Yassmin Abdel-Magied
Yassmin Abdel-Magied Leadership Speaker & Diversity Speaker
Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a Sudanese-born Australian mechanical engineer, writer, and social advocate and a keynote speaker on unconscious bias, diversity, and leadership
After working on oil and gas rigs around Australia for almost half a decade she became a full-time writer and broadcaster in 2016.
He first memoir, Yassmin’s Story, was published with Penguin Random House at age 24, after which she became the presenter of Australia Wide, a national weekly current-affairs show on the ABC and Motor Mouth, a podcast on becoming an F1 driver.
After hosting the documentary, The Truth About Racism, she created Hijabistas for the ABC, a series looking at the modest fashion scene in Australia. Yassmin is an internationally accredited F1 reporter and a regular contributor to the BBC.
Her writing has appeared in publications like Teen Vogue, The New York Times, The Guardian and numerous anthologies. Yassmin has also appeared at literary festivals around the world, including the Jaipur Literary Festival in India and Colorado, Hay Festival in the UK and the Dalkey Book Festival in Ireland. She is also a regular on The Guilty Feminist podcast and has appeared as a co-host on the incredibly popular feminist show.
Yassmin founded her first organisation, Youth Without Borders, at the age of 16 after working for 10 years in non-profit governance. She has since served on numerous board and councils, including the Council of Australian-Arab Relations and ChildFund, and also serves as the Gender Ambassador for the Inter-American Development Bank.
Yassmin has been awarded numerous awards nationally and internationally for her advocacy, including the 2018 Young Voltaire Award for Free Speech and Queensland Young Australian of the Year in 2015. In 2017, Yassmin created Mumtaza, dedicated to the empowerment of women of colour, and most recently founded Kuwa, a platform tackling cultural change around sexual harassment in workplaces.
SPEAKING TOPICS
Yassmin Abdel-Magied has spoken in over 20 countries and her TED Talk, “What does my headscarf mean to you”, has been viewed almost two million times and was chosen as one of TED’s top ten ideas of 2015.
Her speaking topics include –
• Unconscious Bias
• Leadership
• Inclusiveness
• Diversity
• Women in Work
The first time I saw Yassmin present I was hugely impressed. Speaking to a dominantly white, middle-aged male audience from the petroleum industry, Yassmin spoke about inclusiveness and diversity and blew them away...I decided we needed to secure her services for an all-staff forum at Geoscience Australia... Yassmin was wonderful speaking to GA! She won over a potentially skeptical audience with personal stories, charm, warmth, humour, and importantly, a gentle provocation that simply gets individuals to consider why we think the way we always have and do we need to reassess. As Yassmin puts it, being young, female, brown and Muslim, she’s a walking minority and has a good handle on what it takes to feel included. Her talk, and a generous Q and A that followed, generated a buzz of excitement and catalysed many constructive conversations in my organisation. Yassmin added real value to our journey towards a better organisational culture. She makes a difference!
— Geoscience Australia
Yassmin delivered a keynote address to a group of 400 senior global managers. She maintained the attention of the group by delivering a set of simple and powerful messages in a very personal and compelling way. She has developed a level of insight and maturity well beyond her years.
— IMD, Switzerland
“Yassmin is such a natural and gifted presenter - her fierce intelligence, her empathy, and her humour made it one of the best stage presentations I’ve ever seen.”
— Women in Leadership Showcase
Your talk was absolutely superb, and I thought you might be interested to know that we asked attendees to fill in a short survey following a snapshot of which is below:
· 97.3% rated your topic as good or excellent
· 94.4% rated your content as good or excellent
· 97.1% rated your presentation/delivery as good or excellent – 87.14% of which was in the excellent column.
This was, by far, the highest marks received by any speaker on the day.
— The Royal Academy of Engineering, London
