Diverse Voices, Inclusive Spaces: Empowering Conversations with Dani Wallace

“Life was no longer going to happen to me, and I was going to happen to life.”
– Dani Wallace

As the fearless leader of the “I Am The Queen Bee” movement, Dani Wallace’s trek from adversity to triumph is not just inspiring but transformative. In this exclusive interview, she shares her remarkable story, encapsulated in her own words, “Life was no longer going to happen to me, and I was going to happen to life.”

From the council estates of Preston to the global stage, Dani’s path is as compelling as it is empowering. Surviving the challenges of domestic violence, homelessness, and single parenthood, she seamlessly juggled a corporate career with her passion for performance. Today, as an award-winning public speaking coach and singer, Dani embodies the essence of empowerment, helping others “show up, wise up, and rise up.”

But Dani’s journey transcends personal triumph; it also speaks of her commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. As an active ally, she tirelessly advocates for marginalized voices, from LGBTQIA+ communities to the neurodivergent and disabled. Through her work, Dani creates spaces where every voice is not only heard but celebrated—a mission epitomized by her creation, “The BIG Festoon.”

This commitment to inclusivity has earned Dani and “I Am The Queen Bee” numerous accolades, including awards for Best Training and Coaching Business in the UK and Agent of Change awards. Most recently, her efforts were recognized with a nomination for the Entrepreneur of Excellence Award in the National Diversity Awards.

Join us as we look into Dani Wallace’s advocacy for inclusive spaces, empowering conversations, and the relentless pursuit of greatness. In an era where diversity is not just a buzzword but a moral imperative, Dani Wallace’s tale reminds us that success is not reserved for the few but accessible to all.

TWB: Your transition from vocalist and events coordinator to award-winning public speaking coach is quite remarkable. Tell us more about your awards. Could you share with us the pivotal moments that led you to establish “I Am The Queen Bee” and become a fearless leader in the IAQTB movement, particularly considering the importance of diversity and resilience in your journey?

DW: It’s been a wild ride moving from full time performer to fully fledged CEO. There have been so many pivotal moments. The biggest internal moment was when I decided, having been homeless, that life was no longer going to happen to me, and I was going to happen to life. I had been the common factor in everything that had happened in my life so far, and I needed to be more intentional in my decision making. The shift from making moves to survive the moment to longer term thinking really help me set the path out before me.

I began charting my journey via Facebook Lives, chatting to my friends about what I was planning, the gigs I was performing at as they increased in size, the books I was writing, and the people I was meeting. I did that so regularly that more people would watch along and it was lovely that we all felt a part of something.

It was clear from the beginning that the people who watched along with me wanted to be inspired. They saw more for themselves and found inspiration in seeing someone consistently taking positive action to move the dial on their situation.

The next pivotal moment was a trip I made to Malta with my friend, Lisa Johnson. It was a trip I couldn’t really afford at the time, but it was with a group of people who had built really large businesses between them. The flights turned out to be cheap and so I went along, and Lisa helped me understand that being really specific with what I teach would help unlock my ability to grow what I offer.

Having been a performer for over 25 years, paired with my vast experience working within the corporate space as a learning and development specialist, it became clear that speaking and events would be a brilliant vehicle to help people as there is a glaring need for more diversity on stages worldwide.

From there I launched my first course programme BEE Heard, which has remained a staple in the courses I offer now and I made £16000, which I reinvested into my events. It has taken 5 years from that point to now selling out our main event The BIG Festoon consistently and becoming a real leading light for active and enthusiastic inclusion within the event space.

This has seen IATQB winning awards for Best Training and Coaching Business in the UK, Agent of Change awards, and, most recently, a nomination for Entrepreneur of Excellence Award in the National Diversity Awards.

TWB: Your clients have experienced significant transformations in their confidence and speaking abilities. How do you integrate principles of diversity and inclusion into your coaching methods to ensure that individuals from all backgrounds feel empowered to rise up and speak out?

DW: I am very intentional about making sure we have world class consultants that partner with us to make sure that we approach our speaking clients with sensitivity and care. I also make sure that our learner programmes have very clear, informative and concise training on how to be more inclusive with talks. The language we use need to help more people feel seen when we are talking. We also ensure to create a more inclusive space within events, should our speakers wish to go on to create their own event, which many of them do. We partner with Alex Lynam from Beyond The Binary, Jo McMeechan from SENStory and Samantha Lubanzu, a D&I Specialist, to make sure we have all the best and most up to date knowledge, as all of them are spearheading inclusion in the entrepreneurial arena.

It is important to learn from people with lived experience and also to pay accordingly for that consultancy and expertise.

We also have scholarship provisions within our programme to assist people who may not otherwise be able to engage with our work. We are proud to be allies and create equity as widely as possible through the business.

TWB: Your dedication to helping primarily women, while maintaining an inclusive brand, is commendable. How do you navigate the intersectionality of diversity and gender in your coaching approach, ensuring that all individuals feel seen, heard, and empowered?

DW: This has been a real work in progress from since the launch of the business, where, yes, I served primarily women.

However, as the business, and my own education and knowledge around gender has grown, I realised that I wanted to bring people together, not separate them. We have so much to learn from one another and it is imperative that we create safe spaces to do so.

Making sure we use inclusive language as everyday practice, in our content, courses and events, help people see that they are welcome to the party.

I am proud that we are not just an actively inclusive business, but an enthusiastically inclusive business. We are proud to serve all who align with us.

The world is a richer place when we learn from each other and lift each other up.

TWB: Many of your clients praise your ability to provide not just coaching but ongoing support and resources. How do you leverage principles of resilience to equip your clients with the tools and resilience needed to navigate challenges and setbacks in their public speaking journey?

DW: The inner work needed in order to forge a truly successful speaking career is, arguably more important, than that structural work.

Great speakers need great resilience. They need to be humble students of themselves and the reason they want to speak. So many people approach me to work with them because they want to ‘Share their story’. I always challenge this with asking why they want to speak really? How will they serve the audience emotionally and practically.

It is not enough to want to get on stages because you like the sound of your own voice.

They need to be able to hear ‘No’ to being booked and actively seek feedback.

They need to listen and respond to their audiences.

They need to keep their assets up to date so they remain relevant.

Speaking isn’t a ‘one and done’ type of work. It is centred in the speakers’ capacity for continued growth and that is what I teach at the core of all my programmes.

TWB: Your clients often mention the concept of “rising up” and overcoming self-doubt. How do you incorporate principles of resilience into your coaching to help individuals overcome imposter syndrome and fear of public speaking, especially considering the diverse backgrounds and experiences of your clients?

DW: It is really key to remember that EVERYONE experiences some form of imposter syndrome type of feelings, especially when they are becoming more visible or taking up space in rooms and on stages where they may be a minority in terms of race, gender, disability, sexuality, socioeconomic background, and so on.

I consistently share with my clients my key thoughts on this –

If you don’t share what you have to say, how will you help the people that you truly want to help?
People can only be what they can see, so by allowing themselves to take up space and be seen and heard, it will help mobilise more people from a variety of lived experiences to come forward and do the same.

It’s so important, now more than ever, to have people from a wide range of backgrounds take up space so that they and others can indeed rise up.

It’s also worth mentioning that we should really consider depathologizing the concept. It’s not really a ‘syndrome’. The feelings we have around this are a natural physiological and emotional response to the act of positioning ourselves as ‘alpha’ in a room full of other mammals. Once we consider the logical fact that we are safe in the majority of instances, those feelings are easier to work through.

You have a gift to give within your knowledge and story. Who are you not to give it?

TWB: Your recent article titled “Health, not Beauty. That’s why I did it.” sparked important discussions around diversity and inclusion. Could you elaborate on the critical change you made in your life and how it has influenced your approach to coaching, particularly in creating inclusive and resilient spaces for your clients?

DW: For years, I had been plus size and unapologetically so. I loved the body I was in, and it had brought me to where I am today. A lot of my messaging centred in self-acceptance and autonomy, and I certainly would not advocate toxic diet culture.

I, due to health reasons, opted to have gastric sleeve surgery 2 years ago. It has changed my health infinitely for the better and I am now able to get full cover insurance for my business, house and life, which was not available to me before. I didn’t get the surgery to change how I looked, although it was certainly a byproduct that was obvious to my audience.

I was open with them about my choices and remain an advocate for bodily autonomy and choice.

People are not their bodies. They have bodies, and often, when people are becoming more visible, they will question themselves aesthetically. I can proudly share with them that I was visible in a really positive way as a person living in a large body just as much as I am now that I am not so big.

Your message is a million times more important than what you look like. As long as that message is aligned and helpful, stop caring about what society thinks. We should look like and get on with the task of helping the people we want to help.

TWB: Your commitment to vulnerability and authenticity is evident in your posts and articles. How do you believe vulnerability contributes to effective communication and leadership, especially in fostering diverse and inclusive environments?

DW: Vulnerability is a key component in the way that I share. Done well, it humanises us and helps us connect. That really taps into our need as a community.

It helps to have a shared experience and we often connect with each other through our humanity as opposed to banging on about how much we’ve achieved.

From an inclusion and diversity perspective, as I’ve said before, it’s easier to become what we can see. Thus, the more we share our lived experiences with each other, the better we can connect to each other’s stories and messages from a place of empathy and seeking to understand.

TWB: Music seems to be an integral part of your life, from your tribute to Amy Winehouse to your background as a vocalist. How does your passion for music intersect with your work as a public speaking coach, and how do you incorporate principles of diversity and inclusion into your musical endeavors?

DW: Music is the greatest of connectors. It helps create energy and emotion with audiences and is truly the most universal of languages.

I use music to punctuate my talks. For example, when I talk about allyship and inclusion, I will sing Lady Gaga’s Born This Way, or when I want the room to feel high energy, I will perform Tina Turner’s Proud Mary.

I’m intentional about mixing the types of artists and genres whose songs I perform so that people with different backgrounds and tastes can connect to the message I’m trying to convey.

I use music to signify changes in pace. I use it to anchor emotions into key moments of the day.

People seldom remember the exact words you say when you talk, but they remember how you made them feel. Utilising music to amplify that concept is truly magical.

Everyone connects with the piece differently and I find that fascinating. You can connect with a whole room and the individuals within it at the same time, and that is powerful stuff.

TWB: You’ve mentioned events like the “Ideas Fest AKA Glastonbury for Business.” How do you ensure that your events and community gatherings are inclusive and welcoming to individuals from diverse backgrounds, and how does diversity enhance the richness of these spaces?

DW: We are proud of the events that we have created, and we do so with the help of fantastic consultants and experts with lived experiences, for example Beyond The Binary and SENStory.

It’s a travesty, especially in this day and age, that the majority of events that are business centric are catered toward, and centred around the straight, white, neurotypical, able-bodied, middle class experience.

That means that economic growth is stilted, people begin to work and live in echo chambers and the result of this is division. We are richer in more ways than the obvious by creating safe spaces to learn and grow together.

We create more empathic and helpful communities within which rising tides raises all ships.

TWB: In your work advocating for diversity and inclusion, you often emphasize the importance of allies. Could you elaborate on why you believe the world needs more allies for that advocacy, and how you encourage individuals to become allies in their personal and professional spheres?

DW: People who experience adversity, who have been oppressed, or who find themselves in a minority will often be exhausted from years of experiencing complex micro-aggressions all the way through to outright violence. They are often beyond tired of dynamically risk assessing every situation that they find themselves ‘othered’ in. They are weary of well (and sometimes not well) intentioned people forcing them to educate about this experience and therefore reliving it.

It’s not fair for the burden of that to lie solely with the people who are experiencing the oppression.

Allies are needed to help close the gap in education, to alleviate the labour being expected of oppressed and minority communities, to hold safe spaces for them to learn so that they can get on with the task of building the lives they truly want.

An ally’s job is to listen and then help create safety. It is important to pay those who are educating us for their time, energy, and expertise, and not expect free labour.

Our workforces and communities can only benefit by creating equity and enthusiastically including as many people as possible. We all do well when we all do well.

TWB: Looking ahead, what are your aspirations for the future of “I Am The Queen Bee,” and how do you envision continuing to champion diversity, inclusion, and resilience in your coaching and community-building efforts?

DW: My aspirations for the future of IATQB are that we grow our event The Big Festoon to be the biggest and most inclusive business and personal development event here in the UK.

It is our aim to be the hub of entrepreneurial activity for people from all walks of life, and a place they can feel safe to connect, learn and build businesses, in a joyful and safe way,

As we build our speaker bureau, I intend that we will be able to represent the very best in breakthrough British speaking talent and for that talent to be the gold standard when it comes to diversity and inclusion. ⭐

(Video and photo credit: Dani Wallace)

“If you don’t share what you have to say, how will you help the people that you truly want to help?”
– Dani Wallace

Useful Links

Catch Dani Wallace and her work through the following links:

Share Your Insights

We invite you to engage with Dani Wallace’s empowering interview and share your thoughts with our community. Comment below with your insights, reflections, and questions. Let’s keep the dialogue going and inspire one another to embrace diversity, inclusion, and personal growth.

Discussion Questions:

What aspect of Dani Wallace’s journey resonated with you the most?
How do you believe inclusive spaces can foster personal and professional growth?
In what ways can we each become better allies for diversity and inclusion in our communities and workplaces?

We look forward to hearing your perspectives!

July 2024 marked a special milestone at The World’s Best Magazine as we proudly declare it as our Diversity, Resilience, and Inclusion Month. Throughout the month – and moving forward – we officially dedicate a special series of posts in our platform to celebrating the richness of diversity, the strength of resilience, and the power of inclusion.

Join us as we spotlight stories that showcase the myriad facets of diversity, from cultural heritage to individual identities. Through our features, we aim to amplify voices that demonstrate resilience in the face of adversity, inspiring others to persevere and thrive.

Moreover, we pledge to champion inclusion in all aspects of our work, ensuring that every story, perspective, and experience is welcomed and valued. By embracing diversity, resilience, and inclusion, we strive to foster a more equitable and compassionate world.

Let’s come together to honor the beauty of our differences, celebrate the triumphs of the human spirit, and reaffirm our commitment to building a society where everyone is seen, heard, and valued.