Topic - Diversity & Inclusion

DEI Keynote Speakers

47 keynote speakers, curated by Speaker Ideas
World-Class Diversity & Inclusion Speakers

Meet our Curated Diversity & Inclusion Speakers

Bring a diversity, equity and inclusion speaker to your event. Tell us your goals and budget. We will shortlist the right speakers, confirm availability and handle logistics.

Leymah Gbowee

Women's leadership, collective action and participation across divided communities, from a Nobel Peace laureate who organised women across religious lines to help end a civil war.

President Mary Robinson

Former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, covering human rights, public institutions and the legal and policy frameworks that protect participation and equality.

Dame Kelly Holmes

Double Olympic champion who has spoken publicly about sexuality, identity and mental health, examining lived experience of identity, disclosure and mental wellbeing.

Julia Hobsbawm OBE

A workplace futurist, corporate consultant, and author, analysing how hybrid employment patterns, technological overloads, and shifting generational behaviours rewrite the rules of modern workplace culture and strategic employee wellbeing.

Lisa Bodell

An innovation consultant, author, and futures researcher, analysing how corporate simplification, workplace agility, and the elimination of institutional bureaucracy foster cognitive diversity, unlock latent employee creativity, and drive inclusive enterprise problem-solving.

Erica Dhawan

Inclusion through communication, collaboration and the small behavioural signals that affect whether people feel included in hybrid work, informed by writing on collaboration across generational, cultural and physical distance.

Solitaire Townsend

A sustainability entrepreneur, author, and UN taskforce advisor, analysing how social justice, class diversity, and neurodivergent leadership frameworks intersect with corporate climate strategies to help global enterprises drive inclusive and equitable environmental change.

Cathy O’Dowd

First woman to summit Everest from both sides, bringing first-hand experience of entering and succeeding in an environment historically dominated by men.

Bruce Daisley

A workplace culture consultant, podcaster, and former tech firm vice president, analysing how organisations cultivate deep psychological safety, eliminate toxic workplace behaviours, and implement inclusive management frameworks to support diverse, high-performing corporate teams.

Izzy Wheels – Ailbhe and Izzy Keane

Sisters who built a design business around making wheelchairs something to be seen in, examining design, visibility, personal expression and the way assistive products are perceived.

Aimee Mullins

Paralympic sprinter turned actor and advocate, examining disability, identity, design and the way people understand ability.

Marie Gleeson

Draws on her experience as one of the first female officers in the Irish Naval Service, where she broke new ground in a male-dominated field and later commanded a naval vessel. Her perspective connects gender representation with leadership, resilience and organisational culture.

Matthew Syed

Cognitive diversity, decision-making and organisational performance, from a writer whose work on cognitive diversity argues that homogeneous expert teams can fail in predictable ways.

Lecyca Curiel

Generational differences, representation and the expectations younger people bring to organisations, drawing on research on Gen Z attitudes and expectations.

Dr Dawn-joy Leong

Autistic artist and researcher working on neurodiversity and sensory environments, combining lived experience with academic work to examine neurodiversity, sensory environments and how different people experience spaces and systems.

Jahkini Bisselink

Speaks on next-generation leadership and what younger people expect from institutions, bringing a younger-generation perspective to representation, leadership and institutional expectations.

Dr Elke Geraerts

Doctor of psychology and Better Minds at Work founder Elke Geraerts brings a behavioural science perspective to inclusion through her work on psychological safety. She explores how leaders can create workplace cultures where people feel able to speak up, contribute ideas and work effectively across differences.

Ian Robertson

Clinical psychologist and neuroscientist Professor Ian Robertson explores how power, confidence and gender shape behaviour in the workplace. His research brings a psychological perspective to conversations about representation, self-belief and the dynamics that can influence who progresses and succeeds.

Col. Nicole Malachowski

First woman to fly with an elite US Air Force demonstration squadron, bringing first-hand experience of breaking a gender barrier in a highly selective military environment.

Eímear Noone

Conductor and composer who broke a long-standing gender barrier on a major stage, examining representation and first-hand experience of entering a field in which women have historically been underrepresented.

Sacha Dekker

A corporate learning executive, disability advocate, and columnist, analysing how enterprises dismantle systemic ableism, re-engineer recruitment equity, and implement modern accessibility frameworks to optimise talent development for neurodivergent and disabled professionals.

Silvia Garcia

A corporate culture consultant, behavioural psychology researcher, and former Coca-Cola Company global director, analysing how positive leadership frameworks, neural collaboration patterns, and psychological wellness metrics optimise diverse human talent to drive sustained enterprise performance.

Rhea Mazumdar Singhal

Built India's largest sustainable packaging business, bringing first-hand experience of founding and scaling a manufacturing company as a woman entrepreneur in India.

Claudia Kessler

Representation, gender barriers and creating pathways for women in aerospace, informed by an aerospace engineer who founded an initiative to put the first German woman into space.

Kian Gohar

An artificial intelligence researcher, futurist, and former innovation foundation executive director, analysing how corporate entities re-engineer team structures, manage hybrid workplace friction, and deploy collaborative human-machine models within modern distributed enterprises.

Gen Z Influence with Jahkini and Hajar

Paired presentation on generational change and youth representation, combining two perspectives on how younger people view leadership, institutions and representation.

Jamil Qureshi

A performance psychologist, author, and elite executive coach, analysing unconscious bias patterns, cognitive diversity, and behavioural science to help corporate leaders dismantle mental silos, optimise collective intelligence, and foster inclusive workplace mindsets.

Deborah Berebichez

Gender barriers in science, education and technical careers through first-hand experience, from a physicist and data scientist who was told repeatedly that women did not do physics.

Geoff McDonald

Mental health stigma, disclosure and the organisational conditions that affect whether people seek support, informed by a former global HR director who campaigns on mental health at work.

Sinéad Hewson

A change consultant, author, and management lecturer, analysing how gender equity, intercultural competence, and strategic group dynamics intersect to help international enterprises build inclusive workforce frameworks and high-performing corporate cultures.

Rachele Focardi

Generational diversity, differences in workplace expectations and the challenges of managing teams that span age groups, informed by a specialist in multigenerational workforces.

Jade Simmons

Concert pianist and speaker working in a field with limited representation, examining representation in classical music and first-hand experience of building a career in that environment.

Brian Farley

A world-championship sports coach, author, and corporate sales director, analysing how elite athletic frameworks translate to help corporate leaders bridge cultural differences, eliminate ego, and cultivate inclusive team environments built on psychological safety.

Friederike Fabritius

Neurodiversity, cognitive differences and workplace conditions that enable different people to perform, from a neuroscientist working on how differently-wired brains perform in the same environment.

Lynda Gratton

A management practice professor, author, and workplace futurist, analysing how changing global demographics, extended life expectancies, and flexible career structures reshape intergenerational equity, age inclusion, and talent development within modern corporate environments.

Caroline Casey

Disability inclusion in business and the organisational barriers that affect participation and accessibility, drawing on experience founding a global coalition of businesses committed to disability inclusion after discovering her own sight condition at seventeen.

Brenda Romero

Game designer with decades of experience in a male-dominated industry, bringing first-hand experience of building a career as a woman in games and technology.

Gillian Tett

An institutional anthropologist, author, and Cambridge college provost, analysing how cognitive diversity, cross-cultural empathy, and structural communication frameworks eliminate corporate silos, dismantle workplace groupthink, and optimise inclusive enterprise decision-making.

Martha Lane Fox

Representation in technology leadership, boardrooms and public decision-making, informed by experience co-founding a major e-commerce business and has since worked on boards and digital public services.

René Carayol

Inclusion through leadership behaviour, culture and how senior leaders shape the way people are treated inside organisations, informed by an executive coach and former board member who works on inclusive leadership.

Monte Königs

A sociologist, organisational consultant, and future trends researcher, analysing how changing generational values, digital disruptions, and corporate ethics frameworks intersect to help corporate leadership teams design highly collaborative, inclusive, and trust-centred workplace environments.

Mark Pollock

Disability, lived experience and advocacy around research and participation, informed by a blind and paralysed athlete who campaigns and raises funds for spinal cord research.

Jeff Furman

Foundation president at a company that built social justice into its commercial model, focusing on corporate activism, social justice and the way values are embedded into company governance and public positions.

Eleni Gabre-Madhin

Economic access, market participation and the systems that enable smaller producers to reach buyers, drawing on experience founding a commodity exchange that connected millions of smallholder farmers to markets.

Shanthi Flynn

The broader people remit, including workforce leadership and organisational responsibilities around employees, from a career chief HR officer across retail and staffing businesses in Asia and Europe.

Dr. Ayesha Khanna

Works on AI and smart cities, and has built initiatives to bring more women into technology across Asia, examining women's participation in technology and the pipeline into technical careers.

Dee Caffari MBE

Sailor who has circumnavigated the globe repeatedly and skippered mixed crews in a male-dominated sport, bringing first-hand experience of leadership and participation as a woman in elite sailing.

KEYNOTE THEMES

Key Topics Covered by Diversity & Inclusion Speakers

The speakers on this page bring experience across disability, neurodiversity, cognitive diversity, gender, generational diversity, human rights, mental health and inclusive workplace culture. The brief should be specific about the part of inclusion the event needs to address.

  • Disability and accessibility
  • Neurodiversity
  • Cognitive diversity
  • Gender and women's leadership
  • Generational diversity
  • Human rights and equality
  • Mental health and stigma
  • Inclusive workplace culture

Lived experience, research, leadership or policy?

Different events may call for a speaker with lived experience, an organisational or research background, experience leading inclusion initiatives, or a policy and human-rights perspective. Being clear about the audience and purpose helps avoid treating diversity and inclusion as a single interchangeable category.

Frequently Asked Questions

A diversity and inclusion keynote can explore inclusive leadership, belonging, workplace culture, bias, accessibility, disability, neurodiversity, gender, race, cultural difference and other aspects of inclusion. The brief should identify which areas are relevant rather than expecting one speaker to cover the entire field.
Speakers may come from leadership, research, psychology, HR, advocacy, organisational change, accessibility, inclusion strategy or direct professional and lived experience related to a particular area. The most appropriate fit depends on whether the event needs a broad organisational perspective or deeper expertise in one dimension of inclusion.
For leaders, a diversity and inclusion keynote can place more emphasis on decision-making, culture, accountability and inclusive leadership. For a wider employee audience, the focus may shift towards awareness, behaviour, belonging and everyday workplace experience. The speaker should be briefed on the audience and purpose of the event.
A specialist is usually the better fit when the event is centred on a particular subject such as disability, neurodiversity, gender or cultural inclusion. A broader diversity and inclusion speaker may be more appropriate when the audience needs to explore how several dimensions of inclusion connect within leadership and workplace culture.

Ready to shortlist?

Tell us about your event. We’ll come back with three to five Diversity & Inclusion speakers matched to your audience, format and event goals.
Call us, e-mail us or use the form below for a free (non-binding) consultation and we will respond within one working day.