BIOGRAPHY
Mohsin Zaidi is an award-winning author, commentator and qualified lawyer. His memoir, A Dutiful Boy (Penguin, 2020) won the Polari Prize, the Lambda Literary Award and was named Guardian, GQ and New Statesman Book of the Year; providing a personal insight into issues of diversity and inclusion, mental health and justice.
An advocate for LGBT rights, BAME representation and social mobility, Mohsin sits on the board of Stonewall and is listed by The Financial Times as a top future LGBT leader. A regular commentator on Sky News, he also writes for CNN Style, Bustle, Mr Porter and Newsweek and was recently listed in The Lawyer Magazine Hot 100.
For more information on Mohsin Zaidi’s speaking topics and availability, contact Leo von Bülow-Quirk at leo@vbqspeakers.com.
MOHSIN ZAIDI: SPEAKER
Mohsin’s speaking topics include:
- Mental Health – Mohsin addresses the stigma around mental health within ethnic minority communities and draws a parallel between it and a cultural stigma around discussing mental wellbeing at work. Through very personal and at times harrowing tales, Mohsin articulates the case for honesty in personal identity within yourself but also at work and amongst colleagues.
- Social mobility – The single most pressing issue of diversity facing society and businesses is the one to which we give the least attention. While measures of equity on race/gender/sexuality move in the right direction, the gap between rich and poor continues to widen. Through personal experience of growing up in a council house and going to school ridden with gang violence (a school from which he became the first person to go to Oxford University), Mohsin addresses the issue of class bias and discusses what we can do about it.
- D&I / Intersectionality – None of us are just one thing and Mohsin is the personification of an intersectional life. On race, Mohsin has the facts and figures to back up the experiences of ethnic minorities we so often hear about in the news. On class, he speaks candidly about the difference between the world he came from and the world he now lives in. On sexuality, he describes the struggle to accept yourself in the face of cultural stigma. But the strength in his experience lies in the intersectional tale it tells.
- The power of representation – Through eye opening stories in a professional and personal context, Mohsin explains how diverse representation in key roles doesn’t just demonstrate a commitment to being an inclusive organisation but adds value to it.
- Book group – Q&A with a senior person from the company around critically acclaimed memoir ‘A Dutiful Boy’ drawing on all the strands Mohsin writes and speaks on.