Malala Yousafzai

The youngest-ever Nobel prize winner, Malala Yousafzai is the inspirational Pakistani schoolgirl who stood up to the Taliban and won. Campaigning for her right to an education in the face of extreme danger, Malala was the victim of an assassination attempt in 2012 but recovered and has gone on to become one of the most iconic people in the world. As a BAME speaker, she is able to talk about the importance of racial equality in education and the work she continues to do with the Malala Foundation.

Throughout her school years, Malala regularly campaigned for equal education rights calling on her classmates to do the same. When the Taliban began shutting down girl’s schools and banning them from education, she would regularly feature on Pakistani TV demanding action and explaining the importance of education for young girls. This put a target on her back and in October 2012 a gunman attempted to murder Malala. The attack sent shockwaves around the world with everyone praying for her safe recovery. Thankfully, after a number of surgeries in the UK, she recovered, and her facial nerve is now at 96% capacity. From here she’s gone on to continue her activism co-founding the Malala Foundation alongside her father which strives to give girls everywhere access to free, quality education. In 2014 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, aged just 17 it made her the youngest person ever to be given the prestigious award.

Malala had been campaigning for many years prior to the attack. In 2008 the BBC was looking for a Pakistani student to work as an anonymous blogger giving insight into the situation. Her father, Ziauddin, volunteered Malala and this was her first real experience of writing about the issue.

In recent years, as well as her foundation work, Malala has studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University. She has also been named as one of Time Magazine’s most influential people in the world on numerous occasions. Her activism continues and alongside this, she’s become one of the most highly sought after international speakers. Growing up as a young woman in Pakistan she’s suffered discrimination more than most and her eye-opening talks during events act as an inspiration to all in the audience. Able to use her persona accounts to support great change, Malala shares actionable strategies with corporate audiences to improve racial acceptance and diversity policies in professional environments, a truly transformative speaker.