Lauren Burnett-Aubert

Lauren Burnett-Aubert is a compelling keynote speaker whose life story is a powerful testament to resilience, recovery, and transformation.

Growing up in an unstable environment, Lauren spent time in residential care before being fostered by a connected carer — her aunt — in Scotland following involvement with the youth offending system. By the age of 14, Lauren had developed a heroin addiction and was injecting as a way of coping and self-medicating during an incredibly turbulent period of her life.

Her addiction would dominate her teenage years and early adulthood. At 23, a near-fatal overdose left Lauren severely injured after being de-scalped on a bedside table lamp, leading to three and a half years of reconstructive plastic surgery. Despite this life-altering trauma, addiction continued to grip her life. Over the following years she suffered repeated lung collapses and spent four separate periods in intensive care within two years fighting for her life.

During one of these hospital admissions, Lauren discovered she was pregnant with her son, Camden — a moment that would ultimately become a turning point in her journey.

Through 12-step abstinent recovery, Lauren rebuilt her life. With two children under the age of two, she channeled her determination into entrepreneurship, launching her own fashion brand. Within just 18 months she secured investment from the United States, eventually opened a shop on Melrose Avenue, and erected a 90-foot billboard featuring her brand.

Her business was also built with purpose. Lauren worked with female prisoners, teaching them sewing skills manufacturing her hat collection worn by artists and celebrities like Richard Ashcroft, Pussy Cat Dolls and more. Lauren donated a percentage of profits to a drug and alcohol rehabilitation charity.

In 2022, Lauren sold her fashion business to focus on what had become her deepest calling: working in fostering and adoption. Her personal experience of care, recovery, and parenting led her to become a foster carer herself, supporting a teenage girl who was struggling with the same kinds of behaviours Lauren had experienced in her own adolescence.

Lauren now works in fostering and adoption and regularly speaks in prisons, schools, and on television about addiction, trauma, recovery, and the power of personal transformation.

A later diagnosis of ADHD — discovered through the process of her own son’s neurodivergent diagnosis at the age of seven — helped Lauren understand the neurological patterns that had contributed to years of low self-esteem and self-medication. Today she speaks openly about the relationship between neurodiversity, addiction, trauma, and recovery.

Through raw honesty, humor, and extraordinary insight, Lauren delivers unforgettable talks on resilience, neurodiversity, addiction recovery and the power of redefining your future.

Her story is not just about survival — it is about what becomes possible when people are given the right support, the right opportunity, faith and the belief that change is possible.

Keynote Topics – 

1. Addiction, Recovery & the Power of 12-Step Transformation

• Heroin addiction from age 14
• The cycle of self-medication and trauma
• Life-threatening addiction and ICU survival
• The psychology of abstinent recovery
• What real recovery looks like beyond sobriety learning to change patterns in behavior in unhealthy attachments and coping mechanisms

2. 2. Neurodiversity, ADHD & Addiction

• Late diagnosis of ADHD in adulthood
• Understanding addiction through the lens of neurodivergence
• Why many neurodivergent people self-medicate
• Parenting a neurodivergent child while discovering your own diagnosis
• How boxing has helped her and her son channel aggression at systems they don’t fit in to.
• Building systems that work with — not against — neurodiverse brains

3. From Care System to Foster Carer

• Residential care and youth offending pathways
• Being fostered by a connected carer
• Breaking cycles within families and communities
• Becoming a foster carer herself
• Supporting teenagers with trauma and behavioural challenges

4. Trauma, Resilience & Rewriting Your Identity

• Surviving severe trauma and physical injury
• Reconstructive surgery and rebuilding confidence
• How identity shifts after addiction and trauma
• Post-traumatic growth
• An unwavering self-belief and positive outlook. A fire in her belly to defy the odds

5. Entrepreneurship After Adversity

• Launching a fashion brand with two babies under two
• Securing US investment within 18 months
• Building a socially conscious business
• Working with female prisoners and rehabilitation programmes
• Selling a business to pursue purpose-driven work

6. The Power of Mindset & Manifestation

• Turning survival into ambition
• Visualisation and long-term thinking
• Building belief when your past says otherwise
• Creating a new future
• Self-worth and confidence development