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    Penguin Connect

    Inspiring personal and professional growth

We connect businesses with world class authors and ideas that make a difference.

From standalone workshops, to keynote speeches or curated programmes, our events stimulate ideas, generate growth and spark creative thinking at the heart of business.

Authors and audience at Penguin Connect Events

"Phenomenal. They have been brilliant at helping us develop an event programme that ties in with our values and culture."

Olivia McMonagle, Facebook 

Our experts include

Bernardine Evaristo

Bernardine Evaristo is the Anglo-Nigerian award-winning author of several books of fiction and verse fiction that explore aspects of the African diaspora: past, present, real, imagined. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other won the Booker Prize in 2019. Her writing also spans short fiction, reviews, essays, drama and writing for BBC radio. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University, London, and Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature. She was made an MBE in 2009. As a literary activist for inclusion Bernardine has founded a number of successful initiatives, including Spread the Word writer development agency (1995-ongoing); the Complete Works mentoring scheme for poets of colour (2007-2017) and the Brunel International African Poetry Prize (2012-ongoing). www.bevaristo.com

Bernardine Evaristo

Caroline Criado Perez

Caroline Criado Perez is a writer, broadcaster and award-winning feminist campaigner. Her most notable campaigns have included co-founding The Women’s Room, getting a woman on Bank of England banknotes, forcing Twitter to revise its procedures for dealing with abuse and successfully campaigning for a statue of suffragist Millicent Fawcett to be erected in Parliament Square. She was the 2013 recipient of the Liberty Human Rights Campaigner of the Year Award, and was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2015. Invisible Women has won the FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, the Books Are My Bag Readers’ Choice Award and the Royal Society Science Book Prize. She lives in London.

Caroline Criado Perez

David Wallace-Wells

David Wallace-Wells is deputy editor of New York magazine, where he also writes frequently about climate change and the near future of science and technology. In July 2017 he published a cover story surveying the landscape of worst-case scenarios for global warming that became an immediate sensation, reaching millions of readers on its first day and, in less than a week, becoming the most-read story the magazine had ever published -and sparking an unprecedented debate, ongoing still today among scientists and journalists, about just how we should be thinking, and talking, about the planetary threat from climate change.

David Wallace-Wells

James O'Brien

James O'Brien is an award-winning writer and broadcaster whose journalism has appeared everywhere from the TLS to the Daily Mirror. Best known for his daily current affairs programme on the radio station LBC, with over 1.2 million weekly listeners, he has also presented and appeared on a variety of TV shows including Newsnight and Have I Got News For You? His first book, How To Be Right, was a Sunday Times bestseller and won a Parliamentary Book Award after selling over 200,000 copies across all formats. He is often to be found on twitter discussing the burning issues of the day.

James O'Brien

Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five international bestsellers: The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. He is the host of the podcast Revisionist History and is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He was named one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine and one of the Foreign Policy's Top Global Thinkers. Previously, he was a reporter with the Washington Post, where he covered business and science, and then served as the newspaper's New York City bureau chief. He graduated from the University of Toronto, Trinity College, with a degree in history. Gladwell was born in England and grew up in rural Ontario. He lives in New York.

Malcolm Gladwell

Mary Portas

Known to the nation as Mary, Queen of Shops, from her Award winning series for the BBC Mary Portas has made an indelible mark on British retail. Starting her career with Harrods and then Top Shop she made her name as the Creative Director of Harvey Nichols, transforming the department store into London’s sexiest fashion destination. She has written columns for most national media on retail and consumerism, published two books, advised Government on the future of High Streets, launched her own fashion label, as well as kickstarting the return of British manufacturing with her brand Kinky Knickers. Her proudest achievement to date, she says, is the creation of Mary’s Living and Giving shops for Save The Children. Currently the most profitable charity shops in the UK, she has so far opened 25 and has raised over £13 million and counting. All of this is fuelled by the talent and expertise of the people of Portas, her agency based in London. Working on an international level, the business advises clients from every continent, covering every sector of the industry, from mass market brands to high-end luxury, across fashion, beauty, hotels, airports, Malls and Real Estate Place-making. Distinguished by an unrelenting focus on people and the cultural influences that shape their lives, Mary and her diverse team of strategists, designers and creatives have built made to-measure concepts that marry the key tenets of intelligence, instinct and insight. Westfield, Louis Vuitton, Mercedes, Gap, Liberty, L’Oreal, Sainsburys, Estée Lauder to name but a few have all had the Portas magic. Portas believe that understanding today’s fluid consumers is at the heart of great selling and shopping. That and a bloody great dollop of intuition, creativity, vision and risk. Otherwise, why bother?

Mary Portas

Rangan Chatterjee

Dr Rangan Chatterjee is regarded as one of the most influential doctors in the UK. A practising GP for the last two decades and resident BBC Breakfast doctor, Dr Chatterjee wants to inspire people to transform their health through making small, sustainable changes to their lifestyles. Leading the charge on how healthcare and medicine is understood in the UK, Dr Chatterjee most recently co-created a lifestyle medicine course with the Royal College of GPs, that has now been delivered to over 400 GPs and health care professionals. He hosts the No. 1 iTunes podcast, Feel Better, Live More and is the author of two Sunday Times bestselling books. Dr Chatterjee lives in Wilmslow, Manchester, with his wife and two children.

Rangan Chatterjee

Viv Groskop

Viv Groskop is an award-winning comedian (Say Sorry to the Lady, Be More Margo and Anchorwoman), a crack interviewer (most recently seen on Graham Norton's UK-wide book tour), and an agony aunt for The Pool. She is the author of I Laughed, I Cried (Orion 2013), and a regular contributor to the Guardian, Observer and Mail on Sunday, as well as Front Row, Woman's Hour and Newsnight.

Viv Groskop

"It’s always a massive pleasure working with the Penguin Connect team – they make collaboration easy and they make life more interesting – and more fun!"

Madlena Pozlevic, Perkbox

Meet the Head of Penguin Connect

Jonathan Phillips

Head of Penguin Connect

Get in touch to find out how our events can make a difference to your business.

Email: JPhillips@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk

Telephone: +44 (0) 208 231 6412

Connect with us

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More from our experts

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Features

Viv Groskop on how to be confident when public speaking

Experiencing anxiety and fear about speaking in public is very real for a lot of people. In How to Own the Room, Viv Groskop explores the art of brilliant speaking with empowering tips to help you speak up.
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Extracts

James O’Brien on why the ‘nanny state’ is nonsense

Every day, James O’Brien listens to people with unchallenged opinions on lightning-rod issues and dismantles their arguments live on air. He explains why he thinks ‘nanny state’ rhetoric is a divisive and dangerous school of thought.
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Features

Lisa Conway-Hughes on how to manage your money better

Lisa Conway-Hughes, financial advisor and author of Money Lessons, shares her eight top tips for taking care of your money, so that it takes care of you.

What we're reading

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