Leah Brown FRSA
The UK’s leading voice on repair
Bio, short
Leah Brown FRSA is the UK’s leading voice on repair and founder and chief executive of The WayFinders Group, Britain’s leading workplace repair practice. Her firm is called in after an investigation, inquiry, or tribunal, to rebuild the working relationships the process leaves damaged. She speaks on the same pattern wherever trust breaks, in boardrooms, public bodies, and teams, because she believes the formula to repair is context-agnostic.
Bio, medium
Leah Brown FRSA is the UK’s leading voice on repair.
She founded The WayFinders Group in 2022 after a career in law, where she concluded that the risks that actually damage organisations are rarely the legal ones; they are relational, and nobody is trained to repair them. Her firm arrives after the formal process has ended, in the months after findings are published, when the investigation is closed and the people involved still have to work together.
Repair is a discipline comprised of one sequence that rebuilds trust after a boardroom crisis rebuilds it after a public scandal or a workplace complaint, and the same shortcut, the managed apology that skips accountability, fails in all of them. She has made that case at Nudgestock, at TEDx Idea Search 2025 with TEDx London, and at the Restorative Justice Council.
Bio, long
Leah Brown FRSA is the UK’s leading voice on repair.
She was called to the Bar in 2011, admitted to the Roll of Solicitors in 2015, trained at Freshfields, and practised in corporate law before concluding that the risks that actually sink organisations are not the ones lawyers are hired to manage. The biggest risks in any institution are relational, and when they go wrong the technical advice that follows treats the symptom while the damage keeps compounding.
In 2022 she founded The WayFinders Group, Britain’s leading workplace repair practice, now a panel of nine practitioners drawn from law, HR, organisational design, psychology, journalism, communications, and board governance. The firm is called into special situations: the months after an investigation, inquiry, or tribunal, when the findings are accepted but the team is divided and the people who gave evidence still report to the leaders they described. It rebuilds the working relationships the process leaves behind, work the investigation was never designed to do, and measures the change before and after through its Organisational Repair Index®.
Repair is a single discipline required in many contexts. Whether the setting is a boardroom, a public body, or a team, trust breaks for the same reasons and is rebuilt in the same order: acknowledgement, apology, accountability, amends, a sequence that cannot be skipped and usually is. She has argued this at Nudgestock on repairing trust, at TEDx Idea Search 2025 with TEDx London on workplace repair, and at the Restorative Justice Council on what institutions miss when they believe a complaint is closed but the complainant does not. She is a guest lecturer, writes the weekly newsletter The Fixer, and appears regularly in the media on remediation after investigations, inquiries, Tribunals and reviews. She is Acting Chair of Belmont Grosvenor School and a Kent Ambassador.
Video
Signature talks
The true cost of an apology
Every institution under pressure reaches for the same shortcut: the fast apology, the working group, the statement that sounds like accountability and commits to nothing. The cheap option turns out to be the expensive one, and the bill arrives later. This talk sets out the difference between managed appearances and genuine repair.
You don’t have to like them
Repair is not about everyone leaving as friends. You don’t have to like the people you work with; you do have to be able to work with them. This talk is about what that actually takes after trust has broken, and why the goal is a working relationship restored.
What the investigation left behind
The inquiry reports, the findings are accepted, and everyone agrees it’s closed. The people who gave evidence know it isn’t; they still sit across from the leaders they described. This talk is about the damage no investigation was built to repair, and the cost of mistaking a published report for a finished job.
The complaint is closed. The person isn’t.
An organisation files the outcome and moves on. The person who raised it is still carrying what happened. This talk is about the gap between a process that has been handled and a person who has been repaired, and why so many institutions keep confusing the two. Built for the Restorative Justice Council and adaptable to anyone running grievance, HR, or complaints work.
You can’t buy your way out
Billions in settlement or a quiet payoff, the instinct is the same: pay, and make it go away. It doesn’t go away. This talk is about why money closes a case without repairing a relationship, and what it takes to do the thing the cheque can’t.
What audiences take away
A way to tell genuine repair from its performance, a sequence they can actually follow, and permission to accept that repair is often messy and incomplete rather than the clean transformation the self-help shelf promises.
Formats
Keynote, 20 to 45 minutes. Conference or festival main stage, after-dinner, board away-day, in-house leadership session, panel, or fireside. Leah calibrates the examples to the room without changing the argument.
Selected platforms and credentials
Nudgestock. TEDx Idea Search 2025, TEDx London. Disruptors Festival at LSEG. UK Mediation Conference. Restorative Justice Council annual conference. BBC Radio London. Guest lecturer. Founder and chief executive, The WayFinders Group. Acting Chair, Belmont Grosvenor School. Kent Ambassador.
As featured in
The Sunday Times · Forbes · Newsweek · Law.com · People Management · Evening Standard · The Daily Telegraph · Daily Mail · BBC Radio · Leaders Magazine · Podcaster Today · Welsh Agenda · Seen & Unseen · Black Wall St Media · The Voice · Truth Magazine · Media Diversity Institute · The C Word Magazine · Anything Goes Lifestyle · LICC · Be Your Own · Authority Magazine · The Bible Society, Everyday Faith Bible (2025)
Contact
Books and publishing
For book events, bulk orders, rights, and publishing enquiries, contact Watson, Little.
Leah Brown works on what an investigation leaves behind. When the inquiry has reported, the findings are accepted, and the people who gave evidence still have to work alongside the people they described, the formal process is finished and the damage is not. That is her subject, and she is the UK’s leading voice on repair.