Barjis Chohan

Trailblazing Design Leader and Speaker

Originally expected to pursue a career in medicine, Barjis Chohan instead forged her own path, becoming an internationally recognised entrepreneur and an icon in luxury modest fashion. She built her bespoke luxury carpet business from her kitchen into an award-winning international brand, delivering projects for clients including Marriott, IHG Hotels & Resorts, and Emirates.

With over 27 years of business leadership and 15+ years as a keynote speaker, Barjis inspires audiences with practical insights on entrepreneurship, resilience, leadership, and embracing uncertainty.

Contact

Keynotes

About Barjis Chohan

An Innovative Entrepreneur in the Design Industry

Barjis founded her luxury design brand in 1999, initially creating bespoke carpets for large hospitality clients and brands like Marriott and IHG before expanding into fashion in 2011 and has kept it thriving with the same values and ethos she started with. These years of experience are difficult to replicate and give a unique perspective on business, stakeholder management, resilience, courage, ownership, and accountability, which are critical personal and people skills in today’s AI-dominated world.

Born and raised in the UK, with Pakistani roots, Barjis is also a very well-travelled and seasoned business leader. With her brands in London and Dubai and projects across Europe, she has navigated complex, culturally diverse clientele and teams, embodying cultural fluency and speaking with authority on identity and belonging, all without dividing rooms into opposing camps. Her approach to gender equity and cultural inclusion is one of the most practically useful on the circuit.

Contact

Key Highlights

Founder & CEO, BARJIS London – luxury bespoke carpets, Fashion and Design, Est. 1999
Trained at the London College of Fashion; interned with Vivienne Westwood
Featured in Vogue, The Guardian, and many major UK press and Magazines
Winner: Entrepreneur of the Year, London (Shell Livewire), Business of the Year, (Islaam Channel, 2019 and Global MSME Champion Award, Global Council for Promotion of International Trade and many more

London Film Academy and BBC documentary subject
10+ Fashion exhibitions and fashion runways across the US, Europe, and the UAE
Speaks on a range of topics – from resilience and creativity to embracing uncertainty and identity

Keynotes

Leading Keynote Speaker on Embracing Failure, Uncertainty, and Creative Exploration

Barjis Chohan walks onto the stage carrying 27 years of building a business from scratch – the failures, the reinventions, the moments she nearly gave up, and the ones she's most proud of. And she hands all of it to the audience to learn and build their stories.

Corporate teams take away more than insights from her sessions; they leave with a new perspective on challenge, identity, creativity, and what is actually possible for them.

Embracing Failure as a Path to Growth

The fear of getting it wrong and being seen to stumble is one of the most damaging forces in any team culture. It stifles innovation, crushes initiative, and drives talented people to play it safe when they should be taking calculated risks.

This keynote will explore:

Practical tools to build personal resilience under pressure
A reframed relationship with risk and setback
The confidence to take initiative without the fear of failure
A shared language for talking about challenges that shifts team culture

Use creativity as the fuel for growth

Most innovative organisations need to build creative cultures in a world where every business has access to the same tools, technology, data, and an increasingly similar talent pool. Creative thinking is the last remaining source of genuine competitive advantage.

This keynote will explore:

Strategies to stand out from the crowd
A practical framework for creative thinking in business
Strategies to build team cultures that generate and sustain innovation
A renewed belief in the individual's own creative capacity

Identity as a strength

Who you are is your greatest competitive advantage. Many talented people spend years minimising the different parts of themselves that make them different, without understanding the true potential of their identity.

This keynote will explore:

A better understanding of the challenges faced by BOTH women and men at the workplace
How we can create a culture where everyone is valued and we work together to build each other instead of breaking each other
Learn tools and better listening skills to create empathy
Using mentors as a way to create leaders within leaders

All keynotes

Testimonials

What Audiences and organisations say about their Speaker Booking experience with Barjis

"A great character and a brilliant mind, but above all a very generous and special human being, with a story that deserves to be shared with audiences all over the world."

Eugenio Chahin De Gamboa

-Minister of Culture, Columbia

"We really enjoyed having Barjis speak at our D&I Day. She added a really refreshing twist and complemented the whole day perfectly. Her courage is honestly really amazing."

Kambi Group

"The first reactions in the Q&A chat for Barjis’ talk were very positive, and the audience felt really inspired. She is a great, emphatic speaker. The content of the presentation really provided tools and strategies that help the designers at JPMC to act more inclusively. This was also seen in the number of participants, as almost all of them stayed till the end of the event."

JP Morgan Chase

"A lovely speaker who spoke frankly about a lovely range of topics. Everyone responded really well."

Gemma Paine

University of Surrey Students Union

"Barjis was a pleasure to work with. Extremely knowledgeable, clear, and concise. Her story was inspiring."

Stanmore College

"Unfiltered, unapologetic, uncompromising. Barjis was the perfect choice to shake us out of autopilot and challenge the way we see courage, conformity, and the act of carving our own paths. No fluff, no polished soundbites – just real talk about risk, resilience, and refusing to be boxed in. If you were looking for a session that was safe and predictable, this wasn't it. And that's exactly why it hit home."

Fonterra

Trusted by Industry leaders

Contact

Hire Barjis Chohan as a Keynote Speaker

1. Fill in the form below with your event details – dates, audience size, topic interests, and any specific goals for the session.

2. Barjis's team will come back to you within 48 hours with availability, rates, and a brief outline of how a session might be tailored to your needs.

3. Once confirmed, Barjis will work with you in advance to ensure the content is exactly right for your audience.