Sarah Petherbridge

I am a disability awareness trainer and public speaker on the topic of diversity and inclusion ("D&I") from a disability angle.

I draw on my experience of working as a professional with a disability in a corporate environment for various accountancy firms. I was born profoundly deaf and communicate by way of hearing, lipreading, some BSL and intelligent guesswork!

I rose to the challenge of becoming a very experienced senior manager with a profound deafness in a large global organisation, EY. While I was at EY, I helped set up an employee network called Ability EY which at the time of my departure had over 500 members. This network provided support to people working at EY with disabilities/abilities/impairments/conditions including mentoring and coaching.

We also provided awareness training to help EY become more inclusive for people with disabilities and collaborated with various operational strands of the business e.g. recruitment and IT, to ensure that such processes were inclusive and accessible as possible. As the Co-Chair of Ability EY, I also took part in several public speaking engagements both internally and externally to promote disability awareness and collaborated with other strands of D&I such as race and gender to cover intersectionality. I have been nominated for and won awards for our work as Co Chair of Ability EY.

Outside of EY I am continuing with public speaking roles and open to provide disability awareness training in helping companies become more inclusive for people with disabilities. This training would complement any D&I training rolled out by HR managers/directors or D&I leaders as it is based on real life experience and personal stories. I would like to speak to any CSR managers or HR professionals as well as D&I leaders that want to create an inclusive workplace.

I am also an active disability advocate challenging organisations, public spaces and companies to be accessible as possible for people with hearing loss e.g. captions at local cinemas and theatres.