Born 1968, I barely survived societal prejudice and school, community and familial homophobic bullying/ rejection as a teenager in the 1980s. For 16 years I’ve used my experiences to educate, challenge and inspire others right across the UK and to up to 50 countries in person or online. My travels have taken me across the UK as well as India, Canada and recently, Munich and South Korea. In 2008 I organised a protest to the Catholic’s church view of LGBT+ people and began telling my story to LGBT+ youth groups. Then in 2009 in my London primary school, we uncovered via surveys a huge problem with homophobic bullying and language. Approaching Stonewall for help I was told (at that point) they did not run training in primary schools due to potential backlash. However, my school clearly had a serious issue that needed addressing. Firstly I came out (at the age of 40) to my whole school in assembly and was widely reported as the first UK gay male primary school leader to ‘come out’ as gay to his whole school community and international press, I was told later that this inspired ‘a generation of LGBTQ+ educators’ to find their authentic selves in the workplace, leading to the formation of national UK LGBTQ+ teacher networks such as LGBTed who actually have stated as much. I also devised a ground-breaking (so I’m told) training school stakeholder training programme, initially for primary and faith schools to tackle and prevent LGBT+ bullying and prejudice more widely in an intersectional manner. Delivered firstly in my own school, I was soon invited to deliver it across the UK in all kinds of schools in the state and private sectors. I was also invited to speak at numerous high profile education and anti-bullying conferences in UK and overseas, something I do to this day (I’m in Cologne in November ’24). Such was the success of my project ‘Inclusion For All. that Amnesty, Church of England, Department For Education, Kidscape, Show Racism The Red Card, NSPCC, OFSTED and the teacher unions all sought my support in developing their own work in this area, several winning awards as a result, as was the case with NSPCC Safer Networks. I was taking trans speakers into schools to speak before Stonewall and was leading termly LGBT+ train the trainer days several years prior to them. As my work and journey was reported around the world, I wrote for and was interviewed by a large number of UK and foreign media channels and papers. I wrote for Huffington Post, Gay Star News, TES and many, many more. I was invited onto the Equalities forum for the NAHT. My work won awards and increasingly took over my life at a time when I was a full time deputy head, needless to say it all put a lot of pressure on me- but I was determined to make a difference whilst I could and my work was having clear and measurable impact as feedback showed. I heard of an HIV prevention programme set up in Africa inspired by my work-this moved me greatly. By May 2016, I had been awarded a number of awards and nominations which helped get my messages out there. I was twice named one of the 100 most influential UK LGBT+ people by The Independent and designated as a ‘Point of Light’ for services to LGBT+ and education communities by the UK Prime Minister in May 2016 when I was also granted the Freedom of Southwark and won Education Champion at Excellence in Diversity Awards. Later that year I married my partner at the Houses of Parliament and was invited to the Isle of Man for their first diversity conference. This led to me being invited to make island wide change in their education system. I had so much on- as well as my day job that I had a serious breakdown. I nearly didn’t make it- I felt like I’d let everyone down. In time and with support I came back. What really helped me was Bloomsbury asking me to wrote a book ‘Celebrating Difference- A Whole School Approach to LGBT+ Inclusion’ which was published in 2019 and recommended in Parliament by Lord Cashman in April 2019. I was also determined to honour the Isle of Man and so with therapist support I undertook a long term suite on Island, leading to a Parliamentary Hansard ‘thank you’ and island wide change and their first Pride. In 2017 Dellenty Consultancy was formed and I left my job. Since then in addition to work with learning communities across the UK and internationally, I’ve worked with a diverse range of education and corporate clients, from the BBC, HSBC,Eli Lilly and Company, Reuters, Huffington Post, Royal Opera House, Khorus and many, many more. In July 2022 I was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Derby and featured on the Diversity Power List 2022/23 and Global Diversity List 2020 alongside Obama and Kamala Harris. My consultancy is really just me, I’ve done all of this on my own, from social media, to training to speaking at parliamentary committees to billing clients. Despite recently battling long covid, I hope I’ve done some good in the world. Thanks for support!