About IWC Founder Anj Handa
Years of working for yourself teach you things that no training or credential can. They teach you what you stand for when the financial stakes are real. They teach you whose approval you actually need. And they teach you, slowly and sometimes painfully, that saying no to the wrong things is how you say yes to the right ones.
This is the story of how Inspiring Women Changemakers came to exist, and of the equality and systems change practitioner behind it: Anj Handa.
Her work before IWC
Anj began her professional life in Germany in the late 90s, working in IT and international business. It was an environment that required her to develop fluency across cultures, sectors and languages from the start. German became her second language. She became accustomed to navigating working relationships with older men in the IT sector in Germany, where age, gender and race are underrepresented. She developed the interpersonal and political intelligence to navigate rooms where she was consistently the only person who looked like her became, over time, a specialism in its own right.
She returned to the UK and built a career in public policy, employment and skills, working as Director of a non-departmental public body, advising on publicly-funded programmes of up to £20 million and developing the lobbying practice she has continued to build for nearly 20 years. She worked with organisations across the UK, Europe and the US, learning how power operates inside institutions and how to redirect it.
The campaign that changed everything
In 2014, Anj was introduced to a woman seeking asylum in the UK for herself and her two daughters, who faced the risk of Female Genital Mutilation if deported. What followed became one of the most significant experiences of her professional life.
She assembled a pro bono international legal team and led a Change.org petition that gathered 126,500 signatures. She engaged global media, MPs, parliamentarians and international influencers, and was featured extensively in the media.
It also demonstrated something she has built her practice on ever since: that change happens when people with different kinds of power, legal expertise, media access, political relationships, community networks, bring them together in service of a clear and urgent purpose. The structures that protect inequity are not dismantled by good intentions. They are dismantled by people who understand how power moves and are willing to do the work of redirecting it.
Building IWC
Inspiring Women Changemakers was founded in 2017 from a straightforward conviction: that the skills, networks and knowledge Anj had developed over a career of changemaking should not be a privilege available only to those who already had access. IWC became the community and consultancy through which those resources could be shared more widely.
Over the years, the organisation has grown into something she did not anticipate when she began. The milestones include a community that has produced genuine friendships and collaborations across borders, recognition in Forbes as one of the 10 Diversity and Inclusion Trailblazers You Need to Get Familiar With, named as one of Grant Thornton’s ‘100 Faces of a Vibrant Economy’ campaign, sector recognition from Third Sector and Charity Times, several awards, including from Peacemaker International, features across most major UK media outlets, and participation in the UN Commission on the Status of Women during its 30th year events. A recent LinkedIn post on disability representation exceeded 164,000 impressions in under a week.
Anj has also featured in Generation Share by Benita Matofska and Sophie Sheinwald, a visual storybook featuring 200 global changemakers, and the largest ever collection of changemaker stories. Her work on Female Genital Mutilation and asylum was included in Eradicating FGM in the UK by Guardian writer Hillary Burrage, and Refugee Tales by Comma Press.
What experiences taught her
The accomplishments matter. But Anj is clear that the thing she is most proud of after fifteen years is something that does not appear on any award citation.
It is the consistent decision to remain true to values of integrity and generosity, and not to sell those values out to organisations that wanted to use her name or her identity as a validator rather than engage genuinely with the work. At times that has meant significant financial loss. It has also meant a growing clarity about what the work is for, and a deepening trust in her own judgement about which organisations are ready to do it seriously.
Saying no to the wrong clients is how she has built the practice that makes saying yes to the right ones possible.
What she does now
As a consultant and strategic partner, Anj works with civil society organisations, boards and funders in the women’s sector on governance, systems change and the structural conditions that determine whether fairness and safety for women is built into how an organisation operates or merely aspired to in its strategy documents.
As a professional speaker, she speaks internationally on power, governance and structural inequality, and is represented for keynote and facilitation work by Matthew Fisher at Scamp Speakers.
As a writer, she writes on equity, governance and structural change, including through her Power and Practice Substack publication. She is currently writing a memoir based on her family’s experiences of the British Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 through an intersectional, feminist lens, and has a Substack entitled ‘Power and Practice.’ She has written for publications such as Huffington Post and welcomes contributor opportunities.
As an artist, she makes art under the name Gallery Anju. In 2025, her work was exhibited as part of the ‘Invisible No More: Art, Menopause and the Power of Personal Narrative’ exhibition.
Work with Anj
She is available for consultancy, governance advisory work, speaking and strategic partnership with organisations working seriously on women’s rights and structural change, in the UK and internationally.
For speaking and facilitation, email matthew@scampsolutions.co.uk and for everything else, drop a line to anj@inspiringwomenchangemakers.co.uk
