Jude Kelly CBE

Jude Kelly CBE is one of the UK’s most powerful cultural leaders. She is an award-winning creative, a business leader and mentor, and a celebrated global champion of equality, with a particular focus on intersectional gender equity. In April 2025 Jude became Master of St Catherine’s College, Oxford. 

She has received many awards and accolades, including being listed in the BBC’s Most Powerful Women in the Arts and 1000 most significant global women; Red Magazine Woman of the Year Award; Veuve Clicquot Female Social Entrepreneur (with a champagne vine named after her!); CBI First Woman Award; Evening Standard 1000 award; Tide Award. She is an inaugural member of the Connected Women Leaders group, an organization that convenes international cohorts of distinguished thinkers founded in 2017 by Pat Mitchell, Ronda Carnegie, and Hafsat Abiola. She sits on the Global Advisory Board of Pathfinders Presidents Council and the Advisory Board of the Global Institute for Women Leaders (led by Julia Gillard, Australia’s first female Prime Minister). Her TED Talk on ‘Why women should tell the stories of humanity’ has had over 1 million views. 

She has given numerous keynote talks to Business, Governments and global leaders, including at UNESCO, COP 22, CHOGM 2022 and at the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos. She is the recipient of 21 doctorates and fellowships for services to the arts and women in the UK, Australia, Hong Kong, China.

In 2018, she founded WOW - Women of the World as a force for change. WOW’s history began as a festival created at London’s Southbank Centre in 2010 where Jude was artistic director for 12 years. To date, WOW has worked with 33 partners across the globe to present more than 150 festivals and events in 71 places across six continents, with over 5.3 million people taking part.