Meet the Speakers

A Member of the House of Lords, Media Diversity Executive, former shadow minister (covering Education, Broadcasting, Equalities, and Digital Economy), Senior Advisor to the Prime Minister, MP, TV presenter, 2nd black woman elected to Parliament. I like people who get things done. I dislike rearranging my 4 kids’ childcare. Above all I really like inclusive leaders and ice skating.

Julie Szudarek is the President of Groupon International, overseeing all facets of the company’s business and operations outside of North America. Prior to leading Groupon’s international business, Julie served as the President and COO of Groupon’s EMEA region. Earlier at Groupon, Julie ran the North American local and travel businesses, live and things to do businesses and before that was responsible for revenue management, merchandising and data science.

Prior to Groupon, Julie worked at Orbitz as Group Vice President, Revenue Management, Strategy and Analytics. She was responsible for the day-to-day general management of the core Orbitz and Cheaptickets products, including: air, car, hotel, dynamic packaging, attractions & services, insurance and cruise. Additionally, she worked in the London office, successfully establishing a revenue management function for the Octopus and eBookers business lines. She held additional positions in supplier services and business development. Julie holds a BS in Finance and Economics from Indiana University and received her MBA from the University of Michigan. Beyond the Groupon walls, her interests include running, skiing, cooking and music. She lives in London with her husband and three kids.

An IT engineer with a degree from EPITA and a HEC Master degree, Claire Calmejane began her career in 2006 in the Technology Transformation department of Capgemini Consulting, where she supported companies and especially financial institutions in their technological and digital transformation. Contributing to a study on the digital transformation of large companies led by MIT in 2011, she joined the London office of Capgemini to lead the digital center of the Financial Services sector. Recruited in 2012 by Lloyds Banking Group, as Head of Digital Delivery in the Online Services Department, she was appointed Innovation Director and set up the Innovation Labs and the Digital Academy. She was until now Risk Transformation Director at Lloyds Banking Group.

Claire Calmejane is one of the leading figures of diversity in tech in Europe. She has received several awards (Fintech 35 under 35 in 2018, Digital Leader in 2017) and regularly gives lectures on the fintech ecosystem and digital transformation at MIT, CFTE, Oxford and HEC. She is also a member of the World Economic Forum's “Future of AI and Financial Services Automation” project and support charity in their digital strategy as well as training digital champions to enable all citizens to realize their potential online.

Maggie leads SAP’s digital innovation services business globally, helping companies create and maximise business value through the use of intelligent technologies such as IoT, machine learning, AI, blockchain and advanced data analytics. Maggie was recently named one of the world’s first Top 50 Edge Computing Influencers by Data Economy magazine, marking her commitment and contribution to innovation within the technology industry.  She has significant experience building fast-growth digital businesses and previously led Digital Sales globally at Capgemini and Global Cloud Sales & Consulting for Fujitsu. Maggie is on the Companions Board of the Chartered Management Institute in the UK, and was the 2013 winner of the of ‘Women in the City’ technology category award in recognition of her achievements. She is also on the next generation committee at Leap, a charity that helps young people manage conflict. 

Maggie holds both a Master of Letters and a BBS Lang in Business and French from Trinity College, Dublin. She also holds a degree from the Grande École de Commerce de Rouen, France.

She is interested in topics such as customer experience, digital transformation, applied innovation, enterprise gamification, organisational culture and gender equality in business. She is a keen advocate of women in tech and supports initiatives aimed at inspiring young girls to pursue careers in STEM. She has two young children and is an avid fan of CrossFit and a novice horse-racing jockey. Follow Maggie on Twitter and LinkedIn. 

Damien Hooper-Campbell is eBay’s first Chief Diversity Officer and has deep expertise as an agent of change within the technology and finance industries, non-profit sector and academia. He is responsible for leading the design and implementation of eBay’s strategy for embedding diversity and inclusion across its global workforce, workplace and marketplace. He also leads eBay’s University Recruiting & Programs team to ensure that diversity and inclusion are inherent to eBay’s recruiting strategy.

Prior to eBay, Damien served as Uber’s first Global Head of Diversity & Inclusion, where he helped set the company’s foundational Diversity and Inclusion strategy and led its community engagement efforts with the City of Oakland, CA. Before that, he advised Google’s senior leaders and built partnerships within the Black community as a Diversity Strategist in the company’s Diversity team. Prior to Google, Damien served as Vice President in Goldman Sachs’ Leadership Development Group, where he coached Goldman Sachs’ senior leaders. Previously, he led underrepresented minority outreach for Harvard Business School’s Admissions Board and empowered Harlem's non-profit community as an Associate Program Manager at the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation (UMEZ). He also completed the Investment Banking Analyst Program at Morgan Stanley.

Damien graduated with a B.A in economics from Morehouse College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, where he was both a Bert King and Morgan Stanley Fellow.

Rikke Rosenlund founded BorrowMyDoggy in 2012 after taking care of a neighbour’s dog “Aston” for the day. She soon realised that dog owners could use a helping hand to look after their dogs both for walks, weekends and holiday care. The concept for BorrowMyDoggy was born, with the aim to leave 'Pawprints of Happiness' on the lives of dogs and people. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Rikke worked in financial services in London and the automobile industry in Central America. Rikke has been involved in various NGO work including delivering aid in disaster areas, is born in Denmark and holds an MBA from INSEAD.

Doina Popa has established a reputation as a pioneer for women in technology, becoming the first woman outside the US to achieve Salesforce Technical Architect Certification and, at the time of the achievement, the third globally.

Her career trajectory exemplifies both her talent and her leadership abilities, spanning three high-profile roles for three game-changing organisations – Salesforce, Capgemini, and now as the CIO for Salesforce at Barclays. Her work has been consistently recognised by her peers for her ability to innovate and deliver customer excellence.

Technology designer/developer with experience in solutioning , designing and developing using various JAVA, J2EE technologies stack. Specialties: Architecture, APIs, Java (J2SE, J2EE), Spring, Camel.

Ali, has more than 15 years’ experience in tech engineering, has been in payment for the past 8 years working at PayPal and with Visa and Barclaycard prior to Yoyo. At Yoyo he is responsible for leading and scaling the Engineering team and building the next generation of Yoyo's payment and loyalty platform.

Living in Greenwich, I enjoy the general hubbub of being in and around London. Since graduating from University with a BSc Computing in 2006, I have worked for 4 different companies, my last 9 years as a project manager. And the last 4.5-5 years with Adobe. I’ve just recently got married to my partner of 7 years. I’m currently in the process of joining an MBA course starting in Jan 2019.

I try to be an active member in my community by volunteering time to charity groups. I have many hobbies and have almost achieved black belt in martial arts.

Catherine graduated from the University of Liverpool in 2001 with a degree in Computer Information Systems and a serious disinterest for all things code related. Seventeen years on and after vowing that “Tech was definitely not her world”, she is now a Technology Director at the FTSE 250, online comparison business, Money Supermarket Group.

Catherine has held numerous Technology and Commercial leadership roles throughout her career with Marconi, Taylor Woodrow and Auto Trader. She has a real passion for creating successful products, slick customer experiences and happy, highly performant teams through her understanding of the evolution of product engineering practices and her experience in digital transformation.

Fiona is Managing Director of Women on Boards in the UK and is a Trustee of the Charity Fight for Sight. Formerly a director of Old Mutual Asset Management and Hill Samuel Asset Management, running the Global Equities and Emerging Markets Desks, in 2012 Fiona launched Women on Boards UK to support women applying for board roles across the Public, Private and Not for Profit Sectors.

WOB has enabled 1500+ women to get onto boards across the UK. Foundation sponsors (PwC, ICBC Standard Bank, Thomson Reuters and Berwin Leighton & Paisner) and corporate members include UBS, RBS, JP Morgan, Cisco Systems, HSBC, Linklaters, Oracle and Aberdeen Asset Management.

Ashleigh is co-founder of Colorintech a non profit aiming to improve access, awareness and opportunities for ethnic minorities to enter the tech industry. They work with a number of the world's leading tech companies to run programs to enable students and working professionals to access career opportunities.

Ashleigh started his early career in strategy at Google before moving to London start up Qubit and corporate KPMG. He has worked on a number of engagements for Downing Street, the World Economic Forum and a number of the world's biggest organisations on a range of strategy and D&I issues.

Shephali is a seasoned business executive with successful experience in dealing at Senior Management level in complex, highly competitive environments with both a direct customer-base and indirect channel partner relationships. A good team player with excellent understanding of IT services and solutions, first-rate communication and presentation skills, high degree of autonomy, self starter, business minded and results oriented, Shephali is highly organised with the ability to prioritise work and meet deadlines. Experienced in change management and acquisition integration and educated to MBA level. Shephali’s specialties include mergers and acquisition integration, project management, programme management and customer services.

Helping Clients to Get Fast Accurate Analytical Results. Caroline has spent over 20 years helping organizations to drive value from data and transform processes across all business functions. In her current role at SAS, she helps companies on their journey to having competitive edge through data and advanced analytics and artificial intelligence. Caroline is interested in the impact AI will have on society and is passionate about AI being used in an ethical way to work alongside humans. She is interested in inspiring the next generation to solve the hardest challenges facing the world today using technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Caroline is also on the Action for Children Board for the Byte Night Project which helps to PREVENT youth homelessness in the UK and is sleeping rough for a night soon! Ask how you can get involved & make a difference.

Jeremy is Chief of Staff for Analytics & Information Management in Deloitte’s Technology Consulting practice. He works with Senior Leadership to provide strategic oversight and management for a practice of 300 individuals in the UK, and over 5000 globally. Recognised as “a champion for wider discussion and demystification of technology”, Jeremy works to deliver new insights for global organisations to build their capacity and readiness to harness opportunities from analytics and AI. He has featured multiple times as a Technology Specialist Guest Speaker on the BBC and was named the Black British Business Award Winner 2017 – Rising Star.

Tiffany has spent over 20 years helping organisations transform customer experience across their sales, service and marketing operations. In her current role at SAS, she guides organisations on the application of advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to harness customer insights and deliver relevant one-to-one experiences. Tiffany is also co-founder of Griswold Studios, a boutique fitness concept delivering personalised fitness programmes powered by data and analytics.  

Sharon Cooper is Chief Digital Officer of the EIU, the consulting and research arm of The Economist Group, she is focusing on modernising their forecasting tools and creating a suite of digital products to enable the organisation to grow its services. Prior to that Sharon led digital change as the Chief Digital Officer at the BMJ Publishing Group and also worked in the public sector at both Directgov and Government Digital Service.

She has a degree in Chemistry and has worked for most of her career in knowledge and information organisations Including Oxford University Press, Which?, Informa and Reed Elsevier.

Marta Krupinska. London based tech entrepreneur, co-founder of real time pay FinTech startup FreeUp and entrepreneur-in-residence at the global GovTech firm PUBLIC.io. Previously co-founder of a global FinTech Azimo which raised $70M+ in funding from top VC firms and gained over 1 million customers. Received prestigious awards, such as Forbes 30 Under 30 in Finance in 2016 and Evening Standard's London’s Most Influential People in 2017. She holds a MA in Organisational Psychology and a Management degree from Columbia Business School. Marta is a frequent public speaker and advocate for responsible leadership and diversity&inclusion. 

Lesya Liskevych is Head of Web Analytics at Kindred Group, one of the world's leading online gambling operators. Since joining Kindred in 2017, Lesya has built a team of highly-skilled web analytics and optimisation specialists which is transforming the business with customer insight and a data-centric decision-making approach. Lesya's goal is to help Kindred achieve its ambition to become the number one Casino and Sport betting destination.

Outside of work, Lesya is a member of a London-based theatre group and has performed several times at the Edinburgh Fringe. She is also a triathlon enthusiast and regularly competes in Half Iron(wo)man races.