Keynote SpeakersBelinda Parmar OBE is a renowned expert on empathy, AI, Diversity and Inclusion.
CEO of The Empathy Business, Belinda is a renowned diversity campaigner and a Non-Executive Director for the Ministry of Defence.
Belinda uses the science of empathy to change the way companies transform their organisations, focusing on leadership, communications and operations.
She created the Global Empathy Index, published in the Harvard Business Review – the first index to measure empathy and inclusion at scale.
Belinda works with large companies to implement hundreds of ‘nudges’ and interventions that organically build an empathy revolution and give people simple, practical ways to create more inclusive cultures.
Her focus is on belonging and diversity and creating more courageous cultures.
Belinda was Empathy-In-Residence at Barclays, Lloyds and Centrica, and she created the first-ever Empathy Hub in Europe’s largest bank. Belinda was chosen in 2019 to speak at Davos as she is a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum.
Furthermore, she was awarded an OBE in 2015 by the Queen for her services to Women in Technology.
In 2020, she was chosen as one of the top 20 Global Public Figures in Diversity and 2021, she was voted a top 20 Diversity Champion.
Belinda has a law and a language degree and believes that the magic in companies happens when you combine rational and emotional thinking to drive change.
Belinda is the author of Little Miss Geek, used in schools to inspire young women to become tech pioneers.
As a keynote speaker, Belinda’s popular speech themes include ‘AI and the role of the Human’ and ‘Transforming the corporate world with Empathy and Diversity’.
Belinda Parmar OBE – Speaking Topics:
Empathy in Tech:
Belinda argues that technology is fuelling the empathy deficit despite its promises of democratisation, that our biases are embedded in our algorithms, and that empathy is becoming scarcer.
With a new workforce of digital natives, we are witnessing a backlash from society towards big business.
Belinda puts the case for businesses to be more empathic and shows the opportunity, drawing on tangible ‘nudges’ that companies can implement to improve their empathy.
Her talks are based on changes she has made in businesses that have impacted company performance.
What will the Future of Work Look Like?
- What new skills will we need in this new technological era where robots don’t just perform menial tasks?
- What will our working lives look like for us and the new generation of millennials?
- And is the 9-5 working day gone forever?
This talk argues that our humanity, problem-solving ability, creativity, and empathy are the most precious skills in an automated future.
We must re-examine our relationship and interactions between man and machine (who is freeing who?). We must learn new skills to augment and co-exist with machines.
Our loyalty to companies is also changing. Future generations are less tethered to a company and an individual and more tethered to a purpose that drives them.
The fourth industrial revolution demands a rethink in how we train our staff and motivate the next generation of workers who want more purposeful and empathic cultures.
We have been taught to override and suppress our emotions, but we need to be more aware of our emotions to create a symbiotic relationship between man and machine.
The future of work belongs to the emotionally literate geek.
Why Diversity Programmes Don’t Work.
This talk is based on Belinda’s Guardian article on how diversity divides, but empathy unites.
Belinda presents the data for why diversity programmes have failed over the last 30 years. She also combines this with her journey from a diversity-based business to an empathy business.
This controversial talk focuses on the opportunities for empathy-based businesses where empathy becomes the ‘core’ business, not the responsibility of a person or a department.
The Empathy Quotient: Why both Men and Women need to lead with Empathy at Work.
Belinda talks about the power of empathy at work, how companies can define empathy, transform their companies and leadership, and the impact of small changes. She shares her journey from being the founder of a female-focused business called Lady Geek to running The Empathy Business. Furthermore, Belinda will discuss her experiences using empathy in male-dominated industries, including finance, tech and energy.
This provocative and honest talk also challenges the effectiveness of diversity programmes. Furthermore, it shares a new vision for a gender-balanced world at work and the commercial benefits it will bring.
How we can Collectively Break the Bias at Work.
The issue of bias is paramount for Gen Z. They require inclusive cultures where leaders sufficiently understand bias to engage in difficult conversations. Belinda shares her experiences helping some of the world’s largest companies identify and break their biases. These biases include likeability bias, maternal bias, affinity bias, attribution bias, performance bias and AI/tech bias. We are often unaware of our biases. We need the tools and a safe space to acknowledge and explore our biases. The key to breaking bias is creating a sense of belonging and psychological safety.
Belinda shares ‘inclusive nudges’ based on a decade of working with large companies, such as Barclays, King, Lloyds, and the UK government, where she used the power of empathy to start breaking the bias collectively.
Topics Covered
- Identifying six different biases at work
- Using the Power of Empathy to address bias
- Inclusive Nudges & behavioural science to collectively address bias
- How to measure your progress and hold up the mirror to your own company culture
The Global Empathy Index
Belinda Parmar OBE and her team at The Empathy Business are the creators of the original Global Empathy Index published in the Harvard Business Review using their EMBRACE model. Leveraging generative AI, Belinda and her team have scaled their Empathy Index to give companies an empathy ranking.
What problem are we solving?
Companies want live data that can accurately rank how empathic they are against their top 10 competitors and help them identify with precision where the biggest empathy deficits and strengths are. Using ChatGPT alongside BERT embeddings, our EMBRACE model can quickly analyse large amounts of data, offering insights into how a company’s employees feel and also the way a company communicates.
How does this help for speeches?
Rather than give companies a generic speech, Belinda can give them a unique, bespoke speech based on their data using AI.
What is the EMBRACE model?
Our EMBRACE model has been built over the last ten years to define corporate empathy. It transforms the concept of empathy into seven tangible factors:
- Equity: How diverse is the company?
- Meaning: Does the company live by its values?
- Belonging: Do employees feel that they belong?
- Reassurance: Do employees trust the company?
