Cultural leadership expert to deliver keynote at international Toastmasters conference in Spain
Globility Insights founder and cultural leadership expert Marina Ibrahim is set to deliver the keynote at the international Toastmasters District 107 Spring Conference in Málaga, Spain.
She will be exploring communication, cultural intelligence, and the hidden assumptions shaping global workplaces during the event happening on 16 and 17 May.
The international conference, themed ‘Amplify your impact’, will bring together Toastmasters members and professionals from across Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Andorra, and beyond for three days of keynote sessions, workshops, speech contests, leadership development, and international networking.
Marina Ibrahim will deliver the opening keynote on Saturday, 16 May, which is titled as ‘Between accents and assumptions – How to amplify your impact across cultures’
Drawing on her own multicultural journey as the daughter of a German mother and Egyptian father, and her experience supporting multinational teams and leaders for more than 25 years, Marina’s keynote explores how accents, assumptions, and unconscious bias influence communication, confidence, leadership presence, and belonging in international environments.
She said: “The West Midlands is one of the UK’s most internationally connected regions, with enormous potential for global collaboration, innovation, and growth.
“But successful international business is not only about exporting products and services. It is about understanding people, building trust across cultures, and ensuring diverse talent can contribute fully and confidently.
“In global workplaces, accents, communication styles, and unconscious assumptions can quietly influence whose ideas are heard, trusted, promoted, or overlooked. Sometimes the consequences are emotional and personal. Sometimes they are commercially critical.
“In high-pressure environments, from international projects to emergency response situations, misunderstanding language, pronunciation, or regional accents can affect judgement, decision-making, safety, relationships, and outcomes.
“Many multilingual professionals bring extraordinary expertise, adaptability, and global perspective, yet still hold back because they fear being misunderstood or judged. Helping organisations overcome those invisible barriers is not only good for inclusion, it is good for leadership, innovation, collaboration, and business performance.”
In addition to the keynote, Marina will facilitate an interactive workshop on 17 May designed to help delegates apply practical strategies for communicating with greater confidence, curiosity, cultural awareness, and impact in both personal and professional settings.
Marina is the founder of Globility Insights, a West Midlands-based consultancy specialising in cultural agility, inclusive leadership, and high-performing multicultural teams. She works internationally with organisations seeking to strengthen collaboration, trust, communication, and leadership across cultures and borders.
She is also a certified partner of Everything DiSC, The Five Behaviours, and an authorised Country Navigator WorldPrism partner and practitioner.
The conference will also feature keynote sessions from 2019 World Champion of Public Speaking Aaron Beverly, alongside multilingual speech contests in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Evaluation categories.
