABC Primetime News, Good Morning America, People Magazine and Red Table Talk. Pastor of preaching and worship at Left Hand Church, Longmont, Colorado. Pastoral counselor with RLT Pathways; doctorate in counseling. Biography Most workplace gender equity programmes are designed by people who have only ever held authority inside one set of expectations. Paula Stone Williams has held senior roles as both a man and a woman, and her keynote work is built on the comparative material that produced. The argument is empirical rather than rhetorical: the same person, the same competence, two markedly different professional experiences. Her memoir As a Woman: What I Learned About Power, Sex, and the Patriarchy After I Transitioned was published by Simon & Schuster in 2021 and has been optioned by Cannonball Productions. Her TED, TEDWomen, TEDSummit and TEDxMileHigh talks have together passed nine million views. The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, Good Morning America and People Magazine have covered her work. Alongside the keynote practice she is a pastoral counselor with RLT Pathways and pastor of preaching and worship at Left Hand Church in Longmont, Colorado. The counseling background shapes how she handles the room, which matters in this subject area; audiences leave with material they can act on rather than only feelings they have processed. The most useful thing she gives a corporate audience is a precise account of how allyship behaves in practice. Male leaders who want to support women and LGBTQ+ colleagues are often unsure what the substantive ask actually is. Williams names it directly, with examples, and treats it as a capability that can be learned. Key speaking topics Workplace gender equity LGBTQ+ inclusion in corporate environments Allyship as a practical capability for senior leaders Authority, voice and credibility across gender Storytelling and narrative communication Resilience through identity and career change Bridging cultural and religious divides Ideal for CHROs and DEI leads designing substantive inclusion work after initial awareness programmes. Senior leadership offsites where male executives are the intended audience for an allyship conversation. Women’s leadership networks and ERGs commissioning an external voice on workplace parity. Universities, professional services firms and faith-adjacent institutions navigating LGBTQ+ inclusion under public scrutiny. Audience outcomes A first-person frame of reference for how authority is extended differently to men and women in the same senior role. A concrete vocabulary for what allyship looks like inside a meeting, a hiring decision and a promotion conversation. A view of LGBTQ+ inclusion grounded in lived experience rather than abstract policy language. Material that male leaders, in particular, can repeat back to their teams without feeling they are reciting a script.

Why organisations work with Anna Baréz-Brown A track record at scale: the Shine programme has reached thousands of women across four continents and more than 75 nationalities, with named corporate clients including WPP, Channel 4, TikTok, Rothschild & Co, and Google. Her work is built around retention and progression metrics, not engagement scores. Clients commission her when the gender balance of their senior roster needs to change, not when they need an inspirational keynote. She frames inclusion as a commercial discipline. Her core argument, that diversity fails in most companies because it sits with people who lack decision rights and budget, lands credibly with COOs and CEOs as well as CHROs. A corporate operator before a coach: a former European Sales Director responsible for 12 countries and 85 employees, with credentials as a CTI Leadership Coach, NLP Master Practitioner, and qualified Organisational Relationship Systems Coach. She talks to men as well as women. The programme deliberately addresses allyship, micro-aggressions, and the part male leaders play in changing the system, which makes her workable for organisations nervous about polarised DEI framing. Biography highlights Co-founder of Shine (now We Are Shine), launched 2013 with Caroline Whaley. Former European Sales Director with responsibility for 12 countries and 85 employees. Earlier roles at Axel Springer Verlag and Bertelsmann. Programme has worked with thousands of women across more than 75 nationalities and four continents. Named clients include WPP, Rothschild & Co, TikTok, Channel 4, Google, Channel 4, ITV, and EasyJet. Credentialled as a CTI Leadership Coach, Neuro-Linguistic Master Practitioner, and qualified Organisational Relationship Systems Coach. Biography Most diversity work fails on the same fault line. Programmes sit inside HR, measured by sign-up rates and sentiment, while the senior roster keeps reproducing itself. Promotion patterns do not move. Mid-career women leave. The gap between stated values and lived experience widens. Shine, the organisation Anna Baréz-Brown co-founded with Caroline Whaley in 2013, was built to attack that fault line directly. The programme is delivered into companies including WPP, Channel 4, TikTok, Rothschild & Co, and Google, and is measured against retention, promotion, and the gender balance of senior teams. It has worked with thousands of women across more than 75 nationalities and four continents. The credibility behind that work is corporate, not activist. Before launching Shine, Baréz-Brown ran a sales business as European Director with twelve countries and eighty-five staff reporting in, after earlier roles at Axel Springer Verlag and Bertelsmann. She is a CTI Leadership Coach, an NLP Master Practitioner, and a qualified Organisational Relationship Systems Coach. Her argument to senior teams is commercial. Diversity stalls because the responsibility is delegated downward, the investment is underestimated, and the conversation polarises before any system actually changes. Her work treats inclusion as a leadership discipline that involves men and women, allies and sceptics, and the operating decisions of the business itself. Key speaking topics Gender balance in senior leadership Inclusive leadership and allyship Building corporate leadership pipelines Coaching cultures and feedback Personal energy and performance at work Influence, impact, and executive presence Courageous conversations and managing micro-aggressions Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers, and Heads of D&I designing senior pipeline programmes. CEOs and ExCo sponsors who want gender balance treated as a commercial outcome, not a comms initiative. Leadership development teams running cohort programmes for high-potential women and their managers. Male executives and line managers being asked to act as allies and sponsors in practice. Audience outcomes A clearer view of why most diversity programmes do not move the senior roster, and what does. Language and tools for courageous conversations across difference, including on micro-aggressions. Specific practices for women navigating senior career transitions: stakeholder management, brand, energy, narrative. A framing of inclusion that male leaders can act on, not just endorse. A diagnostic for where their own organisation’s pipeline is leaking and who needs to own the fix.

Why organisations work with Emma Ross She brings the operating knowledge of the person who ran physiology for Team GB across Olympic and Paralympic cycles, applied directly to corporate workforces rather than borrowed as metaphor. She co-founded The Well HQ, the consultancy that has delivered women’s health programmes inside Sport England, England Netball, the Lawn Tennis Association, Vitality, News UK and Barclays; her frameworks are already in production in serious organisations. The Female Body Bible gave her a mainstream platform and a Sunday Times bestseller, which means her language is already familiar to employees and journalists before she walks into the room. She closes the knowing-doing gap leaders struggle with most: turning evidence on menstrual health, menopause, pelvic health and breast health into specific policy, benefits and manager scripts. Her authority is independent and scientific. The Cardiff Metropolitan honorary doctorate and her Fellowship of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Science signal that the content is peer-respected, not opinion. Biography highlights Head of Physiology, English Institute of Sport, 2013 to 2021, across Rio and Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic cycles. Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, The Well HQ. Co-author, The Female Body Bible, Sunday Times bestseller, 2023. Changemaker, The Sunday Times Sportswomen of the Year Awards, 2021. Honorary Doctorate, Cardiff Metropolitan University, 2025. Honorary Research Fellow, University of Brighton; Honorary Lecturer, University of Kent; Fellow of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Science. Biography Women make up roughly half of most workforces and a larger share of many consumer markets. Until recently, almost no corporate policy, product design or leadership development programme was built on evidence about how female bodies actually work. Emma Ross is one of the people rewriting that. As Head of Physiology at the English Institute of Sport from 2013, she supported Team GB athletes and coaches across the Rio and Tokyo cycles. Inside that system she saw how much of the playbook for elite performance had been written for men, and what happened when women were given training, recovery, nutrition and medical support designed around their physiology instead. In 2021 she co-founded The Well HQ with Baz Moffat and Dr Bella Smith. The consultancy has built education and policy programmes for Sport England, England Netball, the Lawn Tennis Association and the Open University, and has moved into corporate workforces with Vitality, News UK and Barclays. The Female Body Bible, co-authored in 2023, landed as an instant Sunday Times bestseller and took the argument into the mainstream. Her credibility is underwritten by a PhD from Brunel, more than thirty peer-reviewed publications, a Fellowship of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Science, and an Honorary Doctorate from Cardiff Metropolitan University awarded in 2025. The practical value for a boardroom is simpler: she can tell a CHRO, in specific terms, what to change on Monday about benefits, line-manager training, menopause policy, return-to-work protocols and the data the organisation is not yet collecting. Key speaking topics Women’s health in the workplace Female physiology and high performance Menstrual health, menopause and pelvic health at work Policy and manager capability for women’s health Culture change in male-default organisations Lessons from elite sport for corporate performance systems Evidence-based wellbeing for women Ideal for CHROs, Chief People Officers and Heads of Reward designing benefits, menopause and family-health policy. DEI and ERG leads moving from awareness events to operational change. Executive teams in organisations with large female workforces or female consumer bases. Leadership programmes for senior women and their managers. Audience outcomes A clear read on where your current policies and manager behaviours fail women, and what to change first. Specific, evidence-based actions on menstrual health, menopause, pelvic and breast health that can be taken into HR and benefits. Language that line managers and male leaders can use without fear of saying the wrong thing. A framework for translating women’s health from a wellbeing initiative into an organisational performance lever. Confidence that the content is backed by elite sport science and peer-reviewed evidence, not opinion.

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 Stef Reid A medal record, not a metaphor: triple Paralympic medallist, 2017 long jump world champion and five-time world record holder, with 18 years of evidence on what holds performance together when conditions change. Sharp specificity on the moment after the plan fails. Her material is built around what teams actually do in the hours and weeks after a setback, not the rhetoric of bouncing back. A working argument on inclusion that does not collapse into compliance language. Reid speaks about disability and difference as performance variables, drawing on her TEDxLondonWomen talk on accessible design and her public campaign that pushed Nike on single-shoe retail for amputee customers. Boardroom credibility built outside the speaking circuit: Vice President of British Athletics, broadcaster for Channel 4 and the BBC, MBE for services to Paralympic sport. Clients including BP, Sky, Bloomberg, Visa, McLaren, Barclays and Procter & Gamble, where the brief was leadership under pressure, not an inspirational set piece. Biography highlights Triple Paralympic medallist (Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio 2016) and 2017 World Para Athletics long jump champion. MBE, 2018 New Year Honours, for services to Paralympic sport. Biochemistry graduate, Queen’s University, Kingston, on a full academic scholarship. Vice President of British Athletics and The Leprosy Mission UK; ambassador for London Air Ambulance and British Ice Skating. Broadcaster across Channel 4, BBC and CBC, including the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, the Invictus Games and the 2025 World Athletics Championships; Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Sports Host. TEDxLondonWomen speaker on accessible design; first British amputee to walk a London Fashion Week catwalk. Biography A boating accident at fifteen ended one version of Reid’s life and made the next one a question of design rather than recovery. The medical answer was amputation. The harder question, asked over the eighteen years that followed, was how to build a system, training, mindset, team, that turned a body operating under new constraints into one capable of winning at the highest level of world sport. She did. Three Paralympic medals across Beijing, London and Rio. A world long jump title in 2017. Five world records. An MBE in 2018 for services to Paralympic sport. The proof points sit on a single shelf, but the content she now brings to senior audiences sits underneath them, in the specific habits and decisions that allowed an athlete to keep performing through injury, classification changes and the routine collapse of plans. That material translates because organisations face the same problem in a different vocabulary. Reid works with leadership teams on the practical question of what high-performing groups actually do in the moment a strategy stops describing reality. Her talks for BP, Sky, Bloomberg, Visa, McLaren, Barclays and Procter & Gamble take the same arc, with frameworks built from elite sport science and her own career, not from generic motivational structure. The second strand of her work is inclusion as a performance question. Her TEDxLondonWomen talk argued that accessible design serves everyone, not a category. Her public campaign pressing Nike to sell single shoes to amputee customers made the same point in retail terms. As a broadcaster for Channel 4, the BBC and CBC, and as Vice President of British Athletics, she carries that argument into rooms where DEI language has otherwise lost its edge. Key speaking topics Adaptive mindset and team performance under pressure Resilience and recovery after setback High performance habits in elite sport and business Inclusion and disability as performance variables Mental health and sustained excellence Diversity as a competitive lever, not a compliance line Ideal for Senior leadership teams entering restructure, integration or a period of sustained pressure DEI, talent and culture leads briefing the board on inclusion as capability rather than reporting High-performing commercial, sales and trading teams operating under volatility Sales kick-offs, leadership offsites and all-hands moments where the audience needs a credible voice on adapting when the plan stops working Audience outcomes A clearer view of what a team’s actual response to setback says about its performance ceiling Practical habits drawn from elite-sport preparation that translate to operating decisions under pressure A sharper, less political vocabulary for inclusion that frames difference as a performance variable Renewed conviction at senior level that adaptive capacity is a leadership skill, not a personality trait

Why organisations work with Elliot Barnes-Worrell A first-hand account of how inclusion plays out inside institutions known for being difficult to enter: the RSC, the National Theatre, the Almeida, and the BBC. Academic standing alongside the performance career. Guest lecturer at Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Brown and Howard, with a published interest in race and representation in Shakespeare. A writer-director’s view of how creative cultures actually commission and back new voices, drawn from his own films The Works (BBC) and DIGGING (Film4). Range across keynote, masterclass and panel formats, with a tone that works for senior corporate audiences and for early-career and graduate populations inside the same organisation. Biography highlights Royal Shakespeare Company company member, 2013 to 2014, with roles in Henry IV, Richard II and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Horatio in Hamlet at the Almeida Theatre; Henry Straker in Man and Superman at the National Theatre. Screen credits include ITV’s Jericho and Van der Valk, Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle, Dolittle, and Black Mirror: Hotel Reverie. Writer and director of The Works (BBC, 2016) with Ralph Fiennes, and DIGGING for Film4, premiered at the London Film Festival. Guest lecturer at Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Brown and Howard universities. Alan Bates Award (Actors Centre); Sir John Gielgud Award (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama). Biography Most institutional inclusion work fails on the same question. Once a new voice is in the room, does the institution actually let it shape the work, or does it ask the voice to fit in quietly? Barnes-Worrell has spent his career inside the institutions where that question is hardest to dodge: the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, the Almeida and the BBC. He trained at the BRIT School and at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where he graduated with the Sir John Gielgud Award, and went on to win the Alan Bates Award at the Actors Centre. As an actor his stage work includes Horatio in Hamlet at the Almeida and Henry Straker in Man and Superman at the National Theatre, alongside an RSC company year covering Henry IV, Richard II and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. On screen he has appeared in ITV’s Jericho and Van der Valk, in Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle, in Dolittle, and in Black Mirror: Hotel Reverie. In 2016 he moved into writing and directing with The Works for the BBC, featuring Ralph Fiennes, and later wrote and directed DIGGING for Film4, which premiered at the London Film Festival. That second body of work gives him a working view of how creative organisations decide which voices to back, and on what terms. He also lectures inside the universities most associated with the canon he interrogates: Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Brown and Howard, with a particular line of work on race and representation in Shakespeare. For corporate audiences, that combination of practitioner credibility and academic standing lets him discuss inclusion as a question of craft and culture, not slogans, in front of senior leaders who have become wary of both. Key speaking topics Inclusion as a cultural and creative discipline Race and representation in Shakespeare Storytelling and business communication Confidence and composure in high-scrutiny settings Talent development and emerging voices Mental health and wellbeing for performers and creative teams Ideal for Chief People Officers and Heads of DEI rebuilding inclusion programmes after a period of fatigue or political pressure Early-careers, graduate and apprenticeship leads designing development programmes for new entrants Internal communications and leadership development teams using storytelling as a working skill Universities, business schools and arts institutions running cross-disciplinary events on culture and representation Audience outcomes A clearer view of where institutional inclusion efforts stall, drawn from someone who has worked inside the institutions most cited as case studies. Specific language for talking about race and representation without resorting to either compliance script or political signalling. A practitioner’s account of how creative confidence is built, tested and sustained under public scrutiny. A storytelling vocabulary that internal communicators and leaders can use in their own work.