About Toby Gorniak MBE
Toby Gorniak MBE
I didn’t choose leadership. Leadership chose me.
I was born Roma in Poland. As a child, I was beaten and humiliated by teachers daily. My work was torn up. I was told I would be nothing. I wasn’t failing school , I just wasn’t accepted by it.
At 11 years old, I was beaten into a coma by skinheads.
When the violence escalated, my family fled. I arrived in the UK as a teenage refugee , homeless, penniless, unable to speak English. Everything familiar was gone.
That’s where my life’s direction was set.
I made a promise: if I ever found a way through, I would go back for the others still in the storm and I would become what I needed as a child: a good human who sees potential where others see problems. That promise became my compass.
What I do
I don’t roll out programmes. I build bespoke, self-sustaining cultures based on the real needs of the people inside a system and I leave something behind that allows them to stand strong long after I’m gone.
I work across education systems, organisations, governments, and communities, from grassroots to boardrooms.
I enter a system and read what most people miss , not the paperwork or policies, but the people. I observe how power moves, where respect breaks down, where brilliance is being suppressed, and where fear or habit is shaping behaviour. I then work with people, not on them, to co-create cultures that are lived day to day, not written on walls.
Speaking & Reach
Alongside this work, I am a keynote and inspirational speaker, invited to speak on world-class stages and inside boardrooms on culture, leadership, belonging, and human responsibility at scale. I don’t speak to motivate for a moment, I speak to shift how people lead.
Recognition & Mission
I was awarded an MBE by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for service, recognising more than two decades of work transforming lives, communities, and systems. My work has also contributed to the UK’s first fully funded Hip Hop PhD and collaborations with organisations including TEDx, the BBC, ITV, and Netflix.
The recognition matters only because the outcomes last.
My mission is to empower millions of people worldwide to lead with emotional intelligence, creativity, and heart and to help build a world where no one is ever made to feel “less.”
The Gorniak Method™
Over two decades, this work evolved into The Gorniak Method™, a human-centred framework built on eight core pillars, including Respect, Peace, Love, Unity, Fun, Knowledge of Self, Discovering Genius, Teach to Teach, Honour, Courage, and responsibility in the community, for the community.
The pillars stay constant. How they are lived is always bespoke.
The outcome is authentic leadership, not performative, not fear-based, not dependent on one person. When I leave, leadership remains. Culture holds. People stand on their own two feet.