Women’s Sector Governance & Systems Change Consultancy

Why we focus on the Women’s Sector

Women are still systematically excluded from the decisions that shape their lives at work and in society. Not because of a lack of talent, ambition or capability, but because the governance structures, leadership cultures and funding systems that determine who leads, who is heard and whose interests are protected were not designed with them in mind.

IWC works with organisations that are ready to address that directly: not through compliance exercises or one-off training, but through sustained, structural change.

What we Offer

Most organisations that commission this work have already tried training programmes and board development sessions that produced no lasting structural change. The problem is not the quality of those interventions. It is that they addressed behaviour rather than design. A board can endorse the right values and still consistently reproduce the patterns it set out to change, if the structural conditions that determine who leads, who is heard and who is accountable have not been examined.

How We Work and What You’re Investing In

IWC does not price by the day. The investment for each engagement reflects the outcome the organisation needs, the risk that a poor process would carry, and the breadth of capability being accessed.

That capability is not available from a single source anywhere else in this sector. It combines governance expertise and intersectional EDI practice, board-level lived experience, an active women’s sector network, and the delivery discipline to bring complex, multi-stakeholder work in on time and to budget. It also includes technical literacy that is rare in governance and EDI consultancy: working knowledge of accessibility standards, including WCAG compliance, accessible document and content formats, alt text practice, and the digital inclusion considerations that determine whether an organisation’s communications actually reach the people it exists to serve. That extends to the governance and legal implications of AI use and data handling under UK GDPR, risks that are present in most organisations and named in very few.

When you commission IWC, you are not buying a consultant’s time. You are accessing a depth and range of expertise that addresses what your organisation is trying to achieve, what it is trying to avoid, and what it may not yet have identified as a risk.

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.

Who We Work With

We work with values-led organisations, boards and funders whose mission includes advancing fairness and safety for women and other marginalised people, or who recognise that their own governance and leadership needs to better reflect and serve the communities they exist for.

Our clients include charities, social enterprises, public sector bodies and purpose-led funders across the UK and internationally.

Board Accountability and Systems Change

We work with boards and senior leadership teams to examine the structural design choices that determine who holds power and how it is exercised. This includes board composition and effectiveness, decision-making processes, how lived experience is centred rather than tokenised, and the governance frameworks that underpin accountability to the communities you serve.

The 2025 Charity Governance Code makes equity a governance obligation, not an organisational value. Boards are now accountable for demonstrating progress. That accountability requires structural redesign, not a programme.

“Anj is flexible, knowledgeable about governance and gave us useful things to consider when bringing in new Board members, to help them quickly grasp what we do and feel confident speaking about our work.” Hannah Davies, Healthwatch Leeds

Power, Voice and Leadership Culture

We support leadership teams to understand and address the cultural and structural dynamics that shape whose voice is treated as authoritative, whose expertise is recognised, and how psychological and cultural safety operates in practice. This work connects directly to the conditions that enable or prevent women and marginalised people from leading effectively.

“Anj ran a successful session with our team about unconscious bias. She shared her wisdom and the team appreciated her honesty and direct, that left us with an invitation to do better.” Jude Williams, Literacy Pirates

Equality, Governance and Systems Change Consultancy

For organisations seeking a longer-term partner, we offer ongoing strategic support on equality, governance and systems change in funding, commissioning and delivery. This is not a one-size-fits-all offer: we work with you to identify where the structural barriers are and build the internal capacity to address them.

For funders and commissioners, we bring deep expertise in embedding Shifting Power principles into grant-making and governance practice, ensuring that decisions reflect the voices of those most often excluded, including women experiencing the intersection of multiple marginalising factors.

“I have worked with Anj for several years now as she has supported us on our ambitious agenda to shift power in our grant-making. Anj has been brilliant at centring the lived experience of women in our work of tackling gendered poverty, including an evaluation of our board shadowing programme, development workshops with our grant partners and board strategy session Anj really understands the opportunities and challenges that we face as an organisation and has skillfully helped us to be more inclusive in our work. I recommend her most highly.” Paul Carbury, Smallwood Trust

Speaking and Facilitation

Anj speaks on governance, power and structural change to audiences who need to hear the argument made clearly, not diplomatically. Her talks are commissioned by organisations that want their boards, leadership teams or staff to understand why structural change is necessary and what it requires of them, not to be reassured that progress is already happening.

She is particularly sought for events where the subject matter requires a facilitator who can hold difficult conversations with rigour and without creating institutional damage.

For speaking and facilitation enquiries contact Matthew Fisher at Scamp Speakers: matthew@scampsolutions.co.uk

“Anj was the keynote speaker at an important event and I could not have been happier with her contribution. She was a true professional, radiating calmness and putting others at ease. She has a lovely, relaxed approach whilst simultaneously taking the subject matter very seriously. Most importantly, I spoke to attendees after the event who were equally inspired, including one who said the event had opened his eyes to the need for change.” Catherine Seymour, Association of Charitable Foundations

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.

Anj also brings a level of digital and technical literacy that is unusual in governance and EDI consultancy. This includes working knowledge of accessibility standards including WCAG compliance, accessible document formats, alt text, and the digital inclusion considerations that determine whether an organisation’s content reaches the people it exists to serve. It extends to the governance implications of AI use and data practice under UK GDPR: risks that are present in most organisations and named in very few. When organisations work with Anj, this literacy is part of the engagement, not an additional cost.

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.

Working with Us

IWC works only with organisations that are ready to examine what their governance and leadership actually delivers, not just what it intends. That commitment to working with those who mean it is not tokenistic. It is the standard against which every engagement is assessed, and the reason our external validation carries weight in the sector.

Every engagement is scoped individually. The investment reflects the outcome you need, the complexity of what you’re addressing, and the risk of getting it wrong. Before any proposal is developed, we take time to understand what you’re working on, what feels unresolved, and whether IWC is genuinely the right fit. If we are not, we will say so and, where we can, suggest who might be.

To start that conversation, email anj@inspiringwomenchangemakers.co.uk or book a call below. There is no obligation and no sales process.

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