LGBTQ+ Inclusion in the Workplace Wales Conference

Dan Walsh is Chair of Pride Cymru, Wales’ largest grassroots LGBTQ+ charity and live event. Dan has been a trustee of the charity since 2020, leads the charity’s strategic direction and oversees its operations. Dan grew up in Cardiff and has seen the change in the city over 30 years into a much more inclusive and vibrant place. Dan was previously the youngest Chair of Governors of a primary school in Wales and works full-time in international trade.

Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Sustainability Executive for the Football Association of Wales, delivering on the PAWB Strategy to create equal opportunities for everyone to feel they belong in football, both on and off the pitch and from national level all the way through to our grassroots clubs and volunteers. I’m also a member of the LGBTQ+ community and a passionate Welsh Woman.

Menai has a portfolio career and is an award winning Chief Executive, Non-Executive Director and Independent Adviser.

She has fourteen years’ experience as a Chief Executive and recently won the IoD Wales Director of the Year Public and Third Sector Award 2024 in recognition of her leadership as CEO of LATCH Welsh Children’s Cancer Charity since July 2022. Until September 2021, Menai was Chief Executive of The Pituitary Foundation, a UK-wide award winning health charity, where she successfully led transformative change during her ten-year tenure, establishing the charity as leading in its field worldwide.

Menai is also an Independent Adviser to the Senedd Cymru Commission, Co-Vice Chair of Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA) and Senior Independent Governor and Chair of the Governance and Nominations Committee at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Previously she has been a Trustee of organisations including ACEVO, Race Council Cymru and Daring to Dream.

She is a qualified Chartered Director, with a Postgraduate Certificate in Welsh Government and Politics and holds a Law Degree from Cardiff University.  For the past twenty years Menai has contributed widely to civil society in Wales, and the UK, across numerous causes. A lifelong volunteer also she is passionate about social change, equality, learning and social justice.

Menai is a Fellow of the Institute of Directors, the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), the IoD and the Institute of Welsh Affairs. She is an Ambassador of IoD Wales and holds advisory appointments, including Chair of Social Leaders Cymru Programme 2023 – 25.

She is an advocate for inclusive leadership and has broad interests, networks and wide-ranging experiences across several disciplines and organisations. Menai spends time voluntarily mentoring and coaching others. In 2019 and 2021, Menai was awarded the CEO Today UK and Global Awards, for innovative and strong leadership.

Menai is a first language Welsh speaker.  She has lived experience of being part of a minoritised community (LGBTQ+) and actively works to challenge inequalities. In 2023 she was awarded a Black History Wales Community Award for contributions to race equality and inclusion and in June 2024 she was named in The Pinc List as one of the top 40 influential LGBTQ+ people in Wales.

I am the inclusion manager at Principality Building Society, a role I have now been doing for two and a half years.  Prior to that I have a background in HR, and was part of the Pride Network for several years after joining the Society.

Sarah has worked in the field of HR since 1999, Sarah joined Gower College Swansea as Director of Human Resources in 2017.

Sarah has transformed the culture of Gower College Swansea with her passion and determination to embed wellbeing into the working lives of the workforce.

Sarah has been inspirational leading on women’s health and driving forward a menopause initiative which has been recognised as best practice by the Government Menopause Champion Helen Tomlinson, Mimms Davies MP and Carolyn Noakes, Chair of the Women’s Equality Select Committee. Sarah was invited to present her work on the menopause at the first Menopause Roundtable Event and her work was highlighted in an article for the Times on World Menopause Day. Sarah and her team at Gower College Swansea were recognised at this year’s National CIPD Awards winning Best Health & Wellbeing Initiative for Public/Third Sector.

Sarah had championed employing a dedicated wellbeing team and investing in staff wellbeing as a key people strategy to become an employer of choice, reduce absence levels, build resilience and futureproof Gower College Swansea’s workforce.

Sara Kirkpatrick is the CEO of Welsh Women’s Aid & she describes herself as an Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) professional, specialising in work with perpetrators. She has contributed to several frontline, innovative projects including co-authoring and delivering the award-winning CARA conditional caution project, contributing to the development of DRIVE, early development on Welsh Women’s Aid’s Change that Lasts perpetrator strand and, most recently, the Home Office perpetrator standards.
In addition to her CEO role, Sara is also a Trustee with Youth Realities, and a visiting Lecturer at Winchester University in the social work department, where she continues to enjoy the opportunity to enable practitioners to address DVA safely and effectively.

Professor Sian Rees is Deputy Executive Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Swansea University, were she also holds the position of Faculty Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Lead.  She is Chair of the Swansea University Culture Board, and Deputy Chair of DASSH UK (Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities).  Prior to academia Sian worked in the creative industries, as managing director of her own marketing and PR consultancy and also Publishing Director for Haymarket Publishing’s consumer electronics magazines.

Sian writes academically on authentic public relations and branding in the digital media age, challenging existing understanding of corporate identity and corporate brand personality management.  Sian explores the difficulty of developing “authentic” brand narratives in the digital age focusing on how organisational values, such as EDI, can be embedded in both practice and representation in an authentic way.

Dan Walsh is Chair of Pride Cymru, Wales’ largest grassroots LGBTQ+ charity and live event. Dan has been a trustee of the charity since 2020, leads the charity’s strategic direction and oversees its operations. Dan grew up in Cardiff and has seen the change in the city over 30 years into a much more inclusive and vibrant place. Dan was previously the youngest Chair of Governors of a primary school in Wales and works full-time in international trade.