Women in Business Speakers: Nine Experts on Capital, Customers and the Boardroom

The best women in business speakers do more than tell their own story. They can explain where money, opportunity and promotion get stuck for women, and what an organisation can actually do about it. That makes them useful well beyond International Women's Day, though March is still when most of these bookings land.

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Which women in business speakers should you book?

Money reaches a woman-led business by one of three routes. Someone invests in it, someone buys from it, or someone promotes the woman running it. The nine speakers below are grouped by which of those they work on, so you can match the booking to what your audience actually controls.

Debbie Wosskow CBE co-chairs the government-backed Invest in Women Taskforce alongside Hannah Bernard of Barclays. Set up in 2024 with a £250 million target, it had convened £635 million in commitments and deployed over £115 million across 22 deals by July 2026, with anchor money from Nationwide, the British Business Bank, Barclays and M&G.

She argues it as a returns problem rather than a fairness one. "This has never been about favouring women," she said of the Taskforce's progress. "It is about ensuring the industry does not miss out on exceptional businesses and strong returns."

She has the operating record behind it. Debbie founded Love Home Swap and sold it to Wyndham for $53 million in 2017, wrote the UK government's Unlocking the Sharing Economy review, sits on the board of Channel 4 and chairs The Better Menopause, which makes her a rare crossover booking for women's health programmes as well as investment audiences. Book her for a room that makes funding, procurement or promotion decisions.

PepTalk Fact: Debbie received a CBE in the 2026 King's Birthday Honours for services to female entrepreneurship and to access to finance for women 💷

Learn more and book Debbie Wosskow CBE →

Sahar Hashemi OBE works the other side of the same problem. Buy Women Built, which she started as a single tweet in lockdown and launched properly on International Women's Day 2023, is a kitemark that identifies female-founded brands on shelf. It now covers more than 2,000 businesses turning over a combined £2.5 billion.

The commercial proof arrived through retail. Whole Foods gave it space in its flagship store in March 2024, and Ocado opened the world's first women-built aisle that October with more than 130 brands. For retail, consumer and marketing teams, Sahar connects visibility to revenue with numbers attached rather than asking for goodwill.

She co-founded Coffee Republic before any of this and wrote Anyone Can Do It, the UK's second highest-selling entrepreneurship book, followed by Start-Up Forever, a Financial Times Book of the Month. Her sessions cover how to keep a large organisation behaving like a startup, which travels well beyond the founder audience.

PepTalk Fact: NielsenIQ research in June 2025 found that purchasing intent doubles when a product carries the Buy Women Built kitemark 🛒

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Dame Inga Beale became the first female CEO of Lloyd's of London in 2013, at a market that was already 328 years old. Over five years she led its digitalisation, launched the Lloyd's Innovation Lab and opened access to China, Dubai and India, so she can talk about inclusion and commercial performance as the same conversation rather than two separate ones.

She also started Pride@Lloyds, co-founded the International Insurance Supper Club for senior women, and drove the Dive In Festival, still the only sector-wide inclusion festival in global insurance. She was appointed DBE in 2017 for services to the UK economy, and now chairs the climate company South Pole. Her sessions include Modernising Tradition and Creating An Inclusive Workplace, both of which suit boards and senior leadership teams looking at women's leadership development.

PepTalk Fact: In 2015 Inga became the first woman and the first openly bisexual person to top the OUTstanding and FT Leading LGBT Executive Power List 🏛️

Learn more and book Dame Inga Beale, DBE →

More women in business speakers worth booking

These six cover the pipeline into senior roles and the experience of building a company from nothing, which is what most mixed business audiences want to hear about. Fee bands and full session lists sit on each profile.

How do you choose the right women in business speaker?

Match the speaker to what your audience can actually change. A room that controls budget needs a different voice from a room that controls hiring, and a room of founders needs a different one again. Getting that right matters more than picking the biggest name on the list.

Two of them pair unusually well. Debbie Wosskow moves capital into women-led businesses from the investor side and Sahar Hashemi moves revenue in from the consumer side, so booking both gives an audience the full picture of how money reaches a woman-founded company. It also gives you two very different speaking styles across one agenda.

If your brief is broader than business, our entrepreneurship speakers and gender equality speakers pages cover the wider roster, and venture capital speakers is the place to look if funding is the whole focus.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the best speaker on funding for female founders?

Debbie Wosskow CBE co-chairs the government-backed Invest in Women Taskforce, which has convened £635 million in commitments against an original £250 million target and deployed over £115 million across 22 deals. She speaks from inside the process rather than about it, which is what separates her from most speakers on this subject.

How much does a women in business speaker cost?

Fees for the speakers on this page run from around £6,000 to £50,000, depending on profile, format and whether the booking is virtual or in person. Travel and accommodation sit on top for in-person events. Each speaker's profile carries their current fee band.

Can you book two speakers for the same event?

Yes, and pairing works particularly well on this subject because the funding side and the customer side are different arguments. Debbie Wosskow and Sahar Hashemi OBE between them cover both, and a two-speaker agenda gives you a keynote plus a panel or fireside without repeating the same material twice.

Which speaker suits an International Women's Day event?

Baroness Karren Brady CBE works well for large mixed audiences where recognition matters, and Sahar Hashemi OBE suits consumer and retail organisations marking the day. March books out early, so start six to nine months ahead. Our International Women's Day speakers page has the full list.

💡 Planning an event that needs one of these speakers? Tell us your date, format and audience, and we'll come back with a shortlist and quotes. Send us a message via the chat and we'll take it from there. Remember, it's always a good time to get a PepTalk!