Speaking, Press and Broadcast Enquiries
I would love to speak at your event or be a guest on your podcast or radio show and to talk about how we can work together to create change in the world without replicating systems of injustice.
Here are some of the things I love to talk about:
- Thinking radically about healing and change in the International Development Sector - in 2018 I initiated Healing Solidarity a conference about Re-Imagining International Development.
- Discerning your right-sized role as a white person in building anti-racist practice.
- How we can create spaces that invite justice and liberation and why and how we should centre care as we do.
- Beating Burnout and Building Internal Resilience without bypassing injustice.
- Building our capacity to resist doing-it-all.
- Cultivating humane and just leadership within organisations.
- How to beat chronic exhaustion and value-drift in the social justice sector.
It’s all about how we stop being exhausted and start caring for ourselves as a route to greater impact on the injustice and inequity in our world.
I have personally seen and experienced the burnout that so often comes with change-making work and I see an opportunity, at this time, for us to start to do things differently.
You can read more about Mary Ann and her work, here: (https://maryannclements.com/about-us/mary-ann/)
I have two decades of experience in the not-for-profit and social justice sectors. I have worked extensively on women’s rights and disability issues internationally. I have led organisations and consulted with dozens more. I am committed to making the world a fairer place and see the problems with us over-extending and exhausting ourselves in our change-making work. I believe that these issues directly affect our impact.
I am able to provide insight and analysis, tracking why these problems are showing up so much in people working towards social change and about how we need to change our practice and approach to address them. I can also share the building blocks of the Embodying Change Process which I have developed over the past couple of years which supports individuals and organisations to make the shifts required to enhance their impact without sacrificing their wellbeing
I have had the pleasure on many memorable occasions of being in the audience when Mary Ann has delivered one of her wonderful talks. She is not just a consummate inspiring speaker; she is also a poet and a story teller, a weaver of compelling and moving narratives which she gathers from her own life experiences. She is ready to share of herself with moving candour while always bearing in mind the needs of the audience and the lessons she intuits they need to learn from her. I know that when Mary Ann gets up to speak, I am going to be taken on a beautiful journey full of vivid detail and soaring emotion and I can heartily recommend her for any speaking opportunity.
Rona Steinberg, Outloud Coaching
Some places that you can hear me:
- That Hummingbird Life with Meg Kissack
- TedX Covent Garden Women (talking about the Stories of our Grandmothers in 2013)
- F Your Diet with Kimberly Weiss (Episode 7)
- Going There with Jen Vertanen (Episode 049)
I am also the co-host of the Podcast Change Making Women with Ziada Abeid, check out our 70+ shows (and counting) here and a co-founder of The Story Party, a regular story telling soiree in Central London.
Official bio:
Mary Ann is an Author, Accredited Shadow Work Coach, Action Learning Facilitator & a Nia Movement Practitioner. Her Embodying Change Coaching practice enables people she works with to name the dissonance between their values and the day to day reality of their work and then to move forward with strategies that help to bring their work in change making space into greater alignment with their principles and with a genuine solidarity that is focused on healing injustice. She is currently also in this practice herself as the part-time Co-Chief Executive and Transformation Officer at ADD International working with Fredrick Ouko to lead the organisation through a process of transformational change. She is also the Initiator and a Co-Director of Healing Solidarity and of The Red Tent Directory. She holds a degree in Swahili and Social Anthropology and as Masters in Anthropological Research. Between 2004 and 2011 she was CEO of the charity AbleChildAfrica and has two decades of experience as a leader and practitioner in international development; including developing programmes in three countries for the mental health and wellbeing charity BasicNeeds. She is skilled at professional fundraising and grant-making and has raised millions of pounds for the organisations she has worked for to fund social justice projects. Mary Ann also Chaired a Domestic Violence Refuge and led the organisation through a merger/change process and consulted with other organisations in their change-management processes.
Download professional headshots of Mary Ann here.
Scheduling:
If you’d like to go ahead and schedule a time on my calendar, please click here or email lyndsey@maryannclements.com who can help us find a convenient time. If you’d like to set up a preliminary chat, I am more than happy to do that as well. Please do so via Lyndsey.
Equipment:
I have a reliable microphone, a solid internet connection, and a quiet space for virtual recording.
Training:
I trained as an Inspirational Public Speaker with Ginger Public Speaking in 2012.
Contact Info:
Email: maryann@maryannclements.com
Website: www.maryannclements.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryannmhina/
I look forward to speaking with you soon!
Writing

Writing was my first love and I still do it as much as possible.
Red Tents: Unravelling Our Past and Weaving a Shared Future, a book I have co-authored with Aisha Hannibal launches in the Spring and is now available for pre-order from Womancraft Publishing here.
I write creatively myself and use journalling tools with my clients extensively and in a sector full of questions about purpose, approach, racism, sexism and abuse, I write and speak about viable alternatives specific to the international development and change-making sectors. I share writing about this with my email list on a regular basis.
Below are a list of various places that you can read my recent (and less recent) writing. Some of it is published in my previous name, Mary Ann Mhina.
Below is a list of some places that you can read my writing:
- I co-edited Re-Imagining International Development Vol 28, Issue 1, Gender and Development Journal which was inspired by Healing Solidarity and has lots of fantastic writing in it and which you can find here.
- What Role can Privileged White People Play in International Development? for Bright Magazine October 2018
- Healing solidarity: re-imagining international development in Transformation at Open Democracy.net.
- Bringing our whole selves to our work in International Development
- Resisting the commodification of self-care and building our capacity for collective care.
- Thousands of passionate people and a few bad eggs? Inspired by #AidToo and the 'Oxfam Scandal'.
- Dear Exhausted Woman who wants to change the world. It's OK to rest.
- 'Make Love Not War' a short story which you can hear me reading here.
- 'The Poetry of an Orphaned Nation: Newspaper Poetry and the Death of Nyerere' in Remembering Nyerere in Tanzania' (Mkuki and Nyota: 2016) edited by Marie-Aude Fouere.
- 'Listening to our Grandmothers: The Transformational Wisdom of our Elders' (Kipepeo Press 2013) available to buy from me here and on Amazon.
- 'Partnership Matters: A Reflective Guide' (2012) available here.
- 'Delineated Stories: Getting involved in Mental Health in Tanzania' in Dealing with Uncertainty in Contemporary African lives' (NAI: 2009) available here.
Writing is also one of the ways I practise my commitment to breaking the silence about things we find difficult to talk about. This for me is part of my commitment to healing solidarity and breaking down a culture in which we keep our own experiences silent in our work. One way I have practised this is on social media in relation to the miscarriages I have experienced and some of my writing about miscarriage will be included in a forthcoming book.
Contact Info:
I am open to commissions for my writing.
Email: maryann@maryannclements.com
Website: www.maryannclements.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryannmhina/
I look forward to hearing from you!