Raj Adgopul is a resilience keynote speaker who has delivered engaging and transformational talks for Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, King's College Hospital London, and Gillingham School sixth form. Using his lived experience and inspirational story, he empowers audiences to overcome adversity with courage and hope. Sharing his positive outlook with audiences, Raj is booked for a wide range of events, from team development sessions to EDI programmes and inclusion weeks.
Growing up in a village in central India, his family was recorded as Other Backward Class on his birth certificate. Raj spent four years in Mumbai sharing a room with twenty-three other people, with a personal space of six feet by three. In 2002, he was recruited into the NHS by staff interviewing in Mumbai and arrived in England with five pounds. Over the next few years, he trained and worked as a nurse, took a degree, and a postgraduate qualification. Nineteen years after landing in England, he gave a TEDx talk titled 'Appreciation redefined' at the O2 in London to an audience of a thousand.
Raj speaks on resilience, adaptability and belonging, with humour and authenticity. With this approach, he ensures audiences stay fully engaged in conversations of caste, poverty, and race. A truly inspirational individual who has overcome major adversity, Raj is a fantastic speaker who offers impactful resilience keynotes and candid after-dinner speeches. To secure him for your next event, contact Champions Speakers today!
Raj Adgopul's official speaking topics are listed below:
The Mumbai Mindset
Resilience, adaptability, and problem-solving, drawn from the survival instincts of four creatures that thrive in the slums of Mumbai. Interactive, with a team exercise. 60 or 120 minutes. Works as a keynote or as a development session for a team away day.
Resilience Redefined
The keynote version of the story. What actually carried him from a village with no prospects to a stage at the O2, why most of it was unglamorous, and what it says about the difference between resilience and simply enduring things. 45 to 60 minutes with questions.
Beyond Borders
Race, belonging and active bystanding, for staff networks, inclusion weeks and EDI programmes. Unconscious bias, the difference between intentional and unintentional racism, what stepping in actually looks like at work, and what it is like to be recruited into an organisation from abroad and then have to live here. In his home village, people spat at him over his caste. In England, he met something quieter. Having both is what lets him open the subject without putting a room on the defensive. 45 to 60 minutes.
Just Off The Boat (After Dinner)
Stand-up. First performed at the Hardy Har Comedy Festival in Dorchester in July 2025. For dinners and awards evenings where the brief is to send people home in a good mood.
Official Feedback from In-Person & Virtual Events
"Raj has that rare and precious ability to make an audience laugh and think at the same time. His extraordinary life story and unusual perspective on living, loving and working in England means that his jokes, anecdotes and observations are truly original. At a time when cross-cultural understanding couldn't be more important, his is a voice worth listening to." - Mark Tattersall, Director, Dorchester Arts
"Raj Adgopul was the key note speaker for Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust innovation event in 2016. Raj engages the audience with the power of storytelling, weaving in personal and professional experience with both humour and sensitivity. Would highly recommend Raj, he has made a lasting impact on this organisation." - Elaine Williams, Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
"You have a very good and engaging manner that can really help to capture the attention of an audience. I think that is a winner!" - Dr Patricia Wilkie OBE, President, National Association for Patient Participation
“Raj is a very engaging speaker who inspired some very positive feedback from our students. His life story is very different from the majority (probably all) of young people in Dorset and he brings a huge amount of positive energy to the stage. He is very easy to work with and is able to adapt to the audience as he reads them.” - Baron, Director of Social Enterprise, Budmouth College
"The topics covered by Raj are superbly balanced between gentle humour and the ability to provoke deeper thought amongst your audience. A rare gift. The members of Bristol Common Wealth Society are still enthusing about Raj’s talk and how delighted they were to welcome Raj back “by popular demand!"" - Gina, Branch Manager, Bristol Common Wealth Society
- 2019 - TEDx Speaker
- 2008 - Specialist in Public Health
How to hire Raj Adgopul
Contact the Champions Speakers Agency to provisionally enquire about hiring Raj Adgopul for your next event, today. To get in touch, simply call an official booking agent on 0207 1010 553 or email us at [email protected] for more information.
** We do NOT accept requests for autographs, signed merchandise, fan mail, birthday messages or any other non-commercial contact with the speakers or acts. Each speaker on the website may not have necessarily worked with Champions in the past but are known to perform such engagements within the industry.
