About Venekai
Venekai Consulting Services is a Liverpool-based consultancy specialising in workplace equity and anti-racism, working with boards and senior leaders responsible for governance, risk and accountability.
Founded by Lisa Shoko, it engages leadership teams across the NHS, public, private and third sectors, including regulated environments where decisions carry visible and lasting consequence.
Those who engage Venekai are rarely responding to crisis. More often, boards and senior leaders are considering how anti-racism should sit within leadership structures, how responsibility is held at senior level and how progress is evidenced over time.
Engagements typically begin by stepping back from day-to-day activity to examine how governance operates. This includes how judgement is exercised, where accountability sits and how risk is understood and managed at board and executive level.
Governance structures, workforce data, policies and organisational processes are considered together. This allows gaps, tensions and underlying assumptions to be identified and addressed rather than masked by activity or good intent.
Venekai is often brought in during periods of organisational change, regulatory scrutiny or strategic reset, when leaders want confidence that their approach to anti-racism is credible, defensible and capable of being sustained.
Rather than one-off interventions, it engages leadership teams over time, helping to establish practical governance arrangements and returning to those arrangements as conditions, leadership or external expectations change.
Anti-racism is treated as system-level work rather than a discrete initiative. Complexity is engaged with directly and leaders are supported in moving from intention to evidence, accountability and action.
Alongside running Venekai, Founder and Director Lisa is Anti-Racism Lead at NHS University Hospitals of Liverpool Group and a Non-Executive Director at Baltic CIC and Blackburne House, bringing direct experience of operating within complex, publicly accountable and regulated environments.
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Our approach
Venekai examines how anti-racism is governed within institutions.
In many environments this area has historically been located within programmes, initiatives or individual roles. Increasingly, boards are asking how responsibility should sit within leadership and governance structures instead.
Venekai works with boards and senior leaders to examine how anti-racism moves beyond programmes or initiatives and into leadership oversight.
This includes examining governance arrangements, leadership behaviour, workforce data and organisational culture together, recognising that these elements rarely operate separately.
Anti-racism is treated as ongoing institutional work rather than a discrete project. The intention is to ensure responsibility for this area is clearly owned, located within governance and capable of being sustained over time.
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Empowering individuals within the organisation, our staff-led strategies prioritise the voices and leadership of those directly affected by the issues at hand. This ensures that solutions are relevant, authentic, and impactful.
Our staff-led models empower employees to take ownership of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives by:
Establishing employee resource groups (ERGs) to foster community and dialogue.
Engaging employees in co-creating policies and strategies that reflect lived experiences.
Facilitating focus groups and feedback sessions to ensure all voices are heard.
By centring the experiences of your team, we create solutions that resonate deeply and drive long-lasting change.
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We actively work to identify, challenge, and dismantle racism in all its forms. By addressing systemic inequities, we strive to create environments where all individuals, regardless of race, are respected, supported, and valued.
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Grounded in Critical Race Theory, our work challenges organisations to examine how systemic inequalities are embedded in policies, practices, and workplace culture. Using CRT as a foundation, we:
Analyse structural barriers and their impact on marginalised groups.
Facilitate training on recognising and addressing institutional bias.
Support leaders in implementing equitable practices that prioritise fairness and justice.
We utilise Critical Race Theory to analyse and confront how race and racism shape societal structures. This approach informs our commitment to equity by examining the intersections of law, power, and social justice.
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Rooted in decolonial theory, our work seeks to challenge and transform colonial legacies, reclaiming knowledge, practices, and perspectives that have been marginalised. We aim to create spaces where all cultures and histories are celebrated and preserved.
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Recognising that individuals’ experiences are shaped by overlapping identities, our intersectional approach takes into account the complex ways in which race, gender, class, sexuality, and other factors intersect. This ensures a holistic and inclusive perspective in all of our work. We use intersectional approaches to:
Highlight the unique challenges faced by individuals at the intersections of race, gender, class, and other identities.
Ensure solutions are comprehensive, addressing overlapping systems of discrimination.
Developing environments where diverse identities are acknowledged, respected, and celebrated.Item description
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We believe in making informed decisions, grounded in the best available research and data.
All our approaches are informed by research and data. We conduct workplace audits, surveys, and impact assessments to ensure strategies are targeted and measurable. This evidence-based methodology ensures your organisation can track progress and achieve meaningful outcomes.
Our strategies are designed to reflect proven methods, ensuring that our work is both effective and sustainable.