She/Her

For the past 15 years, Sade has worked across the creative and cultural industries, consistently questioning who gets to tell stories—and challenging the systems that limit whose voices are heard. With deep expertise in organisational transformation, anti-racist leadership, and systems change, her work challenges the status quo while centring care, collaboration, and accountability.

In 2016, she founded the award-winning charity Sour Lemons to address inequity in creative leadership, drawing on her own lived experience of exclusion.

As a coach and strategist, Sade brings humanity into leadership—supporting people to know better so they can do better. She has held fellowships with Clore Cultural Leadership, Red Bull Amaphiko, and UnLtd—all of which have shaped and strengthened her leadership practice.

Sade’s work has been widely recognised: she has been named a Champion of Change at the Champion of Women Awards, a Next Gen Trailblazer for Racial Justice by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, one of the WISE100 Leading Women in Social Business by NatWest.

Both the What If Experiment and Sour Lemons have attracted numerous awards and acknowledgments from funding bodies including the National Lottery Community fund Leaders with Lived experience Fund, the Arts Council’s Transforming Leadership Fund, the Innovate UK Creative Catalyst award.

Sade believes power can be dismantled with kindness and radical generosity—and that real change is built, not just imagined. At her core, Sade bridges visionary thinking with grounded implementation, ensuring equity isn’t just an aspiration, but a lived, collective reality.

Outside of What If…, Sade is a mother of two (soon to be three), sits on the Mayor of London’s Cultural Leadership Board, and is currently writing her debut novel—set in a dystopian future where race is on the brink of erasure.

She/Her

Simone is a creative architect, process deviser and personal connector with a methodology that brings engaging and experiential learning into the training room.

Simone has worked professionally as a facilitator for the past 20 years across a range of sectors. For the past 7 years, Simone has worked exclusively as an Accredited Performance Impact Coach, Inclusion Consultant with a range of clients across the corporate and cultural sector. Simone also works as a theatre director as a professional hobby, whilst supporting 3 arts based charities as a member of their board of trustees.

Simone has always been intrigued by the human experience – the intricate details that influence our habits, decision-making and behaviours. At its core, Simone’s practice is people. She came into this practice through her background in theatre and creativity. Simone uses her creative background, theorised by anthropological and psychological studies and frameworks to explore the radical and generous possibilities that rehearsal can afford us as a space to try out new ways of thinking, feeling and behaving. It is within the rehearsal space for real life that Simone works with people to lead more impactful professional lives.

At the What If Experiment, Simone guides organisations through discomfort into accountable action, so that Black and Global Majority People can thrive in their creative endeavours and professional careers.

She/Her

Sharan is an award-winning educator, facilitator and changemaker with over 20 years’ experience working across the youth, education, arts and social impact sectors. Her work spans anti-oppression, leadership development, wellbeing and systems change—supporting people and teams to reimagine how they work together and embed care, equity and belonging into the fabric of their organisations.

At the heart of Sharan’s practice is a belief in the power of connection, curiosity and compassion. She creates learning environments that are participatory, creative and emotionally intelligent—spaces where people can slow down, think deeply, and do the inner and collective work required for meaningful change. Her style is both playful and grounded, with a knack for turning big ideas into accessible tools and creating space for reflection, challenge and meaningful growth.

Sharan is a qualified psychosynthesis leadership coach, Dare to Lead™ trained practitioner, and experienced curriculum designer. She has led award-winning youth education programmes, coached emerging leaders, and worked across gender equity, anti-racism and systems change initiatives. Her practice includes long-term partnerships with values-led organisations—supporting strategy, co-design and culture change work rooted in care and equity. She has worked both nationally and internationally, and her education programmes have received recognition including awards from The Guardian Public Service Awards and The Centre for Social Justice. She currently sits on the boards of two arts education charities, as well as a number of equity and governance panels.

She is also a Clore Social Leadership Fellow and an active contributor to peer learning spaces focused on trauma-informed practice, solidarity-building and transformative systems change.

Sharan brings her full self to her work—including her lived experience, her creativity, her curiosity, and her role as a mama. She holds a lifelong commitment to equity, and believes deep change happens when we centre humanity and community —not just in what we do, but in why we do it.

She/They

Xanthus is a visual storyteller operating in spaces as a photographer, theatre & movement director, performer, writer and filmmaker. Their creative work is centred around celebrating the varied narratives Black people hold, with an emphasis on girlhood and womanhood.

At the What If Experiment, Xanthus is the company coordinator where they ensure the smoothest processes possible, operating with a duty of care, keeping the team connected, supported and solving problems on the fly!

Xanthus is wholeheartedly motivated by the positive impact community can have on one’s existence; rooted in a love ethic, they share the ideology that many facets of life are better shared in communion, with others.

As a Young Vic Neighbourhood Voices alumni, their writing credits include: ‘AiTopia’ The Young Vic Theatre, National Youth Theatre’s ‘Up All Night’ The Duke of York Theatre and “Origins: Identity” The Bush Theatre.

Their photography credits include being featured in TimeOut, Guardian and Outernet – Tottenham Court Road Station.

Their directing credits include ‘When it Snows in April’ Streatham Space Project, ‘Going for Gold’ Park Theatre, ‘Big House, Big House’ Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, ‘If I Could Love’, ‘Just Nod’ and ‘Repossession’ Theatre 503, audio play: ‘Ep 4 – Erica’ Hear Myself Think Podcast, and ‘Black Joy’ at The Almeida. Resident Director for ‘An Inspector Calls’ 22/23 UK + IR tour, and assistant director credits include ‘Changing Destiny’ The Young Vic, ‘PYNEAPPLE’ The Bunker Theatre and ‘Dear Elizabeth’ at The Gate.

Beyond What If… They enjoy reading, cinema, travelling, live art – in particular, experiencing music live and documenting life as they see it.

They/She

Alex is a passionate and persistent doer, collaborator, and strategist. Fuelled by the potency and potential of collective liberation, they are driven to disrupt and rebuild systems in service of our shared liberation. Alex approaches the work of building an antiracist future as both a human challenge and an infrastructural one.

Their particular focus is on the organisational, institutional, and economic forces which reproduce inequity. Calling on diverse experience from across disciplines and sectors, they deploy the lens of their mixed heritage and white passing to scrutinise — and, ultimately, to help reimagine — the hidden structures of oppression.

In their work with organisations on strategy, leadership and governance, Alex collaborates with teams through anti-racist design, co-creating processes, programmes, and organisations that nurture belonging.

She/Her

Jane is a deep listener, avid collaborator and sober optimist. She is dedicated to co-learning, repair and equity to release each other in becoming our most capable, visionary, thriving, communitarian selves. As a facilitator, she is committed to holding brave conversations that address, delegitimise and undo whiteness, racism and other oppressions, and support those harmed by them. As a white middle-class cis woman, she practices redistributive justice and is constantly evolving understanding of this.

Jane’s background is in artistic and learning methodologies. These underpin her ongoing training in non-violent communication and conflict transformation. Jane offers long experience of intergenerational working, in cultural activist projects and arts organisations led by people younger than her, in settings where colleagues who are Black and of the global majority are the founders and leaders, and in processes of collective problem-solving and creative visioning.

She/Her

Munotida Chinyanga is a director, sound designer, and anti-disciplinary artist working across live performance, sonic experimentation, and immersive installation. Her practice centres audience co-creation and challenges traditional structures of participation. She is also a PhD researcher at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, exploring how sound and space can deepen collective participation in public environments.

He/Him

Rojal Jerome Myers is a multidisciplinary creative and proud Hackney native, using film and design to shift culture and centre untold stories. His work spans short films, red carpet interviews, documentaries, and experimental visuals—each project a testament to the power of identity, truth, and community.

Rojal’s creative practice began unexpectedly at 16. His sister gave him a  hand-me-down digital camera, with the sole aim of upgrading her holiday photos. This ignited a lifelong fascination with storytelling. Since then, the camera has rarely left his hands.

While studying Graphic Communication at university, Rojal cultivated a deep appreciation for visual design. Today, he works fluidly across moving image and graphic media, often blending the two to reflect, question, and reimagine the world around him.

His approach is rooted in collaboration and care. Whether on set, in the studio, or in community spaces, Rojal brings people together through curiosity, shared purpose, and a belief that no one is bigger than the work. He sees creativity not as individual expression, but as collective practice.

Beyond the screen, Rojal finds joy in cinema trips, testing new recipes, and attempting to master whichever sport has recently caught his attention, despite his mum’s persistent warnings about his two left feet.

At the heart of Rojal’s work is a desire to create space for people to show up as their full selves. Everyone has a story. When they’re ready to tell it, he’s ready to listen and to help bring it to life.