Former Lambeth equality commissioner Professor Miranda Brawn celebrated 10 years of her Diversity Leadership Foundation at the House of Lords in London by launching The Brawn Review.
Key findings of the review include:
- While people from diverse backgrounds, such as ethnic minorities and those with a disability, are under-represented at boardroom level across all sectors, inclusion can improve the innovation and productivity levels of an organisation by ten times.
- Almost four out of five (78%) of the board members from across the globe who contributed to the review said that more can be done to help boardrooms and the organisations they govern become more sustainable and inclusive.
The House of Lords event also saw presentation of lifetime achievement awards from the Miranda Brawn Diversity Leadership Foundation (TMBDLF).
Winners of the 2025 of educational scholarships from the foundation were also announced.
Miranda Brawn is the first honorary professor of business and law at the University of Roehampton.
With a substantial career in law and at boardroom level in many businesses, she is also the founder, president and chief executive officer of TMBDLF and host of “The D.A.R.E. Podcast” with global leaders as guests
She delivered the annual foundation lecture entitled this year: “Why Diversity Still Matters” and launched her charity’s new 10-year strategy – “1 Million Young People: Classroom to Boardroom”.
The first recipients of TMBDLF lifetime achievement awards were
Dame Fiona Woolf DBE (former Lord Mayor of the City of London; a former partner at the international law firm CMS; former president of the Law Society; former chancellor of the University of Law; and founding patron of TMBDLF.
Baroness Sandy Verma, chancellor of the University of Roehampton; and past Chair, UN Women UK.
Nicholas Cheffings, board counsellor, The Crown Estate; founding board advisor, TMBDLF; and past chair of the leading global law firm Hogan Lovells.
Baroness Doreen Lawrence, founder of the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust.
The Brawn Review is available online at tmbdlf.com. It is becoming a permanent resource which can be used from the classroom to the boardroom.
Its 50 recommendations include working to ensure that boardrooms are more representative of the country as a whole and holding leaders to account for improving the recruitment, retention and progress of diverse board members.
The report took three years to complete. Professor Brawn began her research while a resident visiting fellow at the University of Oxford from 2022 until 2023.
A first of its kind in terms of the range of diversity strands, scope and transparency covered, the report includes input from 1,000 global board members with 50 recommendations covering 24 sectors including finance, business, law, charity, health, and education.
The Brawn Review aims to “focus on the recommendations about how sustainability, inclusion and good governance should be interpreted, updated and enforced in the boardroom”.
Its 50 recommendations are endorsed by leading international organisations, global leaders, scholars and experts including Lord [Mervyn] Davies of Abersoch CBE whose 2011 “Davies Review”, a UK government initiative to increase gender diversity in the boardroom began the creation of this type of review.
A copy of The Brawn Review can be received by emailing TMBDLF at info@tmbdlf.com
