Who Is Diversity Alliance?
Gabby Austen-Browne is an award winning diversity and inclusion expert delivering consultancy, education and training to the events and hospitality sectors as founder of Diversity Alliance.
She brings her professional experience producing and delivering events, managing venue operations and developing sales strategies for hospitality venues, to inform, support and advise on DE&I strategies that are relevant to the sector.
Gabby's diversity and inclusion journey has been a long one. Before moving to events, Gabrielle was a professional dance artist gaining a Masters in Community Dance from Laban, focussing on delivering creative activities to marginalised communities, giving access to dance and performance to underrepresented groups including those with physical and learning disabilities, older people, young people in pupil referral units and refugees. She worked with the Chickenshed Theatre Co. where she completed their diversity and inclusion training and went on to deliver workshops and facilitate sessions for practitioners on delivering inclusive performance sessions and teaching performance in an inclusive way.
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Gabrielle is recognised as an expert and has appeared on many panels speaking about DEI inside and outside of the events industry. This led her to co-founding a Diverse Speaker Bureau, dedicated to nurturing and elevating the voices of people from underrepresented groups and supporting businesses and organisations to diversify their speaker panels at events, ultimately contributing to the wider mission for equality, inclusion and representation. Gabby has written about Diversity & Inclusion for industry publications and has a regular column in Conference News.
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In addition to being an award winner herself, she has also been a judge for the C&IT awards 2022, CN Agency Awards 2022, EN Suppliers Awards 2022 and M&IT’s Tomorrow's Talent award 2022/3, CN 30 under 30 2023 and 50 LGBTQ+ Hospitality Champions 2023.
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Gabby is a mentor and ambassador for the Fast Forward 15 mentorship programme, with the aim to encourage applications from more diverse mentees and mentors, specifically from underrepresented communities, which has been incredibly successful and is co-founder of the REACH Scholarship programme working with Universities, to support Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority events management students with living costs, to directly improve representation and address the talent pipeline at a grassroots level and is a Member of the MMU Events Connect Advisory Group.
All her work is underpinned by her experience and expertise in the health and wellbeing space. Gabrielle is a qualified yoga and mindfulness teacher who brings these skills to create mindful, accessible and inclusive environments, when working with clients.
