Beatrice Kabutakapua helps leaders turn lived experience into influence, confidence, and authentic leadership.
5.00 of 5
Top rated!5 of 5
I wasn’t confident in my ability in storytelling, but now I feel like I am able to do so and advise others on how they can also use storytelling to help them communicate across the business
IOIC Workshop Participant
Beatrice Kabutakapua is an international keynote speaker, Amazon bestselling author, and founder of The Business Storytelling Centre. With a background as an award-winning journalist and documentary maker, she delivers thought-provoking keynotes on leadership, identity, communication, and inclusion. Her work helps organisations create cultures where people feel seen, heard, and empowered to lead from who they truly are. Trusted by companies including WPP Media, Aviva, Booking.com, and Save the Children, Beatrice brings a powerful mix of storytelling, strategy, and human insight to every stage.
Beatrice Kabutakapua is an international keynote speaker, Amazon bestselling author, and founder of The Business Storytelling Centre. She is known for helping organisations build leadership cultures where people are not simply included, but genuinely heard, valued, and empowered to lead with confidence.
Born in Italy to Congolese parents and now based in London, Beatrice brings a global perspective shaped by identity, culture, and lived experience. Her work sits at the intersection of leadership, storytelling, communication, and inclusion, helping organisations unlock the potential of leaders who have historically been overlooked or underestimated.
Her keynotes are honest, practical, and deeply human. Audiences leave with clear tools, stronger self-awareness, and a renewed understanding of how communication shapes leadership. Rather than encouraging people to fit into traditional leadership moulds, Beatrice helps individuals lead from who they actually are.
She is available for conferences, leadership summits, talent pipeline programmes, DEI events, and company-wide gatherings worldwide.
Before becoming a speaker and entrepreneur, Beatrice built her career as an award-winning journalist and documentary maker. That editorial background continues to shape her work today. She combines investigative depth, emotional intelligence, and compelling storytelling to create experiences that resonate long after the event ends.
Beatrice believes that leadership becomes more powerful when people stop performing and start communicating from a place of truth and clarity. Her work gives leaders the language and confidence to articulate their experiences, strengths, and perspectives in ways that build trust and influence.
Her talks explore themes including:
Her sessions are designed to create reflection as well as action. Whether speaking to senior executives, emerging leaders, or global teams, Beatrice creates spaces where audiences feel challenged, empowered, and understood.
Beatrice has worked with organisations including WPP Media, Aviva, Save the Children, Booking.com, and Holland & Barrett. Across her programmes and keynote talks, she has reached more than 10,000 people across three continents in English, French, and Italian.
Organisations value her ability to connect strategy with real human experience. Her sessions help teams strengthen communication, increase engagement, and develop leadership cultures where a wider range of voices can thrive.
She regularly collaborates with DEI leaders, People and Culture teams, and Learning & Development professionals looking to move conversations beyond theory and into meaningful behavioural change.
Her work consistently receives strong audience feedback, with a 90% satisfaction rate across her programmes and events.
In October 2025, Beatrice published her first book, Lead With Your Story: How to Turn Your Lived Experience Into Your Leadership Superpower. The book became an Amazon bestseller and further established her as a leading voice in authentic leadership and storytelling.
The book explores how lived experience can become a source of leadership strength rather than something people feel pressured to minimise or hide. Through practical insights and powerful reflections, Beatrice encourages readers to communicate with greater clarity, confidence, and purpose.
Her work particularly resonates with women from the Global Majority, LGBTQIA+ leaders, leaders living with disabilities, and professionals who have experienced exclusion or invisibility within traditional workplace structures.
At the same time, her message speaks broadly to anyone seeking more human, courageous, and effective leadership.
Beatrice Kabutakapua is known for creating keynote experiences that are both emotionally engaging and strategically relevant. She combines storytelling with actionable insight, helping audiences understand how authenticity, communication, and inclusion directly influence leadership performance and organisational culture.
Her delivery is warm, intelligent, and thought-provoking, balancing vulnerability with practical takeaways that audiences can immediately apply in their professional lives.
Whether addressing leadership teams, future talent programmes, DEI conferences, or international company events, Beatrice brings energy, depth, and credibility to every stage.
For organisations looking to inspire stronger communication, inclusive leadership, and meaningful cultural change, Beatrice Kabutakapua delivers conversations that stay with audiences long after the event has ended.
5 of 5
I wasn’t confident in my ability in storytelling, but now I feel like I am able to do so and advise others on how they can also use storytelling to help them communicate across the business
IOIC Workshop Participant
5 of 5
She supported our team in getting to know each other better and inspired us to think out of the box
EUROPEAN JOURNALISM CENTRE
5 of 5
She is a genius at this
THE LANKELLYCHASE FOUNDATION
Keynote by Beatrice Kabutakapua:
In 2019, Beatrice wrote in her journal that her biggest fear was being visible. She was a year into building her business: talented, driven, with decades of journalism, communication, and storytelling on her resume. And yet, that journal entry told a truth that was preventing her from asking for more and being more. Fast-forward to 2025, and Beatrice is a best-selling author and international speaker who appeared in videos watched by more than 300K people all over the world. That didn’t happen by chance; it happened because Beatrice finally stopped pretending that who she was and what she did were two separate things.
This keynote challenges and dismantles old beliefs leaders and employees have, like: visibility is dangerous and being seen makes them a target; they need to master storytelling before being worthy of being heard; their work will speak for them (spoiler alert, it won’t).
Staying invisible is not a strategy for advancement. It is a way of making yourself easy to overlook. This keynote replaces those beliefs with a new understanding: that visibility is a choice and choosing it is an act of leadership. Finally, it walks the audience through the steps to make themselves visible without loosing who they are.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Keynote by Beatrice Kabutakapua:
This keynote opens with a bold statement: you are a superhero. Not as a motivational slogan but as a provocation. Because most people in the room will not claim it immediately. And that hesitation is exactly the problem this keynote is built to solve.
The biggest lie we have been sold on is that whatever works for some works for everyone. Crash test dummies were designed for able-bodied men, making women nearly 50% more likely to be injured in a collision. For decades, most makeup excluded anyone darker than beige. And leadership programmes were sold to everyone else as a one-size-fits-all solution.
The result? Disengagement. Leaders who revert to old behaviours because the frameworks never reflected who they actually were. A persistent lack of diversity at the top. And an epidemic of leaders who have learned to perform authenticity rather than live it.
This keynote does not describe the problem. It dismantles it. Beatrice introduces the FOCUS™ framework as a method built specifically for leaders whose stories have been systematically undervalued. Because your lived experience is not a gap in your professional profile, it is the most powerful asset you already have. Your story is your superpower. This keynote teaches you how to use it.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Keynote by Beatrice Kabutakapua:
Most organisations don’t know that the most expensive problem in the workplace does not show on any balance sheet. It lives in the gap between what people know and what they feel safe to say. Between the values on the wall and the culture in the room. Between the engagement strategy the HR team designed and the quiet disengagement happening in every meeting.
Business storytelling is the organisational infrastructure that closes that gap and most organisations are not using it.
This keynote introduces two strategic approaches to building a story-led organisation: top-down, where senior leaders model authentic communication and give permission for the whole culture to follow; and bottom-up, where listening is built into the everyday: onboarding, goal-setting, performance conversations, so that the gap between intention and lived experience finally begins to close. Because listening is not a one-off campaign. It is a muscle. And most organisations have never been shown how to build it.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Watch Beatrice Kabutakapua in action!
Despite popular beliefs, company culture isn’t defined by what a company says, by the slides, or a deck shared in the intranet. Company culture is a direct result of the stories that leaders in the organisation share and live. Yes, I said “Live” because stories are not just shared. When you th
