Logo
Ayo Sokale Headshot
Report a problem with this profile
[email protected]

Ayo Sokale      

Civil Engineer, BBC Presenter, Former Deputy Mayor of Reading, Sustainability, Motivational, STEM & Neurodiversity Speaker

Ayo Sokale is a renowned Chartered Civil engineer, a distinguished keynote speaker, motivational speaker, STEM speaker, and sustainability speaker. She is widely recognized as one of the fastest engineers to achieve Chartered status. With an extensive background in delivering flood risk management projects, managing teams, supervising engineers, and influencing policy through key committees, Sokale is a dedicated advocate for engineering and sustainability. She works as a Major Project and Program Delivery Business Manager for The Environment Agency.

Sokale is a pioneer, and, in that spirit, she founded Tessellated Future Technology a tech start-up in 2023. Her company launched an AI powered Coaching App – Get Coached in 2024. Get Coached is a mobile app that uses AI technology to provide 247 access to coaching. The app is already set on revolutionizing the coaching industry by bringing bespoke, high-quality coaching to everyone at an affordable price, enabling you to win your game. Coaching helps individuals understand and achieve their goals, aid their reflections, and gain clarity. Get coached combines Sokale’s passion for self-development and coaching with technology and her desire for a more equitable society where everyone has access to the tools there need. Tools such as coaching. A sought-after presenter and keynote speaker, Sokale shares her expertise on technology, sustainability, engineering, innovation, and more. Her captivating presentations inspire and educate audiences on critical topics.

In addition to her engineering prowess, Sokale is a multifaceted talent. She is a prominent BBC Broadcaster, notably co-presenting on CBeebies’ Get Set Galactic, a captivating science-based gameshow for children. Her love of working with young minds shines through as she explores themes ranging from gravity to the Solar System, pollination, and energy. Sokale’s broadcasting portfolio extends to BBC Reel, BBC Bitesize, and acclaimed documentary work for renowned networks like Smithsonian, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, Yesterday TV, and Channel 5. Her presenting skills have also been sought after by other commercial clients, including ITN and Trimble. Sokale actively contributes to the STEM field, producing engaging content for corporate clients and creating the Wednesday Wisdoms Series/Podcast and Everyday Science Series and Esoteric Stories for Modern Lives. Notably, Sokale is a former Counselor and Deputy Mayor of Reading, where she founded Plastic Free Caversham, earning single plastic-free accreditation for the area in 2022. As an Executive Coach, Sokale works with successful professionals navigating crossroads in their careers, helping them align with their values and leverage their unique strengths and interests. She brings her empathetic approach and inspirational insights to her keynote speeches on neurodiversity and mental health, drawing from her own diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome.

Sokale is also an accomplished author, with her book ‘Othered: How to Thrive & Disrupt in Spaces Not Created for You’. The rights to this are handled by the BKS Agency. Her entrepreneurial spirit shines through as the Founder and CEO of a tech startup poised to revolutionize the coaching space. Sokale is also featured in Dr Shini Somara’s Book ‘Engineers Making a Difference: Inventors, Technicians, Scientists and Tech Entrepreneurs Changing the World, and How You Can Join Them’ and in Daniel Tammet’s book ‘9 minds’.

Beyond her professional achievements, Sokale is a non-linear thinker with diverse interests and a track record of success, from pageantry where she held titles such as Miss Plymouth, Miss Sussex, and Miss East Sussex, to her advocacy and active work for social enterprises and charity. She is also an animated superhero named Eco Angel, reflecting her dedication to flood risk management and community protection. Sokale is a Trustee for the Autistic Girl Network Charity. Recognized as one of the Top 50 women in engineering in 2017 and the ICE President’s future Leader in 2018, Sokale is a true force of positive change and innovation across a range of sectors.

Speech Topics

Sustainability

  • Sustainability and the economy (Do our current economic practice make the cut?)
  • Sustainability and human psychology – growth and expansion (Natural desire to expand and grow – in natural conflict with the need to consume less etc)
  • Sustainability and class (The undue impact of natural consequence & policy on lower class – UK centric)
  • Sustainability and the future (Children, Malthusian Theory)
  • Sustainability and mental health (Rise in Nihilism and fear for the future)
  • Sustainability and technology (Case studies from the Built environment)
  • Sustainability and Innovation – what is innovation (research, implement technology, learning from failure, collaboration and sharing knowledge)
  • Climate change –The case for change - Adaption and Mitigation

Women in Tech, Construction & Stem

There has been a historical fight for equality.

Today in the modern world the fight has drifted to the fight for equal representation of women in tech, construction, and wider STEM. I talk about the value of this. Values such as: women in the room where the build environment and the technology that impact all our lives are designed and implemented.

I also paint another picture and discuss the careers currently predominate carried out by women and question the way these careers are perceived and valued. And explore the very important ways these industries also positively influence the world. I used this to challenge this new form of bias and the way its manifest in this arena.

I talk about myths and folklore and the representation of feminine and masculine energies and the way it’s being rewritten over time to paint a new picture that limits both ways of being and the need to understand these embedded cultural ideas and the impact this has on our behaviours and expectations of people (bias).

I like to talk about the natural diversity in the world around us taking lesson from Gary Ferguson – 8 master lessons of nature – where the diversity in wildflower has a critical role in the ecosystem and can be extrapolated to see it impact in our wider lives.

Diversity

  • What does Diversity truly mean?
  • Value the Difference

Neurodiversity

  • What is neurodiversity?

Social Commentary

  • So, you are different and a little disruptive?
  • How to think?

News

Ayo Sokale: What Does Being Black Mean to Me?
I was once asked ‘What being black meant to me’. I can recall my automatic robotic answer – excellence, resilience. All nonsense rhetoric now I reflect on it. So here are my reflections on it now: What does it mean to be black? When I relocated back to the UK, at the age of 9. This is the first time I recall being described as black. After all, before that point I was my parent’s child and simply a Nigerian. However, I would come to understand over time that being black was a different kind of identifier to one such a being a Nigerian. I would learn that being Black is a title with a heavy history – one that causes some people shame and discomfort when they think of the slavery so heavily associated with blackness in their minds. I would also learn that it a very well marketed idea. After all, just look at negative tropes and motifs associated with blackness in movies and TV at least until more recent re-imagining.

Related Speakers View all

More like Ayo