Melanie Richards CBE | Non Executive Director, Morgan Stanley International and HKA, Chair of The Eve Appeal

Melanie has extensive leadership experience and holds a number of non executive positions across the private and charitable sectors including Morgan Stanley International, HKA, the Royal National Theatre and the Invictus Games Foundation.

She also provides sounding board advice to senior leaders as an Advisory Partner at Manchester Square Partners.

She is Chair of The Eve Appeal, a women’s gynaecological cancer charity and has been a tireless campaigner for inclusion and gender equality for almost 20 years. In 2019 she was awarded a CBE for her contribution to business and to the diversity and inclusion agenda. She was a founding member of the 30% Club Steering Committee and named #1 in the Financial Times’ 2017 list of Female Champions of Women in Business. She sits on the Steering Group of the FTSE Women Leaders Review and won the Outstanding Contribution to Social Mobility Award in 2018.

What one action would you like to see organisations, or the government take to drive gender equity?

In my lifetime, collaborative efforts have seen us make progress towards greater gender equality but the “job” is far from done. So my plea to Government, organisations and individuals at every level is to maintain the pressure to change women’s futures in every aspect of their lives; from focusing meaningful resources on women’s health to ensuring that women have an equal opportunity to progress into influential roles in society. Women have made and will make a really valuable contribution to changing the shape of the World for the better, not just for themselves but for everyone.