Lucy Kellaway Keynote Speaker

Lucy Kellaway is an award-winning columnist, educator and co-founder of Now Teach. Across 31 years at the Financial Times (1985–2016), she became one of Britain’s most distinctive voices on management, skewering fads and corporate jargon and creating the cult character “Martin Lukes.” She was named Columnist of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2006.

In 2016, Kellaway co-founded the education charity Now Teach to help experienced professionals retrain for the classroom; since launch it has supported more than 1,000 people into teaching roles, especially in high-need subjects. She stepped into teaching herself in 2017 and now draws on first-hand classroom insight as well as decades observing leadership and work. Her memoir Re-educated (2021) chronicles that reinvention with candour and wit.

Kellaway’s keynotes are sharp, funny and practical. She unpicks how language shapes behaviour, why culture often trumps strategy, and what organisations can learn from the discipline and humanity of outstanding teaching. Audiences value her clear-eyed take on change and her ability to turn hard-won experience into usable tools for better leadership and communication.

Her honours include an OBE (2021) for services to education, alongside multiple journalism prizes earned during her FT career. As a columnist and author of bestsellers including Who Moved My BlackBerry? and Re-educated, she offers international audiences both entertainment and incisive analysis—insight that helps leaders cut through noise, focus on what matters and act with clarity.