Available to book
Johanne Penney
Build inclusive, accountable cultures with Johanne Penney, speaker and DEI strategist. Johanne works with executive teams to drive systemic change, delivering award-winning expertise for organisations like Spotify, Barclays, and the NHS.
Johanne Penney is a globally recognised inclusion strategist and the founder and CEO of Amp Up Your Voice Ltd, helping executive teams embed inclusion into business strategy.
A former law graduate whose career was derailed by racial discrimination, Johanne rebuilt her path around one mantra: Think Big. She now advises leaders across corporate, public, charitable, and creative sectors, and is the author of the eBook The Roadmap to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. She also sits on the board of Bold Waters, a social impact movement that uses open water to build confidence and expand access to swimming for under-represented communities.
Her consultancy works with executive leadership teams and boards to move inclusion beyond performative gestures and into measurable business strategy, covering succession planning, sponsorship pipelines, psychological safety, cultural competency, and systemic culture change. Clients and collaborators include Spotify, Barclays, BAE Systems, Trainline, Innocent Drinks, and the NHS, spanning corporate, public, and charitable sectors.
Through keynotes and leadership development programmes, Johanne gives audiences a practical grasp of psychological safety as a performance strategy, equity-led succession planning, and sustainable leadership that guards against burnout. She is known for pairing compelling storytelling with strategic clarity, challenging rooms with warmth and authority.
Book Johanne to help your leadership team turn inclusion commitments into lasting, accountable cultural change.
Topics, sessions and talks
Johanne Penney moves leaders beyond stated commitments to inclusion and into accountable, everyday practice. She sets out how to lead diverse teams with clarity and confidence, using practical tools that embed inclusion into decision-making, culture, and strategy rather than treating it as a single initiative. The session challenges traditional leadership norms directly, leaving attendees with a working framework for translating good intention into consistent, measurable action across every level of their organisation.
In this honest, direct session, Johanne Penney draws on her own experience navigating power dynamics as a woman of colour to help women step fully into leadership. She blends personal story with practical insight on building confidence, visibility, and influence in spaces not originally built with them in mind. Attendees leave with concrete techniques for owning their voice and asserting themselves in rooms where they have previously held back.
Johanne Penney explores how identity, power, and voice intersect, and what that means for people navigating organisations that were not designed around them. She gives audiences language and tools for advocating for themselves and others with confidence, without losing sight of who they are in the process. The session equips attendees to move through systems with intention and clarity, turning awareness of identity and power into practical, everyday self-advocacy at every level of the organisation.
Many organisations understand inclusion in theory but struggle to live it day to day. Johanne Penney addresses that gap directly, equipping leaders with the self-awareness and practical behaviours needed to move from performative gestures to meaningful, measurable change. She is candid about where good intentions typically break down, giving audiences the courage and accountability structures required to close the distance between an organisation's stated values and its actual, everyday practice.
Testimonials
Featured Projects
often considered together
Andrew Adeniyi
Workplace Wellbeing
Diversity and Inclusion
Unconscious Bias
Shola Mos-Shogbamimu
Diversity and Inclusion
Gender Equality
Social Justice
Shola Kaye
Empathy
Effective Leadership
Communication
frequently asked questions
Something we've not covered here?
Johanne Penney pairs personal narrative — drawn from her own experience navigating racial discrimination and power dynamics — with a structured framework that gives audiences transferable tools for embedding inclusion into decision-making, leadership practice, and self-advocacy.
Johanne Penney speaks on inclusive leadership, women's leadership and self-advocacy, and cultural humility and identity in organisations. She is the founder and CEO of Amp Up Your Voice Ltd, named Best Inclusion and Empowerment Consultancy Firm 2025 by SME News, with clients including Spotify, Barclays, BAE Systems, and the NHS.
No, PepTalk doesn't charge a booking fee. You pay the speaker's fee plus any travel and expenses, which PepTalk confirms upfront in your quote. The shortlist, contracting and event-day logistics are included. For repeat or multi-event bookings, PepTalk can agree preferential rates with your procurement team.
PepTalk sends a shortlist of matched speakers within 24 hours, each with a profile, a fee and a recommendation on the strongest fit. The more you share about your date, audience, format, objectives and budget, the closer the match. Once you choose, PepTalk handles the contract, travel and logistics through to event day.
The typical fee range on a PepTalk speaker profile is a guide to what that speaker usually costs for an in-person event in their home market, shown in their local currency. The final fee depends on format, location, date and session length. Virtual and shorter sessions usually cost less, and international travel and peak dates cost more. PepTalk confirms the exact fee in your currency once it has your brief.
No. PepTalk represents 15,000+ speakers, hosts, comedians and entertainers, some booked directly and others through their agents and agencies worldwide. The process is the same for all of them: PepTalk checks availability, negotiates the fee and manages the contract and logistics.
Book a speaker three to six months before your event. Allow 12 months for large conferences, peak-season dates or a specific in-demand name. PepTalk also fills last-minute and replacement bookings, often within days, so get in touch as soon as you have a date, even at short notice.
Get the right person
Tell us what you’re working on and we’ll match you with the talent your audience won’t stop talking about.
