Yassine (she/her) is an EDI (Equality/Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) facilitator, mentor, speaker, consultant, writer, interviewer, host, sensitivity coach, podcaster and occasional accidental model. Her areas of expertise are LGBTQ+  inclusion, building inclusive communities, creating anti-racist spaces and approaching EDI through an intersectional lens. 

As a queer, fat, dark skinned, Black, African, immigrant and gender non-conforming woman with a mixed bag of mental health challenges; her passion for equality, equity and inclusion stems from the core of her very existence and motivates all her work. 

She is of Gambian and Liberian heritage, and was born in Kenya, moved to Ethiopia, Senegal and Niger all before the age of 12. At that point she was sent to a quintessentially English all girls boarding school on the Sussex Coast. She then ventured up to Scotland for university before finally finding somewhere to call home in the cultural melting pot that is London.

After several years as a Client Account Manager at Stonewall, she recently launched her own consultancy, Confronting Change EDI Strategies in 2020. This is her vehicle in the fight for social change and challenging intolerance and injustice. Being her whole authentic self is integral to her work and she sees empathy and imagination as the driving force in how we can create change and make a difference in the world. 

As a masculine presenting Black woman, she is continuously challenging concepts around gender and exploring what womanhood means to her. In January 2022, she travelled to Miami to undergo a gender affirming procedure called Non-flat Top Surgery, (something between flat top surgery and a breast reduction). While she is still in the process of recovering, this has already been an exciting period of self-discovery, as she relearns to navigate the world in the body she always dreamed of, but never thought  possible. 

She combines her professional expertise on subjects relating to LGBTQ+ inclusion, gender, intersectionality and embedding anti-racist practice into our day to day lives while drawing from her own lived experiences to tell her story and bring these subjects to life. She candidly speaks about mental health and well-being, authenticity, the importance of community and how we can all learn from one another in sharing our own stories.