Kerryn Johnstone | EY
Kerryn believes that the key to success is setting a strategy for yourself, and then working hard to implement it. This includes creating a continuously evolving Personal Stakeholder Map, finding the right mentors for guidance and utilising any courses and training on offer to add to her toolkit of skills. Leaving school with no idea of what she really wanted to do with her career, Kerryn decided to find experience in the world through life events. Before she set off, Kerryn lined her ‘Career Toolkit’ with an Executive Secretarial course, knowing that whatever career path she eventually chose; the world would always require Admin. It’s frequently been beneficial, especially when recession hit and the only people being hired where administrative staff.
Kerryns career began on a well-known London reception desk in 1998. Since then she has worked in many different sectors, including blue chip, banking, government and charity organisations. Through sheer hard work and determination, utilising networks and working her career strategy over the years, she now creates Methods and Tools to underpin the Deployment Approach for large Global Programs. Kerryn also juggles being a Mum to two busy boys, with challenging work hours, being a commuter and the on-the-job travel required of her role in a large City Firm.
Kerryn grew up in Zimbabwe and Malawi, leaving at the age of 21 for Europe. Having lived in many countries around the world since, from 3rd world through to 1st world she has seen first-hand, and understands how tough it can be, for young women to find a voice to allow them that first ‘foot in the door’. Actively involved in charities and philanthropy, Kerryn strives to always find a way to give of both her time and experience to help others believe in themselves too!
Jo Sweetland ǀ Green Park Interim & Executive Resourcing
I can't tell you that I deserve to be shortlisted for this award and the outcome is not for me to decide, but what I can tell you is what I have learnt and how I try to pass on these lessons to the people I meet.
It's never sat comfortably with me being labelled, for example I've been called an entrepreneur, a strategist, a leader of people. My father was an entrepreneur and I saw the risks and tribulations he had to go through to grow his business and the difficult times he experienced. His journey in the business world taught me a lot and helped me build a really deep respect for business people as individuals as opposed to their title and the roles that they play.
I always try to be true to myself and live through my values and beliefs in all circumstances.
As a mother of two young children, having to juggle a highly pressurised, demanding career while maintaining a consistent and supportive home life for my family, I have developed a great respect for all working mothers. This by far has been my greatest challenge to date!
Through consulting with organisations in helping them acquire the kind of talent that will drive their businesses forward, I have learnt that agility and flexibility throughout the partnership is essential for achieving long term outcomes. As a female who aspires to lead in a male dominated industry, my core values of customer centricity, inclusion, good manners and hard graft are central to not just how I work, but how I motivate others around me to work. More than anything, I believe humility is one of the key factors to success within the industry. Through my experience, it is the more challenging of customers that I have had to consult with who have demonstrated consistency and loyalty, and in some cases even becoming friends, as a result of using my softer skills of influencing and helping them come to decisions which are beneficial for their business.
As a Managing Partner and one of the original members of Green Park Interim & Executive Search, I head up the HR Practice consulting with a range of businesses across the Private sector helping them solve some of their most challenging people problems. Being seen as a trusted advisor to my clients is paramount to mine and Green Park's HR brand.
Naomi Bowman ǀ HSBC
Naomi leads Governance & Operations within HSBC’s Monitor Liaison Office. She is responsible for maintaining an efficient and effective interface at all times between HSBC and the Monitor.
Prior to commencing this role in June 2014, Naomi was Head of Business Management & Strategy for the Global Standards Programme where she successfully designed and built the function responsible for financial management, vendor management and resourcing strategy.
Before joining HSBC in January 2013, Naomi was Senior Manager at EY specialising in operations and regulatory advisory and has achieved notable career success to date having worked on some of the most prominent banking administrations, integrations and mandatory regulatory changes during the past decade.
Naomi holds an ACA (ICAEW) and is currently studying for the ICA’s Postgraduate Diploma in Governance Risk and Compliance.
Outside the office, Naomi is Governor for Tonbridge Federation and delivers a number of speeches to students throughout the South East. An active diversity champion and public speaker, Naomi was key note speaker at the ICAEW’s prize giving ceremony 2015 and gave a TEDx talk at Imperial College in June 2015 on career acceleration.
In June 2014, Naomi was announced as the national Women in the City's "Future Leaders Award" winner
Sara Sherwani | Telefonica UK
Sara Sherwani, a driven Service Designer whose predominate focus is centred on delivering excellent customer experience and delivering the best technology solutions through Service Management principles. Ensuring that the customers’ expectations are met and they are delighted with the digital experience that they have with O2. Through her contributions, she was sponsored and chosen to represent Telefonica UK Operations at the One Young World conference. One Young World is a global organisation about bringing together bright, young leaders to discuss and bring change to a number of global issues with high profile members like Bob Geldolf, Kofi Annan and Sir Richard Branson. Presently, Sara operates as an Ambassador for One Young World outside of her day to day role.
Having always developed the curiosity on how to make a positive impact through the work that she carries out, Sara has been involved in educating over 100 young people in digital skills and exploring digital careers. Through delivering Digital Skills workshops up and down the country with the backing of Telefonica. I have spoken at schools and conferences about the other opportunities outside the traditional routes available to young people, giving them an opportunity to speak to someone who’s ‘been there done that’. She is heavily moved by the third sector and often gives pro-bono advice to charities around define, managing and improving their processes and utilizing the efficiencies of technology. Currently, she is working closely with a Charity called Josh who sponsor over 500 girls in India to go to school.
Dawn Kelly ǀ Oliver Wyman
Dawn Kelly has cemented herself as a top performer and integral office character at the leading global consultancy firm, Oliver Wyman, since joining as a graduate just two years ago: working with top tier clients on some of their most demanding projects, whilst actively contributing to – and being the driving force behind – a variety of firm initiatives and activities.
Dawn’s most recent consulting accomplishments include redefining a bank’s credit card strategy, contributing to a globally published report and engaging with >15 top Asset Managers on their key concern, conduct risk. At the same time Dawn led the OW Enabling Enterprise community partnership, aiming to inspire children to succeed, developed and implemented the recruiting strategy for an OW target University, and launched the OW Teach First volunteer partnership, running >10 employee-teacher coaching relationships as well as classroom/insight days for students. She also seeks to inspire and develop new talent from all backgrounds through running training sessions, being involved in the internship programme and fully advocating the buddy/mentor system.
Her passion for, and commitment to, inspiring young people to succeed extends beyond the office, mentoring underprivileged 16/17 year olds and female university students, as a Springboard and School-student mentor. This has always been important to Dawn: during school she was a Youth Ambassador, inspiring young people to interact with businesses, organisations and the police to make Essex a better place for themselves; and during University volunteering as National Youth Science Ambassador, guiding young people through investigations, inspiring interest in science and learning.
Dawn’s enthusiasm and passion for collective achievement through inclusion and involvement (of herself and all around her) stems from her unexpected offer to study Natural Sciences at Cambridge University. Working three part time jobs, volunteering 5-10 hours a week, and sporting just as much, she was elated to secure such an opportunity. Dawn propelled herself into all the University had to offer: working with the greatest scientific minds in the world; developing University-wide enterprises through her election to JCR President and holding other CUSU positions; and flourishing in College life, from rowing 1st Boat with LMBC to Captaining the Netball team and running the L’Armor Society. These unimaginable experiences, along with her first class degree, inspired the energy and fervour with which Dawn has entered life at OW, and with which she hopes to inspire many others to do the same.
Jacqui Braganza ǀ Accenture
I joined Accenture as a Technology Consulting Analyst in February last year. I have been working at one of the largest CMT accounts since Day 1, but have had the opportunity to work across a couple of different technology projects – the experience gained here has allowed me to develop not only my business acumen and analytical capability, but also my ability to work with and lead both internal teams and external stakeholders. My interest in Digital has primarily developed from being submersed in the Digital world as I have grown up – the way Digital is shaking up businesses is endlessly interesting. Watching huge corporations reshape, evolve and adapt the way they work means it is an extremely exciting time to be working in the Consulting arena.
Layla Mullins | HSBC
Using my skills in organisation and Global Event Management gained from a 14 year career as a PA, I was promoted to a business analyst role in January 2014. In my current role, I have identified and networked together 1,200 people globally to standardise tools and methods used within their roles - and launched a solid community to promote working together as a team, career development and mobility across business areas. I keep in touch with the 1,200 employees with regular comms and monthly global networking events in APAC, NY, Dubai and the UK where ideas are shared and taken back to the central team with the aim to make improvements to the way we work at HSBC.
Alongside my ‘day job’, I volunteered as an Events Organiser for the HSBC Gender Diversity employee resource group called Balance at the mid-2013. In November 2014 I was elected as the UK Chair. I am passionate about gender diversity and have driven a committee of volunteers to increase UK membership by over 500 to 2,500. I have spent a lot of time networking with senior leaders to get Balance more recognised as a key part of the HR process, improving transparency of initiatives to benefit gender diversity. I am not afraid to challenge when I believe the business is not considering the impact of decisions and have driven events for the members which genuinely engage across the business, linking senior leaders to women with aspirations. During my tenure, Balance has launched a global committee to add some governance around the 25 (and growing) branches that we have worldwide. Specifically in the UK, I have appointed committees to run Balance North (incorporating 8 branches) and Balance Scotland (3 branches) to bring he organization closer together and open opportunities for all. Together, we deliver country-wide events and work towards impacting change on the organization.
Joanna Williams | Reed Smith LLP
I was recently promoted to Of Counsel in the financial markets and regulatory group at Reed Smith, specialising in wholesale financial and commodities regulation. I am a recognised expert on European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) and the Regulation on Energy Market Integrity and Transparency (REMIT) implementation issues, for example, through my work for the European Federation of Energy Traders.
I started life as a qualified lawyer at Slaughter and May 14 years ago as a corporate finance associate. Just over 5 years on, I was seconded to Shell Treasury and joined Shell full time at the end of 2006. From there I moved to Shell Trading. During my 6 years at Shell, my practice covered derivatives, corporate finance, energy commodities trading and regulation. My love of financial markets regulation brought me to Reed Smith at the beginning of 2014.
Since then, I’ve spent my time helping a huge variety of clients to negotiate and respond to the unprecedented scale, pace and complexity of the regulatory changes that are affecting financial and commodities markets. I enjoy the constant challenge of applying my hands-on experience of in-house practice to identify what’s important to clients in a sea of regulatory reform and help them respond and plan accordingly. At a high level, this involves spotting trends and themes in regulation and the differing approaches of various regulators. At the same time, it involves being able to communicate complicated, dense and highly technical regulatory requirements in a way that’s easy to digest, practical and commercial.
I also really enjoy the opportunities being back in private practice has given me to work with and help to develop junior lawyers, as a trainee and intern supervisor, a mentor and through my work on the trainee and vacation scheme assessment panel.
Dalya Bernstein | Select Concierge
Dalya is an award winning EA with a wealth of experience within the PA/EA industry. She has been Executive Assistant to a high profile/high net worth Entrepreneur for the past 5 years and has a wide range of skills including extensive diary management, corporate travel management, event planning, social media management & property management.
Dalya holds a Certificate in First Line Management and a Diploma in Personal Assistance. In 2013, Dalya won 1st runner up in the Executive PA Magazine PA of the Year Awards and in 2014 won the Pitman Training Super Achievers PA of the Year Award. This has allowed Dalya to be invited as a guest speaker for many networking events throughout the UK within the PA industry.
In her spare time, Dalya is a professional singer and performs each weekend. She also enjoys keeping fit and in 2014, completed 2 half marathons for charity and also successfully reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro with a close colleague, raising £9500 their chosen charities.
Dalya is passionate about the role of a PA/EA and hopes to inspire others and continue being as successful as possible.