Book Maria Thomas to speak at your next event.
Signature keynotes and conversation
Most organisations aren’t short on good intentions. What they’re missing is the right language and someone who can hold the room while it happens. Maria Thomas People & Culture strategist, academic researcher, and founder of Halden Atlas, speaks at the intersection of inclusion, leadership, and human experience. Warm, rigorous, and direct. Audiences leave with new language, practical frameworks, and the quiet confidence that change is possible.
From Good Intentions to Measurable Change
The EDI metrics that actually tell you something
Inclusion work without measurement is just storytelling. Maria cuts through vanity metrics to show people leaders how to move from gut feel to evidence and from annual reports to real accountability.
Best for: HR & People teams, EDI leads, senior leadership
Women & AI: Who Gets Left Behind Inclusion, intelligence, and who the future is being built for
AI is moving fast. But whose knowledge is shaping it, whose bias is baked into it, and whose future is being written without them? Drawing on academic research, panel experience, and frontline work in EdTech and digital inclusion, Maria explores what truly inclusive AI looks like and what organisations must do now before the gap becomes permanent.
Best for: Women in Tech events, ERG conferences, Corporate HR teams
Who Sits at the Table
Reimagining diversity in charity governance
Look at most charity boards and you’ll find the same faces making decisions about people they’ve never shared a room with. Drawing on her own journey to three governance roles, Maria makes a personal and practical case for why diverse boards aren’t a nice-to-have — they’re a matter of integrity.
Best for: Charity & non-profit leaders, trustees, governance teams
Sublimation
The space between tenacity and rejection
The talk nobody puts on the agenda — and the one people remember most. Maria reframes rejection not as a stop sign but as redirection, offering a framework for channelling ambition and drive into something generative.
Best for: Leadership conferences, ERG events, professional development
The Fluency Gap
Why good managers still get inclusion wrong
Most managers aren’t exclusionary on purpose — they’re underprepared. This keynote gives leaders a new vocabulary and practical tools for building teams where psychological safety isn’t a policy, it’s the lived experience.
Best for: People managers, HR teams, leadership development
Wellbeing Isn’t One Size
An intersectional approach to mental health at work
Generic resilience training wasn’t built for everyone and most people know it. Maria helps organisations ask harder questions and build mental health cultures that work for the whole workforce, not just the people already doing fine.
Best for: HR & People teams, charity staff, ERG leads
