HIRE a speaker for your Black Inclusion Week Event
We have pulled together an incredible list of speakers from the UK and beyond, who will enhance your event with thought-provoking presentations and key notes. The speakers on our list will bring your event to life and will offer insights and practical action advice on a wide-range of topics related to Black Inclusion. Topics range from Ethnicity pay gap to allyship to setting a diversity strategy.
Booking a speaker is as easy as 1, 2, 3
Please note:
We are happy to connect wonderful speakers with organisations who are committed to inclusion. All conversations and fee negotiations are to be conducted directly between the organisations and the speakers. We do not vet the speakers or indeed the organisations.
Meet the Speakers
Find a speaker for your event here
Abigail Agyei
Abigail Agyei is an award winning dynamic and experienced policy and strategy advisor. With over seven years’ experience in building and maintaining strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders and community groups, leading community projects with vast experience supporting voluntary and under-served groups.
Abigail is the winner of last year’s Civil Service Rising Star Award for her dedication to public service making significant impact to communities and being instrumental in leading on race in the Civil Service and enabling uncomfortable conversations with senior leaders and amplify the voices of people of colour in the department in order to create inclusive, safe and accountable culture. She is incredibly passionate about intersectional identities and how their lived experiences are shaped in the world. Abigail was named as one of this year's 'Top 50 Influential Neurodivergent Women' and has been awarded MBE by Her Majesty The Queen in this year’s 2022 New Year British Honours for Public and Community Services.
Abigail is open to speaking on the following topics: Leading and having impact at any level, early careers, diversity & inclusion, why intersectionality matters, black women and neurodiversity, discovering your authentic self, connecting to your mission and fostering and developing staff networks.
Aggie Mutuma
CEO, Diversity and Inclusion expert, executive coach, speaker
Aggie Mutuma is the CEO and lead consulting director of Mahogany Inclusion Partners. She is a passionate, award winning Inclusion and Anti-Racism expert, People Leader and Executive Coach with a track record of supporting organisations as they build cultures where everyone can thrive.
She works with Exco leaders and their teams to deliver DEI and Anti-Racism strategies. Cross industry organisations she has supported include global FTSE100 organisations, consultancy firms, retailers, third sector and public sector organisations.
She is a trusted advisor for the CIPD and an engaging speaker, for many leading organisations, most recently for the CBI, and the CIPD Annual Conference 2020.
Aggie’s experience of HR leadership in large and small organisations, her experience as an executive coach, her expertise in diversity and inclusion and her warm, empathetic and engaging style all combine to make Aggie an excellent speaker and panellist.
Audry Bron
Audry Bron DEI & Global Communication Expert at Bontekoning & Bron
At the age of 5, Audry Bron and her family migrated from their birth country Suriname to the Netherlands as political asylum seekers. Audry was raised bi-cultural and multilingual which has been the foundation of her lived experience in Diversity and Inclusion. She is engaged in supporting organizations in using diversity to move towards inclusion and belonging. Audry Bron approaches her goal through an intercultural lens and 'communicating inclusively'. After all, everything within a culture is intertwined with communication. From there, a key question is how you can communicate with each other in such a way that everyone – with respect for eachothers’ cultural background (religion, ethnicity, gender, etc.) and personality – is involved. Audry’s mission is to reduce the crippling long-term effects of (un)conscious (in)sensitivity to differences and similarities of cultural identity and to promote positive transformation that contributes to improving the well-being and performance of individuals and organizations.
Audry Bron lives in the Netherlands and is available on international level for virtual events. She delivers presentations in English on the following Diversity and Inclusion topics:
-Inclusive Communication
-Allyship
-Psychological Safety
-Social Mobility
Audrey Pantelis
AUDREY PANTELIS Director of Elevation Coaching and Consulting
Audrey’s career in education as teacher, middle leader, senior leader and head of school in both mainstream and special educational needs spans over thirty years. She gained her National Professional Qualification in Headship (NPQH) in 2007. She was the founding Head of a free Special school in north-west London where she led the school through its first Ofsted inspection, where it gained a ‘Good with outstanding features’ judgement.
Audrey is a leadership coach and she also works with schools and organisations in developing and implementing positive, systemic changes with regards to racial diversity and inclusive practices. She speaks on the importance of the intersectional challenges with regards to race and gender.
Bernadette Thompson
Bernadette is the Associate Director of Inclusion for NHS Barts Health. Prior to this role, she spent 23 years in the Civil Service where she held a range of operational and HR roles, across many Government departments and agencies, including, Ministry of Justice, Home Office, HM Treasury, Legal Aid Agency, Cabinet Office and Department for Levelling Up.
She is a strategic and progressive HR professional with indepth knowledge, insight and expertise in the Diversity and Inclusion, employee engagement and cultural intelligence.
For 5 years, Bernadette co-chaired a multi-award-winning cross government race network; she is a pivotal influencer and trusted partner to senior leaders across a range of sectors. She has a proven track record of engaging with employees at every level, reaching hearts and minds, supporting people to be the best that they can be.
In the 2021 Queens Birthday Honours list, Bernadette was awarded an OBE for services to Diversity and Inclusion.
Speaking topics – Any aspect of advancing Race Equality and Inclusion or Diversity and Inclusion more broadly
Hakeem S. Allen
Hakeem S. Allen is an Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, & Access (IDEA) architect, as well as the Founder & Executive Director of The Anti-Racist Social Club (‘The Club’), a registered charity startup that works to create spaces and resources for education and open dialogue with White people and non-Black POC about becoming anti-racist allies and creating psychological safety.
As Executive Director of The Club, Hakeem leads interactive workshops geared towards reshaping organisational cultures and equipping senior leadership with IDEA best practice. Anti-racism is inherently intersectional, so The Club helps organisations improve their cultures, and the work they create, to be more diverse in all aspects of identity and ability (e.g. gender, sexuality, neurodiversity, etc.).
Hakeem keeps his audiences engaged by avoiding presentations, using games and discussion-based activities, and keeping content relevant by incorporating mental health, design thinking for innovation, and neurodiversity into workshops. Outside of work, Hakeem is an avid tennis player, creative writer, and stand-up comedian.
Mamta Saha
MamtaSaha has earned her stellar track record as inhouse L&D lead and independent consultant with over 15 years of immersion in multiple global matrix commercially-focused businesses and bespoke consultancies, where she gained her wealth of experience leading cutting-edge learning and development strategy and company-wide implementation. Passionate, committed, professional, with excellent facilitation skills, coaching ability and dynamic bespoke training design in all behavioural areas for all levels of business from board to frontline. Her illustrious list of clients include Tesco, Accenture, KPMG, L’Oreal, Aviva, Sports England, Blackstone, Coca-Cola, Lucozade Ribena Suntory, China Investment Corporation, Logicor, Lloyd’s of London, State Street Bank, VHS Global.
Her Diversity and Inclusion projects have centred on creating a fair and inclusive workplace, including gender, ethnicity and race, nationality, cross culture, age, disabilities, sexual orientation, transgender, religion and belief, and micro inequities. One example of her diversity consultancy work is supporting L’Oreal HQ in Paris to co-design its core company diversity programme and overseeing its rollout across L’Oreal’s Middle East presence. This included train-the-trainer programmes and bespoke interventions from C-suite to frontline employees. This resulted in measurably increased staff morale in terms of perceived fairness of workplace, working relationships strengthened, teams becoming even more multicultural and cohesive, able to work together more effectively, and truly leverage from a place of diversity.
Mamta is a media psychologist and a regular contributor on BBC and Sky News for her psychological opinion and views on gender roles equality, the invisible barriers that stop people from getting ahead, professional development and politics.
Speaker Topics: What Inclusion looks and feels like; psychological impact of a connected team; working consciously across cultures
Margaret Ochieng
Margaret is an organisational psychologist and a practitioner-academic supporting various organisations across various sectors to embed inclusive and anti-racist practices into day-to-day organisational life. As a speaker, her enviable style is popularly described as impactful, authentic and thought-provoking based on her lived experience, behavioural sciences expertise and rootedness in academia.
Her thought-leadership models and evidence-based frameworks are often described as accessible, intellectual and practical in maximising intended progress while minimising bias and resistance to change. Margaret is a member of the British Psychological Society (BPS) and a Fellow at the Royal Society for Arts (FRSA). She is a visiting lecturer at Birkbeck University, London and a PhD candidate exploring in real-time the current developments around anti-racism practice in UK organisations. Margaret is also an advisor for Lloyds Banking Group on engaging with UK Black entrepreneurs.
For this year’s Black Inclusion Week, Margaret is available to speak on topics such as; re-imagining an organisation as an “anti-racist village”; what can we learn from the history of anti-racism in UK organisations to create better progress now? Or staying the course of the anti-racism journey together.
Rejoice Ojiaku
Rejoice is the Co-Founder and Content Lead for B-DigitalUK, as well as an Award-Winning Diversity & Inclusion Advocate. She has also worked in SEO for almost 5 years with a focus around content. She also is a Global Speaker and has spoken at several conferences such as Women In Tech SEO, BrightonSEO, WhiteSpark Local Summit etc. She continues to grow her career by entering new opportunities such as being a judge for Digital Women Awards and The European Search Awards. Additionally, she is also a Twitter Spaces Co-Host for #BlackInTheWorkspace which is a platform to allow the Black demographics to discuss all things employment related in a safe environment.
Speaker Topics: - Diversity, Content (SEO related), Importance of Building a community, navigating agency life with anxiety disorder
Richard Etienne
Former official videographer to British Prime Minister Theresa May, Richard holds senior communications positions within the private and third sectors and has aided the online promotion of global brands in academia, art, and politics for over 17 years.
Currently Director of Internal Communications at Elsevier, a medical data and analytics publisher, Richard also holds trustee positions at Hackney Empire, SarcoidosisUK and is an independent steering group member for the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).
As a personal branding consultant, Richard teaches a Guardian Masterclass series, Self-promotion for introverts and How to succeed as an introvert professional and is also the founder of Black Introvert Week UK. Follow Richard’s brand awareness blog, where you can download free eBooks on introversion empowerment.
Speaks about:
- Self-promotion for introverts
- How to succeed as an introvert professional
- Promoting personality diversity in the workplace
- Effective communication skills for tomorrow’s leaders
Adeife Onwuzulike
Adeife is a business strategist experienced in embedding diversity and inclusion into all parts of an organisation and business strategy. She is experienced in providing both inhouse and external advisory expertise working with not-for-profit and FSTE 350 organisations. She has led culture change programmes, worked with talent teams to attract, retain, and increase diversity representation at all levels of an organisation (particularly on gender and ethnicity). She is experienced in improving ethnic representation in management and senior leaders and creating and developing employee resource groups to ensure they act as strategically in influencing and guiding DEI work. She takes both a data led and human centric approach to driving change and her strategies have led to increased data disclosure on multiple diversity strands. Adeife works with boards and senior leaders to help them in their approach to DEI through workshops and speaking events to ultimately help them on their journey from awareness to advocacy. She also works with them to help them on their inclusive leadership journey and increase their confidence in areas such as race, gender, mental health.
She is a DEI expert with an MSc from King's College London on Human Resource Management and Organisational Analysis and qualified chartered HR specialist.
Adeife can speak on...
The Inclusion journey - From awareness to advocacy,
The role of allyship and privilege,
Ethnicity Pay Gap reporting,
Implementing Internal sponsorship and mentorship programmes to support Ethnic Minorities
Culture Change
Inclusive Recruitment and Leadership
Hannah Awonuga
Hannah Awonuga is the Global Director, Head of Colleague Engagement within the Group DEI function in a global financial services organisation. Hannah has been working in banking since she was 17yrs old, and for the past 11yrs has spent time leading remote teams in the retail bank,
business and corporate bank before transitioning into Diversity and Inclusion. Hannah attributes her
achievements in banking to her humble beginnings, caused to live independently since the age of 15, socioeconomic inclusion is a topic very close and personal to her.
Hannah Awonuga is also a multi-award-winning DEI thought leader and speaker; over the past two years, she won 2021 WeAreTheCity rising star award, was named amongst the 2021/2022 most inspirational D&I (Diversity and Inclusion) professionals by D&I leaders and was listed in the 2021 Top 25 most influential DEI practitioners by HR Magazine.
She has recently been appointed as a non-executive director for the UK government membership body Progress Together which has been set up to increase socioeconomic diversity at senior leadership level across the UK financial services.
Hannah Awonuga has built her professional brand with an extensive LinkedIn network of over 55,000 followers, She is a passionate and knowledgeable speaker and facilitator who is experienced in strategy development, inclusive leadership and keynote addresses, facilitates senior executive safe space conversations and frequently joins international panel discussions with industry leaders.
Habee Hamilton
"Habee is an engaging and pragmatic Diversity and Inclusion Director who combines her varied experience, commercial expertise, and compassionate nature to deliver strategic and transformational diversity & inclusion and racial equity change in organisations of all sizes ranging from FTSE 100 and Global organisations to small local charities.
Habee is particularly passionate about race, gender and disability equity and is keen to advocate how C-suite leaders can foster cultural change that embeds inclusive behaviour into business operations.
Having previously held key roles at an operational and commercial level, Habee has developed a well-rounded overview of business operations which is integral to the work she fulfils today in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) space."
