Engage with Cynthia Fortlage: Leadership Speaker and Expert
Discover the thought-provoking insights of Cynthia Fortlage, a distinguished leadership speaker. With over 25 years of experience, Cynthia's talks delve into power, dignity, and belonging, offering practical strategies for navigating complexity in modern organisations.
Whether you're planning a conference, leadership forum, or corporate event, Cynthia provides engaging and actionable guidance. Don't miss the opportunity to bring a leadership speaker who inspires change.
Cynthia Fortlage is an award-winning leadership speaker, former C-suite executive, and Founder and CEO of The Fortlage Collective. Her work helps senior leaders build trust, dignity, and performance across difference in complex organisations.
Drawing on more than twenty-five years of leadership experience across corporate environments, the national women’s movement, and international LGBTQ+ advocacy, she has spoken to audiences in more than 30 countries and over 550 organisations worldwide.
Her talks combine lived experience, leadership insight, and thoughtful challenge to help audiences navigate complexity with clarity and responsibility.
Typical responses are within 1–2 business days.
Speaking That Moves People
Whether opening a conference, moderating a panel, or leading a leadership conversation, Cynthia creates space for audiences to reflect, question assumptions, and engage with difficult topics in a constructive way.
Her sessions are known for their warmth, clarity, and honesty. Drawing on lived experience and leadership practice, she helps audiences explore the realities of power, belonging, and responsibility in today’s organisations.
Speaking Themes
Leadership in the Messy Middle
Modern leadership requires navigating complexity, disagreement, and rapid change. Cynthia’s talks explore how leaders hold difficult conversations, make responsible decisions, and lead with clarity when the answers are not simple.
Power, Dignity, and Belonging
Organisational culture is shaped by everyday leadership choices. Cynthia explores how power, identity, and belonging influence who feels seen, heard, and able to contribute within teams and institutions.
This theme draws on Cynthia’s work across corporate environments, the national women’s movement, and international LGBTQ+ advocacy.
Psychological Safety in Practice
Psychological safety is often discussed but rarely understood in practice. Cynthia’s talks examine the real behaviours and leadership habits that build trust, accountability, and healthy team dynamics.
Acceptance without Understanding™
Cynthia’s signature leadership philosophy explores how people can work effectively across difference without requiring agreement, shared lived experience, or the same worldview. This approach gives leaders a practical way to navigate polarisation, disagreement, and complex social issues while protecting trust, dignity, and performance.
What Audiences Take Away
Cynthia’s talks combine lived experience, leadership insight, and thoughtful challenge. Audiences consistently say they leave with new ways of thinking about leadership, culture, and responsibility.
Audience Outcomes
• A deeper understanding of how identity, power, and culture shape everyday leadership decisions
• The confidence to open honest conversations about complex and sometimes uncomfortable topics
• New perspectives that challenge assumptions and shift the way people think about inclusion and belonging
• Practical insight leaders can take back to their teams to build more thoughtful and human workplaces
• Practical ways to build trust, dignity, and performance across difference without reducing complex issues to conflict or compliance
Who Cynthia Speaks For
Cynthia speaks with audiences navigating leadership, culture, and complex social change.
Typical audiences include:
• Executive teams and senior leaders
• Boards and organisational decision-makers
• HR and people leaders
• Employee resource groups and internal leadership networks
• Global conferences and professional associations
• Organisations navigating change, trust, difference, and performance
Workshops and Leadership Conversations
Not every conversation needs a stage. Cynthia also facilitates smaller sessions designed to help leaders explore complex questions in a practical way.
These sessions can include:
• inclusive leadership in practice
• navigating difference and conflict
• gender and leadership conversations
• psychological safety in real teams
Each session is tailored to the audience and organisational context.
Invite Cynthia to Speak
Cynthia speaks at conferences, leadership forums, corporate events, and global conversations on leadership, trust, dignity, and organisational performance.
Speaking engagements can also connect to advisory work, leadership programmes, and organisational development through The Fortlage Collective.
The best place to start is a short introductory conversation.
Typical responses are within 1–2 business days.
Sector Insight & Thought Leadership
Global Perspectives is the quarterly LGBTQ+ news and leadership insight briefing for leaders navigating a changing world. It curates relevant global developments and translates them through both a lived and leadership lens.
Each edition helps ERG leads, inclusion practitioners, HR teams, and business leaders understand what is happening across the global LGBTQ+ landscape, why it matters, and how it may affect the decisions leaders are being asked to make every day.
It is designed as a practical thought leadership resource for organisations navigating changing legal, cultural, and political contexts, while continuing to lead with dignity, care, and responsibility.
Speaking Collaborations
Contributing as a “Human Book” with The Human Library, facilitating open, real-world conversations that challenge assumptions and deepen understanding.
