Speaker Focus – Winston Ben Clements

Winston Ben Clements is an Inclusion Speaker & Advocate with expertise in the areas of disability awareness, anti-racism and resilience.

He was predicted to live a life of isolation and pain due to a rare bone disorder known as Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI). This condition caused his bones to be extremely fragile, suffering over 200 fractures in his lifetime.

Winston is wonderful speaker and always a joy to work with and as part of our Speaker Focus series, he took kindly took some time from his home in the USA (or so we thought he was) to answer some questions on his speaking work.

Firstly, I hope you are well. You have been in the USA for few years now – have you noticed any differences between the speaking market in the USA compare to the UK?

Thank you for the invitation! Generally speaking the events that I have attended in the US have been more large scale with bigger venues and audiences and typically running across multiple days. In the UK I was primarily receiving invitations from corporate clients whereas in the US I’m seeing requests from a wider variety of industries such as schools and nonprofits who seem to be more open to partnering with a professional speaker. That being said, the landscape will vary depending on where you are based in the US and your topics of expertise.

Is diversity and inclusion high on the agenda in the USA or you finding other topics more of interest?

Last year, I would say it was about a 50/50 split between motivational talks and diversity and inclusion talks. From a D&I perspective I found that clients were really interested in my experience of living and working with a disability and practical steps required to support disabled colleagues to maximize their potential. On the motivational side I was often asked to simply share my personal story especially to teams and students with takeaways around resilience and growth mindset.

In the same vein, have you found accessibility better in the USA that the UK and can we all be doing more to approve accessibility?

This is a good question and again really depends on your location. My family and I are based in Atlanta and we have found wheelchair accessibility to buildings and venues is generally good compared to many of the historical buildings in London. However, the UK is probably easier to navigate on a day to day basis because the streets are more pedestrian friendly and there are more public transport options compared to the US which is more car-centric. One thing we can all do is to advocate for accessibility in the spaces we use. Whether that’s your home, business, gym etc consider how you could make that venue a little bit more accessible for someone with different needs or even for yourself in case of injury etc.

You have your own You Tube Channel with your wife called ‘The Clements” with over amazing 250k subscribers and you both share your insights into being an interabled couple. It is perhaps a subject that is not often discussed? What has the reaction been? 

We started the channel because we realized that there was a lack of positive representation for people with disabilities especially when it comes to dating, relationships and family life. The content is based on documenting our daily life as a married couple, raising a family and running a business in the hope that it will break down some of the misconceptions around disability. The reaction has been overwhelming, we are just under 300K subscribers and we receive 100s of comments daily from people all over the world who tell us that the videos have changed their views on disability or that they have shared the content with someone who has a disability because they believe it will give them encouragement and hope for the future.

You have a background in computer science – given your knowledge – what are your thoughts on the impact AI/ChatGpt?  

There are pros and cons but overall I am optimistic. In my keynote “Accessibility: Leveraging AI for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion” I unpack the best practices for using AI to enhance disability inclusion and workplace cultures to unlock the full potential of all team members. I’m excited to explore more use cases for how we can use this technology to support diversity and inclusion initiatives. AI tools have the ability to accelerate progress in many different industries therefore I encourage everyone to try them out or seek guidance from an expert on which AI systems could be a good fit for your situation.

The most recent events we have worked on have been virtual talks and have gone very well – but do you prefer the in person talks or happy with virtual?

We started working together around the time of the pandemic so most of the events were running virtually and it seemed to carry on from there. However I do enjoy being back in the room, meeting people pre and post event because I believe that there’s a lot of learning that can happen during those one to one chats. In short I’m very open to all opportunities where my story can support the audience on their journey and then if we can figure out logistics I’d be delighted to attend and meet everyone in person 🙂

I ashamed to say I have never met you in person – as the pandemic hit and you moved to the USA – do you have any plans to be back in the UK for any in person talks this year?

Believe or not I’m actually in the UK right now (at time of writing) but it is a flying visit to take care of a few things. I always appreciate the support of Scamp Speakers in handling my UK bookings so you will definitely be the first to know of any in person talks here and of course I’ll keep you posted next time I visit with some more time (and hopefully better weather) to grab a tea and finally meet!

More info can be found on Winston speaking work on his webpage.