Speakers

Joanne is a Global Inclusion Delivery Manager for HSBC. She cares for four members of her family in addition to having her own disability. Jo is an advocate for people with disabilities as well as those who have caring responsibilities. She was included in the Shaw Trust Power 100 list in 2022 and recently attended a reception at Windsor Castle recognising her role as a carer as well as the work she does supporting carers in the workplace.

Mark has decades of experience connecting business communities to accelerate change.

Mark founded Sircula Ltd to enable B2B communities to connect, learn and grow. In June 2018 Mark launched d&i Leaders to bring together global diversity, inclusion and HR related professionals. Since then, Mark and the team have established an annual programme of strategic in-person and online summits and conferences,

Ana is the Deputy Group Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Manager at IKEA, based in Sweden. With a career in Human Resources spanning over 15 years, Ana brings deep experience in people leadership, business transformation, and embedding equality, diversity and inclusion as a strategic business priority across global organizations.

Ana joined IKEA over a decade ago,

Iulia (she/her) is the Global Accessibility Partner at Sanofi, based in The Netherlands. In her role she drives the integration of accessibility into digital products, physical environments, and workplace culture. Iulia sets and operationalizes Sanofi’s global standards creating accountability across teams to make inclusion a practical reality. She positions accessibility strategically as a lever for better products,

I am lead KPMG’s Digital Accessibility team, working to ensure our firm and the technology we create is accessible to everyone – including our colleagues and clients with disabilities, neurodiverse conditions, and long-term health conditions.

I’m also passionate about creating opportunities for young people with special education needs, to give them the successful careers they deserve.

Shani is a global authority in inclusion and accessibility, shaping the future of brands, media, and customer experiences with real, measurable impact.

Recognised as the UK’s most influential disabled person and a BBC 100 Women Laureate, trusted by over 350 businesses and brands to seamlessly integrate accessibility into their strategies. Her expertise has driven groundbreaking initiatives.

Katherine is an international HR and talent executive with more than 15 years’ experience designing leadership and workforce strategies for global organisations operating across the UK, EMEA, APAC and the United States.

She has held senior leadership roles within major global organisations including London Stock Exchange Group, AXIS Capital and Liberty Global. Her work focuses on enterprise talent strategy,

Rachel is the Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Manager, where she provides the strategic direction for DE&I initiatives for the 188 countries where Nestlé operates.

She joined the global HR team from the UK and Ireland market where she was the head of communications as well as the co-chair of the market disability employee network.

Carys was an audience insights intern with Channel 4, from October 2025 to July 2026. She was granted this opportunity through the Thomas Pocklington Trust’s get set progress scheme. She completed and supported her team with a varied number of tasks and projects, helping the team to deliver insights and reports more accessibly, assisting with governance and documentation,

Emily is the Senior Inclusion and Wellbeing Manager at TUI. She believes inclusion is built through small, everyday actions and that nothing should be designed for people without being co-created with them. Her approach draws on lived experience of disability, a Churchill Fellowship on inclusive wellbeing for disabled people (2023) and her role as a Trustee for Mana,

Vishal Kumar is a Global Enablement and DEI Advisor at Shell, leading disability inclusion globally. He brings over 14 years of experience in HR across the energy and manufacturing sectors. His work spans large-scale change and engagement, organisational design, leadership capability, HR technology, and global workforce transformation. For over a decade, Vishal has played a leadership role in the disability inclusion space—working with start-ups,

Taylor is an award winning Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) leader and a proud Black woman committed to advancing equity and belonging in the workplace. She has extensive experience designing and delivering global DEI strategies for complex, multinational organisations across the full employee lifecycle, including recruitment, retention, progression and culture. Alongside this, Taylor has voluntarily led employee network growth initiatives that amplify underrepresented voices and build community,

Ed Mitchell is the co-chair of the able2 network, BT’s people network for Disabilities, Neurodiversities, impairments and long-term conditions. along with Lachlan Shanks. Ed has been passionate about inclusion since joining the workforce after being diagnosed with Autism at 7 years old. Ed first grew the network with Mary-Fryer Stevens from 2020 to 2021, following the loss of a close personal colleague which inspired him to take up the role of network co-chair.

Ashleigh is Director, Neuroinclusive Workplaces at Everway and a passionate advocate for creating workplaces where neurodivergent people can thrive.

As a dyslexic leader with an international career spanning LinkedIn and Everway, Ashleigh combines lived experience with practical insight to help organisations better understand the hidden cost of masking and the impact of accessible,

Kate is an author, founder of PurpleSpace, storyteller and optimist.

PurpleSpace is the world’s only global network of disability employee resource group leaders: a community of 4,000+ leaders across 175+ employer brands that collectively employ 1.5 million employees with disability.

In 2014 she published Secrets & Big News: the research was the first to examine the ‘disclosure’ or ‘declaration’ of disability at work.

Charlie is currently an Internship Coordinator at the Thomas Pocklington Trust (TPT), a national sight loss charity. He supports the development and implementation of the highly successful Get Set Progress internship programme, bringing together employers and talented visually impaired job seekers to deliver meaningful work placements. Charlie has been visually impaired since birth and has himself taken part in the internship programme that he now delivers.

Darren is a Senior Director of Digital Accessibility at Eli Lilly and Company. Leading an enterprise strategy and global team to embed accessibility best practices throughout Lilly’s digital environment. Darren has been driving disability inclusion at Lilly for over ten years, starting with co-founding the EnAble Employee Resource Group in 2015 and establishing Access Lilly in 2020,

Mark is a Manager in the Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (IDE) team at KPMG in the UK. He works collaboratively across the organisation to ensure that IDE is embedded throughout all policies, processes and systems that impact the employee life cycle. Mark has worked in the team for 9 years and has led on firm-wide initiatives and projects including thought leadership,

Joanne is Head of Global Inclusion, Wellbeing & Culture at TUI Group, leading work that strengthens belonging, psychological safety and sustainable performance across diverse global teams. With a career spanning generalist HR, talent, development and culture, Joanne focuses on embedding inclusion into everyday ways of working rather than standalone initiatives. With a passion for practical,

Jamie is currently Head of Talent and Learning at Channel 4 Television. His main interest is in helping individuals grow and develop in organisations. He has previously held similar roles in the BBC and other media organisations. As an HR consultant he worked in the public and private sectors in this country and internationally for organisations such as DHL,