I am Jarell Bempong—founder of Bempong Talking Therapy™, systems thinker, cultural architect, and a lived authority on what it means to build inclusion from the margins inward. As a Black, gay, neurodivergent man raised between working-class realities and cultural dissonance, I’ve spent my life navigating and decoding the invisible systems that exclude us. I wasn’t just excluded from the room—I was never meant to be in the building. And yet, I turned that exclusion into strategy, healing, innovation, and systemic transformation.
My journey began not with a textbook but in survival—navigating disownment, racism, queer erasure, neurodivergent masking, and the sharp edges of British institutional life. From these lived truths, I built what didn’t exist: a framework that centres the very identities most excluded. I call this Intersectional Cultural Consciousness™ (ICC™)—a paradigm that goes beyond ‘diversity’ and instead rebuilds the foundations of belonging, voice, and leadership. I paired ICC™ with Sage™ AI—a revolutionary, AI-augmented tool that turns inclusion from an abstract aspiration into measurable, real-time transformation.
Through Bempong Talking Therapy™, I’ve created a consultancy unlike any other. We don’t offer check-box workshops. We restructure systems. We don’t use buzzwords—we offer blueprints. My practice integrates trauma-informed therapy, decolonial leadership, and cultural strategy with precision diagnostics and inclusive tech. Every tool I’ve developed is grounded in justice, healing, and action—because theory without transformation is not enough.
Our consultancy works across four key pillars:
Leadership Transformation – Through ICC™ training and executive coaching, I help leadership teams rewire their understanding of power, equity, and inclusion.
AI-Augmented Culture Change – Sage™ uses natural language processing and bias-detection to analyse workplace culture and reveal the hidden inequities often missed by traditional DEI audits.
Mental Health as Inclusion – I embed culturally conscious well-being strategies into every organisational layer, ensuring that inclusion isn’t just structural—it’s psychological.
Intersectional Strategy – Whether through hiring equity, community engagement, or DEI policy design, every project centres the Intersectional Majority™—those of us with overlapping, marginalised identities.
My consultancy has worked with forward-thinking organisations such as Havas, Alstom UK&I, HN Wines, and Fresh Start Future Enterprises. With Havas, we reduced workplace burnout by 38% and improved inclusion trust metrics across racialised and queer employees. At HN Wines, ICC™ implementation led to a 76% increase in DEI leadership engagement and a 41% reduction in recruitment bias. With the UK ICF Partnership, I’ve trained and certified over 100 executive coaches in ICC™, seeding intersectional wisdom across industries and sectors. This isn’t performative DEI—it’s measurable, sustained change rooted in lived truth and strategic rigour.
I don’t see inclusion as a department. I see it as a design principle. And I don’t believe in ‘diverse hiring’ without equitable retention, progression, and mental safety. My consultancy focuses on rewriting the story of who leads, who thrives, and who belongs—not through performative gestures but through system-wide recalibration. That’s why I developed Sage™ AI—to ensure organisations have real-time data to close inclusion gaps, reduce harm, and make equity actionable and accountable.
But Bempong Talking Therapy™ is not just a consultancy—it’s a movement. A living proof that AI can be used ethically to serve inclusion, that intersectionality can be systematised, and that equity doesn’t need to come at the cost of effectiveness. In fact, when inclusion is embedded with precision, everything gets better—culture, retention, innovation, wellbeing, and leadership. My work has been recognised nationally and internationally, including being crowned Most Transformative Mental Health Care Services 2025 by the UK Enterprise Awards, and shortlisted across over a dozen major diversity, innovation, and social mobility awards.
What makes this consultancy powerful isn’t just the frameworks or AI. It’s the truth behind it—the lived experiences of those who have been excluded for generations finally being treated as expertise. Every training, report, and platform I deliver is rooted in the belief that the future of work is not only diverse—it is intersectional, culturally conscious, and radically human.
Through Bempong Talking Therapy™, I am not just asking organisations to become more inclusive—I am giving them the tools to make it inevitable.
