Helena Morrissey

Dame Helena Morrissey is a transformational leader in finance and diversity who grew Newton Investment Management from £20 billion to over £50 billion during her fifteen-year tenure as CEO and founded the groundbreaking 30% Club, which has doubled female representation on UK company boards and expanded globally across nine countries. Now chair of Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust and the recently rebranded Inclusion in Finance initiative (formerly the Diversity Project), she oversees work that shapes talent pipelines across the investment industry whilst serving as Head of Personal Investing at Legal & General Investment Management. Her sessions equip leaders with actionable frameworks to unlock commercial performance through inclusive cultures, demonstrating how voluntary collaboration drives lasting change and why diverse perspectives strengthen decision making, innovation and results.

When Dame Helena Morrissey took the helm at Newton Investment Management in 2001, the firm managed £20 billion in assets. Over the following fifteen years, she grew that figure to more than £50 billion, establishing herself as one of the most influential leaders in global finance. Her success in investment management, however, represents only part of her impact. In 2010, she founded the 30% Club, a groundbreaking initiative built on the principle that men and women working together could achieve better gender balance on UK company boards without legislation or quotas. That approach has since been adopted across the United States, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, South Africa, Australia, Canada, Malaysia and the Gulf Cooperation Countries, and the proportion of female directors on UK listed company boards has more than doubled.

Dame Helena now serves as Head of Personal Investing at Legal & General Investment Management, overseeing £894 billion in assets, and chairs Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, one of the UK's largest and most prominent investment trusts. She leads Inclusion in Finance, the initiative she founded in 2016 as the Diversity Project and recently rebranded to reflect its expanding mission to create a new generation of diverse talent across the investment and savings industry. The organisation's Pathway Programme, now in its third year, continues to build talent pipelines whilst addressing systemic barriers to inclusion. Elevated to the peerage in 2020 as Baroness Morrissey of Chapel Green in the Royal County of Berkshire, she has also taken on the role of chair at Altum, further extending her influence across the financial sector. Twice named by Bloomberg as one of the 50 most influential people in global finance, and recognised by Fortune as one of the world's 50 greatest leaders, she has been a regular media commentator on climate change, executive pay, and investor responsibility. A Cambridge philosophy graduate who began her career with Schroders in New York, she was appointed CBE in 2012 and later awarded an honorary doctorate by Cambridge University.

Dame Helena equips organisations with practical frameworks to unlock talent and drive measurable business outcomes through inclusive leadership. Her keynote presentations combine firsthand experience from transforming both investment performance and workplace culture with actionable strategies that leaders can implement immediately. Audiences gain insight into how voluntary collaboration achieves lasting change, why diversity strengthens decision making and commercial results, and how to build cultures where talent thrives regardless of background. Whether addressing financial services professionals, corporate boards, or cross-sector leadership teams, she delivers clarity on the business case for inclusion and the leadership behaviours required to embed it. Her work demonstrates that principled action and commercial success reinforce one another, leaving audiences with the confidence and tools to create environments where diverse perspectives fuel innovation and performance.