Ettie Bailey-King / Fighting Talk Communication | London, UK
D and I Consultancy
I've come to think of my life as a kind of alchemy: taking the most painful things that have happened to me and turning them into fuel for making a more just world.
A teacher once told me, "Ettie, your superpower is that you can misunderstand anything." I don’t believe in superpowers, but I can see how my passion for inclusive, accessible communication was there right from the start. I know, in my bones, that being genuinely heard and understood is not a luxury. It’s safety.
From age 11, I started to channel that conviction into commitment. I volunteered on a youth-to-youth counselling helpline and as a peer supporter, supporting other struggling young people through their own darkest moments.
I didn't have language yet for what I now call it, but I was already practising alchemy: turning my own pain into the capacity to sit with other people's pain, and to help.
The experience that shaped me most profoundly was surviving rape and sexual assault, and the isolating realisation, afterwards, that there was no real space to talk about what had happened to me as a survivor. I desperately wanted other people to be safe, understand their rights, and know how to seek justice, so no one else would have to carry that silence alone.
That determination led me to help build the Schools Consent Project, taking it from an idea into a registered charity that has now reached over 62,000 young people. I helped design the workshops and delivery model that took consent education into schools across the UK, and later internationally. I also founded the CLEAR campaign, pushing for sexual consent to be embedded properly in the UK school curriculum.
In my darkest moments, what has consistently pulled me through is storytelling. Writing my own story down, even messily, has helped me find order in the chaos. Language has helped me make sense of things that made no sense at all, and connected me to other people in a way that has been genuinely life-saving.
That's the belief underneath everything I now do professionally: the right words can help people find their place in the world.
There are lots of parts of my life (like my ADHD and OCD) which other people might view as barriers. And while they're challenging, I am certain they make me better at my job.
Because I know, firsthand, that the world doesn't meet everyone’s needs.
It’s part of what makes my work so transformative. I build communication and spaces that work for people as they *actually* are. For the tired, distracted, confused and exhausted person that you are, not the 'ideal' version of you.
Alongside the Schools Consent Project and CLEAR, I became Marketing Director at Getting on Board, working to make charity trustee boards more diverse and equitable, and led communications strategy for Girls Not Brides, contributing to the global fight against child marriage. I've volunteered with LGBTQIA+ charities and initiatives, including Charity So Straight, working to make the charity sector more genuinely inclusive of LGBTQIA+ people.
My academic writing has been recognised with a global medal, The Undergraduate Award, in 2012, and with a full scholarship for my master's in English Literature at Oxford University. I also hold a diploma in counselling skills from WPF Therapy, which underpins my ability to hold brave, honest spaces when training people through difficult subjects. In 2023, I won the Equality and Diversity Award at the IPSE Freelancer of the Year Awards, recognition that came despite facing trolling, death threats and rape threats for continuing this work.
I was also named on Charity Times' 2023 list of women making a difference in the charity sector, and selected for the London Library's 2022/23 Emerging Writers Programme from hundreds of applicants across the UK.
Today, that same instinct shows up in the training I deliver to organisations like Amnesty International, Wellcome, Decathlon, Girlguiding, Oxfam and Greenpeace, turning good intentions into practical change.
Whether it's a student telling me they've never felt so safe, or a client saying they finally feel equipped to have a hard conversation well, the throughline is the one that has run through my whole life: turning what could have broken me into something that helps others be braver, safer, and less alone.
My commitment to inclusive and accessible communication was never a career choice. It is simply who I am.
Ever since I learned to speak, I have been using my voice, first to survive, then to help other people survive, and now to build a world where others can speak up without being silenced, shamed or ignored.
