Wow. For those of you who were able to make our 2025 International Women’s Day event at Brix London on Tuesday, we imagine that was your reaction to the force of nature that is Heather Fisher. Heather told her story in a totally transparent and vulnerable way, from suffering from anorexia as a child as she set her heart on becoming an Olympian, the subsequent impact that losing her hair from alopecia has had on her, through to winning over 150 caps for England rugby, playing at World Cups and Olympics games, and switching sports to the Bobsleigh, and joining Team GB, through to her post elite sport career, which has included participation on SAS: Who Dare’s Wins.
We set an objective of this year’s event being truly inspirational, and Heather delivered that in a emotional, hour long keynote that had all guests totally captivated as she spoke from the heart.
It was also a great privilege to be joined by Mabinty Esho. Mabinty is the Head of DEI at Comic Relief. Mabinty delivered an insightful talk on managing difficult conversations, both from employee to manager and vice versa. Reinforcing the importance of us all calling out inappropriate actions and behaviours and making a concerted effort to think inclusively in everything we do. This was another example of how our year long partnership with Comic Relief can benefit members, and we hope to have Mabinty joining us at our Conference in June to run a session based on her presentation yesterday.
This was Phil Goodman’s, BPMA CEO, first IWD event at the BPMA. He highlighted ‘In my opening address that whilst this was the third event hosted by the BPMA, my perception was that previously, once the event was over, much of the conversation stopped. I want to ensure this doesn’t happen again, so I proposed one actionable ambition that we set to address and progress by IWD 2026.
My proposal was around the gender pay gap. The ultimate objective is to become an industry proud to have genuine gender pay equality. We will be seeking members to join a committee to work with us on this ambition throughout the year ahead. If you’re interested in getting involved then please reach out to me directly at phil.goodman@bpma.co.uk’.
For those of you who were unable to join us, we appreciate that it is a crowded industry calendar at the moment, but once you’ve hopefully had the chance to speak to anyone who was there, we really hope that you can put a marker down for next year to make a special effort to support the event if you can.
The event was a great example of how, in a relaxed and informal setting with great food and brilliant speakers, we can come together as a membership, enjoy time with one another, and leave feeling inspired and motivated to create a positive impact.
