About IWC
Inspiring Women Changemakers (IWC) is both a consultancy for civil society organisations and a community for changemakers. We work on two fronts: with organisations whose governance and leadership must better reflect and protect women and other marginalised people, and with a community of changemakers who are doing the longer, harder work of making the world safer and fairer for women every day. We’re based in the UK but our clients and community members are international. This work is needed globally.
IWC was founded in 2017 by Anj Handa, Forbes-recognised Diversity and Inclusion Trailblazer, governance specialist and professional lobbyist of nearly 20 years. Everything IWC does is grounded in a single conviction: that women’s inequality is not a cultural inconvenience or a pipeline problem. It is a structural and political failure, reproduced through governance systems, funding decisions, leadership cultures and institutional design that consistently centre the wrong people.
Addressing it requires precision, courage and a willingness to examine what most organisations would rather leave unquestioned.
The Founding Story
In 2014, Anj led a high-profile legal and media campaign on behalf of a woman seeking asylum in the UK for herself and her two daughters, at risk of female genital mutilation. She assembled a top legal team, coordinated a Change.org petition that gathered 126,500 signatures, and engaged global media, MPs and international influencers.
That campaign was not just about one woman and her daughters, though it was absolutely about them. It demonstrated how power moves: through networks, through narrative, through the governance decisions of institutions with the authority to include or exclude. It also demonstrated what becomes possible when people bring their skills, connections and courage together in service of a clear purpose.
That understanding became the foundation of everything IWC does.
The world is not yet fair or safe for women. Inspriring Women Changemakers exists to change that.
What We Do: For Organisations
We specialise in the design choices that most diversity programmes never reach. We know that women experience disproportionate inequality at every level of working life: in pay, progression, access to leadership, and protection from harm. When race, disability, age, neurodivergence or other factors are added, the barriers compound. IWC works with values-led organisations, boards and funders to address this structurally, not symptomatically.
The 2025 Charity Governance Code makes equity a governance priority, making Boards accountable for demonstrating progress. That means examining governance architecture: who sets the agenda, how authority is distributed, whose expertise is recognised as strategic, and whether the people most affected by decisions have genuine influence over them.
Anj brings deep expertise in Shifting Power principles, applying them to governance design and funding practice. She is one of fewer than 1% of Black and brown women in the UK holding governance roles at senior level and has served as Chair of arts organisation Freedom Studios and Independent Governor and Committee Chair at Leeds Arts University.
We work with charities, social enterprises, public sector bodies and purpose-led funders across the UK and internationally.
Our Values
IWC is built on a set of values that are more than aspirational statements. They are the standard against which we assess our own practice, and the basis on which we choose who we work with.
We are changemakers of all bodies, beliefs and backgrounds, united by a commitment to a world that is fair and safe for women and all marginalised people.
Integrity: we name what we see, including when it is uncomfortable, and we are honest about the limits of our own expertise. Organisations commissioning this work should expect the same directness from us that we ask of them.
Fairness: we promote justice, equity and inclusion in every relationship and decision, and we hold ourselves accountable to the same structural scrutiny we bring to the organisations we work with.
Generosity: we share time, resources and connection to uplift others. As a social business, we commit a minimum of 10% of our time to mentoring, pro bono sessions and subsidised places for changemakers experiencing hardship or harm.
Positivity: we hold hope and resilience as active practices. The scale of the problem has not diminished our conviction that structural change is possible, it has sharpened it.
What We Do: For Changemakers
Our community is for changemakers of all genders who want the world to become a safer, fairer place for women and other marginalised people. It is a space for the intersectional, sometimes uncomfortable conversations that more cautious spaces rarely hold well, and a practical resource for those building the skills, networks and strategies that sustained social change requires.
Too many changemakers are doing vital work in isolation, stretched thin and at risk of burnout. This community exists to change that: to ensure that the people working hardest for women’s rights and safety do not have to do it alone.
IWC is a place that’s safe for the messy, intersectional conversations that can be shied away from in other communities.” IWC member and behavioural specialist Cllr Adele Bates.
