Melissa Ahmed | Techwuman Ltd
Melissa is very passionate about being a role model, not only for engineers, but young entrepreneurs and females in ethnic minorities to show that engineering or being an entrepreneur can be a viable career choice for women.
At the age of 26 Melissa has achieved Incorporated engineer status, SolidWorks professional member, SolidWorks Champion, STEM and female role model, an advocate for women in engineering and is a successful entrepreneur, running an engineering consultancy business.
She does a tremendous amount of outreach work as she is very passionate about helping the next generation and her company takes on her mission to empower the next generation to take up a career in STEM through the activity days they do but also provides mentoring and uses her network to find jobs and placements for her mentees. She networks with other females to expand her network and tries to be the role model she never had when she was entering her career in engineering.
Was the first female employed in the technical department at a manufacturing company and excelled at leading the team to produce a successful stock part system in the factory, as well completed a successful innovate project to improve the design process of security products - saving the company 40% of the overall product development costs in a year.
Melissa has successfully completed a Research Masters (MSc) on The Digital Simulation of attacking structures in accordance to the standards LPS 1175 set up by the Loss Prevention Certification Board. During this project she identified new methodologies for improving the efficiency of the design process for security products - saving the company 40% of the overall product development costs in a year. She was the first female employed in the technical department at a manufacturing company and excelled at leading the team to produce a successful stock part system in the factory. She achieved a (BEng Hons) in Aeronautical Engineering and was a finalist for the Female Undergraduate of the Year Award in 2014 . She also achieved the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Outstanding Paper on an Aerospace Subject, RAeS University Prize and the Manchester Branch Project Prize.
Julie Haigh | North Cumbria Integrated Care
With 20 years experience of both the military and engineering it was always my passion to be a midwife.
I retrained in my late 30's and qualified as a Midwife in 2012. 3 years ago I became a Digital Midwife leading on several projects whilst also acting as the elected Chair for the Digital Maternity Group within NHSx along side my daily role. I was the first midwife to become a Fellow with the Faculty of Clinical Informatics in 2020 and am currently a recipient of a scholarship to study for my Masters in Heathcare Analytics and Artificial Intelligence at Sheffield Hallam University.
Rikki Alderman | British Army
As a career soldier within the AGC(SPS), my journey began directly upon leaving school in 2004 at the Army Foundation College Harrogate.
Completing special-to-arm training, my first assignment commenced as a junior administrator with the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards. Embracing every opportunity of developing my newly learnt administrative skills, I also deployed with the Battalion to an exercise in Malaysia and on operational engagements to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Following an assignment to Headquarters 16 Air Assault Brigade as the Logistics Movements Clerks and promoted to Corporal, in 2009, I was selected to become a Section Commander with 2nd Army Training Regiment Pirbright. My appointment consisted of training the army’s future soldiers in addition to providing them with pastoral support. In 2011, I was selected as the army’s ambassador for an exchange post in New Zealand on Exercise Long Look, where upon I instructed personnel from the New Zealand Defence Force.
Upon return, my journey took me to the Falkland island whereupon I was employed as the movement Junior Non-Commissioned Officer in a Tri-Service environment within the Falkland Island Support Unit. During this assignment and being recognised for making the most contribution for a junior non-commissioned officer (NCO), I was awarded the prestigious Avery-Wilkes trophy.
Selected for promotion to a Senior NCO in 2012, I was assigned to 2nd Battalion, The Royal Anglian Regiment in the position of their Staff Support Assistant where I became a part of the Commanding Officer's TAC Headquarters and subsequently deployed on exercise and overseas on operations in Afghanistan. Upon return and selected to be the STRAP Focal Point to the Chief of Defence Staff in 2014, my role entailed the dissemination of highly sensitive material for Chief of the Defence Staff, Vice Chief of the Defence Staff, Secretary of State and all other Defence Ministers.
Promoted further in 2017, I returned to Pirbright as their chief clerk, responsible for administrating in excess of 140 permanent staff members and 1,000 recruits within a busy training establishment. In 2019 I returned to 2nd Battalion, The Royal Anglian regiment as the Financial Systems Administrator and I have recently promoted to a Warrant Officer 2nd class and look forward to an appointment with the Light Dragoon Guards situated in North Yorkshire.
Dawn Childs | National Grid
Dawn Childs is the UK Change Director for National Grid and is leading the transformation required to meet efficiency expectations whilst still delivering to net zero.
Prior to this she was the Group Engineering Director for Merlin Entertainments Group with responsibility for engineering delivery, standards, practices and processes across the worldwide portfolio of more than 130 theme parks, resorts and attractions. This followed a tenure at Gatwick Airport as the Head of Engineering, responsible for all of the infrastructure and technical services at the airport. She joined Gatwick in 2012 after 23 years as an Engineering Officer in the RAF.
Throughout her career she has been a strong advocate for women in engineering. To pursue this passion she actively engages in many outreach activities and in October 2018 she became the President of the Women’s Engineering Society and is also a Trustee for World Skills UK. She is also the Executive sponsor for WING (Women In National Grid) employee resource group.
Maysoon Shafiq | Al Mu'Minun - The Believers
Maysoon Shafiq is the founder and Director of Al Mu’Minun (The Believers) a non-profit organisation dedicated to serving the youth through open spaces of spirituality, dialogue and empowerment.
Maysoon actively works in the community to promote gender parity, inclusivity and diversity through open dialogue in her communication. She holds several events, seminars and conferences for members of the community (Muslims and Non-Muslims) so they may understand fully the religion of Islam and the rights offered to women. She has mentored several women who have all trained to be successful champions in their own right.
Her work has been recognised through several awards; she was awarded the Commendable Award at the British Muslim Awards 2020 under the Leading Lights of the Year category and she received the Diversity Champion of the Year Award 2020 at the Kirklees Inclusion & Diversity Awards 2020.
She has published a book "First Steps in Understanding Islam" and it is available on Amazon to purchase as either an eBook or a paper copy.
Emma Martin | BT
I am a Software Engineer working in Digital Platforms, Consumer BT based in Belfast, a coding instructor at Coursera and a graduate with an MSc in Software Development from Queen’s University Belfast.
Before I discovered coding I worked in Marketing and gained a First Class Honours from Ulster University. During my time at university I worked at a local tech start-up the summer before I started my placement year I got my first insight into the world of technology and this kicked started my passion for wanting to learn how to code. I am an advocate for driving change within technology and have been involved a number of committees and boards including the Project Management Institute Northern Ireland Chapter, Women Who Code Belfast City Lead and IET Young Professionals Committee Belfast. Additionally, I am an advocate for tech diversity and I am part of the Diversity and Inclusion team within BT which involves helping to drive change around our processes and culture.
I am passionate about giving back to the tech community as throughout my journey into technology I was fortunate to be mentored by some incredible females and I now dedicate a lot of my time paying that forward. I have completed the CodeFirst Girls Fellowship and over two months I taught 40 girls coding skills in SQL and within a team completed research into leadership and education. I have taught a number of CodeFirst Girls courses and I also develop my own coding courses for Coursera aiding more people in their coding journeys and currently have taught nearly 7000 people coding skills. I am also the Founder of FirbroME a management application for those suffering with chronic illness and was inspired with my experience of living with a chronic illness.
I also lead on BT Belfast Outreach activities which included the mTech Academy project which is a programme where 15 schools across Northern Ireland are linked with employers to deliver an experiential learning project over the course of six months. As part of the programme there was a workshop with careers teaching to up-skill them around the future careers in technology and empower them with the information needed to encourage students to pursue a career in technology. The programme was praised by senior leadership across BT and has been described by students as “the most worthwhile project they have done in school.” My work within the Belfast community around inspiring others from all backgrounds into technology has been recognised in a number of ways as I was named one of the Sync NI ‘Tech Trailblazer’ as part of the STEM role models in Northern Ireland, I was also highly commended for the Diversity Advocate Award at this year’s Women Who Code She Rocks Awards and nominated for the Rising Star Awards. Finally, I am a public speaker, mentor and creator to share my story and encourage others to consider a career in technology.
Eneni Bambara-Abban | SOKOSHOPPER
Eneni Bambara-Abban is a Robotics Engineer, STEM Communicator, Tech Speaker and Content Creator, the Founder of Anime & Chill, an International Anime and Gaming Community as well as a Member of the BCS, Chartered Institute for IT.
She currently works as a Product Owner at Sokoshopper, an International Pan-African E-commerce Start-up, and is responsible for maximising the value of the platform, prioritising the team backlog and managing an agile workplace which centres on the core values of Scrum, such as full transparency and collaboration.
Whilst at Sokoshopper, Eneni also supports the business as a technical consultant applying her robotics and automation knowledge to creative innovative strategies to differentiate Sokoshopper from its competition.
An advocate for diversity and inclusion, Eneni has a strong passion to de-mystify and eradicate the negative stereotypes and limiting societal expectations placed on women worldwide. After being discouraged from studying robotics engineering for many years and later graduating as the only black woman on her course, she knew that she wanted to do something to increase diversity within STEM especially in the fields which will power and govern our future - Data, AI and Robotics. For the last few years, she has self-funded and organized several coding, robotics and wellbeing workshops in England and across Africa, as well as virtually during the pandemic to encourage, educate and support young people in pursuing and retaining careers in engineering and technology.
Suze Shardlow | Suze Shardlow
Suze Shardlow wrote her first line of code in 1982 and started making websites in 1996.
She was a hobby coder all the way through primary school and university. The UK education system didn't know what to do with girls who were interested in tech, so she was never shown that you could program for a living. Without a post-university plan, she enrolled on the most versatile degree she could think of - BA Business - and took all the marketing modules on offer while building websites for her friends on the side.
Suze's degree and subsequent Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing kicked off a 20-year career in management, communications and strategy with organisations including the Canadian Government and the Metropolitan Police. Suze spent four years winning the hearts and minds of 30000 police officers and 20000 support staff to support them in adopting new tech. Later, Suze retrained to become an expert advisor on covert policing, managing pan-London undercover surveillance.
A move into community policing and managing buildings, vehicles and criminal exhibits around London put Suze at the sharp end of Government cuts. With the promise of redundancy in 2018, Suze took a long hard look at what she wanted to do for the next 20 years and grabbed the opportunity to retrain in modern software engineering, rapidly building a portfolio of full-stack applications. Suze has been an active volunteer since becoming a Scout leader in 2014. She began donating her time and expertise as a Chapter Lead at Ladies of Code London, and then a Director at Women Who Code London, leading a combined total of more than 10000 members.
Suze now works for herself. She creates and delivers her own coding courses, teaching Python and JavaScript as well as how to create your own personal branding website. She has worked with academics at the University of Sussex to bring their research interviews from 30 years ago to life via a chatbot. The interviews are with women about their views on love, sex and relationships at the height of the AIDS pandemic. Suze is also a technical writer and conference speaker, having given talks in the UK and overseas. She's an experienced and engaging event host who instinctively gets the best out of her guests and speakers, even when live and unedited.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Suze took all her tech meetups online, delivering more than 130 hours of live online tech content across 60+ events. These included over 90 hours of facilitated tech co-working sessions which helped more than 60 people through lockdown. She designed and delivered more than 15 hours of public speaking coaching and mentoring workshops, then organised and hosted a live online showcase event for the women who "graduated" from these workshops. Suze's work attracted the attention of Global Diversity CFP Day, who selected her as Europe Lead for their 2021 online conference. Suze curated the content and a diverse group of speakers for a six-hour live stream, then hosted and produced the entire event singlehandedly, facilitating one fireside chat and two panel discussions in the process. This success led to Suze being chosen as a panel discussion MC at codebar Festival.
Suze's tech community event ideas and methodologies, borne of two decades of knowing her various audiences and documented in her blog, have been replicated by other groups including those based in Silicon Valley, California.
Isabel Scavetta | Rolls-Royce Plc
Isabel is determined to prove that women from non-tech backgrounds can break into industry, and is recognised for her extensive social action work for gender diversity and digital education.
She has had several notable volunteering achievements, including a Fellowship at Code First Girls, where she is teaching 20+ women to code, an advisory role for Microsoft’s TechHer Student community for 500+ women, and being featured on BBC News for her work as a Technology Partnerships Specialist at social enterprise ClassOf2020.
She has led teams of promising female students and professionals on hackathons aimed at social good, with her team being finalists for the Vodafone Diversity Hackathon with their project promoting diversity in the workplace. She has previous experience at various strategy and finance firms, led social action projects for 150+ youth in her local community, and holds a First Class degree in Spanish & Politics from UCL. She writes about her challenges and reflections on her blog Her Business Now to offer open access to her journey and inspire others.
Georgia Yexley | Tier Mobility
Georgia has worked in partnership with cities internationally, to reach their active and sustainable transport goals.
A firm believer that collaboration and partnership underpin sustainable services, Georgia leads the partnership strategy behind Tier Mobility's services across UK and Ireland. Georgia is a vocal advocate for inclusion and accessibility, and contributes to raising the volume of women and underrepresented groups in tech.