Why women should be humanity’s first explorers on Mars

Caroline Clark is an executive coach, psychology researcher and former senior technology leader with over 13 years leading in fast-moving, high-pressure environments. She is an analogue astronaut, having operated in isolated, confined, and extreme environments designed to simulate space missions.

Caroline also mentors space entrepreneurs on the UK Space Agency’s startup accelerator, and is STEM Challenge Coordinator for the Cosmic Girls Foundation, which is running a global competition to send a girl aged 14–19 through astronaut training and into space.

Her work focuses on leadership and human performance under extreme pressure and complexity.

The Invisible Life of Homes

Jason Ratcliffe is a building surveyor, environmental health researcher and founder of The Wellbeing Surveyor. His work focuses on the relationship between buildings, indoor environments and human health, combining professional practice with academic research.

He is currently undertaking doctoral research examining the performance and health impacts of natural versus synthetic insulation materials in historic buildings. Jason works with homeowners, institutions and policy aligned organisations to improve understanding of air quality, moisture, light and comfort within homes.

His wider work includes public engagement, education and research led initiatives aimed at raising national awareness of healthy housing.

That curiosity, courage, and the internet can create limitless opportunity beyond the classroom

Luis Evitt is a British entrepreneur, marketing consultant, and founder of several ventures including Social90, Agency Architecture, and nowhey. A former professional rugby player, Luis’s

sporting career was cut short by injury at eighteen — a turning point that led him into the world of online business. With no degree or formal training, he taught himself marketing through YouTube and built a career working with global names such as Bear Grylls, the United Nations, and Anthony Joshua.

Through Social90, he helps businesses grow through smart strategy and content. His product brand nowhey is redefining recovery nutrition with a clean, plant-based protein drink. He also

mentors young entrepreneurs through Agency Architecture, showing them how to build careers beyond the traditional system.

Luis’s story embodies the message of his TEDx talk: that curiosity, courage, and the internet can create limitless opportunity beyond the classroom

Scroll Less, Live More – How to Love Life and Get More Done

Mark Saxby is a former BBC and ITV journalist, award-winning speaker, and one of the UK’s first social media consultants. As founder of Status Social, Mark has helped businesses generate over £20 million through social media. He also created Positive Social, a national charity helping young people make safer, smarter choices online. 

With a unique mix of hard-hitting insights, laugh-out-loud storytelling, and practical takeaways, Mark leaves his audiences equipped with actionable strategies and a fresh perspective on the digital world.

He’s a dad-of-three, husband-of-one and runs an international campaign against the world’s most evil foodstuff – quiche. He also helped Azerbaijan win the Eurovision Song Contest while disguised as a Moldovan and has performed (badly) on the flying trapeze at the Moscow State Circus.

Are You Nourishing the Monster or the Hero? – How Trauma, Care and Our Choices Shape Human Behaviour.

Nicola Noél is the founder of Brainworks Therapy, a multi-award-winning online mental health clinic and global consultancy. She is a multi-award-winning, internationally recognised mental health consultant working at the intersection of mental wellness, EDI and leadership, as well as a Specialist Psychiatric Nurse, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Transformational Consultant and speaker. With over 20 years of frontline experience across community, acute, judicial and custodial settings,

Nicola specialises in empowering professional women to rewire their brains, reset their mindsets, manage emotions, build radical resilience and thrive in both life and leadership. Her expertise covers complex trauma, PTSD, resilience training, perinatal mental health and forensic psychiatry. She designs and delivers high-impact wellbeing, transformation and resilience programmes, with a focus on ethical and radical leadership, connection, empowerment and habit transformation. 

Her influence extends globally, from consulting with the United Nations on prison reform for men of Afro descent, to collaborating with HRH Duchy of Cornwall on menopause awareness initiatives, to writing and delivering a tailored empowerment programme for Amazon’s Black Employee Network across EMEA, in partnership with the Fortune 500 global leader, focused on radical resilience, ethical leadership, and amplifying visibility. 

Nicola’s voice is widely recognised in the media. She is the creator of the viral movement The Library Is Open, which has sparked national conversation on allyship, equity, and lived experience. She has been featured in Metro, Women’s Health, Stylist, Good Housekeeping, Yahoo Life!, The Independent, and Simply Christmas, as well as on BBC Hereford & Worcestershire, BBC Radio Wales, UK Health Radio, and across local and national press. 

Through being a co-author in powerful book collaborations, therapy, corporate training, speaking engagements and growing social platforms, Nicola continues to disrupt outdated mental health systems, amplify women’s voices, and make an unstoppable impact on resilience, visibility, and wellbeing locally, nationally, and globally. 

Refugees Are Not the Problem

Parisa Pirooz is the founder and executive director of Creshendo, a global nonprofit that centers refugee-led design in integration, storytelling, and economic empowerment. The daughter of parents who fled the 1979 Iranian Revolution, she grew up with an intimate understanding of displacement, resilience, and the quiet burdens carried by those startingover.

Her career has spanned frontline work with refugee women in Jordan, legal advocacy for immigrant survivors of domestic violence through a Harvard Law School clinic, and service on a federal task force supporting Afghan families in camps across the United States. Across these experiences, Parisa witnessed the same pattern: systems built to help refugees rarely include their voices.

She founded Creshendo to change that. Today, she leads a volunteer team of more than seventy people across twenty countries, working to ensure that displaced communities are not passive recipients but co-creators of the systems that shape their lives.

Inside the Safety Theatre

Sienna Ahir is a 17-year-old youth activist, public speaker, and founder of Daggers Down, a youth-led anti-knife crime campaign reshaping conversations around violence in the West Midlands.

As the Member of Youth Parliament for Wolverhampton, she has delivered speeches in the House of Commons on national issues from employment inequality to youth safety, championing the voices of thousands of young people.

Her work spans policy, campaigning, and empowerment, including contributing to the UK Parliament’s Youth Select Committee inquiry on Youth Violence and Social Media. She has worked with councils, police, and local organisations to create real-world solutions, from bleed-control initiatives to youth voice projects.

Sienna’s mission is simple: to ensure young people are not just consulted, but genuinely heard. Her work continues to build momentum across communities, inspiring other young people to lead change with courage, clarity, and conviction.

Dyslexia, Dance, Autism and Me

Starting dance at four, Tamar found a powerful way to express herself beyond her early learning challenges. From this early start, her passion for movement grew into a lifelong mission to connect communities and celebrate cultural diversity and inclusion through dance. Tamar Dixon is a dance educator, writer, an international dance facilitator and founder of social enterprise, Unique Movez Dance Collective CIC (UMDC CIC).

Guided by her own experience as a dyslexic and autistic dancer, Tamar has faced challenges and setbacks due to her disability, and is committed and driven to create safe, non-judgemental spaces where all voices are heard and valued; especially in the studio, and on and off stage.