Available to book
Johanne Penney
Diversity and Inclusion
Leadership Development
Team Building
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.
Inclusion
Business Consulting
Business Leader
Inspirational Female
Black History Month
International Women's Day
Women's History Month
Coach
Female Empowerment
Mindset
Personal Development
Author
Founder
CEO
Female CEO
Executive
Thought Leader
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.
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frequently asked questions
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Email johanne.penney@getapeptalk.com or call PepTalk on +44 20 3835 2929 (UK) or +1 737 888 5112 (US), and one of our speaker agents will contact you within hours to confirm Johanne's availability and fees. If you can, please include your budget upfront – it helps us fast-track your request. It’s also helpful to know the date, format (virtual or in-person), location, and a bit about your audience.
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 adds no booking fee, so you pay the speaker's fee and nothing beyond it. The service, from shortlist through to contracts and event-day logistics, is included. For repeat or multi-event bookings, PepTalk can agree preferential rates with your procurement team.
Share your event date, audience, format, objectives and budget, and PepTalk sends a hand-picked shortlist within 24 hours. Each suggestion comes with a profile, a fee and a recommendation on the strongest fit. Once you choose, PepTalk handles contracts, travel and logistics through to event day.
The typical fee range is the speaker's standard in-person fee in their home market, shown in their local currency. It moves with format, location, date and session length: virtual sessions and shorter slots usually cost less, while international travel and peak dates cost more. Send your brief to PepTalk and the team will confirm the exact fee in your currency.
Not all of them, and it makes no difference to your booking. PepTalk's network of 15,000+ speakers covers talent the team works with directly alongside speakers represented by agents and agencies worldwide. PepTalk approaches the speaker, negotiates the fee and handles contracting either way.
Three to six months ahead is comfortable for most events, and 12 months is better for large conferences, peak-season dates or one specific in-demand speaker. Shorter timelines are workable, and PepTalk regularly fills last-minute and replacement bookings within days. Availability is the constraint, so get in touch as soon as you have a date.
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