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Educating & inspiring keynotes about gender, identity & diversity

Matt Ellison

travels from UK

Thought-provoking speaker on identity, courage & acceptance basing his keynotes on his own story as a transgender man

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5 out of 5 stars

Matt had the audience captivated with his own incredible and courageous personal story. I have to say it was one of the best sessions I have ever seen delivered at a Pharmacy Conference and I have been to many in my 24 years as a pharmacist professional.

Rachel Mackay, Associate Director of Medicines Management See all references

Reasons to book Matt Ellison

  • Educational Impact: Matt’s dedication to educating people on transgender topics, from medical interventions to legal implications, enriches his keynotes. His insights into the Gender Recognition Act and personal experiences in a Q&A session provide valuable learning opportunities.
  • Personal Journey: Matt Ellison’s story as a transgender man, filled with highs and lows, offers a compelling narrative that resonates with audiences. He shares his struggles with identity, making his keynotes relatable and impactful.
  • Business & Healthcare Benefits: Matt’s speaking engagements benefit diverse organizations and his talks on diversity and inclusion improve workplace dynamics, enhance talent recruitment, and elevate the standard of care for transgender patients. Matt’s journey inspires audiences to overcome fears, fostering personal transformation and professional growth.
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Matt Ellison is a captivating transgender keynote speaker whose journey is a testament to resilience. With a compelling narrative of personal struggles and triumphs, Matt educates, inspires, and motivates audiences globally. From Fortune 500 companies like Fidelity International to leading educational institutions, his tailored keynotes on diversity, inclusion, and personal growth leave a lasting impact. Experience the power of Matt's transformative storytelling to unlock inspiration and drive positive change at your next event.

Reasons to book Matt Ellison

  • Educational Impact: Matt’s dedication to educating people on transgender topics, from medical interventions to legal implications, enriches his keynotes. His insights into the Gender Recognition Act and personal experiences in a Q&A session provide valuable learning opportunities.
  • Personal Journey: Matt Ellison’s story as a transgender man, filled with highs and lows, offers a compelling narrative that resonates with audiences. He shares his struggles with identity, making his keynotes relatable and impactful.
  • Business & Healthcare Benefits: Matt’s speaking engagements benefit diverse organizations and his talks on diversity and inclusion improve workplace dynamics, enhance talent recruitment, and elevate the standard of care for transgender patients. Matt’s journey inspires audiences to overcome fears, fostering personal transformation and professional growth.

Matt Ellison is a highly sought-after, entertaining and thought-provoking transgender speaker. His life experience as a trans man has fascinated and inspired audiences of all kinds in both private and public sectors in the U.K. and internationally. His insights on change, as someone who has made such a huge and fundamental change himself, apply to everyone in all areas of professional and personal life.

Organisations who have invited Matt to speak include Microsoft, eBay, Mars, Toyota, Lacoste, Disney, KFC, NHS, Lloyds of London, City of London Corporation, Fidelity International, HM Courts and Tribunals, and many more.

Matt has been consulted and interviewed on many occasions. He was recently seen on TV in the high-profile Channel 4 documentary ‘Me and My Penis’, which broke many taboos, covering sex, psychology and men’s mental health issues.

Tailored towards the audience, Matt has something to offer all audiences, including healthcare professionals, businesses, educational institutions, emergency services, political and religious groups, plus more. Depending upon requirements he can delve deep into the mind of what it feels like to be transgender with a story full of highs, lows and humour. He can educate the audience around such things as the medical interventions, social aspects, safe practices for service providers and employers, as well the legal implications of the Gender Recognition Act and the popular Q&A if requested gives the opportunity to answer all those burning questions.

With an increasing number of trans folk having the courage to transition, yet with so many still facing discrimination and ignorance, transgender issues and diversity & inclusion, are currently more relevant than ever.

See keynotes with Matt Ellison
KEYNOTE BY SPEAKER MATT ELLISON

Mental Health

In this keynote Matt will talk about:

  • Understanding external influences and how much they can affect others’ mental health.
  • Why ‘being yourself’ or ‘bringing your whole self to work’ is fundamentally important to good mental health.
  • Inspirational story overcoming mental health challenges.
  • Lived experience giving insight into profound mental health struggles, and how they were overcome – relatable to all walks of life.
  • Key points on how to help others overcome mental health struggles or prevent them developing.

Matt brings experience of having worked/delivered content within a high security psychiatric setting.

KEYNOTE BY SPEAKER MATT ELLISON

Diversity & Inclusion

In this highly relevant keynote, Matt will talk about:

  • How diversity and inclusion can help your company thrive, from recruiting more highly skilled staff to increasing staff productivity and boosting staff retention
  • Practical advice on how to be more inclusive, develop good practices and put together company policies and procedures.
  • How to be more dynamic with your diversity and inclusion policies and procedures, creating a higher degree of engagement, including with your non-LGBT staff
  • The UK Gender Recognition Act and how to avoid inadvertently committing criminal offenses
KEYNOTE BY SPEAKER MATT ELLISON

Gender

In this keynote Matt will talk about:

  • What is gender?
  • Male, female and non-binary.
  • The difference between sex, gender and sexuality.
KEYNOTE BY SPEAKER MATT ELLISON

Identity

In this keynote Matt will talk about:

  • Who do you identify as?
  • Internal and external factors – appearance and inner identity.
  • How aspects of identity may be in conflict or undergo change.
  • Identity, self-discovery and self-realization.
KEYNOTE BY SPEAKER MATT ELLISON

Social Norms

In this keynote Matt will talk about:

  • Our minds and lives are conditioned by the norms we have grown up with.
  • They may seem natural, inevitable or just plain common sense, but they can be limiting or worse.
  • Creative questioning of norms can allow liberating change.
KEYNOTE BY SPEAKER MATT ELLISON

Change & Motivation

Having made life changes more fundamental than most people are faced with, Matt Ellison brings his insights to the issues of blocks, facing the unfaceable and redefining your life for the positive.

After nearly four decades being too fearful to go through the changes that he needed to be happy, he finally found the answers that made the scariest challenges of his life feel easy and effortless. What he learned can help others to also overcome fears that are often exaggerated, and to increase their motivation to achieve their goals in life.

  • In this keynote, Matt will give you tools and strategies to increase motivation and overcome fear!
KEYNOTE BY SPEAKER MATT ELLISON

Courage & Inspiration

Matt knows what it’s like to risk everything. He feared he could have lost his family, friends and business & been branded a ‘freak’ by society, yet none of those things happened.

KEYNOTE BY SPEAKER MATT ELLISON

Trans Awareness & Acceptance

In this keynote Matt will talk about:

  • Raising awareness of transgender issues.
  • How best to support staff, clients, students etc. who are undergoing or are around those undergoing gender transition.
KEYNOTE BY SPEAKER MATT ELLISON

Equality & Rights

  • The UK’s Gender Recognition Act: a British perspective on the right to be respected and to be accepted whatever one’s gender identity, sexuality, race etc.
Watch speaker Matt Ellison in action

Matt Ellison Speaker Showreel

See keynotes with Matt Ellison

References

Matt had the audience captivated with his own incredible and courageous personal story. I have to say it was one of the best sessions I have ever seen delivered at a Pharmacy Conference and I have been to many in my 24 years as a pharmacist professional.

Rachel Mackay

Associate Director of Medicines Management

Matt is obviously very passionate about helping others and telling his story, so others are confident in taking the first step to changing their lives. Matt was able to share useful resources to the group and was keen to speak to members of the audience on a personal level after the talk. A thought provoking talk.

Anne Cooper

Lloyds of London

“I have no hesitation in recommending Matt to speak at any event across any industry vertical. I think his stories around transformation and change, and the bravery and courage in personal journey, is something that is applicable to any type of person in any type of industry”

Jonathan MacDonald

Sunday Times Best Seller and International Speaker

Pandemic, or no pandemic, nothing can stop our Kentucky Fried Pride celebrations. To get the party started, Matt Ellison joined us virtually to share his personal journey and experiences. Buckets of love and gratitude to Matt for such an inspiring, authentic session.

KFC UK & Ireland

Matt was fantastic. He brought great energy and delivered a personal, honest, inspirational story. We were very happy.

Microsoft

"Highspot asked Matt Ellison to speak at their annual Stand for Change month to learn more about gender diversity and inclusion, and suffice it to say that we were blown away with the session Matt delivered. Not only did he tailor the session to the company and what we were seeking to understand in terms of information, but his openness, honesty and willingness to talk about topics we would normally shy away from was hugely refreshing, and has helped normalise conversations about gender identity in the workplace already. By sharing some of his experiences and stories in such an open way, Matt will no doubt help us make our professional and personal lives more inclusive. We cannot thank you enough, and would wholeheartedly recommend booking Matt to speak at any and all corporate events."

Highspot

Transgender 101: Pronouns – How you could make a real difference

I still see much misunderstanding around the use of pronouns for transgender people. They’re such a little thing yet to the transgender person it can make or break not only their day, but often much more than that.

I fully understand how it can be confusing. Right from a very early age as we learn to speak we gender those around us according to how they present on the outside. Even a three year old will automatically say ‘he’ or ‘she’ and use them in the correct context. It just comes naturally. So when a transgender person says they’re transitioning and you’ve known that person a while it can feel unnatural to gender them as to how they identify. I won’t lie, I even miss gendered myself occasionally in the early days of my transition!

I went through my childhood with many coping mechanisms in place and one of these was around the female pronouns that were being attached to me. I reasoned with myself, for example, if I was thirsty and wanted to buy a can of coke I’d tell myself ‘Actually, it doesn’t make any difference to me at this very moment in time whether I am male or female and whether the shop assistant calls me Sir or Madam, he or she. I’m not in physical pain because of their chosen pronoun and it makes no difference to my ability to purchase my drink. They’re only words. I’ll get my drink just the same and it will quench my thirst just the same’. To some degree this helped me cope, however in reality this is not how it works. Those little words, Sir, Madam, he or she, actually have a far more impactful and significant meaning to a transgender person than most people could ever contemplate. There’s a vast burden of psychological triggers attached to those words. Every time they hear an incorrect pronoun it‘s a stabbing reminder of the many things that aren’t right for them in life. There’s the possibility of digging up any of the hundreds of negative feelings experienced from living within the wrong identity, and this can trigger feelings of dysphoria, depression and even self harm or suicide. So if a person is already having a bad day and feeling dysphoric, then gets miss gendered, it can amplify those feelings ten-fold. Most of us will have experienced stubbing a toe; if you’re having a good day “ouch” it hurts, but if you’re having a really bad day it can make you crumble and want to burst into tears.

So imagine how amazing it feels to be gendered correctly?

This can be the complete opposite to what I’ve described above and make the person feel on top of the world. Not only does this prevent triggering those stresses but this time the positive psychological impact of such an encounter can be enormous. It has great meaning attached to it, including acceptance from those around them, feeling validated and respected, but above all it shows people care. Not bad for something that doesn’t mean much to the person saying those words and just takes a little thought.

When should you make the switch to new pronouns?

On the whole if a person has identified themselves as transgender the correct pronouns to use from then on are the ones of their preferred gender, but be careful because there are exceptions. Pronouns used should be at the preference of the transgender person themselves. Sometimes people don’t feel ready straight away, perhaps they are waiting for hormones to have brought about enough physical changes that they pass in their preferred gender, or maybe they haven’t had a chance to tell everyone around them yet.

As a rule of thumb, if you’re not sure, you could use gender neutral pronouns such as ‘they’ and ‘them’ but if you can it‘s nice to discreetly ask what they’d prefer.

I often hear even the most understanding and supportive people using the wrong pronouns simply because there is confusion as to what is correct. Many people simply don’t realize the impact pronouns have on the transgender person.

Non binary

There’s another thing of note and that is those who identify as non binary or gender queer etc. This topic could fill another blog but in brief it means that person doesn’t associate themselves with either gender. Often a non binary person will prefer gender neutral pronouns such as ‘they’, ‘them’ and ‘their’, but sometimes they may have a gender which they do prefer. It is up to them and it is respectful to use the pronouns of their choice.

What if I mess up?

Now here’s a great question, as this often happens by accident! Usually the best way to deal with this is to simply correct yourself and carry on without bringing more attention to it. If the person making the error starts making a fuss and is overly apologetic it makes it into a bigger issue than it was initially.

Summary

So if someone you know is transitioning, a fantastic thing you could do for them would be to use the pronouns of their preferred gender. Go on…..you’ll make their day!

03.07.2018

Interview with Matt Ellison

What made you realize you wanted to become a speaker? 

There were a few things that all came together. As a young child at school I discovered how much I loved giving talks and presentations to my class. Most of my classmates would be really nervous but I was always excited. I just really enjoy speaking.

Then when I started teaching as an adult, I soon realized I was in a fantastic position to inspire students and to make a real and positive difference in all areas of their lives. I loved the way that teaching enabled me to do this, however I then realized those opportunities are even greater as a speaker.

Then lastly since deciding to transition from female to male I have become very passionate about the topic and am excited to help others have a better understanding. Transition has taught me a lot. It wasn’t all easy, but it’s certainly been the most life affirming and amazing journey one could ever imagine. So I get to do something I love while educating, inspiring and helping others.

How much does humor factor into your keynotes and other speaking engagements?

What a great question. We can usually find a light-hearted side to life and that was something I actually made use of to cope with some awkward moments during my transition that might otherwise have been difficult or even traumatic. Bringing humor into a talk at an appropriate moment certainly helps me to connect and engage with the audience. And it certainly lets me know they’re still awake!

Why should clients use you for their next event?

What I offer is unique, current, interesting, educating and inspiring. Transgender issues are a hot topic in today’s world. Although society has recently become more accepting, things are still very new and a greater understanding can be facilitated.

I can educate on transgender issues from a social, medical, legal, psychological or moral point of view, depending on the client’s requirements.

I truly believe my life experience has relevance to everyone, and the strategies I developed can be applied to all areas of professional and personal life. I survived living in the wrong identity for years, and took tough decisions to make fundamental changes in my life that could have lost me everything. I broke down my barriers and learnt to cope with major challenges both during and after my transition. These strategies can help others transform their life situation and realize the person they really are.

I educate and entertain, with a story you’ve not heard before, and won’t forget in a hurry!

What are your biggest goals in your life or career currently?

My biggest goal at present is to make a real difference by reaching out to more and more people through my public speaking. I want to give as many people as possible a very positive and memorable experience around meeting a transgender person. I relish the opportunity to entertain, educate, and really change the way individuals, organizations and businesses think about many things including, but not limited to, transgender issues.

Oh, and a personal goal? I want to learn to sing better.

‪Who or what inspires you most?‬

I’m inspired by people who faced with adversity, and despite the odds against them, keep going and keep fighting, making a real difference in this world. Especially those who can do all this with a smile on their face.

What’s something you should never ask a transgender person? 

Definitely a big no-no is ‘What was your previous name?’

2023-11-01

Strategies for Corporate Change: Insights from Gender Transition

In general people usually opt for familiarity over change. Think how you feel when an app, or website suddenly changes their layout, all the tabs have moved and, at least initially, navigating is just that much harder. I’m sure most of us have experienced the frustration of this. Yet as we know, corporate organisations and […]

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2022-10-12

Airport Scanners – A Major Fear For Trans Travelers

One fear for many trans people is flying, specifically getting through airport security. Without fail, every time I fly I have anxiety about whether today will be the day I am asked to go through a body scanner at security and will be picked out due to an anomaly because of my trans body. If […]

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See keynotes with Matt Ellison
Non-binding request for Matt Ellison

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Matt Ellison
Matt Ellison

5 out of 5 stars

Matt had the audience captivated with his own incredible and courageous personal story. I have to say it was one of the best sessions I have ever seen delivered at a Pharmacy Conference and I have been to many in my 24 years as a pharmacist professional.

Rachel Mackay, Associate Director of Medicines Management See all references

Keynote topics with Matt Ellison