Anj Handa

Who’s Missing, and What It Costs

When women, and particularly women whose identities compound that exclusion, are consistently absent from leadership, it is not only a fairness failure. It is a design failure. This keynote makes the structural case for women’s representation from the impact outward: what happens to decision-making quality, risk assessment, organisational culture and long-term resilience when the people closest to the issues are furthest from the decisions. Honest about the barriers. Clear about what better looks like. Designed to leave audiences with a compelling picture of what becomes possible, not just what is currently missing.

Suitable for: corporate leadership events, board development, professional networks, funder convenings

The Labyrinth, Not the Ceiling

The glass ceiling is the wrong metaphor, and it has been pointing organisations in the wrong direction for decades. The barriers women navigate are not one dramatic obstacle at the top. They are a complex, intersecting set of structural and cultural conditions that operate at every level, and they affect different women differently depending on race, disability, age and other factors. This keynote names those conditions clearly, examines what organisations are inadvertently building in, and shows what a better-designed route looks like. Grounded in Anj’s own experience of navigating institutions as a British Indian woman in governance, and in two decades of practice helping organisations see what they have designed without noticing.

Suitable for: women’s leadership conferences, L&D programmes, corporate and civil society audiences

Collective Power: How Changemakers Move the World

Rooted in the founding story of IWC and two decades of watching what happens when people bring their skills, networks and courage together in service of a shared purpose. This talk is about the practical and political power of collective action: how to build coalitions across difference, how to use narrative to shift power, and why the most important thing any changemaker can do is stop working alone. Story-rich, energising and designed to leave people with a clearer sense of their own capacity to contribute, and of the community of people doing this work alongside them.

Suitable for: civil society conferences, women’s networks, staff development, changemaker and advocacy audiences

Leading Through Backlash: Staying Brave, Strategic and Well

For leaders and changemakers navigating a political and cultural moment in which progressive values are being actively contested. Draws on Anj’s own experience of leading high-profile campaigns under pressure, and on two decades of observing what sustains movements and what burns them out. Practical, honest and grounded in what people are actually facing right now. This is not a talk about resilience as self-management. It is a talk about strategy, community and the long game. The tone is not defiant. It is steady, clear and full of hope for what sustained collective effort can achieve.

Suitable for: leadership conferences, civil society organisations, professional networks, EDI practitioners

Conference Hosting

Anj is an experienced conference host and moderator with a track record of holding complex, multi-perspective conversations with clarity and purpose. She is particularly sought for events where the subject matter requires a facilitator who can navigate difficult dynamics with both warmth and rigour.

Previous conferences include Disorienting Race by Carnegie School of Education, annual conferences of grantmaker Rosa Fund and domestic abuse charity IDAS, and leadership events across the corporate and civil society sectors.