Award-winning workplace culture speaker helping organisations create workplaces where people feel safe, valued and understood.
5.00 of 5
Top rated!5 of 5
Jackie provided messages to our 250+ global business owners that were pertinent, delivered in a clear, entertaining and memorable fashion.
CEO, International Egg Foundation
Jackie Handy helps organisations create workplaces where people feel safe, valued and understood. With more than 30 years of experience in senior leadership, learning and development and inclusion, she delivers practical, engaging keynotes that help leaders strengthen belonging, purpose and performance. As the creator of The Matter Model®, TED speaker and award-winning storyteller, Jackie combines research, relatable stories and practical tools that inspire lasting culture change.
Jackie Handy is one of the UK's most respected voices on workplace culture, belonging and leadership. Her mission is simple: helping people feel safe, valued and understood at work.
Drawing on more than 30 years of experience across senior leadership, learning and development and inclusion, Jackie understands the realities leaders face when trying to build thriving workplace cultures. Her sessions move beyond theory, offering practical strategies that help organisations create environments where people genuinely want to contribute, collaborate and grow.
Jackie is the creator of The Matter Model®, a practical framework that explores the critical connection between belonging and purpose. It helps leaders identify the cultural gaps holding organisations back and provides clear, actionable ways to strengthen engagement through the everyday moments that have the biggest impact.
Her approach reminds leaders that creating a great workplace doesn't always require major investment. Often, the biggest difference comes from consistent human behaviours that help people feel they matter.
Jackie has built a reputation as a speaker who connects with audiences on both an emotional and practical level.
Her TEDx talk was selected for the main TED.com platform, bringing her message on belonging and human-centred leadership to a global audience. She was also recognised as Best Storyteller at the UK Speaker Awards, reflecting her ability to combine meaningful insight with humour, warmth and memorable stories.
Every keynote takes audiences on a journey where evidence, lived experience and practical leadership advice come together. Participants leave inspired, but also equipped with ideas they can apply immediately in their own organisations.
Her work and expertise have also been featured by HR Magazine, the BBC, and in her book The Matter Model – How Great Leaders Build Belonging, Strengthen Purpose and Drive Engagement at Work, published by Routledge.
Jackie has partnered with organisations across a wide range of industries, supporting leaders who want to strengthen culture, engagement and performance.
Some of her clients include:
Whether speaking to senior executives, HR professionals or people leaders, Jackie demonstrates how stronger workplace cultures are built through intentional leadership rather than expensive initiatives.
Her keynotes explore topics including:
Audiences appreciate her ability to translate research into relatable examples and practical actions that leaders can start using straight away.
Everything Jackie teaches is grounded in real leadership experience and shaped by her own personal journey. Her lived experience, professional resilience and deep belief in people have shaped an approach that feels authentic, honest and highly relevant to today's workplaces.
She encourages leaders to rethink what makes people stay, perform and thrive. Rather than focusing on grand gestures, Jackie shows how meaningful conversations, everyday recognition and genuine human connection create stronger teams and better organisational outcomes.
Her message resonates because it is practical, optimistic and rooted in the realities of modern work.
Away from the stage, Jackie is a passionate long-distance hiker and a committed fundraiser for Dementia UK. Those experiences continue to reinforce the values that underpin her work: compassion, resilience and creating environments where everyone feels they truly matter.
If you're looking for a keynote speaker who combines award-winning storytelling, practical leadership expertise and a powerful message about workplace culture, belonging and purpose, Jackie Handy delivers an engaging experience that inspires audiences long after the event has finished.
5 of 5
Jackie provided messages to our 250+ global business owners that were pertinent, delivered in a clear, entertaining and memorable fashion.
CEO, International Egg Foundation
5 of 5
Jackie took the time to research our company’s values and use them to prompt ideas for small but important changes we can make as individuals. Feedback from our colleagues has been that this was particularly impactful, and I’ve seen evidence of these actions being put into place already.
Head of Insights, Premier Foods Group
5 of 5
Jackie bought passion, energy, humour, real life stories and huge impact at our recent conference. We wanted a speaker who could support us in reshaping our peoples thinking on being the best leader they can be and boy Jackie did an awesome job. So much positivity and great feedback has come in and energy levels feel high.
Head of L&D, Westerleigh Group
Keynote by Jackie Handy:
The way people experience work shapes the way they perform at work.
Leaders are being asked to deliver more, often with less time, greater complexity and a higher emotional load. At the same time, team members want to feel seen, valued, trusted and connected to work that has meaning. Culture can no longer be something organisations talk about; it must be something people can feel, trust and act on every day.
This keynote closes that gap.
Built around Jackie Handy’s international book, The Matter Model: How Great Leaders Build Belonging, Strengthen Purpose and Drive Engagement at Work, this keynote gives leaders a practical way to build robust, resilient teams ready for the change happening now - and the change still to come.
Do I matter here?
Does the work I do here matter?
This is not a fluffy talk about “being nice”. It is a commercially relevant keynote about building healthy, human-centred workplaces where people stay, contribute and do their best work.
AUDIENCES LEAVE WITH:
Keynote by Jackie Handy:
You already care deeply about inclusion.
You know that when people feel they must shrink, mask, edit or protect themselves at work, they cannot fully contribute. And when people do not feel they belong, your business loses honesty, creativity, trust and talent.
This keynote closes the gap between good intentions and everyday impact.
It gives audiences a way to think about belonging that is practical, personal and immediately useful - built through a series of small but powerful human choices.
In this keynote, audiences are invited to look beyond the language of inclusion and into the lived experience of it. Audiences will leave with a long list of no-cost actions to help people feel safe, valued and understood.
What does it really feel like to belong?
And what is the impact when you don’t?
Jackie shares part of her own inclusion story: the moments that shaped her understanding of what it means to be seen, judged, to belong, to adapt, and to find the courage to finally take up space as herself.
This keynote explores why belonging is so much more than what we say. It lives in how we notice, listen, include, challenge and act with one another in the small moments, every day.
AUDIENCES LEAVE WITH:
Watch Jackie Handy in action
