Jude Kelly

CEO and Founder

The WOW Foundation

Speaker Biography

Jude Kelly CBE is one of the UK’s most powerful cultural leaders. She is an award-winning creative, a business leader and mentor, and a celebrated global champion of equality, with a particular focus on intersectional gender equity. In 2018, she founded The WOW Foundation as a force for change. WOW began as a festival created at London’s Southbank Centre in 2010 where Jude was artistic director for 12 years. Now an independent charity, WOW has seeded a global movement with activity in 45 locations across six continents and reached 65 million people.

She has received many awards and accolades, including BBC’s Most Powerful Women in the Arts; Red Magazine Woman of the Year; Veuve Clicquot Female Social Entrepreneur; CBI First Woman; Evening Standard 1000. She is an inaugural member of Connected Women Leaders, sits on the Global Advisory Board of Pathfinders Presidents Council and the Advisory Board of Julia Gillard’s Global Institute for Women Leaders. Her TED Talk ‘Why women should tell the stories of humanity’ has had over 1m views.

She has given keynote talks to business, governments and global leaders, including at UNESCO, COP 22, CHOGM 2022 and at the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos. She is the recipient of 21 doctorates and fellowships for services to the arts and women in the UK, Australia, Hong Kong, China and the USA.

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