What does it mean to lead with courage, clarity, and confidence — as a woman?
On Wednesday 12th November, we’re bringing together inspiring speakers and industry leaders for a powerful Women in Leadership Online Conference.
It’s a full day of learning, collaboration, and real conversations — designed to support current and future women leaders.
Join us for a day on Zoom filled with inspiring talks and discussions from renowned experts and industry leaders.
Throughout the day, you’ll hear from experts as they share their insights and experiences. You’ll engage in meaningful discussions with other attendees, allowing you to learn from others and explore these ideas even further for a collaborative learning experience. Using breakout rooms, we guarantee you will be involved in discussions with at least 30 other participants over the day.
But it’s not just about listening and talking – we also want you to take action. That’s why each speaker will provide practical tips that you can implement straight away at your workplace.
Whether you’re a manager, team leader, HR professional, or CEO, this conference is for anyone passionate about creating a people-first culture that empowers their people.
At Happy, we support an inclusive definition of ‘women’ and this conference is open to anyone who is cis, trans and nonbinary for whom womanhood is part of their gender identity or experience – or allies, who want to better understand how to make a more inclusive and fair world for everyone.
Find out how organisations worldwide are shifting the focus from micromanagement to trust, from surveillance to empowerment, and from stress to joy.
Here’s what previous conference attendees have said about our interactive online events.
“The speakers were so interesting and the interactivity was great, I enjoyed speaking to other attendees.”
Attendee from 2024 Happy Workplaces Conference
“I loved today’s conference, every speaker was so engaging, plenty of time for discussion and thought provoking debate. I adored the format!”
Attendee from 2024 Happy Workplaces Conference
“The conference most definitely exceeded my expectations with some very inspirational speakers.”
Attendee from 2024 Happy Workplaces Conference
Stay informed about announcements regarding our speakers for this year’s event. As always, our speakers share practical, hands-on ideas that you can implement to create happy and engaged workplaces.
Leanne Davis – Facilitator, Coach and Learning Adventurer at LiveLearn
Sonali Kumarakulasinghe – Facilitator, Coach and Mentor at SK Consulting
Emotions are always present at work, and they can be helpful, or unhelpful, in our behaviours, decision making, working relationships and performance. In this experiential session we will use a card deck – the Emotional Culture Deck – to take a practical and intentional approach to identify how our emotions can enable our success at work. Participants will leave the session with increased awareness of how emotions at work matter, with some actionable next steps.
You can learn more by visiting Leanne’s website LiveLearn here, and Sonali’s LinkedIn here.
Kelly McGovern – Chief Nurse
Kelly McGovern joined West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust as chief nurse in July 2023. Previously, Kelly was deputy chief nurse and director of nursing of Broomfield site for Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust – one of the largest acute trusts in the country with 15,000 staff.
In addition to her trust-wide role, Kelly was the director of nursing for Broomfield Hospital and also urgent and emergency care clinical director.
Kelly qualified as a nurse in 2005 and has gained a breadth of clinical leadership experience and held professional nurse leadership positions as well as more operational roles. She has worked at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, East and North Herts NHS Trust and latterly for Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust
Sophie Bryan: Founder of Ordinarily Different.
Sophie Bryan is a HR, Leadership and Workplace Culture Specialist, with a twist! She’s also trained in Human Sexuality, Sexology and Relationship Psychology. Sophie is going where no other HR professional has dared to! To talk about sexual dynamics in the workplace. How understanding human nature (such as things like power, dominance, and shame) is the source to eradicating Sexual Harassment in the workplace – not more policies and tick box training! And how, when we harness our sexual energy in positive and appropriate ways, it can create collaboration, connection and creativity at work.
In Sophie’s podcast, The Rebel Work, she talks about how we should all have happier, healthier, more productive and purposeful experiences of work.
Stay informed about announcements regarding our speakers for this year’s event. As always, our speakers share practical, hands-on ideas that you can implement to create happy and engaged workplaces.
In this session, Femi will draw on her decades of experience of being a women in leadership and together you’ll discuss what’s going on for women leaders at work including what women bring to leadership, what gets in their way, and what they want to enable themselves to flourish. By the end of the WWW Talk, attendees will have gained fresh insights into the unique strengths women bring to leadershop and come up with innovative approaches for overcoming challenges.
Femi founded her equality and diversity consultancy in 1985 and has dedicated her career to advancing diversity and inclusion. With over 35 years experience, she combines her scientific background with persuasive training, facilitation and coaching skills.
Femi continues to design and deliver customised training programs for clients, covering topics such as racial and gender equity, inclusive leadership, cultural awareness, and dignity at work.
Femi’s impact reaches across private, public, and voluntary sectors. Her inclusion strategies and training have transformed organisations. She has been supporting cultural transformation in The Houses of Parliament for five years, past clients include the BBC, L’Oreal, The Lego Foundation and Save the Children.
Voluntary work has also always been important to Femi, she volunteered for Switchboard for 13 years and spent 6 years as chair of National Women’s Aid.
Femi’s legacy lies in her unwavering commitment to creating a more inclusive world—one where diversity is celebrated, biases are challenged, and dignity prevails.
Growth rarely happens without tension. In this talk, Jenny Fernandez redefines friction as a powerful catalyst for transformation—especially for women navigating bias, change, and high expectations. Through personal stories and research from McKinsey and Stanford, she illustrates how setbacks, resistance, and difficult feedback can become springboards for resilience and leadership mastery. “Healthy Friction” challenges audiences to reframe discomfort as data and turn moments of struggle into moments of strength, unlocking the next level of their leadership impact.
Growth rarely happens without tension. In this talk, Jenny Fernandez redefines friction as a powerful catalyst for transformation—especially for women navigating bias, change, and high expectations. Through personal stories and research from McKinsey and Stanford, she illustrates how setbacks, resistance, and difficult feedback can become springboards for resilience and leadership mastery. “Healthy Friction” challenges audiences to reframe discomfort as data and turn moments of struggle into moments of strength, unlocking the next level of their leadership impact.
Jenny Fernandez, MBA, is a leadership development consultant, executive coach, and former CMO who partners with senior leaders and their teams to become more adaptive, effective, and resilient. She is a faculty member at Columbia University and NYU, a TEDx Speaker, and a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Southern California. You can download her free Personal Branding and Self-Promotion e-book—a practical toolkit designed to empower your teams and enhance their skills—and connect with her on LinkedIn.
Join creativity strategist Natalie Nixon, PhD, for two dynamic nine-minute virtual sessions exploring the MTR (pronounced “Motor”) framework – a transformative system that redefines productivity and helps you build creativity as a strategic competency by blending movement, thought, and rest into a cohesive operating system. Rather than perpetuating hustle culture, Dr. Nixon reveals how the best organizations allow the personal and the professional to converge at strategic moments, often when we step away from our desks and phones. Through her WonderRigor ™ theory, participants will be introduced to how intentional movement, deep thinking, and restorative pauses cultivate creativity, prevent burnout, build leadership resilience, and unlock genuine productivity- all without rigid protocols or life-hacks that drain the joy from our working hours.
Dr. Natalie Nixon, creativity strategist and CEO of Figure 8 Thinking excels at helping businesses catalyse creativity’s ROI for inspired business results. She is the author of Move.Think. Rest. and The Creativity Leap.
A hybrid thinker with a background in cultural anthropology, Dr. Nixon worked in the fashion industry for a division of The Limited Brands in global sourcing. She was then a professor for 16 years and the founding director of the strategic design executive MBA program at Thomas Jefferson University.
She received her BA from Vassar College & her PhD from the University of Westminster in London.
This talk is all about what each of us need to thrive at work and how we can create healthy environments. Rosie will cover how to create a culture of trust, and how to give people freedom within a framework.
Rosie joined COOK in 2000 and is co-CEO alongside her brother Edward Perry (founder). Today, COOK is a growing, award-winning food brand employing 2000 people, with a belief that healthy relationships are the foundation to happiness in work and life. We cook meals & puddings in our own production kitchens, using the same techniques and ingredients that a good cook would use at home. We have 109 branded retail stores, 1000+ concession partners, and sell online through an expanding delivery business. We believe in business as a force for good and became a founding BCorporation in 2013. This includes running a RAW Talent programme helping people with barriers to employment back into the workplace. COOK has been a Top 100 Employer for over a decade, and has regularly held the #1 position in the Best Companies “Top Food & Drink Brands to Work” list. Rosie feels passionately about providing opportunity to those with barriers to employment, and also chairs a National Oversight Board working across UK prisons to support more prison leavers into work.
What strengths do you bring to your work and if we all played to our strengths how much could be achieved? Leading with strengths in mind may require some different thinking but yield exciting results.
Nicky has been a senior facilitator for over 16 years. Her leadership purpose is to support people to reach their full potential, and this has driven her internally as part of Happy’s senior leadership team. It has enabled her, through her work every day with clients, to facilitate senior leadership programmes and personal development events. Nicky also has a proven track record at leading on large projects and inspiring others as a speaker at conferences.
Psychological safety isn’t built through slogans or surveys — it’s created through everyday habits and conversations. In this practical session, Helen Sanderson will introduce two frameworks that turn the idea of psychological safety into something tangible and actionable.
You’ll start by exploring the Five Foundations of Psychological Safety – Mattering, Voice, Clarity, Collaboration and Growth – each brought to life through a keystone practice you can take back to your own team.
Helen will then introduce Confirmation Practices – a simple, structured reflective approach that can be used personally and within teams to strengthen awareness, trust and growth over time.
Helen Sanderson, PhD, is an internationally recognised leader in person-centred practices, psychological safety, and innovative team development. Founder of the award-winning Wellbeing Teams, inspired by Buurtzorg, Helen reimagined homecare with self-managed teams and strong relational foundations—earning national accolades and an Outstanding rating from the CQC.
A TEDx speaker, author of over twenty books, and one of the UK’s 50 New Radicals, she brings two decades of transformative work across health and social care. Helen’s current focus is on creating cultures of compassion and collaboration through team agreements, reflective practices, and strengths-based supervision—helping organisations shift from compliance to co-creation.
Building Psychological Safety Through Everyday Practices
Psychological safety isn’t built through slogans or surveys — it’s created through everyday habits and conversations. In this practical session, Helen Sanderson will introduce two frameworks that turn the idea of psychological safety into something tangible and actionable.
You’ll start by exploring the Five Foundations of Psychological Safety – Mattering, Voice, Clarity, Collaboration and Growth – each brought to life through a keystone practice you can take back to your own team.
Helen will then introduce Confirmation Practices – a simple, structured reflective approach that can be used personally and within teams to strengthen awareness, trust and growth over time.
Our Women in Leadership Online Conference is not like your typical online event. You will be actively involved throughout and will have the opportunity for personal reflection, as well as discussion in pairs and in larger groups for lively debate and challenge. Pluss
Select your ticket below, or contact us for bulk order options.
Your ticket will include a goody bag, lunch and refreshments throughout the day. You will also have access to Fuse, with related materials and information during and after the event.
| Date | Availability | Number of places | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Nov 2025 10:00 AM - 4:30 PM | 46 spaces left |
All times listed are UK time (GMT/BST).
Please note that your booking is not secured until you checkout. All prices listed in the shopping cart are excluding VAT.
If you are booking at a discounted rate (for example, if you are from a charity), you will see this on the final stage of the shopping cart after you have set up your account or logged in. Discount codes can also be added on this final page.
We have worked with thousands of clients to create joy at work — here is just some of the feedback we have received.
"The conference was absolutely brilliant. Content was inspiring, current, thought provoking and most importantly for me action provoking! Definitely moments that impacted my heart, my brain but also my feet to take action. Thank you and the team so very much."
Hear from inspiring female leaders on 12th November, held online via Zoom.
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