Catherine Garrod

Catherine Garrod is a workplace culture and inclusion specialist who empowers organisations to create environments where people thrive by being themselves. As founder of Compelling Culture and author of *Conscious Inclusion*, she led Sky to become the UK's Most Inclusive Employer, with 80% of teams increasing their diversity within two years. Catherine equips leaders and teams with practical, everyday decision-making tools that embed sustainable culture change without relying on top-down initiatives. Her clients achieve measurable results, including 15% improvement within 18 months, whilst employees gain the clarity and confidence to make inclusion a natural part of how they work.

When Catherine Garrod founded Compelling Culture in 2020, she did so with a clear mission: to help organisations step up and create workplaces where people are proud of what they believe in and inspired to evolve the culture around them. Her approach is rooted in a powerful principle she lives by: unless you're consciously including people, you're almost certainly unconsciously excluding them. As author of *Conscious Inclusion: How to 'do' EDI One Decision at a Time*, published in April 2023, Catherine champions a practical, decision-led model that moves beyond top-down change initiatives. Instead, she advocates for combining skill and will to guide people in their everyday thinking, embedding inclusion into the fabric of how organisations operate rather than treating it as a separate programme.

Catherine's credibility stems from her proven track record in transforming workplace culture at scale. She previously led Sky to become the Most Inclusive Employer in the UK, achieving an 80% increase in team diversity within two years of launching the inclusion vision. Now, as a consultant working across media, financial services, healthcare, and the public and third sectors, she combines employee engagement, communications, and diversity expertise to make the complex simple. Her inclusion diagnostic tool delivers measurable impact, with clients achieving 15% improvement within 18 months. Catherine collaborates with executive teams, business areas, and HR functions, drawing on her insider understanding of how organisations operate and what genuinely works when embedding sustainable change. Her approach addresses root causes, creates roadmaps with clear KPIs, and embeds change into policy, process, and systems through behaviour nudges that make conscious inclusion second nature.

Catherine empowers audiences to see inclusion not as an abstract ideal but as a series of everyday decisions within their control. She equips leaders and teams with practical frameworks they can implement today, tomorrow, and the day after, transforming how they think and act without waiting for permission or large-scale initiatives. Her straight-talking, energetic style resonates with people already passionate about their work, giving them the clarity and confidence to influence culture from where they stand. Audiences leave her sessions with tangible actions that improve team dynamics, creativity, problem-solving, and employee engagement. When people can be themselves and influence how things are done, their lives improve, their organisations thrive, and the communities they serve benefit. Catherine's work proves that conscious inclusion isn't just the right thing to do; it's the smart thing to do, delivering measurable results that strengthen every aspect of organisational performance.