During a 30-year career, Catherine saw first-hand how digital technologies initially enabled news organisations to flourish and then destroyed the economic models supporting them. Catherine discusses and assesses the repercussions not just within the industry but for democracy and our understanding of the world, as well as forecasting developments in new media.

We are more divided than ever before and not just on subjects that directly touch on our lives. How can we hope to reach consensus in the workplace if we’re passionately polarised on Meghan and Harry or whether cancel culture even exists? Catherine looks at the drivers of such polarisation, unpicks the way that these arguments are often proxies for other issues such as race and inequality, and looks at what works, and what definitely doesn’t, to defuse potential hostilities and bring people together.

Organisations know they need to improve the diversity of their workforces, but they often don’t know why. Catherine unravels the confusion surrounding diversity and diversity programmes, highlights the dangers of creating echo chambers or cultures that suppress dissident opinions and demonstrates the value of more inclusive cultures.

This addresses some of the key points in the Difference Works keynote, but looking in more detail at the subject of female participation in the economy and the workplace. Why is it that organisations struggle to retain women and how can they improve that record? And, why the rewards of doing so are huge.

There is something much more damaging than saying the wrong thing to the newly bereaved, saying nothing at all. Not that there’s much value to mumbled platitudes or ill-timed expressions of sympathy (grieving people often seek a semblance of normality at work and may not wish to be forced to answer questions about how they’re feeling). Luckily, such mistakes are easy to avoid. Catherine talks about what she’s learned from dealing with the bereaved and from her own widowhood and other losses.

Catherine spent two years researching her biography of King Charles III and many more years behind the scenes covering the Royals and is now working on a book about the representation—and misrepresentation, of royal women from Anne Boleyn to Meghan. She gives insights and tells anecdotes from the strange world she dubs “Planet Windsor” and also highlights the surprisingly pervasive influence of the Royals on public life.