16-17 June 2020
ExCeL, London
6-7 September, 2018
ICC Sydney, Australia
6-7 September, 2018
ICC Sydney, Australia
Elly Hardwick
Chief Digital Officer @ UBS
Vandana Bangera
Product Portfolio Manager @ Charles Taylor InsurTech
Teo Pile
Business Analyst @ Charles Taylor InsurTech
Joyce Adeluwoye-Adams MBE
Global Diversity and Inclusion Leader
Fiona Campbell-Howes
Founder and CEO @ Radix
Lucy Edge
Chief Operating Officer @ Satellite Applications catapult
Nick Roberts
Client Director @ Makers
Star of BBC's The Apprentice
Karren Brady, businesswoman, peer, ‘first lady of football’, and Alan Sugar’s aide on The Apprentice, became MD of Birmingham City at the age of just 23, and is now one of the UK’s best known business personalities.
After starting out in advertising, Karren’s first contact with David Sullivan, then owner of Sport Newspapers, was through selling him air-time on LBC. So impressed was the businessman that he employed Karren and she was quickly appointed a director. Upon hearing that Birmingham City had gone into receivership and was for sale for £1, she famously persuaded David that she could run the club. He bought it, and installed Karren as Managing Director.
Within 12 months Karren had turned the club around, recording a profit. In four years she became the youngest MD of a PLC when the business was floated with a value of £25million. She steered the club to huge successes on paper and on the pitch and through the many challenges the football and business worlds bring. Karren left the club when it was sold for £81million. When David Sullivan and his business partner David Gold bought West Ham United, Karren was appointed Vice-Chairman where, amongst other things, she negotiated the team’s move to the Olympic Stadium.
In her characteristically no-nonsense but entertaining way, Karren speaks about running the business side of a major football club - through promotion, relegation, controversy and even brain surgery. Known for her resilience and focus, she describes how to combat fear of failure and energise the team, and why hunger is always your most valuable asset regardless of your organisation or industry.
Aside from football, Karren has served on the boards of Mothercare, Arcadia, Channel 4 and Sport England. She is an active member of the Lords and a Government small business ambassador, and advises the parliamentary Women in Sport Advisory Board. She has written autobiographies, business books and novels, and has written for a range of national and local newspaper titles.
A Partner at Goldman Sachs since 2014, Jo leads projects involving thousands of engineers on a global scale, most recently overseeing the build-out of Marcus UK, the firm’s consumer savings platform. Jo joined the firm in 1997 in the Investment Research Division and prior to this was responsible for Global Volume Trading Technology at NatWest Markets. She is an advisor to the UK Government Digital Service Advisory Board and Chair of the Bank of England CIO Forum.
Jo is the driving force behind Goldman Sachs’ partnerships with various diversity focused organisations, such as the Code First: Girls 2020 Campaign, which aims to teach 20,000 young women to code by 2020 for free. Through this partnership, she has also been able to offer all Goldman Sachs women analysts in London seats on free evening coding courses.
Outside of work, Jo dedicates her time to similar causes, acting as a board member of Women in Science and Engineering (WISE), campaigning for gender balance in science, technology and engineering. She is also a trustee of the Bletchley Park Trust and sponsors their Disadvantaged Schools Education Programme.
Dr Rebecca Pope is a clinical neuroscientist, TEDx speaker and part of KPMG in the UK’s leadership as its Head of Data Science and Engineering. She leads KPMG in the UK’s Centre of Excellence to build scalable, high-performing data science and AI products to help transform and drive business value across the KPMG global network’s client base and across market sectors.
Rebecca is an internationally recognised thought leader and an implementation expert in how technology and data science can accelerate improvements in health and care. She has published a number of academic research papers, written several scientific commentaries in the Guardian, and is the recipient of National awards for her academic research. She has co-authored numerous KPMG Thought Leadership papers
Rebecca is an active and passionate member of various initiatives to foster diversity and inclusion in STEM, from school to the C-suite.
Heleen Snelting is Director Data Science EMEA at TIBCO, where she and her team help TIBCO customers optimise business and operational processes through the use of advanced analytics. She previously held international roles at market- and shopper research company IRI. Heleen is passionate about knowledge sharing and is an active TIBCO Community contributor.
Sonia Cargan serves as Chief Diversity Officer of American Express. In this role, Sonia is responsible for the company’s global diversity and inclusion strategy, helping to ensure that American Express remains an employer-of-choice among top diverse talent by focusing on attraction, hiring, development, and retention, while promoting an inclusive culture throughout the employee lifecycle.
Over time, Sonia has held a range of increasingly senior Human Resources roles in Europe, Asia, and North America, building a strong track record of successfully partnering with business leaders to drive strategic organizational goals. Prior to her current role, Sonia served as HR VP for Southeast Asia, Greater China & Japan. Leading a diverse team across nine countries, she played a critical role in the development of future-focused people strategies, putting in place strong talent foundations to drive business growth and bottom-line results. Previously, Sonia was the HR Business Partner for Global Finance and the worldwide staff groups, driving a full complement of HR services to maximize human-capital strategies across a portfolio representing over 3,500 employees worldwide.
Sonia holds a BA Honors degree in social administration and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (UK). She was named one of Black Enterprise’s top corporate diversity executives in 2018.
Joanna Chwastowska graduated in Computer Science from the Academy of Science and Technology in Krakow, Poland. She's then joined newly open Google Krakow office, and worked as Software Engineer, growing from an individual contributor to Tech Lead Manager across the following 8 years. On her next adventure she's been an Engineering Site Lead for a fashion startup from New York (shopspring.com). In summer 2017 she's moved to London to work as an Engineering Lead for Google's DeepMind Health team.
Engineer at heart, manager by choice – she loves to explore human nature and build strong engineering teams. By doing so she hopes to help others (and herself;) to grow, and have greater, positive impact on the world.
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.
Namrata Sarmah is a Senior Director of Product at Viacom. Throughout her career, she has worked in a variety of sectors like IT, FMCG, Telecom, Media Production etc. Most recently, Namrata has worked with a popular Digital Health company and a Beauty start-up. She is an Advisor at several UK start-up incubators and accelerators. She has been a Virgin Start-Up Mentor for last few years helping young businesses find their footing. Namrata also serves as a Non-Executive Director at an educational trust. She is an alumna of the University of Cambridge and Manchester Business School.
Ruth leads Business Transformation and IT for Lenovo’s Data Center Group (DCG). Previous to Lenovo she was the CIO of the Business Intelligence & Global Head of Shared Applications for Deutsche Bank, and spent eight years at NetApp where she held a number of engineering and sales leadership roles. Ruth holds a degree in Computer Science from Columbia University. Ruth is an avid endurance athlete, swim coach for the Special Olympics, and loves mentoring and building engineering cultures which embrace diversity.
Genevieve joined TSB in 2016 to lead the Bank’s mobile programme – including the launch of TSB’s new mobile app for retail customers. She previously spent 10 years working in a number of roles across Barclays building strong, inclusive and sustainable teams. She is a digital specialist and an agile evangelist and excels at accelerating cultural change. Genevieve lives in Leicestershire with her husband, two young sons and their dog, Margot.
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.
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.
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.
Craig leads an international team of ethical hackers. This team protects BT and BT’s customers by identifying vulnerabilities in systems, software, and process. Before leading this team Craig was a senior cyber security consultant, helping customers make sense of the vast amounts of threat data present in their systems.
Craig helps secure multi-national organisations, large local enterprise, and small and medium businesses. While the threats are similar, the way to approach cyber security varies. In this talk Craig will extrapolate lessons learned and apply them to the start-up space.
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 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2011, she joined the London office of Capgemini to lead the digital centre 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 before being appointed Risk Transformation Director at Lloyds Banking Group. In September 2018, Claire Calmejane joined Societe Generale as Group Chief Innovation Officer. Claire Calmejane studied IT Engineering with a degree from the École pour l'informatique et les techniques avancées (EPITA) and a Masters degree from the HEC French school of management. Follow me @ccalmeja
Laura is an experienced business and technology leader, driving industry change, diversity and inclusion with innovative and pioneering approaches. She has performed roles including COO, CTIO, Digital and Sales leadership roles, working in leading technology and consulting organisations, including Avanade, Oracle, Capgemini and IBM. She has a track record of delivering technical, operational and sales excellence, but people leadership and organisational change motivate her the most. She attributes her record of strong business results not only to a passion for technology and innovation, but mostly to her ability to get the best out of people through humility, creativity and authentic leadership.
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.
Caroline has over 23 years experience in IT from consulting to solution engineering to sales across Applications and Technologies as a manager and an individual contributor. She thrives being on the cutting edge, whether delivering the first CRM in 90days globally back in 2003 to establishing and chairing the Corporate Social Responsibility Board for Oracle UK 2006-2010. She received sales consultant of the year in 2014 as an enterprise architect before moving to manage the Security sales consulting team in 2014 and adding the security sales team to her tribe in 2016. Her recent role running the Cloud Native and Integration team lead to her leading the emerging technologies and focusing as a thought leader in Blockchain as a solution for proof of provenance. She has now taken on a role to help Oracle establish itself as the market leader for Autonomous Data Management.
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.
Tricia Smyth is Head of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) for Dell Technologies in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). At Dell Technologies, Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) is a core part of our success. It’s more than what we do – it’s who we are. Having full leadership buy-in is critical when creating real change within organisations and as part of her role, Tricia works with business leadership teams to drive a business driven culture of diversity inclusion, and to ensure Dell remains an employer of choice. Tricia is also responsible for driving leadership commitment, engagement of customers and team members in the D&I agenda, and promoting partnerships and engagements with global companies and advocates. Based in Cork, Ireland, Tricia brings a wealth of international experience across her +15 years’ of passionately driving D&I initiatives and employee engagement across all of her previous roles.
Chris is the VP of Infrastructure and IT at the world’s largest travel company, Expedia Group. He leads a global team of over 700 people who are responsible for providing IT infrastructure and support for Expedia’s eCommerce platform along with 25,000 employees in over 200 offices worldwide. Chris is currently based in London and frequently travels to the US, India and Europe as part of his global remit. He has been with Expedia for 17 years.
Chris is an ally, advocate and sponsor for Diversity, Inclusion and Gender balance he sits on Expedia’s Global Inclusion forum. He has anxiety around public speaking at large events but is trying to learn from his 8-year old daughter who has no fear. Like most Expedians, he has a passion for travel and loves visiting new countries and experiencing different cultures with his wife and two children.
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.
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.
Elizabeth Filippouli is a social entrepreneur with a background in journalism having worked with mainstream media in Athens, Greece and internationally in the US and the Gulf. As of 2012 she is the Founder & CEO of Global Thinkers Forum (GTF), a global platform incubated at Said Business School University of Oxford, that works as an agent for positive change by connecting international thought leaders and promoting values-based leadership, collaboration and partnerships. GTF is London-based with an international advisory board and presence in 8 countries: UK, USA, Jordan, Turkey, Greece, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and a fast growth rate. It was launched in 2012 in Amman, Jordan under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Rania and has engaged influencers from business, philanthropy, academia, media, literature. The organisation promotes PPPs and cross-country collaborations, with particular focus on women.
In 2015 Global Thinkers Forum launched an international mentoring programme, Global Thinkers Mentors, pairing youth and women from all over the world with accomplished individuals across 50 countries. In 2018 and as part of its tireless efforts in support of SDG 5, the organisation launched Athena40 the first ever global ranking of the top 40 most innovative women from across all industries.
Mandy Jeffery is the vice-president of people, international and operations at Workday, a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources.
With more than 20 years of experience, she has global responsibility for Workday’s HR operations and international business partnering and employee engagement.
Previously, she served as the senior director of HR Operations at Verifone and was part of a team that successfully implemented Workday across 44 countries.
Preceding Verifone, she was a HR consultant for Thames Water, and has also previously served as the HR director for EMEA at Allegis Group. She has also served on multiple boards across EMEA.
Simon is a Principal in the London office of Boston Consulting Group and is the European head of BCG’s Centre for Digital Government. Simon works in large scale transformations and technology-enabled policy, and he has worked on a broad range of strategic topics from the impact of Brexit on the environment, to how the UK can get more value from its maps (or geospatial data if you prefer the fancy term!).
Simon is also the Recruiting Director for BCG's Technology Advantage practice, where he has become well-versed in the challenges and rewards of recruiting diverse teams.
Asif is Head of Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging for The Telegraph. Delivering the strategic plan to drive a co-ordinated approach across the business to focus both investment and intent on the broader inclusion agenda. He is a Multi-Award Winning Diversity and Inclusion expert with a proven track record in achieving operational and strategic targets, managing quality, performance, risk and change through promoting equal opportunities and diverse cultures.
He is a passionate and inspirational leader with the ability to empower individuals and create a truly inclusive environment for all. Asif is key in implementing D&I activities and programmes as well as connecting with stakeholders at all levels to build strong and influential relationships with business leaders and influencers. Asif acts as a role model, providing governance across the business on D&I and cultural change and is committed to creating a strong sense of belonging for all.
Asif has received a number of accolades for his professional and volunteering work that include the Mosaic (Prince’s Trust) Award for mentoring and NAMP Multi Faith Award, Police Officer of the Year Award, European, the Civil Servant of the Year Award, the prestigious Asian Professional Award and the highly commended Head of Diversity Award at the European Diversity Awards. Asif was honoured last year in the Queen’s birthday honours list with an MBE for his services to Policing and the Communities and is a member of the HR Guild and is a Freeman of the City.
He is currently the Chair of the London Hate Crime Board, an Ambassador for Remembering Srebrenica, Member of the APPG (All Party Parliamentary Group) on Hate Crime, Special Advisory to the charity Penny Appeal, a trainer for the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and a Special Sergeant with the City of London Police.
Tara Hein-Phillips is the Chief Digital Officer at the Sundance Institute, and is the product lead for their new platform, Sundance Co//ab. She brings over 15 years of experience in digital transformation, new product development, and commercial management and has launched many successful products and services in that time. Her key areas of expertise are global strategy, new product development, and digital transformation, with a particular passion for digital education and the arts. A lifelong student, she has pursued degrees in theatre, literature, herbal medicine, and, most recently organizational psychology and leadership.
Nira is a Senior Clinician Strategist at DeepMind Health. A pediatrician by background, she trained at Stanford, where her research focused on remote clinical monitoring via EHR integration of consumer-facing health technology. Previously, Nira worked in management consulting for the Boston Consulting Group and has consulted for a variety of digital health startups in the Silicon Valley. She holds a BS from UCLA, MD from UCSF, and has worked at hospitals in the US, UK, Australia, and South Africa.
Hector GHF is a Mexico City-born, London-based creative technologist working in the realms of marketing and design. He brings over 10 years of experience from the technology sector, designing experiential learning and marketing campaigns during his time at Google prior to joining Goldman Sachs Engineering. During his career, he has facilitated design-led innovation workshops for Silicon Valley startups, Forbes 500 companies and international organisations.
Having worked in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, New York and now London, Hector has a global perspective and is a champion of accessibility, diversity and inclusion. In his spare time, he provides mentoring to tech startups from around the world. He enjoys art. He loves tacos.
Dayne is Senior Vice President, leading the UK&I Enterprise Business for Dell Technologies. He and his diverse team help companies embrace the challenges around digital transformation. He has recruited and developed one of Dell Technologies most high performing teams and is a leader within the business on delivering the diversity agenda. Dayne is also passionate about ensuring the business supports female and ethnic minorities growth into Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths subjects. He is on the Board of the Prince’s Trust leading programmes for mentoring, internships and seed investment to well-deserving, underprivileged youths via the Trust. He is passionate about sustainability and champions Dell’s Ocean Plastics sustainability initiative. Originally from South Africa, Dayne has held a range of leadership roles internationally before joining Dell in 2010 and holds a BSc in Mechanical Engineering.
Katie is the 2019 winner of Women in IT’s CTO of the Year award recognising the work her team have done transforming Adstream internally into a leading player in the Adtech space optimising Cloud, Devops Practices, CI:CD and the latest Tech. She is passionate about getting the best from People and Technology to produce products which deliver real value to Businesses across Industries. Taking pride in a deep business and technical knowledge she believes leading a successful team is down to being a great role model, advocating flexibility and actively encouraging growth and development across the team.
Emma served as an Engineer Officer in the RAF before transitioning to the influence capability of Military Intelligence. Over five tours of Afghanistan, she was placed in leadership and governance roles, leading teams to collect life-saving information. After a realisation that she was using the same influence skill set and methodology in her interactions with politicians and military commanders as she was with the Taliban, Emma co-founded the Applied Influence Group. She was honoured with an MBE in 2015 for her service in Afghanistan.
Gaia Paolini is a Data Scientist at TIBCO, having previously held roles at Pfizer, IBM, biotech and software companies, academia as well as consulting independently. She is interested in ideas, science, art and algorithms and enjoys the challenge of combining these to generate insight from data.
Christianne has worked in communications for 13 years, initially as a copy-writer and then for a management consultancy specialising in communication, before co-founding AGL in 2010.
She works with corporates and private individuals; in one-to-one sessions and in groups; across sectors and around the world. It might be helping with an important speech; a leadership transition; an employee engagement project around a piece of change; a refreshed corporate narrative or simply communication coaching to make sure a person or team are being as impactful as possible.
Whatever the situation, she’s most interested in finding the human moment that transforms data transmission into something that makes a connection, that changes minds and behaviour, and that works.
Clients include Vodafone, GSK, British Airways, Garda World, Lily’s Kitchen, Tyrrells Crisps, Lloyds Banking Group, JCB, Shell, DMGT, Santander and Jaeger Le Coultre.
Christianne is a graduate of Edinburgh and Rome universities.
Nerissa is an award-winning UX Designer and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). Originally from Indonesia, Nerissa grew up in Singapore and believes in pushing boundaries to create innovative solutions to societal problems.
Trained as an industrial designer, she treats user experience problems as engineering puzzles, tackling them through an iterative process of research and development. Her work is focused on improving the workflow and interactions of data-rich applications for different business areas, helping with efficiency gains and ultimately an increase in ROI.
In her spare time, Nerissa can be found advocating Design for Social Good through the RSA community and trying out the new photogenic foodie places in London.
Ioana Monica Stama is a Solution Consultant at TIBCO, having previously held the same role at Oracle. Her degree in Cybernetics, Statistics and Informatics triggered her interest in how business outcomes can be improved by turning data into knowledge, with a focus on bringing together people, data and technology to achieve innovation goals.
Dan is a business psychologist, communication coach and learning consultant.
Dan has worked with a wide range of audiences, in all sectors, on all continents, and at all occupational levels - including boards and senior management teams. His expertise lies particularly in the areas of leadership, communication, employee engagement and organisational development.
Before joining AGL, Dan was a director at Mind Gym, working with leaders to achieve measurable impact across global populations. He was also head of research and knowledge, keeping the organisation abreast of the latest thinking.
Dan is also an accredited MBTi practitioner and has an excellent knowledge of the latest thinking in the worlds of psychology, neuroscience and business. He is experienced in conducting organisational research, and his study of the development of people inside one magic circle law firm features extensively in a recent book on best practices in the legal sector.
Keith is Director of DevOps for ADP UK for their flagship human resources and payroll products in Europe. His role is to promote Continuous Delivery and DevOps principles, patterns and tools within the development and operations teams. Keith is a passionate believer that this will improve the outcomes for the business, employees and customers. Last year the work was short listed for the National DevOps awards. Keith has more than 30 years of software development, operations and DevOps experience. He has led many cultural, business and agile transformation projects in various companies. In his previous role, Keith led a project in Ordnance Survey which transformed the way environments were provisioned using a combination of open source tools and changes to business processes and culture. This project was shortlisted for the Real IT Awards in 2016. Keith has also chaired and spoken at various DevOps conferences and user groups.
Julie invests in B2B SaaS businesses across Europe as part of Salesforce Ventures, the strategic investment arm for Salesforce with over 300 portfolio companies across 20 countries and one of the most active cloud investors and CVCs globally.
Prior to joining Salesforce, she worked on investments at Founders Factory, a multi-corporate backed accelerator and incubator based in London, where she engaged early stage companies into a program with L'Oreal, easyJet, the Guardian, CSC, Holtzbrinck and Aviva.
Rehana leads the London Engagement Team which provides 2000+ London-based employees with access to learning and volunteering opportunities, as well as building out a sense of community, a place where people enjoy working and feel heard and valued. Rehana partners across all brands, levels, geographies and Business Resource Groups to drive culture change, working towards an inclusive and exceptional workplace for Expedians worldwide alongside Expedia’s Global Inclusion forum. Expedia Group is guided by a purpose that is inherently inclusive: to bring the world within reach. As the world’s travel platform, it's extensive brand portfolio includes some of the world’s most trusted online travel brands.
Having partnered with Tech leads on the set-up of the latest Expedia Group engineering office in Amman (the first gender balanced EG Tech office globally), Rehana enjoys traveling to different Expedia offices to learn about culture differences across locations. As well as travel, dance is one of Rehana’s biggest passions and she has competed at 10 dance Latin and Ballroom national competitions.
Rachel is Head of Digital Strategy and Product Development at Nationwide Building Society, where she shapes Nationwide’s digital vision and roadmap and works with teams to set clear, value orientated goals. Rachel started her career in consultancy at Arthur Andersen and Ernst & Young, before moving into digital product development. She’s worked with a wide variety of organisations, from start-ups and scale-ups to listed companies in retail, travel and housing/financial services, before joining Nationwide in 2013. Since joining the Building Society she has worked in a variety of leadership roles across digital banking, innovation and product development – and played a lead role in Nationwide’s agile transformation story over the last 18 months.
Pallavi is a tech entrepreneur and founder at AIingenious. She believes in the power of Artificial Intelligence and her vision is to create AI based solutions to solve the real-world problems. She has experience of working in different industries including eCommerce and Healthcare. She is collaborating with mental health charities to create AI based solutions to create awareness and help people struggling with mental health conditions.
Also, She is a tech speaker and author. She writes features on latest technologies and supports diversity and inclusion in tech industry.
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.
Kate Harris is part of Cirium’s data science team, working on projects covering a range of sectors and datasets. She manages the graduations in the team as well as being involved in the wider RBI graduate scheme.
Kate started her career in astrophysics working in academic institute across the world, looking at galaxy formation using observations from both ground based telescopes and satellite data, before doing a career change into data science. She worked an e-commerce company before moving to RBI to become one of the core members of the team in 2017.
Kate has been working with data for many years and enjoys digging around in the databases and problem solving. She loves bring together different aspects of the business to make the most out of the data, and guiding and helping her graduates with their skills and careers.
Helena is the CEO of a consultancy business and frequent speaker on the topic of building confidence. In 2018 she began speaking on this subject and within the year more than 500 people had heard her speak at events, workshops and online webinars. She is passionate about helping women who lack confidence to build their confidence and knows first-hand what’s it feels like to suffer from low confidence, to miss out on opportunities and to feel unable to fulfil your true potential. She has gone from wallflower to badass networker, from shy employee to business leader, from being terrified of speaking at meetings to knowing how to command a packed conference room. She wants to empower more women to challenge their limiting beliefs and help them transform their lives too.
An experienced Change Management Consultant with an extensive background in senior HR leadership positions spanning over 20 years across sectors, from professional services, legal to shipping and fashion, Helena has helped organisations transform their businesses by helping their employees to embrace change and view change as an opportunity for success.
Prior to setting up her business Helena enjoyed 11 years at PriceWaterhouseCoopers where she performed a number of roles including the co-setup of a careers services for 19,000 employees – with coaching at its core.
Helena has a degree in Psychology and is a qualified HR practioner (MCIPD)
Mamta worked in Broadcast Media for almost 20 years, heading up delivery and engineering teams, responsible for managing over 60 employees and multi-million pound budgets. After the experience gained from working in large organisations such the BBC, Sky TV and Amazon, Mamta launched a Swedish company, The New Leadership, in October 2017. Mamta now works as a Leadership Consultant and is CEO of the UK company.
Bonnie Molins has spent the last 20 years working in the public, charity and commercial sectors to produce inclusive service solutions that provide equal access and better outcomes for diverse users with a range of access needs.
She currently leads on inclusive design at leading provider of Digital Services and Platforms Kainos, with a focus on producing whole systems that work for whole populations, streamline service delivery and improve user equality.​ Bonnie believes that inclusive design is good design – because it means everyone can use the thing.
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.
Debbie Levitt, CEO of Ptype UX & Product Design Agency, has been a UX strategist, designer, and trainer since the 1990s. As a “serial contractor” who lived in the Bay Area for most of this decade, Debbie has influenced interfaces at Sony, Wells Fargo, Constant Contact, Macys.com, Oracle, and a variety of Silicon Valley startups.
Debbie is a speaker and trainer who has presented at conferences including eBay’s Developer Conference, PayPal’s Developer Conference, UXPA, and WeAreDevelopers. She is an O’Reilly published author and one of few instructors on the planet recommended by Axure. Her newest training program is DevOps ICU, which teaches non-UX roles how to measurably improve DevOps results by correctly integrating UX practitioners and processes.
Ms. Kae is currently serving as the Executive Director of Qlik.org and the Global Head of Corporate Responsibility at Qlik, where she leads the organization’s program towards globally sustainability and empowering nonprofits to effectively serve our planet and vulnerable populations. The program includes leading sustainability reporting best practices internally and externally; managing strategic partnerships with the United Nations, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity, Private Sector Roundtable and other organizations; directing a successful grant program leveraging the Qlik software through Qlik.org; and directing employee engagement activities with partners, WeSeeHope and Medair, as well as many other global nonprofits.
Ms. Kae is the Founder and President of “WeSeeHope USA Inc”, a not for profit supporting women and youth programs in Africa; serves as Board Member to the Friends of Dana Farber Cancer Institute; and is currently pursuing her graduate degree in Corporate Sustainability at Harvard University.
As Intelligent Automation programme manager Veronika is responsible for implementation of large scale Automation and AI projects at British Telecom. She aims to deliver real results and drive improvements to the bottom line and customer experience. Her recent focus has been on getting the best out of RPA (Robotics Process Automation) by applying holistic approach to Automation.
Veronika’s areas of interest include Intelligent Automation, Process simplification, real life AI implementation and Agile.
Prior to joining British Telecom Veronika has worked in IT project management and consulting in the UK, Germany and Russia.
Karen has brought agile and microservices transformation and delivery to organisations across the public sector, FinTech and publishing industry. Karen is passionate about the intersection between tech, people and leadership and believes in building a successful team synergy you need a group of talented, diverse individuals who always try to raise their peers. Find out more information about Karen here and watch Karen’s ThoughtWorker story to find out what motivated her to become a developer.
After an impressive career in law, as well as sales and marketing in the pharmaceutical industry, Sarah Palmer found her passion in motivational coaching, training and development. She is PowerSpeaking, Inc’s European business affiliate, training and developing leaders, and emerging leaders, in communication skills.
She is passionate about developing women in the workplace so they can voice their ideas and is an active member of TechSheCan, a ground breaking initiative to inspire and empower women in tech careers.
Sarah’s experience includes:
Sarah believes no idea should fail because of a bad pitch. The idea should fail because it was, well…. just a bad idea, or bad timing. Her learning style is fast, fun, and inspirational.
You can discover more here: www.powerspeaking.com
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.
Sonya Iovieno heads up the Growth and VC-Backed division of Silicon Valley Bank’s UK Branch. Sonya joined SVB from Lloyds Bank in September 2016, where she was responsible for new business origination with mid-market companies. Sonya brings 20 years of corporate and commercial banking experience. At Silicon Valley Bank, Sonya is focused on high growth venture capital backed businesses that have typically raised Series A financing.
Dutch-born Marie Weijler (27) is a member of the investment team at Cottonwood Technology Fund, a Dutch-American venture capital firm specialized in high-tech and hard science. Her main responsibilities include deal sourcing and investor relations. Previously, she was the Senior Manager of fintech scale-up Princip.al, which offers a deal sourcing platform to private investors. In 2018, she was involved in raising € 25 million for fintech scale-up UnifiedPost. This achievement resulted in a place on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe 2019 list in the Finance category.
Award-winning media trainer, named 'Outstanding Woman in Professional Services' at the 2018 Precious Awards. Bridgid leads the media training team at TNR, part of the Press Association, the UK’s national news agency. She coaches high-profile speakers and spokespeople before media interviews, Select Committee appearances and major speeches. Bridgid has been a broadcast journalist for 20 years (including stints as a political reporter and financial reporter) and is best known for 10 years as a presenter and reporter for Channel 4 News. As well as media training and conference hosting, she presents weekend programmes for ITV News as a freelance newsreader.
Leila has a wealth of experience in bringing out the best in others; She inspires driven, talented, career professionals to achieve greater influence, performance and results, through accessing their infinite potential and experiencing limitless possibilities through exponential growth. Leila’s’ corporate career of almost 25 years combines a wealth of experience initially gained as a qualified accountant, followed by 7 years in Corporate Finance and latterly a successful Sales Executive, with the last 16 years spent in the Technology sector, coupled with accreditations as a Master Coach, Mentor at the Professional Speakers Academy, Trainer/Facilitator at Hewlett Packard Enterprise L&D, and a Master Practitioner of NLP.
Leila, The Authentic Leadership Coach™, shares her philosophies, learnings and system, the ‘Ultimate Success Blueprint™, in her award-winning book, “Success Redefined – How to leverage your natural talents to become limitless!”
Irrespective of your job title, we are all ultimately in Sales – people buy people. Leila’s main area of focus is Communication, Confidence and Connection – to create a compelling first impression, on a call, in a meeting, a networking event, presenting to an audience or indeed pitching to prospects. Showing up consistently with certainty, whilst conveying a clear message, will enable you to create a powerful presence resulting in greater influence, performance and results in your career and in your life!
Leila has delivered inspiring, thought-provoking talks, workshops and trainings at various events and organisations including Hewlett Packard Enterprise, DXC, IBM, 3M, Dow Jones, Santander, Birkbeck University of London, Oxford Brookes University, WOSR and multiple CIMA events.
Rafi leads a team of Sales Operations Analysts at Tableau Software, the world’s leading visual analytics and business intelligence software. Prior to this role, she spent 5 years building out the European-wide Product Consulting team at Tableau from 6 to 34 individuals. Now, her passion is to bring Tableau’s mission of helping people see and understand their data to the company’s internal analytics and business practices.
Originally from Los Angeles, Rafi moved to London to complete her one-year Masters at the London School of Economics over seven years ago.
Riya Grover is the Founder and CEO of Feedr, a curated marketplace which allows individuals to order healthy, nutritious food from London's best artisan vendors at their workplace - and named one of the top 100 Startups in 2018 by the Startups 100 List. Prior to starting Feedr, Riya worked in Sales at Deutsche Bank and Marketing at PepsiCo. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an Undergraduate in Economics from Oxford University. Riya advises and has worked with a number of startups in London, and is proactive about supporting early stage entrepreneurs.
Johanna is the founder of the Swiss Startup Delygate.com. It’s a digital marketplace empowering people to delegate everyday tasks in just a few clicks. Typical chores are handyman, housework, home improvement, languages and more.
Prior to this, Johanna spent 12 years in corporate finance, management consulting and business development working for companies like Siemens, Procter & Gamble or Horvath & Partners in Europe and in the US.
She holds an MBA degree from NYU Stern School of Business and specialized in both finance and marketing.
She is based in Zurich, Switzerland and enjoys sports and sculpting in her leisure time.
Annie Hou is Head of Data Science at Sandtable, a company that focuses on behavioural analytics. Since joining in 2015 she has helped to build an amazing team that have developed new tools, methodologies and ways of working that have transformed the company. Annie obtained a Ph.D. in Astrophysics. While totally different fields, there is an underlying goal to understand change and how environment and interactions can alter an outcome, whether it be the type of galaxy or a person’s attitudes and decisions. She enjoys dancing to baby shark with her toddler, all forms of sci-fi and yoga. She was born in Kathmandu, grew-up in Toronto, but now calls London home.
Denise Jones is a 20-year veteran of the software industry, as both a data engineer and a Product Manager. She has developed data-centric and data science products with companies such as Microsoft and Expedia, in the United States, London, and Barcelona. In 2019, she relocated to Spain to join LetGo, the world’s leading classifieds ad app, as a Senior Product Manager specializing in data science products. She is currently developing Reveal, LetGo’s prestigious machine learning-based photo recognition technology
Ms. Jones was certified in Data Science Ethics by the University of Michigan in 2018.
Coming from the world of sport where one tiny mistake is the difference between winning and failing, Danielle’s experiences have given her an insight into what it takes to break through barriers and achieve challenging objectives. Danielle’s philosophy is that to get the most out of the professional, you have to get the most out of the person. Understanding who you are and appreciating the differences that make you ‘you’ underpins our personal success stories
Danielle is a double Paralympic gold medallist, five-time World Champion and the first disabled athlete to represent England as an able-bodied discipline. She now works as a professional key note speaker and Inclusion Champion, delivering big impact messages that take people from medal potential to World Class.
Susie tried to change who she was for over a decade in a bid to prove she was good enough for her senior roles in high tech Innovation. Her career has spanned media, global telecoms and healthcare. Whilst her work was award-winning, stress spilled into her health and her relationships, until she eventually realised that the cost was just too high.
Having experienced the benefits of coaching, she trained as a Performance Coach in 2005 and coached “on the side” for many years before making it her sole income source.
Now Susie inspires and supports high performers who are where she was – in a pattern of working longer and harder to avoid being found out. She uses a range of techniques that nurture mindset, positively leverage emotions and enhance instinct. She specialises in shifting the way that successful women in STEM think so they can rapidly become better leaders in life and work.
Susie is a passionate speaker, and writes for Families Magazine and Thrive Global. She works with clients privately as well as in a Mastermind setting, regularly running corporate workshops, and life-changing retreats exclusively for women in business. She lives in London with her husband and 7 year old daughter.
Maria Flores Portillo joined Persado as a General Manager in the UK, with a wealth of experience in the digital industry, where she's spent the most part of her career and waking hours. Maria joined Persado from Ooyala, where she built a Programmatic Advertising business from the ground up and played a leading role during the Videoplaza acquisition - she left the business as VP of Business Development, Channel Sales and Ad technology. Prior to that, Maria was a Strategic Partnerships Manager at Google, working with large media and brand companies across Europe to expand their advertising business, and a Senior Marketing Manager at EE, the largest and most advanced mobile communications company in the UK. She holds an MSC in Mobile and Satellite Communications from the University of Surrey and Superior Degree in Telecommunications Engineering from Universidad Publica de Navarra.
Gintare has degrees in Physics and Financial Mathematics. During her career she fell in love with tech and became a software engineer. As she admires the finance industry and the math behind it, she has always been working with financial technologies.
Her journey started with a graduate program at Barclays and continued there for 5 years. Gintare worked in the infrastructure engineering department playing a very important technical role in Barclays' public and private cloud deliveries. She then moved to London to persuade an opportunity at Morgan Stanley and continued her career in banking technologies. After few exciting years at the hedge fund, Gintare decided to join a fintech startup - Thought Machine. She is now part of the financial industry's tech-transformation and she never felt happier.
Gintare is also member of meetups and initiatives such as Pyladies, Women who Code and Django Girls. In her spare time she loves challenges like triathlon, cycling, running, hiking, and travel!
Following her extensive career as an exhibition & furniture designer, Lynn Willacy joined Air Products in May 2000 working within the Customer Service Organisation. She has had many roles since and is currently the Community & STEM Ambassador for the UK & Ireland and sits on the Leadership Team. Lynn leads programmes and initiatives which engage with the local community, educational establishments and organisations who support STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths). Being an advocate of diversity and inclusion, she has been featured in publications such as ‘The Manufacturer’ and ‘The Chemical Engineer’ discussing the skills shortage and how we can encourage girls to consider a career in STEM. Lynn has also has been invited to be a panelist at conferences and events, such as the Surrey based ‘TeenTech’ event, the UTC (University Technical College) Annual Principle conference and a UTC focus group working with the Education Policy Committee as an Employer Partner voice. Lynn has also represented people living with an invisible disability as part of the IChemE ‘Disability in Engineering’ panel event in London, and her personal story is inspiring. Most recently, Lynn was named the ‘Skills & Community Champion’ at the prestigious UK Manufacturing Champion Awards 2018. The criteria for this award was 'The employee who recognises that manufacturing's influence extends beyond the four walls of the factory and gets out into the local area to share their work and experience to a wider audience' which is definitely Lynn’s passion and the main focus of her role.
Niki has worked in the digital industry for over seven years, and has led the creative on over 40 projects around innovation, digital health and financial technology. She has worked on campaigns for global brands from PepsiCo to Sky and 3M as well as social enterprises such as Greater Change, a donation app for homeless people in Oxford. Niki is now Senior Designer at what3words, where she works on the design and evolution of what3words products
Isabel Fox is a mother, wellness coach, bio-hacker, Peloton enthusiast and horse lover. She also happens to be one of just a handful of female General Partners in the UK, with a $30m fund and a portfolio of ground-breaking founders who are daring to disrupt the status quo and improve the world we live in.
At Luminous Ventures, the fund she has co-founded with business partner Lomax Ward, Isabel has the opportunity to indulge her passion for innovation, investing in visionary founders with breakthrough technologies, and backing deep-tech and science that matters.
With a background in investment banking and financial PR (IPOs), Isabel has founded two corporate PR firms focused on the venture eco-system, co-founded two software start-ups (one exit) and been an active angel investor in the UK and US.
Throughout her career, she has been enormously supportive of women working in her industry – and, for 15 years, played an active role with Astia, mentoring upcoming female founders together with Sharon Vosmek, a key authority on diversity.
Having worked in New York, San Francisco and London, Isabel now lives on a farm in Kent with her family, animals and organic vegetables!
Erin Platts is Head of Relationship Banking, Europe at Silicon Valley Bank. She oversees a number of teams including those covering Client Acquisition, Entrepreneurial Banking, Accelerator & Growth Banking, Debt portfolios, Healthcare & Life Sciences and Working Capital Finance.
Erin and the broader team are dedicated to providing financial services, specifically debt financing, to early, growth, and late stage technology businesses, with a particular focus on venture backed businesses. Erin is responsible for developing new relationships and overseeing the continued growth of the portfolio, as well as taking an active role in the development of the external eco-system.
Erin has been with Silicon Valley Bank for over 10 years, beginning her career in SVB’s Boston office. She moved to London in 2007 and has worked with a wide variety of technology and life science businesses, providing flexible and innovative financing solutions at all stages of growth. In her previous role as a Director, she was responsible for the team managing the financial analysis, structuring and management of debt relationships with technology businesses throughout the UK.
Erin was recently selected by Management Today to appear on the top 35 Women Under 35 list.
Erin earned a BA in Business Management and Entrepreneurial Studies from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Agnes is a senior analyst in the Customer Analytics team at Hotels.com (an Expedia Group company). She loves detecting and solving users’ problems based on their digital fingerprint, let it be clicks on an email, taps in an app or page views in a browser. She is passionate about education and has been teaching computer science and data analysis for a decade to various audiences including students and non-technical professionals. She is the co-founder of R-Ladies Budapest, which -- as a local chapter of R-Ladies Global -- promotes gender diversity in the R community.
Joanne is Centrica’s Head of Mobile User Computing. She’s also an active campaigner for gender diversity in her organisation and an energetic member of the Centrica Women’s Network, being a chapter lead for Leicester. Joanne has launched two mentoring programmes in Centrica. She’s done this of her own volition, having spotted a gap in the development tools available in her organisation. Her passion makes her feel empowered, and great success has come from this. Joanne takes great inspiration from women who have faced challenges, and this drives her actions to make the workplace better for current and future generations. Joanne is also a mentor to two ladies.
In this role he is responsible for overall Information Governance, including Risk assessments and response activities which encompass the evaluation, mitigation and reporting of information and privacy risks facing the Company. This includes leading an enterprise wide Information Risk Management (IRM) program covering Intellectual Asset Protection (IAP), Data Privacy (acting as the Data Privacy Officer) and Enterprise Records Management.
He is currently Co-Chair of Spectrum Europe (The European chapter of Air Products’ LGBT+ Employee Resource Group) and is on the Tech Partnership Degrees Employer Board. His volunteering activities are focused on STEM related mentoring, education and awareness with Tech Partnership Degrees and charities such as SATRO and TeenTech.
Previous business roles include in the Air Products’ Corporate Risk Office, as Director of Intellectual Asset Protection. Prior to that, he has held various IT leadership roles including Global Director of Business Relationship Management and Director of IT Security, Compliance and Risk Management.
Over his career he has lived and worked in Germany, the Netherlands and the United States of America.
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/shash-patel-69013b2
Olivia specialises in helping scientists, and tech people, impact as presenters and leaders. The outcome is a leader who influences company culture, builds successful growth, and increases engagement.
“Most companies spend their energy on branding, marketing, and sales, rather than on polishing the presence, presentation and passion of their leaders”. - Olivia Schofield - Forbes Magazine
A lesser known fact about her. ... At the age of 21, she ran away to join a circus as a magician’s assistant... in Mexico!
Olivia is an International award-winning speaker who has worked as an Executive Trainer and Keynote Speaker on 5 continents in 24 countries. Her clients include American Express, BNP, IBM, Microsoft, Roche, Swift, Zalando.
Kaitlin D'Avella is a Copy Lead at TransferWise, one of Europe's most successful fintech companies. TransferWise is working to make moving money across borders instant, convenient, transparent, and eventually free. She leads a team that crafts content for users who need help. Before TransferWise, she worked in digital marketing for the likes of Workday and UNESCO.
Gail Orenstein, has been a photographer for 23 years. She lives in London and is a member of The NUJ and The International Press Association and is both CAA and FAA licensed. She is Drone journalist. Gail was the first female to drone in Kurdistan, Iraq during the Mosul offensive in Iraq 2017. She has travelled often on her own to 84 countries and droned in 21 countries. She has photographed and droned in many conflict zones often the only female photographer in the field at the time. She was a Press photographer for The Chicago Immigration and Naturalisation office. Her recent work has focused on her drone journalism work in conflict zones. Her drone footage and photography work has been distributed world wide including CBS news, Der Stern, Aljazeera, Rudaw, The Guardian, The Chicago Tribune, The Times, Slate, Mashable, Washington Post, TIME, The BBC, The Telegraph, Kurdish TV24, Microsoft and many more.
Yasmeen leads multiple teams delivering strategic, commercial and legislative projects across the breadth of business at Channel 4. Having worked for Channel 4 since 2006, Yasmeen is now a subject matter expert in a number of areas within the company.
Channel 4 is a British, public service, free-to-air television network delivering innovative ground-breaking content to the public. This includes, as a top priority, diversity in TV and the media both in the content they commission and within every level of the organisation. Yasmeen is part of the Channel 4 ‘Women in Tech’ working group, currently focussed on retaining, recruiting and development.
Prior to working at Channel 4, Yasmeen worked at Atos Origin within Systems Integration in a variety of roles on a wide range of Public Sector projects. With a BSc in Computer-Aided Chemistry from the University of Surrey, Yasmeen has always enjoyed applying computation solutions to practical problems. Coupled with a comprehensive background in systems analysis and solutions architecture, Yasmeen is passionate about technology and advocates smart, pragmatic solutions.
Tash is a Senior Cloud Security Engineer at Photobox Group (which includes Moonpig, PosterXXL, Greetz! and Hofmann) and previously a threat modelling engineer in financial services. She is currently building tools and processes to automate all the things/ make the Cloud more secure. She is also a contributor to a few threat modelling projects and resources via OWASP and other community events.
Tash is also on the review panel for DevSecCon and an avid advocate for Women in Tech/Cyber, appearing at various tech and security events and meetups to talk about both technical and behavioural topics.
Ellena Ophira is a successful entrepreneur and CEO/Founder of Weddingly, a dynamic B2B2C platform that makes wedding planning more social, personal and intuitive.
As pioneers in WedTech, Ellena and her women-led team are on a mission to bring innovative Technology to the dated Wedding Industry.
With over 10 years experience in Marketing and Strategy, Ellena has worked with leading Brands such as John Lewis, LK Bennett and M&S, as well as supporting the launch and growth of over 200 Startups and SMEs.
Ellena started her first business in her early twenties and is a passionate advocate for entrepreneurship in Women.
She is also proud to be featuring in a new book, celebrating Female Founders, alongside inspirational women such as Martha Lane Fox.
Inken joined Halma plc, a FTSE 100 global group of life-saving technology companies, in July 2017. Inken is Halma’s first chief innovation and digital officer, a role that is pivotal in helping Halma achieve continued growth, drive innovation and realise our purpose of growing a safer, cleaner, healthier future for everyone, every day.
Inken is helping to foster a group-wide digital culture. Inken and her team contribute to each of Halma’s sectors and operating companies to develop their unique digital vision and value creation model. This includes developing or acquiring digital platform capabilities that all operating companies can benefit from or finding the right partners to accelerate their business plans.
Before joining Halma Inken was the Chief Innovation Officer of innogy SE, a renewable energy company based in Essen, Germany and subsidiary of the German company RWE. Prior to that Inken was MD of RWE’s Strategy and Management Consultancy practice.
Inken is a member of Halma’s executive board.
Vanessa Menchaca-Wachtmeister is a B2B Global Launch Manager at Hotels.com and an accomplished travel writer behind the blog: wanderonwards.co. Originally from Los Angeles, Vanessa has spent the last decade bouncing between Beijing, Boston, and London pursuing a career in tech whilst exploring over 40 countries. She has a BA from Boston College, a Masters in International Development from SOAS (University of London), and her real passion is teaching people how to travel farther, longer and for less. When she’s not on a plane, she enjoys learning languages, developing her skills, and cooking with her husband and cat.
Cara de Lange is a wellbeing mentor, coach and speaker. She is the founder of Softer Success – Be More Gentle with Yourself. Her program Prevent Burnout, Find Balance enables individual clients and corporate teams to create a more harmonious, peaceful and productive life. Cara shares simple tools and tips on how to slow down, increase energy and become more resilient.
Cara is an associate of and works closely with the International Stress Management Association (ISMA). She is also a member of the organising committee for International Stress Awareness Week. Her first book ‘Softer Success’ – Prevent Burnout Find Balance and Redefine your Success launched in March 2019 and is available on Amazon.
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