Book IWD Speaker: Sophie Jane Lee
Sophie Jane Lee is an author, journalist, brand strategist, and founder of Electric Peach — an award-winning storytelling agency working with social impact organisations, non-profits, and changemakers, including the United Nations. Named one of the UK's top 100 inspiring female entrepreneurs by Small Business Britain in 2024, and a non-executive director at the Organisation for Responsible Business, Sophie has spent over 15 years at the intersection of story, power, and social change.
An NCTJ-qualified journalist with bylines in The Guardian, BBC, The Independent, Fast Company and Huffington Post, Sophie has trained thousands of founders and leaders to tell more compelling stories and communicate with impact. Her work is grounded in a conviction that the stories we tell — about ourselves, our organisations, and the world — have the power to shift what people believe is possible.
Her debut book, Beyond Palatable: A Manifesto for Unapologetic Women (Luath Press, 2026), is the result of years of living, researching, and reckoning with what it means to be a woman who refuses to make herself acceptable at the expense of being real. The book examines the social conditioning that teaches women to tone themselves down, to be pleasant, agreeable, frictionless, and the actual cost of compliance. It draws on Sophie's own history of self-abandonment through addiction, abusive relationships, and depression, alongside in-depth interviews with women from diverse backgrounds who have navigated and dismantled the barriers placed in front of them.
Beyond Palatable is not a self-help book. It does not ask women to fix themselves. It asks them to question who decided they needed fixing in the first place.
Sophie is currently on her Reclamation Book Tour, speaking at venues across the UK. She speaks on internalised misogyny, the history of silencing women and why that matters today, self-reclamation, authentic leadership, and the politics of women's self-expression.
Key Speaking Themes
The expectations placed on women to be palatable, and the cost of meeting them | Internalised misogyny and self-limiting beliefs | Reclaiming identity after self-abandonment | Authentic leadership and unapologetic self-expression | Storytelling as a tool for social change
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