Jane Brazzill | PwC
Emily Walker | Liverpool John Moores University
Elizabeth Mendes Da Silva | Barclaycard
I grew up in Westminster, with my mother, a cleaner from Portugal and my two elder sisters. I went to St Peter’s Eaton Sq School where I was also a server at the Church for eleven years, and still sit on the Parish Committee Council to date. I studied Piano for twelve years, and am very passionate about Art, choosing this as my subject of choice at Southampton University. For secondary, I attended Lady Margaret’s all-girls school in Parsons Green.
Whilst studying, I did PR work within the club industry (unpaid), and learnt the process of working to tight deadlines/ targets and marketing. It was doing this, and working in close proximity to the owners that made me want to become a Personal Assistant, as I demonstrated strong organisational skills and a keenness of multitasking and working under pressure.
I have just moved to Barclaycard as a PA with Planning Support, as a stretch role, after spending three years in Barclays Internal Audit working as a PA to nine Portfolio Heads, and a PMO for SRP. Before starting at Barclays, I took two years out to have my son Alexander (now six), as a single mother I still found the time to volunteer for the local National Childcare Trust to assist with fundraising. I have sat on the D&I Council within BIA as an assistant and now am helping out with the Initiative 10 in Barclaycard.
I have just taken the Agile Foundation Course, in Project Management, and am looking to develop my knowledge further with my studies to reflect my current role, and ambitions to further my career within the Corporation. Alongside these, I am passionate about keeping fit, and have just started a blog which tales about the importance of keeping a healthy/ balanced lifestyle.
Debra Jacobs | RBS
Debra started her varied career in the hotel industry, before moving into Conference & Banqueting. In the years that followed, Debra moved to a corporate environment organising in-house events and activities before finally moving to work for event management agencies. In these roles, Debra was responsible for project managing multiple global conferences and events for clients within the pharmaceutical industry; working to tight deadlines, constantly changing logistics, client demands, budgets and environments.
After 10 years in the events industry and to achieve a more sustainable work life balance, Debra changed career direction transitioning to a PA role.
For the past 10 years, Debra has worked with senior HR leaders across a variety of industries including Financial Services, Insurance and Facilities Management. Debra has been at RBS for 7 years, working within Group HR Functions. Her current role is in Learning & Development.
Debra is both Founder & Chair of the PA Network at RBS. The aim of the network is to bring the PAs together from across the Bank; to learn from one another, to share experiences, information and best practice and offer career development and training. The network helps to reinforce the value of the PA role and will help support the banks with the ambition to be number one for customer service, trust and advocacy by 2020. From a standing start in January 2016 the network now has over 530 members from across the UK & Ireland.
Outside of work, Debra is a Trustee for Saving Macedonia Strays, an animal rescue charity based in Macedonia. Debra helps to raise awareness for the organisation and the work they do, as well as fundraise, run their social media outlets and support with the rehoming of the animals within Macedonia, the UK & across Europe.
Bianca Angelico | Sodexo
My career began five years ago when I moved from South Africa to pursue a career in London. This started with a 3 year position as an EA at Unwired Ventures Ltd, led by Philip Ross. Within five months into the EA role, to build out my events experience, I took on the Events Assistant / Conference Producer roles and delivered 5 global events per year, with the most notable being WORKTECH Berlin 2014 and FutuRetail 2014, both of which achieved more than 110% of target revenue, and broke new ground in audience engagement.
Leveraging this success I sought out an opportunity as Partner Marketing Executive at Condeco that would allow me to lead on more events in Europe and benefit a wider audience and company. After 9 months I was promoted to Events Manager & Executive Assistant to the MD of EMEA which in the following 2 years I became deeply embedded in the FM / workplace industry through being the Deputy Chair of WIFM within BIFM, the Communication Leader for YMF and the Young Leader Lead in programmed events for CoreNet UK. My enthusiasm in these roles, and the difference I am having, saw me being recognised as a Young Leader by Tomorrow Meets Today.
I have a passion for making a difference in people’s lives through being a powerhouse for a brand, and couldn’t refuse to join the Sodexo team in supporting the CEO of Healthcare in UK & Ireland to connect its 8,000 strong workforce through reinvigorating the internal communications strategy, repositiong our vision and mission statements and raising the profile of the CEO through social media. This current role is a key step in me achieving my goal of becoming a CEO of an organisation.
Anne-Lyse Hardesty | Worldwide101
Business support specialist or more commonly known as Virtual Assistant (VA) with Worldwide101.
Anne-lyse grew up in the south west of France and studied International Business. After working in Brazil and Australia, she decided to put her luggage down in Dallas, Texas. She worked as an executive assistant for a Beer equipment importer and then for one of the largest US Beverage distributors in the Marketing and Sales department. She gained 8+ years experience in the Drinks industry.
While moving to yet a different country (the UK) and pregnant with her second daughter, she decided that family was her priority but at the same time didn’t want to give up a career. Becoming a remote executive assistant became an opportunity and started her journey in 2015 in joining the premium virtual assistant team, Worldwide101. She is now supporting remotely 5 entrepreneurs based in US and Europe in building and growing their business. The flexibility and freedom of this position is priceless. In addition, she is a learner and curious, so being part of the Worldwide101 team has been so wonderful. While working with her clients, she has been discovering completely different worlds and the tasks can be diversified, from doing customer service for an American dog potty company to managing a freelance team for a French infopreneur!
Anne-lyse is as well part of and contributing to the group « We are virtual assistants » aimed at spreading the word to join the virtual assistant world to other moms !
Mohammed Zafran BEM | All 4 Youth & Community
Amali de Alwis | Code First: Girls
Amali de Alwis is CEO of Code First: Girls, a multi-award winning social enterprise that works with companies and women directly to increase the proportions of women in tech and entrepreneurship. They do this by running free and paid coding courses for men and women, by advising companies on tech talent, and by running a community of 5500+ women who are interested in tech. Over the past 3 years they’ve provided £2.5 million+ worth of free tech education, and taught 4000+ women how to code. They are the largest provider of free in person coding courses for women in the UK.
Amali previously worked as a consultant at PwC, which included a secondment to the World Economic Forum. Prior to this she was a senior research and strategy consultant at TNS Global.
Outside of the day job, she is a member of the steering committee at the Tech Talent Charter, a small business mentor through Start-up direct and CommonwealthFirst, a Tech London Advocate, and a fellow at the RSA.
Ruth Oshikanlu | Goal Mind Limited
Ruth Oshikanlu – Award-winning Queen’s Nurse, midwife and health visitor and parenting expert. She is the founding director of Goal Mind Limited, and has over 22 years track record in delivering secondary and primary health care services in the independent, statutory and voluntary sectors. She is an inspirational professional who is passionate about women and children having supported a vast amount of women from conception, birth and beyond.
Ruth is a published author of Tune In To Your Baby: Because Babies Don’t Come with An Instruction Manual; a holistic self-help parenting book that promotes maternal and infant mental health. She runs a private practice in London’s Harley Street supporting women who have had assisted conception or previous miscarriage to enjoy their pregnancy without fear.
Ruth is a champion for nurses, midwives and health visitors, enabling her colleagues to be better practitioners and deliver excellent standards of care to the women and children they serve. To date, she has penned over fifty articles in several nursing and healthcare journals that encourage colleagues to challenge their mindset and be proactive about finding solutions to problems at work.
Ruth was involved in developing the recent Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) pathway for The Department of Health/Public Health England for health visitors and school nurses. She regularly speaks at national conferences on issues affecting women such as FGM, domestic abuse, parenting.
Ruth is a a member of the Chief Nursing Officer Black and Minority Ethnic Advisory Group and uses these roles to influence policy and raise professional standards. In her spare time, Ruth volunteers as a mentor/coach for young girls with low self-esteem. She has been able to make an impact to women and children despite being a single parent to a 12 year old boy.
