Hazelle Garton | Royal Navy
Hazelle Garton joined the Royal Navy as an Air Engineer Officer (AEO) in 2008 having completed a degree in Mechanical Engineering at Loughborough University.
Following training she took up post as Assistant and then Deputy AEO on 702 Naval Air Squadron where she supported ab-initio aircrew and engineering training for the maritime Lynx helicopter, that deploys on to the Royal Navy frigates and destroyers worldwide. A key highlight was her role as the engineering lead for a deployment in Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Mounts Bay – a ship without a hangar where aircraft maintenance took place on the flight deck This was impressively during the depths of winter in extremely challenging weather conditions!
From 702 she moved to the Royal Naval Air Engineering and Survival Equipment School as the Staff Officer. In addition to supporting the executive functions of the School, Hazelle was heavily involved in the mentoring of students and examination of those passing through on courses; this included their personal and professional development a responsibility that she relished. She was also a key member of the organisation team for the biennial AEOs’ Conference which delivers professional development and networking opportunities to circa 350 AEOs across the Royal Navy.
Assigned to the helicopter landing platform, HMS Ocean in 2015, Hazelle was responsible for the safe execution of the embarkation of a dozen aircraft, stores and personnel from across the Armed Forces to enable a 4-month deployment in support of NATO exercises. Added to this, she oversaw the embarkation of 3 US Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey aircraft to the Ship for a 2-week period of operations, the interoperability of which was a first for the Royal Navy. On leaving Ocean in 2016 Hazelle was privileged to be a member of the inaugural Ship’s Company of HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, in direct charge of a section of 36 Air Engineer Technicians, where her experience was used to help develop the processes and procedures to be used once the Ship sailed on completion of her build programme.
Selected for promotion to Lieutenant Commander she took up her current post in the Merlin Delivery Team as a Technical Through Life Support Manager in 2017 and is now responsible for ensuring that all projects introducing capability to the thirty £39m maritime helicopters have a fully developed support solution before entering service, including the necessary spares, tooling, training and technical information.
An unashamed cricket lover, Hazelle retired from playing for her county side Devon last season, placing in the top-10 of all-time wicket takers in the Women’s County Championship; she continues to captain the Royal Navy and UK Armed Forces ladies’ teams. Also a keen golfer, she represents both the Royal Navy and her local club, playing off a handicap of 10.
Hazelle will marry her long-term partner Laura (also a Naval engineer) in December and looks forward to the prospect of the pitter-patter of 4 tiny paws arriving in the house in due course.
Faith Jayne | Raytheon Systems Limited
Faith Jayne is Legal Counsel for Raytheon UK and Raytheon ELCAN. Faith was promoted to Legal Counsel – Manager in June 2017.
Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN), with 2016 sales of $24 billion and 63,000 employees, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defence, civil government and cybersecurity solutions. Raytheon is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Faith joined Raytheon in 2015 as Legal Counsel. Supporting the Director of Legal Affairs, Faith provides business counsel on a range of matters from disputes to contract negotiations to compliance. Specific areas of interest include representing Raytheon UK in the Global Privacy Working Group and working to develop and raise awareness of intellectual property process and procedure. Following a recent promotion, Faith has assumed operational responsibility for the running of the team, and supports her colleagues leading Global Trade, Ethics and Data Privacy to deliver compliance excellence.
Before joining Raytheon, Faith was an Associate with DLA Piper LLP in the Technology and Outsourcing team. Faith joined DLA in January 2014 and whilst at DLA undertook a 4 month placement to Raytheon from June 2015 – October 2015 acting as Legal Counsel.
Prior to working with DLA Piper, Faith qualified as a English law solicitor into the Commercial team at Addleshaw Goddard LLP where Faith worked from September 2010 to December 2013. Faith undertook her training contract with Lupton Fawcett LLP in Leeds between 2008 and 2010 with seats in Employment, Litigation, Intellectual Property and Corporate.
Faith has been recognized within Raytheon for her leadership in mentoring having been awarded both a Highly Commended Award in the 2017 Mike Quinn Mentoring Awards and a 2017 RMS Mentoring Excellence Award. Faith was appointed Chair of the UK’s Raytheon Women’s Network in 2016 and served as the VP for RWN Global, International.
Faith holds a postgraduate diploma in legal practice from the College of Law and a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of Manchester.
Georgina Brown | Ministry of Defence
Georgina has a strong digital delivery background.
She has varied experience, including business analysis, project management and software development and design. She is an experienced manager and team leader and takes pride in being inclusive and seeing the people she mentors spread their wings and be valued.
Her infectious enthusiasm and passion for innovation comes from truly wanting the best for the organisation she works for as well as her team.
She has worked for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for over a year as the Digital Capability Lead where she is responsible for working across Defence to implement the Digital, Data and Technology profession. This requires her to build networks and connections across Government to make sure best practice is established. It also requires her to support employees with their learning and development and career choices by developing new training opportunities, including working with the Defence Academy and GDS Academy, and the BCS in developing digital skills within Defence. She is responsible for mentoring several employees herself as well as acting as a conduit to other Government departments for external mentoring. As part of this she has been responsible for bringing in new ways of learning, using on-demand training resources, and communities of practice, all for the first time in Defence.
In addition to her role in the MoD she is the Senior Delivery Manager for establishing a new way of working within Defence called the UK Defence Digital Service (UK DDS). This is the first tri-service and Civil Service collaboration for digital services. The first service she is leading will aim to improve efficiencies in medical decision making in combat and requires her to mentor and lead a technical team to be able to deliver. She works closely with senior leaders to support their engagement with these new ways of working, acting as a coach.
Before working for the MoD she worked for Innovate UK as the Programme Delivery Manager for the Innovation Funding Service (IFS). This has become the major funding route for Government funded research.
During her time with the research councils she was a Senior Project Manager for large scale change initiatives and the Senior Digital Services Manager for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council where she concentrated on large scale corporate IT implementations.
In the more distant past she has gained skills and knowledge as a software developer and designer.
Victoria Cope | BAE Systems
Victoria is an experienced leader, with a multidisciplinary background and track record of achievement.
Focussed on strategic commercial leadership and effective relationship management to deliver tangible results for businesses and individuals alike.
Victoria has over 15 years’ experience in the Aerospace and Defence sector and has worked within corporate procurement, finance, sales, commercial and engineering functions within FTSE100/250 organisations including BAE Systems, QinetiQ, Airbus and Unilever.
Victoria is passionate about sustainable development, in particular she actively supports the next generation of young people into sustainable careers in the Aerospace & Defence sector, through her roles with the Air League & Movement to Work charities.
Victoria is a chartered Aeronautical Engineer by background and holds an executive MBA from Henley Business School. Victoria is a Non-Executive Council Member of The Air League, Trustee of the Inspiring Leadership Trust and was awarded the Marshall of Cambridge Medal in 2012 for contribution to the industry.
Rachel Beattie | Careaux
My name is Rachel Beattie, I am twenty-three years old and I am co-founder of luxury ethical womenswear brand, Careaux with my sister and best friend, Laura.
From an idea when I was fourteen combining my love of fashion and Maths we have created a world first dress.
Careaux creates timeless, classic dresses that change to fit each and every woman. The Careaux dress has a hidden zip around the waist which allows the dress to completely separate into a top and a skirt and then be reattached. This enables the dress to have a different size top to bottom or the same size throughout. Not only that, the tops and skirts can also be interchanged to create different styles, colour and fabric combinations. All handmade locally in Manchester.
I was studying for my GCSEs and my two favourite subjects were Maths and Art. I have always loved clothes and for my Art project I decided to create a dress with my Nana who had been a dressmaker since she was fourteen as well. She spoke so passionately about the importance of quality, fit and tailoring each outfit to the individual, I fell completely in love with the dressmaking process from start to finish. Alongside this I used to borrow Laura's clothes, but as we were very different shapes, it never used to fit, it was either too big on top or small on the bottom or sleeves were too short or skirt was too long. This brought to the forefront of my mind, how each and every one of us were different - our own, shape, style, personality and lifestyle but clothes had not changed and do not accommodate this fact. One night ten years ago I had the 'lightbulb' moment for Careaux, as soon as this happened I told Laura and it has been our sole dream and focus to make the Careaux dress come true.
However, we did not know anyone who had ran a business and we had not run a business before, therefore we started researching and learning as much as we could. I carried on with my GCSEs, A-Levels and I then went on to study Maths at The University of Manchester. During my time at University I worked for a charity called The Tutor Trust as a primary school tutor to tackle educational inequality and also completed an actuarial internship at a big 4 firm. In my third year at University, I studied abroad in North Carolina and this gave me a chance to delve deeper into the Maths behind Careaux looking at Combinatorics (the number of different ways you can combine different things) for e.g. number of tops and skirts to make Careaux dresses. When I returned from study abroad after years of searching we found our first dressmaker in 2016 and developed the dress for the next two years whilst I was apart of the Natwest Entrepreneurial Spark accelerator programme in my final year of University.
I graduated with a first class Masters of Maths in 2017, soft launched Careaux late 2017 to test the idea and we then launched our bespoke services in July 2018. As well as being on an actuarial graduate scheme at a big 4. In the last 6 months, we've been lucky enough to create pieces for Royal Investitures and I have won the Barclaycard Everywoman in Retail Innovator Award, The EVAs Young Entrepreneur One To Watch and have been named on the Northern Power Woman Future List 2019. We have just launched our kickstarter campaign to pre-order the debut core collection and will be launching the e-commerce site this year proudly supported by The Princes Trust. I am also a Code First Girls, STEM and Pankhurst Centre Centenary City Ambassador.
Laura Beattie | Careaux
I am the co-founder, alongside my sister Rachel, of luxury, ethical womenswear brand Careaux based in Manchester.
Careaux create timeless, classic dresses that change to fit each woman's unique shape, style, size and lifestyle. The Careaux dress has a hidden zip around the waist which allows the dress to completely separate into a top and a skirt and then be reattached. This enables the dress to have a different size top to bottom or the same size throughout. Not only that, the tops and skirts can also be interchanged to create different styles, colour and fabric combinations. All handmade locally in Manchester.
However I do not come from a business or fashion background. I went to an all-girls school where I failed all but one of my A Levels. I then completed a Foundation Year at Manchester Metropolitan University, followed by a History degree achieving a 2:1. I then went on to study for a Graduate Diploma in Law. After University I worked as a volunteer for the Citizens Advice Bureau and then as a tutor for the educational charity The Tutor Trust, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Rachel had the idea for Careaux when she was fourteen and as soon as she told me I knew it was exactly what I wanted to do and, even though I have loved doing what I have done throughout the years, knowing this has stayed with me and is still what I feel today.
I have Cystic Fibrosis and I am currently on the double lung transplant list. I am passionate about raising awareness for Cystic Fibrosis and Organ Donation. I was a part of the national NHS campaign during Organ Donation week last year. With Careaux we have also created two dresses for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust highlighting the amount of medication people with Cystic Fibrosis take and also highlight the issue of recycling plastic - with each dress having sequins made out of recycled plastic and laser cut medicine bottles as well as ethically sourced fabric and recycled plastic fabric.
Danni Sears | News UK
Following a Drama degree at Birmingham University, I did work experience at the BBC and Two four productions, before joining a brand new local radio station in Exeter.
There was no rule book so I had free reign to get involved in music scheduling, reporting, events and promotional activity. What I found most fulfilling was seeing how important we became to the local community, everything from opening school fetes to turning on the Xmas lights and doing numerous fun runs for charity.
I then moved to London and worked at GMG Radio on Smooth with radio legends like Simon Bates and Mark Goodier; before moving across to Bauer where I moved into commercial programming and was responsible for being the key link between editorial and Sales; this involved working on Magic, Absolute and Kiss answering client briefs, writing scripts, storyboards, directing videos, working with talent and editing. I also taught myself how to produce trailers at the weekend, so that I was capable of doing the whole end to end process- from answering a brief to having a video live or a radio trail on the air.
I then wanted to broaden out and step out of my comfort zone into the world of magazines; proactively I spent time with Art Directors, writers and Shoot directors to learn their crafts in addition to my day job. The hard work paid off and I ended up being promoted to manage a team of cross media producers who worked on large scale multi-platform partnerships. After 5 years at Bauer I then moved to News Uk, where I started by running a Project management team before a promotion to head up a team of Commercial editors, a role which taps into my broad creative background – at a time when my company is diversifying in platforms.
Anila Chowdhry | Freelance at Channel 5's The Vine Show & The Telegraph
Anila Chowdhry is an award-winning Presenter and Producer.
Since the age of 15, she has gone from conducting work experience at local radio stations and newspapers, and interviewing influential people like MP Sir Charles Kennedy in Parliament and Jon Snow in the Channel 4 newsroom for her YouTube Channel, to working for the world’s leading media companies including the BBC, ITV News, The Telegraph, ITN and Zee TV.
Anila has presented and produced across TV, Radio, and online, breaking major news stories like Brexit, the General Election, Grenfell and the Manchester and Westminster terror attacks.
She has hosted live debates on the topic of the day and interviewed many inspirational and influential people including MPs, experts, celebrities and real people. And she uses her platform to raise awareness of the work done by various charities, predominately focusing on equality, eradicating poverty, empowerment, and supporting the next generation.
Anila is passionate about creating a well-informed electorate, promoting gender equality, and furthering the development of humanity.
Dulcie Pryslopski | Maggie Semple Ltd
From as young as I can remember, I was always accompanied by a sketchbook and box of colouring pencils.
The gift of being creative always came naturally to me and would enable me to shine afar in school, earning extra house points for my "beautifully presented" homework, although being a factual catastrophe! What I never understood was why despite entering all the Art competitions at school and aspiring to win a Blue Peter badge, I always somehow missed out and never won anything. What I soon realised, with the encouragement of my number one fan Mum, was that it was not about the winning but about my own personal gains from these experiences. Winning would one day, hopefully arise as a result of my hard work and positivity recognised by inspiring others which is why I’m so pleased to be nominated for the WATC Rising Stars award.
A fond memory is my preparation for non uniform days at school. Feeling restricted by wearing the same clothes each day, non uniform days were like birthdays to me. I would edit my outfit the night before and feel excited to showcase my favourite jeans and accessories to the world the following day. I never conformed to the trends and would often stand out like a sore thumb with my hair horns and sunflower jeans but I felt special and felt like the real me. It didn’t go a miss either as people would start to enquire what I planned to wear next much to my dad’s dismay when I demanded I needed to buy something new for each occasion to make my fashion statement. It was nice to be recognised for my fashion flare and use this as an opening conversation piece with people I wouldn’t normally speak to due to the social hierarchy at school. It somewhat helped me to find my place at school and gave me an identity which is something I aspire everyone to have today through their clothes.
A milestone moment was my acceptance as a student at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. I remember so clearly filling in my application and my teachers telling me just how competitive it is to earn a place there. This was reinstated when I dropped my huge, heavy portfolio off on the top floor having walked up 5 flights of stairs to get there. As a large group of us waited eagerly, we were informed to "not get our hopes up as only one person out of every forty candidates will get in". As others looked away in dismay I thought to myself that someone has to get the place and why shouldn't it be me when there is no reason for why I shouldn't! I have the work ethic, skills and evidence to show that i'm suitable - it's just down to the opinion of the judges which could go either way quite frankly. I decided in that moment that after years of lacking confidence and doubting myself that actually I was at a point of my greatest self appreciation and happiness. I finally valued myself confidently as a creative and whether I got in or not was just a bonus - even if my further education depended on it! Thankfully the judges acknowledged this and believed in me enough to offer a place to start the foundation course at CSM. This was sealed with the recognition from my school that I also achieved 100% both years for my A-level art work placing me in the top 10 students in the country for Art. Against all odds, my journey as a fanatic art student began and it was here that I discovered my passion for Graphic Design and later graduated with a degree in this at London College of Communication.
As I approached my final weeks as a student, I was contacted out of the blue by my Photography teacher from my secondary school about their troubles to fill a maternity cover position. She asked me if I would apply as they thought that I could be the answer to their problems. It then occurred to me that I hadn’t studied for a teaching degree and therefore wouldn’t stand a chance at getting past the interview but apparently this wasn’t the case. Aged 20, having had no experience with working with children, I found myself CRB checked, now interviewing for the role. I knew I had the artistic knowledge and dedication needed plus the belief from the Arts department so decided to go for it. I interviewed alongside 5 qualified teachers for the position but defied all odds once again and was offered the position of Art and photography teacher at St Martin’s Secondary School. I began this role just three days after finishing university, with all my prep time squeezed in over the weekend! What's more, my three month contract extended to a complete school year and I raised my previously slacking GCSE Art group’s grades by two levels to achieve their target. This was my greatest achievement, knowing I helped to inspire such a young group of people and help them to achieve their goals to help cement their future.
Fast forward to my role now as Creative Director at Maggie Semple Ltd where I get to achieve great things on a regular basis with a whole network of talented, inspiring women. I swap and change daily between my two loves, Fashion and Design; conjuring up anything from the latest window display to new designs for the Semple Collection. I have a love of anything that sparkles or oozes colour and it's great to know that now, our clients do too. Time and time again, I listen to how our clients feel that they should hide their bodies and blend in by wearing black to conform to their corporate environment. But why should they? We live in a modern world where we are encouraged to be the best we can be and if that’s done by presenting on stage in a powerful pink dress, then so be it! We should be supportive in allowing women to feel confident in what they wear and move past the stereotypes which often suppress our ambitions. We are here to go against all odds and make our mark in the world as individuals. I certainly have and it’s great to know I am here making a difference to help grow women’s confidence to unleash their achievements too.
Casey Elisha | Casey Elisha Books & Love Thy Fro: The Musical
Casey Elisha is a London based self-published author whose aim is to diversify the scope of children's literature.
She released her first title, Love Thy Fro, in December 2015, which was met with positive reviews from platforms such as The Voice and Madame Noire.
Aimed at 5-8 year olds, Love Thy Fro is about a young girl named Kemi who loves her beautiful, big, curly, afro hair. A simple book with a simple message, the book aims to teach girls the importance of loving themselves and embracing their “non-typical” hair from a young age.
Casey went on to create I Am Festival, a children's literary festival that took place at Deptford Lounge in July 2016 and July 2018. Full of stalls and workshops, the event provided a space for children and parents to discover diverse reading content they may not have known about before, as well as to be able to participate in workshops that promoted and supported empowerment. It was at the festival in July 2016 that Casey released My Empowerment Journal, an introductory journal for children encouraging them to be creative and express themselves.
Since then, Casey has gone on to release two more books; My Mummy is Superwoman was released on Mother's Day in 2017, and My Daddy Does was released on Father's Day in the same year.
Casey most recently added the title Executive Producer to her name as she adapted Love Thy Fro into a musical. Sponsored by ORS Haircare, the production debuted at Theatre Peckham in October 2018 for Black History Month. Following a successful private showing, Love Thy Fro: The Musical went on to sell out all 6 shows.
“All children deserve to see themselves in books and on stage. Little black girls need to see themselves centre stage. It inspires, it empowers, and it shows them they matter in a way they don’t always see. I want my work to show these children they matter.” - Casey.