Who Leads This Work?
All IWC organisational work is led by Anj Handa, Forbes-recognised Diversity and Inclusion Trailblazer and governance specialist with almost 20 years of experience in equality, employment policy and structural change. As one of fewer than 1% of Black and brown women in the UK holding governance roles at senior level, including as Chair of arts organisation Freedom Studios and Independent Governor and Committee Chair at Leeds Arts University, Anj brings both the expertise and the lived authority this work requires. Listen to Anj’s recent interview with Third Sector.
Where a programme or project benefits from additional specialist input, Anj draws on a trusted network of associates in areas including media handling, public speaking coaching and facilitation.
Who Leads This Work?
Ready to Talk?
IWC works only with organisations that are ready to examine what their governance and leadership actually produces, not just what it intends. That commitment to working with those who mean it is not a marketing position. It is the standard against which every engagement is assessed.
If your organisation is committed to advancing fairness and safety for women and other marginalised people, and you want to ensure your governance and leadership reflect that commitment in practice, we would love to hear from you. Email: anj@inspiringwomenchangemakers.co.uk
About our Specialisms
How is this different from standard DEI training?
Most diversity, equity and inclusion training focuses on individual awareness: helping staff and trustees understand bias, understand difference, and understand their legal obligations. That work has its place. What IWC does is different. We work on the structural and organisational conditions that determine whether inclusion is possible in the first place, regardless of individual intent.
A board can be full of people who have completed unconscious bias training and still consistently make decisions that marginalise the communities it serves, if the way decisions are structured, who is invited into which conversations, and whose lived experience is treated as relevant expertise has not been examined. That examination is what IWC specialises in.
What does it mean to centre lived experience in governance?
Centring lived experience means designing your governance and decision-making so that the knowledge, perspective and expertise of people directly affected by your work has genuine weight in shaping it, not as a gesture of inclusion but as a structural reality. It means thinking carefully about who is in the room when strategy is set, how your board recruitment and induction processes either widen or narrow who can meaningfully participate, what counts as credible expertise in your organisation, and how feedback from the communities you serve actually travels to the level where decisions are made.
In practice this looks different for every organisation. For some it means reviewing board composition and recruitment. For others it means redesigning how staff with lived experience of the issues are involved in strategic conversations. For funders it often means examining how grant-making criteria and application processes either reproduce or challenge existing power dynamics.
What is Shifting Power and why does it matter for funders?
Shifting Power is a framework and practice that challenges grant-makers and commissioners to redistribute decision-making authority toward the communities and organisations closest to the issues being funded, rather than retaining it at the funder level. In practice it means examining who decides funding priorities, who assesses applications, what counts as evidence of impact, and whether the organisations you fund have genuine agency over how resources are used.
For funders in the women’s sector, Shifting Power has particular urgency because many of the organisations best placed to address the issues you care about are led by and accountable to the women most directly affected by inequality and harm. The governance decisions funders make about how they allocate authority and resource directly shape whether those organisations can do their most effective work, or whether they spend their capacity managing funder relationships and reporting requirements instead.
How do we start a conversation about working together?
The first step is always a conversation. Let’s arrange a call to discuss what you are working on and what feels unresolved, and we will arrange a call to explore whether and how IWC can help. There is no obligation and no sales process. If we are not the right fit, we will say so and, where we can, suggest who might be.
