Trailblazer: Cordelia Osewa-Ediae

As part of our Trailblazers series, we’re shining a light on leaders who are driving meaningful change across sectors and shaping the future of leadership, culture, and organisations.
The next feature in our series is Cordelia Osewa-Ediae FRSA, Director and Consultant, and founder of Cemsed Consultancy Ltd.

Cordelia Osewa-Ediae is the founder of Cemsed Consultancy Ltd. A Leadership development and culture transformation Consultant, Cordelia has close to twenty years’ experience of driving systemic change. She has built a strong reputation as a trusted strategic partner who works with other leaders to deliver high-impact culture transformation and leadership development interventions in civil society, public, and private sector organisations. Cordelia’s strategic counsel and bespoke programmes have left measurable, lasting impact on organisations including the NSPCC, Clore Social Leadership, National Grid, BT Group, and Currys Group.

Given her expertise in AI, the future of work, and diversity, equity and inclusion, we sat down with Cordelia to explore the biggest opportunities and challenges facing leaders today, and what organisations must do to build inclusive, future-ready cultures in a rapidly changing world.

What do you see as the biggest opportunities for leaders in the public and private sectors when it comes to AI?
The opportunities for all leaders are extraordinary. Those who will stand out as truly transformative leaders are not those who simply ticked the AI ‘compliance box’. They will be the leaders who use the AI inflection point as a once-in-a generation mandate to reimagine how their organisations grow and invest in their people.

I like my stats so here goes: The World Economic Forum estimates that over the next decade, technology could transform approximately 1.1 billion jobs. It is also predicted that AI will create more jobs than it displaces. However, this will only happen if companies do not simply layer technology onto old structures. Instead, organisations will need to intentionally invest in people and redesign work.

In the midst of the relentless AI noise and hype, leaders must be unwavering in owning their responsibility because AI does not shape itself. This is technology that is shaped by those with power, and the stakes are high. In the right hands, AI could be one of the most transformative forces for human progress. In the wrong hands, it could be one of the most efficient engines of inequality we have ever built.

Some leaders are already taking steps to build organisations that are strategically future-ready with AI-literate employees, and a robust leadership succession pipeline that is built for the world that is coming, not the world that was. We need more leaders to do the same.

How can organisations ensure their leadership and culture keep pace with technological change?
Culture evolves at the speed of trust while technology moves at the speed of disruption. The priceless glue between these two forces is good leadership.

Keeping pace with technological change requires three things that leaders rarely prioritise simultaneously. Curiosity without naivety, building cultures that welcome constructive challenge, and accountability structures that evolve.

Until organisations recognise that keeping pace with technological change is fundamentally a leadership and culture challenge, they will continue deploying tools that their people are not equipped or empowered to use, or govern responsibly.

Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety shows that teams perform best when people feel safe to speak up, challenge assumptions and admit uncertainty. In the age of AI, that principle has never been more urgent. If people do not feel safe to question an AI output, flag a hallucination or demand explainability, the organisation is not simply culturally unhealthy, it is strategically exposed.

Culture is not the soft side of any technology strategy. It is the bedrock upon which every transformation programme is built or broken.

Some of the work I do is to help organisations diagnose cultural readiness gaps before changes are deployed and operationalised. This is because trust and psychological safety are not wellbeing initiatives. In the age of rapid technological innovations, they are risk management strategies. When organisational culture is damaged, it does not just slow transformation down, it can sabotage it from within.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give to leaders looking to foster a more inclusive workplace?
My counsel here is two-fold. That leaders should role model inclusive leadership and that they should intentionally measure belonging, not just representation.

A recent report from Mental Health First Aid England (MHFA) highlighted a ‘Silence Gap’ that 45% of employees do not feel comfortable raising issues at work, including flagging mistakes or potential risks. Even more concerning is that 15% of workers admitted that they have made preventable mistakes because they felt too stressed or unsafe to raise concerns.

Wow! This just illustrates yet again that one can have a diverse room but also have a deeply exclusionary culture. While numbers will tell you who is present in an organisation, only the right questions will tell you whether people feel seen, heard and genuinely valued.  Intentional and consistent engagement across multiple channels is how leaders can tell the difference between a culture that is truly thriving and one that has learned to perform as though it is.

Organisational cultures should be audited with the same rigour applied to finances. This can help reveal whose voices shape decisions, whose ideas get credited, who gets the benefit of the doubt, and who has to constantly fight to earn respect and recognition.

How does focusing on DEI impact an organisation’s performance and culture?
I might be stating the obvious but I would like to start by saying that the acronym ‘DEI’ stands for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and these are not interchangeable terms. Diversity is the presence of people with different characteristics and from different backgrounds. Equity is ensuring that structures, processes and opportunities are fair. Inclusion is about the daily, lived experience of belonging, psychological safety and being genuinely valued.

If done right, diversity, equity and inclusion are distinct forces that can collectively contribute to the sustainability, competitive power and health of an organisation. When an organisation takes intentional steps to ensure diverse representation, equitable processes and an inclusive approach are woven into leadership, and hiring, promotion and performance decisions something profound happens.

Diversity from how people think and how they have lived helps prevent groupthink, strengthens decision making and boosts innovation. Equitable processes, opportunities and policies help ensure organisations attract, recruit and retain the best talent. And an inclusive culture enables psychological and high performance.

When DEI efforts are delivered in a tokenistic way, it has measurable consequences including reputational damage, costly mistakes and a breakdown of psychological contracts. Strategic DEI is not a nicety, it is a necessity.

A Deloitte study showed that teams with inclusive leaders are 17% more likely to report high performance, 20% more likely to make high-quality decisions, and 29% more likely to behave collaboratively. These are not marginal gains. These are transformational outcomes.

A lot of my work is focused on developing and supporting leaders who are driving change in organisations because they have an important role to play in shaping workplace cultures and creating the conditions for high performance.

How do you think leaders can best prepare their teams for the future of work?
People often resist change because they fear the loss of control. So, leaders must devote time and effort into bringing people along on the collective journey of preparing for the future of work.  Recently, a growing number of reports have highlighted a troubling pattern where some organisations are attributing layoffs to AI whilst failing to replace those roles with AI at any meaningful scale. This is what is now being called AI washing, and its consequences extend far beyond reputational damage as it can erode the very trust needed to prepare teams for the future of work.

When people experience AI as a threat rather than a tool, resistance does not simply slow adoption, it entrenches it, and no transformation strategy can succeed in a culture built on fear and broken trust.

I would recommend five non-negotiable commitments from every leader who’s preparing teams for the future of work:

First, to intentionally build safe workplaces where people feel engaged and a sense of belonging. Second, to lead with a strengths-based approach that signals clearly to every person that what they already bring is valued and can be built upon. Third, to embed continuous learning into their culture, not as an annual training event, but as a daily organisational habit so people embrace and reward new ideas. Fourth, to prioritise inclusion as a strategic lever so groupthink is avoided.

Finally, and perhaps the most urgent commitment is to develop AI literacy across every level of your organisation. This work should not just focus on technical understanding, but should also emphasise ethical awareness of what AI means for their people, culture and values.

What’s a career achievement you’re particularly proud of, and why?
I have a long list of career achievements I’m proud of. These include successfully leading a nationwide strategic review at the NSPCC, being pivotal to BT Group overhauling its approach to workplace inclusion, co-delivering its first ethnicity pay gap report, and designing and leading its first reciprocally beneficial reverse mentoring programme. I’m also proud of designing and delivering a transformational leadership programme at the National Grid. And recently working with other amazing leaders at Clore Social Leadership to launch an England-wide series of leadership programmes.

If I’m pushed for one answer, I would say that my greatest career achievement is that for almost twenty years of working across sectors, and on some complex projects, my clients and stakeholders are never in doubt that I consistently adopt a people-first, collaborative approach in my work.

Who has inspired you in your career, and what lessons did you take from them?
So many people have inspired me and I fear that highlighting specific names risks missing those who are equally deserving of recognition. I often say that I stand on the shoulders of giants because I have been blessed with amazing role models, mentors, sponsors, and cheerleaders. And they come from every walk of life.

Some have inspired me through the way they lead with quiet authority and deep intention. Others through the extraordinary grace with which they have faced adversity and refused to be diminished by it. Others still through the fearless way they drive change, build coalitions and support others. What they all have in common is the ability to have impact without losing sight of their humanity.

The main lesson I have taken from everyone who’s inspired me is that community matters. There is a popular saying: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”. And it is so true!  Collective strength, shared purpose, and lifting others creates lasting impact and meaningful success. One does not need to walk, or work, alone.