diversify logo
Buy Tickets

Speaker

Lola Akinmade Åkerström

She/Her

Award-winning Visual Storyteller | International Bestselling Author | Keynote + TEDx Speaker | CEO, Geotraveler Media

Lola Akinmade Åkerström is an award-winning visual storyteller, international bestselling author, and travel entrepreneur. She has dispatched from over 80+ countries and her work has been featured in National Geographic, New York Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, BBC, CNN, Travel Channel, Travel + Leisure, Lonely Planet, Forbes, and many more. She has collaborated with commercial brands such as Dove, Getty Images, Mercedes Benz, Intrepid Travel, Electrolux, ASUS, and National Geographic Channel, to name a few.

As a storyteller, Lola was named a 2022 Hasselblad Heroine and 2018 Bill Muster Travel Photographer of the Year.

As a business owner and entrepreneur, she runs Stockholm-based creative storytelling agency Geotraveler Media and was named one of the 2023 Most Influential Women in Travel by Travel Pulse. She was honoured with a MIPAD 100 (Most Influential People of African Descent) Award within media and culture in 2018 and in 2021 with a Newsweek Future of Travel Storytelling Award.

Her book, Due North, received the Lowell Thomas Gold Award for Best Travel Book, and she is also the author of international bestselling “LAGOM: The Swedish Secret of Living Well” available in over 15 foreign language editions. Her internationally-acclaimed novel, “In Every Mirror She’s Black”, was a Good Morning America (GMA) Buzz Pick, Apple Editors’ Pick, Amazon Editors’ Pick, Independent UK “Best Thought-provoking Story”, and was shortlisted for the Bad Form Review Book of the Year. Her latest novel, EVERYTHING IS NOT ENOUGH, is a Jennette McCurdy Book Club Pick, a Washington Post, Sunday Times, and Amazon Editors’ Pick, amongst others

She runs her own online academy, Geotraveler Media Academy, which runs photography experiences around the world and is dedicated to visual storytelling and helping the next generation of travel storytellers put the heart back into the craft.

Chisom Udeze photo

Chisom Udeze (She/Her)

Economist | Founder of Diversify, Diversify Consult and HerSpace

Chisom is an Economist, a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) Strategist, and a 3 times founder of impact driven companies. She has over 14 years of experience working with organizations like the European Commission, The United Nations, ExxonMobil and The Economist Group. Chisom is analytical and a data enthusiast. She is passionate about interrogating the cross-sectoral relationship between society’s inhabitants, resources, production, technology, distribution and output. She efficiently and effectively unlocks complex systems, interprets data, forecasts socio-economic trends and conducts research.

Having lived and worked in 7 countries across 3 continents, she is highly adaptable to different circumstances and people, and thrives in uncertain environments.

As the founder of Diversify and Diversify Consult, Chisom and her team work with companies, institutions, governments and civil society to develop sustainable DEIB strategies and embed measurable diversity and inclusion initiatives in the workplace and society. In addition, in 2022, Diversify launched the Diversify Nordics Summit, the largest conference in the Nordics that gathers cross-sectoral stakeholders to amplify DEIB in the Nordics and beyond.

In 2020, she founded HerSpace, a diverse and inclusive co-creation community for all genders, with particular focus on women and non-binary people. In 2022, HerSpace launched HerTech, Women in Tech incubator, for women-led companies, with a focus on the inclusion of diverse founders.

Chisom is a thought-leader in DEIB and a passionate advocate for mental health and wellness. She writes often on DEIB and justice related topics, some of her work is published on Forbes. 

Skip to content