Stephanie Itimi | Seidea
Nigerian-born Stephanie Itimi is the founder of Seidea, a social enterprise focused on helping black and ethnic minority women build cybersecurity and IT careers through lectures and webinars by industry experts.
She has a track record of facilitating significant development initiatives and was part of the team that pioneered the world’s first public health information service inside the WhatsApp platform.
Tackling fake news on Ebola, it provided content in text, images and audio to users in West Africa from the BBC World Service as well as through partners Unicef, World Health Organisation, World Food Programme and the Centre for Disease Control.
A published author of an academic book titled “The Informal Sector in Nigeria and its impact on Development”, she is an Advisor at Africa Business Portal. She sits at the Advisory Board for The Young Politicians and Leaders Network (UK, Liberia and Ghana). She has also played a leading role in the creation and production of high-profile projects in Slovakia, Morocco, UK, Uganda & several West African countries through her various consultancy experiences with Culture Fez, Balloon Ventures and the European Commission, advocating freedom of information, digital literacy, economic empowerment and gender equality.
Siobhan Sherry | Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
My undergraduate degree is in Biology and after graduating in 2009 I worked in a lab in Newcastle, before returning to University in 2010 to study Environmental Consultancy.
My Masters dissertation was in contaminated land, however given the economic climate at the time of graduation there was very little remediation taking place. I managed to secure a maternity leave cover as the Contaminated Land Officer at Darlington Borough Council, but left when the incumbent officer returned.
I then moved to the Marine Management Organisation where I worked on marine licencing. In this role I worked on a range of projects from very small scale pontoons to Hinkley and Sizewell Nuclear power plants.
In 2014 I moved to London and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) where I worked on flood policy in response to the 2013/14 Somerset floods.
After 15 months I was promoted to Senior Scientific Officer working in the Land Use division managing a £7million research budget which covered sustainable intensification of agriculture, soils and peatlands, forestry, and agri-environment monitoring and evaluation.
In late 2017 I moved to the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to lead the Biomass Electricity team as part of the Clean Electricity Directorate.
Jacquelyn Guderley | MNTL HLTH
Jacquelyn is a mental health and gender equality advocate, social entrepreneur, and listed as one of the UK’s most influential Women in Tech in 2017 & 2018 by Computer Weekly, one of the top 50 champions of women in business 2017 by the Financial Times & HERoes and included in BusinessCloud’s Top Female Tech Trailblazers in 2019.
She began her career as a management consultant in the technology sector, at Accenture, where she played a key role in company-wide gender initiatives, including piloting and launching Accenture’s Girls in Tech programme.
In 2013 she became cofounder of Stemettes, an award-winning social enterprise that inspires girls aged 5-22 to pursue careers in Science, Tech, Engineering & Maths through fun, tech-filled events. Stemettes have worked with almost 40k girls around the globe to inspire them into STEM.
In 2016 she joined the management team and steering committee of the Tech Talent Charter, an initiative that brings together industries and organisations to drive diversity and address gender imbalance in technology roles. That year, she also stood as a political candidate for the Women’s Equality Party, wanting to address the systemic imbalances relating to gender in society, writing their party policies around women in tech and business.
In 2017, Jacquelyn founded and became chief exec of Salomé, the literary magazine for emerging female writers, a platform that aims to tackle gender inequality in publishing. Salomé authors went on to secure publishing deals for debut novels.
2019 has seen the launch of Jacquelyn's newest venture - MNTL HLTH - an organisation born out of her own mental health challenges in the past. MNTL HLTH runs events to break the silence around mental health and drive positive action and change in the mental health landscape. Jacquelyn is also currently Head of Operations at Love Language, a company that works to break down the societal barriers between D/deaf and hearing people through BSL interpreter access.
Jacquelyn has been in the national press – both for her work at Stemettes and for driving a successful campaign to prevent the UK government from removing Feminism from the A Level politics syllabus. She is also a long-standing volunteer for Jami, the Jewish Association for Mental Illness, and an Ambassador for MQ, the mental health research charity and for Big Youth Group, an organisation improving the odds for young people.
Sheree Atcheson | Deloitte
Listed as one of the UK's Top Most Influential Women in Tech & an international multi-award winner for her services to Diversity & Inclusion in the Tech industry, Sheree (@nirushika) is the U.K. Technology Respect & Inclusion Manager, Deloitte; Founder, I Am Lanka; Board-Appointed Global Ambassador, Women Who Code; Contributor, Forbes.
Sheree is a global tech outreach leader and as a paassionate advocate for gaining/retaining women in the tech industry, she launched & led the award-winning U.K. expansion of Women Who Code (womenwhocode.com), since 2013.
Women Who Code is the world’s largest global non-profit dedicated to helping women excel in tech careers. Sheree & her work have been featured in many publications, such as HuffPost, Marie Claire, Wired, ComputerWeekly, The Guardian, Sunday Telegraph, Newsletter & many more.
As a subject matter expert, she also delivers trainings/workshops on : allyship, privilege awareness, unconscious bias, understanding the business of diversity and inclusion, personal branding, empowering yourself to empower others.
The aim of her career is ensuring people are aware of the fantastic opportunities the tech industry has to offer & make certain that people (regardless of gender, race, social stature) are able to benefit from these & reach their full career potential.
Sharniya Ferdinand | NatWest
Sharniya has progressed quickly through NatWest during the past 7 years – growing a reputation as the face of the bank in communities across London.
With experience spanning personal, business and commercial banking this has involved her supporting businesses to grow, scale and create personal wealth. A key part of Sharniya’s success has been to host expert educational business events that encouraged customers to network and exceed their business expectations. These free to attend events quickly became famous both internally and externally to NatWest with significant media coverage.
An additional key part of the work Sharniya led during this time was to support female business owners. In 2017 Sharniya was recognised with the RBS Women’s Opal award for her contribution to Women in Business.
Following the success of her previous role Sharniya was promoted to Business Inclusion Programme Coordinator, a role that is unique to Sharniya. This position involves managing a customer led strategic programme of inclusion activities across the bank and for commercial clients.
As an individual, Sharniya is passionate about diversity and inclusion and empowering those who are underrepresented in their industries and communities. Sharniya is an Inclusion Champion and supports NatWest’s aspiration to be a truly inclusive place to work.
Sharniya has a drive for personal improvement and knowledge which has seen her achieve a BSc (Hons) in Psychology and a Masters in Events and Exhibitions Management. In her spare time, Sharniya writes an online blog - sharing her personal experiences in life - whilst being an avid traveller.
Salma Zulfiqar | SBZ Creative Media
Salma Zulfiqar is an International Artist and Activist empowering refugee and migrant women, promoting integration, working towards preventing hate crimes and extremism.
Salma has also highlighted the underreported plight of women and children all over the world with the United Nations.
In 2017, she was voted one of the most inspirational women to hail from Birmingham and her work was documented in the book Women Who Dared to Dream alongside Nobel Laureate, Malala Yousafzai.
Elizabeth Seward | Airbus
Elizabeth Seward has over 15 years of experience in the space industry and is a Senior Strategist for the Space Systems division of Airbus Defence and Space, responsible for the UK strategy across all areas of satellite manufacturing.
Previous roles include leading the Earth Observation, Navigation and Science marketing team, thermal engineering and mission systems engineering in the future programmes team, where she worked on projects such as the first study for the ExoMars rover and a mission to return a sample from an asteroid.
Elizabeth is on the executive board of Women in Aerospace Europe (WIA-E) and the chair of the WIA-E UK local group, which she helped to set-up in 2016. She is also active in the International Astronautical Federation, sitting on the Entrepreneurship and Investment committee, the Honours and Awards committee, the GEOSS committee and is a previous vice chair and continuing committee member of the Workforce Development and Young Professionals Committee.
As a STEM outreach ambassador, Elizabeth has presented to groups and schools, and has made appearances as a space expert in various media.
Elizabeth has an MPhys degree in Physics with Space Science & Technology from the University of Leicester.
Sarah Garnett | Telefonica UK Ltd
I joined O2 back in 2010 as an apprentice in our Operations function.
I’ve spent the last 9 years in a number of different roles from Internal Communications to project managing Europe’s biggest technology event, Campus Party.
I made the big leap into HR where I worked in Early Careers helping to drive our generation agenda bringing talented under 30’s into the organisation.
I am now the Inclusion Manager for the UK which means I work with our senior leaders to drive and implement our D&I strategy.
I work really closely with our three employee networks (BAME, LGBT+ and Womens Network) to ensure we are meeting/exceeding our targets.
I am really passionate about my work and I want to create an open and inclusive culture, where everyone feels empowered to come to work and be themselves.
Fabia Howard-Smith | Accenture
Fabia is a digital consulting analyst at Accenture, prior to that she graduated from UCL with a BASc in marketing and psychology.
During her time at Accenture she has helped clients navigate digital innovation and strategy, delivering marketing and transformation projects across myriad industries.
Working in technical environments often driven by functional requirements, Fabia challenges her clients to focus on the end-user’s needs. She has proactively achieved the IDEO human-centred design certification. Becoming an advocate for user research and incorporating design thinking into her work; including training clients and colleagues on the topic.
She’s passionate about Girls in STEM initiatives: organising leadership events for colleagues to engage in meaningful discussions about gender, facilitating hackathons to teach young children about STEM and leading groups of school girls at Accenture’s Girls in STEM events. She thrives on creatively solving challenging problems, helping clients identify and address pain-points through innovative solutions. An example of this was when she won the Ulster bank Hackathon in 2018 with her customer-centric idea based on retention and loyalty.
Combining her interests of human-centred design and innovation, Fabia has co-authored a paper on AI and ethics, published by the House of Lords Artificial Intelligence Committee. Also, she’s actively involved in a grassroots ethics network that publish the ‘Ethical Hotlist’- a monthly roundup of digital initiatives at the intersection of ethics and technology.
Charlie Lait | TicToc by Bloomberg
I’m a digital content creator for a global millennial audience with 6 years experience across digital roles in the public and private sector, in the U.K. and in the U.S.
I currently work in the EMEA hub of TicToc by Bloomberg, a 24/7 social media news network. I’m obsessed with how people think and what motivates them to make choices. That obsession underlies the two things that matter most to me in my career – making smart digital content that people respond to and interact with, and making that content in a team pursuing a common vision.
I’ve been singular in pursuing my career since I hit 18 – never did a semester of my university education go by when I didn’t have a media job while keeping a full-time course load. But my curiosity about people has taken me around the world, and I’m lucky to have lived abroad in Italy, New York and Chicago aged 18-24. That international experience continues to shape my worldview and ambition.
My current job is to grow the EMEA audience and create stories from EMEA that resonate with users globally, be it breaking news, a hyperlocal story with a global resonance, or anything in-between. I might be working on a program of content including video, animations, graphics, writing, and interactive mediums (Instagram stories, Twitter moments, etc). Depending on the day and the story, I’m a one-man band, producing and packaging content, or I'm working with others in London, New York and Hong Kong.
On a daily basis I manage the workload of video editors in London and early New York hours – setting up the brand’s daily news agenda for EMEA and the Americas. I deputise in approving final content for the Global Editor In Chief, as needed - but I’m not a line manager, and don’t hold a managerial title. I have grown into this responsibility by developing my relationships and responsibilities across the team.
I partner with teams across Bloomberg’s global network to turn written stories into dynamic social media packages. That could be a reporter in Ireland, a stringer in a remote Morocco town, or an external agency. As part of this collaboration, I also sometimes write for Bloomberg News traditional properties.
Previously I was digital editor for HM Treasury during the EU referendum, and at the Prime Minister’s Office during the 2017 general election. If you know the Treasury has a cat, and that cat has an Instagram (www.instagram.com/treasury_cat), that’s because of me. Within four months I managed that account directly, with a completely nonpaid social strategy that resulted in 15,000 followers within six months. I ran the digital communications strategy for the New £1 Coin campaign, winning the PRWeek Awards 2017: Public Campaign, I oversaw the work of the external agency -- delivery of the website, promotional materials and social media strategy, including setting paid media spending.
Prior to that, I worked across multiple digital roles at Yahoo EMEA editorial. I was Launch Editor of Yahoo Live, a live video events project that streamed high-profile events (The Academy Awards red carpet, NFL games, exclusive concerts) used entertainment influencers and high-profile events to engage the digital millennial audience. As editorial lead, it was my responsibility to design the digital content strategy that would deliver a large, continually engaged millennial audience.
I worked with the marketing department to highly shareable create digital assets for maximum social sharing reach, and with our production partners to ensure original content was delivered to specification from the ground. I was personally responsible for pitching and delivering the social media strategy for many of these events directly to the PR teams for the high-profile entertainment figures we worked with. My digital strategy for one of our events resulted in a global hashtag trend on twitter, which was re-trending the next day in multiple international markets.
I started my media career in news production at CNBC and Sirius XM in New York. I went on to work in online audience development and social media management for an investigative magazine transitioning to web-only, and a media non-profit looking to increase its donor base. In both of those roles, I assisted the Heads of Audience redesign the website and implemented new social media strategies to grow their 16-24 audiences.
From 2010 until 2015, I was a freelance digital video production assistant in New York and London, working for global media clients including the BBC and Endemol. I continue to informally advise small businesses today on their social media strategies, via Bloomberg Philanthropies partnerships.
I have a BA in Journalism and Religious Studies from New York University, U.S.A.