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Lord Chris Holmes of Richmond MBE is Britain’s most successful Paralympic swimmer, a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion, and a leading authority on digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI). As a keynote speaker, Chris combines his remarkable life story with deep expertise in leadership, digital innovation, and policy.
After losing his sight at the age of 14, Chris defied expectations to dominate Paralympic swimming, winning nine gold, five silver, and one bronze medals across four Games. He broke 35 world records and remains one of Britain’s most decorated Paralympians. Beyond sport, he pursued a career in law and journalism, later becoming a commercial lawyer specialising in employment and pensions.
Chris played a pivotal role in delivering the record-breaking London 2012 Paralympic Games as Director of Paralympic Integration, helping to make them the first Paralympics to sell out every session and reach a global audience in the hundreds of millions. His leadership and vision helped redefine perceptions of disability sport worldwide.
In 2013, Chris was appointed a Life Peer in the House of Lords, where he focuses on digital innovation, AI governance, social mobility, and financial inclusion. A thought leader in AI policy, he introduced the Artificial Intelligence (Regulation) Bill in 2023, calling for a human-centred approach to AI governance. That same year, he was awarded the Alan Turing Award for his contributions to ethical AI and digital policy. His 2017 report, “DLT for Public Good”, remains an influential resource on blockchain and digital ledger technology.
Chris also serves as a Diversity Adviser to the Civil Service, a Non-Executive Director for UK Sport, and a patron of Help for Heroes, the Youth Sport Trust, and the British Paralympic Association.
As a speaker, Chris delivers a powerful message of resilience, innovation, and inclusion. His engaging style, warmth, and humour resonate with corporate leaders, policymakers, and technology experts alike. His topics include overcoming adversity, diversity and inclusion, AI governance, and the future of digital technology—ensuring audiences leave both inspired and informed.
Chris speaks powerfully about his incredible Paralympic achievements, both as Britain’s greatest Paralympic swimmer and Director at London 2012.
Chris is Britain’s most successful swimmer, winning a total of 9 gold, 5 silvers and 1 bronze medal, a string of World and European titles and 35 world records. He was a member of the GB Swim team for 17 years and Captain for 5.
As Director at London 2012, Chris drew on political skills, strategic know-how and his incredible determination to deliver another record-breaking list of firsts: the first games to have all sponsors signed to both Olympics and Paralympics, the first games to sell out all the stadia for every session and the first games to achieve worldwide television audiences in the hundreds of millions.
Chris lost his sight at the age of 14 and says “one of the most challenging aspects was the fact that people immediately stopped seeing me”. The attitudes of those around him became everything. Practical challenges can be solved with practical solutions but access to practical solutions and the willingness of people to consider, or provide, these solutions can be the difference between access, inclusion and opportunity or an insurmountable barrier. Chris’s life experience shows any audience that no matter the obstacle, anything is possible and he communicates this powerful message with incredible warmth, humour and humility.
Chris has over 20 years of boardroom experience including terms at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Pensions Client Board, UK Sport, the Disability Rights Commission and, most recently, Channel 4, as Deputy Chair. He has an outstanding ability to deliver commercial results whilst inspiring all members of the team from board level throughout the organisation. His focus is on empowering people to do their best work in an inclusive, diverse environment, deploying data and insights to the full. New ideas are encouraged, doing things differently, ‘data upskilling’, experimenting, learning fast, and consistently delivering creative and commercial success.
In and out of Parliament Chris’s policy focus is on digital technology: innovation, ethical deployment and effective regulation. Chris writes regularly on technology, financial services, fintech and regulation for several national publications. Chris also advises several technology and open banking firms.
Chris is responsible for the Artificial Intelligence (Regulation) Bill introduced in the House of Lords as a private members bill. He was a member of the House of Lords Select Committee on artificial intelligence (AI) and has brought this expertise into all aspects of his work including helping organisations address how artificial intelligence is being used in the boardroom and thinking deeply about effective governance, ethical implications and ensuring we are making the most of the incredible potential of this game-changing technology.
Chris has been at the forefront of thinking about DLT/blockchain applications since his influential 2017 report, ‘DLT for public good: leadership, collaboration and innovation.” He played a central role in getting the groundbreaking Electronic Trade Documents Act passed into law and argues this development – effectively removing a legal barrier to digitizing trade documents and permitting ‘reliable systems’ with certain criteria that can be satisfied by blockchain solutions – should unlock innovation and mass adoption of DLT.
Chris Holmes was excellent and was a perfect choice for our event! He was funny, down to earth and very inspiring – we had great feedback from our Trustees and guests, thank you Chris Holmes .
Excellent, Chris Holmes has a very relaxed and engaging style – our guests warmed to him immediately. He is very perceptive about the audience present and adapted his talk to suit them – a very unique man in that respect. He was humorous and thought provoking and did exactly what we asked him to do. Chris Holmes is a warm, genuine, funny and inspiring speaker. It’s quite something to hold a restless audience’s attention at the end of a very long day.
