Childlessness in the Workplace

Panel

Sophie Hunter
Sophie is Managing Director of S.E Hunter Associates Limited, a local Human Resource Management Consultancy based in North Wales. She has a specialism in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in the Workplace, having worked in an EDI Human Resource role for 8 years prior to leaving to set up her own company. Her interests include early morning swimming, volunteering with animal rescues, and veganism. Her dream is to set up an animal sanctuary. Sophie is Childless through Circumstances.

Katy Schnitzler
Katy is the founder and lead training consultant of MIST Workshops. MIST provide bespoke training, policy writing and support for organisations on the topics of pregnancy loss, infertility and childlessness. MIST’s work is academically-informed by Katy’s PhD research, which is she is pursuing alongside the consultancy. Katy has worked with various organisations to improve practice in these prevalent and significant, yet often overlooked areas – including global energy companies, universities and The NHS. Katy is also an academic and specialises in Psychology and Business – highlighting childlessness as an EDI issue within these taught programmes.

Berenice Howard-Smith

Berenice is a trained EDIB facilitator, involved in gender balance groups and has worked with Cambridge University on implementation of a fertility policy for IVF patients. She has delivered talks themed on learning together about childless exclusion to business networks and is developing a shared narrative between her design life and a childless one. Berenice has won awards for her social design project, Walk In Our Shoes and as a podcaster with The Full Stop and for her design work as Hello Lovely. She was a World Childless Week Ambassador from the start until 2022.

Jody Day
Jody is the British founder of Gateway Women, the global support & advocacy network for childless women, founded in 2011. She’s the author of what many professionals consider to be the ‘go-to’ book on the topic, Living the Life Unexpected: How to Find Hope, Meaning and a Fulfilling Future Without Children (PanMac 2016/2020). Chosen as one of the BBC’s 100 Women in 2013 & a UK Digital Woman of the Year in 2021, she’s a global thought leader on female involuntary childlessness, a psychotherapist, a 2017 and 2022 TEDx speaker, a founding and former board member at the UK Charity Ageing Without Children and a former Fellow in Social Innovation at Cambridge Judge Business School. Often referred to as the founder of the ‘childless movement’ and less often, but more memorably as ‘the Beyonce of childlessness!’, she’s been an Ambassador for World Childless Week since its inception in 2017. After a lifetime in London, she now lives in West Cork, rural Ireland, where she’s completing a novel (featuring a childless heroine of course!) and nurturing her emerging Gateway Elderwomen project.

The event is included in the Childless Festival Weekend Pass. Click here to book your pass to attend this and all other events happening at the festival.