Sachini Imbuldeniya

CEO

Sachini Imbuldeniya is a frickin’ unicorn. She’s a woman of colour from a working-class background, living with a disability – which makes her representative of the four most underrepresented groups in the UK’s creative industry, and one of just 0.01% of women of colour to own her own creative agency.

And not just any agency. She’s co-founder and CEO of the award-winning House of Oddities (HOO) – an independent shop built as a safe space for creatives from those underrepresented groups who don’t feel like they ‘fit in’ with the ways more ‘traditional’ agencies work. But it’s not just about being equal and inclusive (although that’s pretty damn sweet). Sachini built this because she believes that people from diverse backgrounds make wilder, weirder, and better creative work. And then she only went and proved it... Despite starting with no creative agency experience and just £200, House of Oddities has gone from strength to strength, becoming a leading light in the industry for daring creative work and part of the fight for a fairer, more inclusive industry – and winning Gold at Campaign’s Agency of the Year Awards this year. Her clients include Tony’s Chocolonely, Butternut Box, Sport England’s This Girl Can, Stokke, Oxfam, NSPCC, Childline, Amnesty International and Malaria No More. They said she ‘has a mastery of the power of creativity to move people’ and ‘sets an incredible example of what modern leadership looks like.’ Another described her as ‘batshit crazy’, and she’s more than happy to own that.