Sarah Raitt | Defence Primary Healthcare
Sarah is an Army GP, currently serving as the Senior Medical Officer for Defence Primary Healthcare (DPHC) in Central London.
Leading a mixed military and civilian team of doctors, nurses and allied healthcare professionals, delivering healthcare to a diverse military and civilian population in Central London.
Sarah took over her current role in London just 6 weeks before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. London GPs and their teams have been at the forefront of the COVID response over the past year and have continued to provide services throughout each wave of the pandemic. From early outbreak management, moving swiftly to adopt telephone and online consultations, to setting up and running community pulse oximetry, so patients can be safely monitored at home, plus many other new ways of safely delivering healthcare during the pandemic. Sarah has led a Primary Care team to respond magnificently in support of the NHS, by rapidly deploying staff into NHS roles, and mobilising military and civilian DPHC staff from across London to support the National COVID-19 Vaccination campaign.
As an Army GP, Sarah has developed considerable experience leading healthcare teams through change and working under pressure. While deployed overseas these have often been in resource poor, high risk and remote settings.
Oyiza Momoh | GSK
Oyiza is an advocate for the development of others and access to opportunities.
During her Neuroscience degree, she contributed to a peer-reviewed paper on the relationship between depression and stroke, hoping to increase awareness and understanding of a topic that she believes affects many but is not discussed enough. She volunteered as a First Aider in Scotland for 5 years before helping to expand the charity, First Aid Africa, and co-founding its Glasgow chapter. Again, helping to train communities, healthcare workers and government authorities in skills that can save lives.
In her professional career, Oyiza is Clinical Data Manager at GSK, working to develop medicines for patients with unmet clinical needs. She recently published on the importance of inclusion and diversity in clinical trials, hoping to promote discussion within patient advocacy groups. She also leads the Women's Leadership Initiative for GSK's Global HQ (GSK House), providing development opportunities for women, shining a spotlight on inequality and driving forward our ambition of gender parity. Oyiza is a keen STEM Ambassador, leading a network of STEM Ambassadors at GSK House and contributing heavily to GSK's UK STEM strategy.
She is passionate about coaching and mentoring, having benefited personally and professionally from the kindness offered by others.
Uyiosa Ogunbor | Medsimple
Uyiosa Ogunbor is an award-winning final year medical student who regards herself as a med-entrepreneur.
From a young age, Uyiosa knew she wanted to become a doctor but was oblivious to arduous journey ahead as the first doctor-to-be in her family. Around the same time, her experience of financial instability sparked an interest in financial literacy, problem-solving and entrepreneurship.
Her journey into medical school coupled with her interest in entrepreneurship led to the curation of Medsimple. Medsimple is a training and resource provider for students pursuing a career in Medicine. It provides the solution to the inequality of resources and inexperience in schools with aspiring medics through its e-learning platform and workshops. Medsimple has impacted hundreds of students, collaborated with schools and higher education institutions.
Uyiosa is passionate about empowering the younger generation to pursue their dreams. She is currently a mentor on the ‘Ignite programme’, an initiative providing support and up to £10,000 bursaries to students from under-represented backgrounds. As a member of the Medicine: Ask The Expert Team, Uyiosa delivers talks to aspiring medical students. Uyiosa was previously an interviewer on behalf of the Faculty of Medicine.
She is currently an NHS Clinical Entrepreneur due to her interest in entrepreneurship and problem-solving.
In 2020, Uyiosa was awarded the prestigious Akindolie Medical Scholarship and named the top 150 most outstanding African & African Caribbean Students (2021). She has been awarded a letter of commendation by both the Dean (Faculty of Medicine) and Associate Dean (Education). Her work has led to features including BBC and Santander.
Sarah-Jane Mintey MBE | Developing Experts
Sarah Mintey MBE a former headteacher founded a fast-growing edtech company called Developing Experts in 2015.
In 2019 it won Tech Nation's 2019 Rising Star Winners, and in 2020 was one of 10 UK companies on Google's Immersion Growth Program for 2020. In September Sarah was awarded an MBE for services to Tech and Education. Her science curriculum is now used by over 5000 UK schools and is used by the rail and energy sectors to recruit their future talent pipelines.
In February 2021 Sarah will be launching her platform into China after securing a contract with the Chinese Government. Sarah was recently named by Startup Magazine as one of the 'Top 20 Most Influential Female Founders of 2020’.
Anaya Kamara | Anaya Hair and Beauty
I am the founder of Anaya Hair and Beauty, a mobile hairdressing platform that brings beauty to your doorsteps working with a team of hairdressers, barbers and makeup artists.
My background is IT (Information Systems Development) MSc Masters of Science with tons of industrial qualifications.
In January 2006 I experienced a gruesome car accident that took my Dad’s life and I survived with few others. This lead to memory loss and severe trauma due to the shock with leg and body injuries. I was unable to go back to my IT job and was on incapacity benefits whilst going through treatments, counselling and therapy. It was during this time I started to help women in my former estate to do their hair whilst my leg was been treated and sitting down whole day at home. I began making use of time and keeping the mind busy. This went on for 2 years and the word of mouth spreads fast and as my body and mind were healing so does my customers grew and I decided to come off benefits and went on a business start up course with HMRC followed by enrolling in Newham college to study hairdressing All hair types. I gained levels 2&3 Diplomas in Women’s hairdressing and later also gained a Diploma in Beauty Therapy level 2.
I started working as a solo hairdresser for 7 years as I breakthrough in 2016 when I received an Award for Inspirational Entrepreneur by REEBA Awards Organisation. This lead to further open doors and I transits from Solo hairdresser into a platform bringing other hairdressers along so that they can showcase their skills and add value to the community.
Our team as been recognised as UK Top Afro stylist on the Afro Hair and Beauty Show sponsored by BBC in 2018 which makes us proud.
Further more our team strive for excellent in bringing good customer and communication skills whilst on the job. Our platform is structured with systematic processes with a corporate edge that makes us stand out from our competitors.
We are here to stay are our aim is to take it to full national level adding value to our nation in the hairdressing and beauty field balancing work and our clients lifestyle.
Trudie Fell | BelleVie
Trudie is a social entrepreneur with a passion for creating environments in which people thrive and a love of technology.
She is the CEO and Co-founder of BelleVie, a company on a mission to prove how an innovative operating model using self-managing teams, funded by monthly subscriptions, and underpinned by great technology can fix the current crisis in care.
Trudie spent 11 years working at telco Three UK, where she founded the company’s first diversity group, Women in Tech. They ran a coding course for mothers returning to work, met over 800 school children through a variety of outreach projects and spoke at numerous events and panels including London Tech Week.
Trudie has built and led teams responsible for customer facing front end applications through to back end system architecture. She’s proud of her role transforming IT departments from traditional, command and control structures to self-managing agile teams. Having started her IT career as a software developer she is known for bridging the gap between technical and business teams. She co-founded BelleVie to use her passion for enabling people through self-managing teams to create great jobs in at-home care.
Her vision for BelleVie is to create a world where people who give and receive care are valued and thrive together.
Natalie Bamford | Colleague Box
After a brush with death from a childhood illness, I have always tried to live life positively with a can do attitude and smile on my face!
Back in April of 2020 when we found ourselves in the grips of a pandemic, I was put on furlough and was unsure what the future held for me.
After deciding to send out a little letterbox gift to our working from home colleagues, my husband Adam and I set up Colleague Box. A side project at the time that I was able to do whilst working from home.
After the success of our first 'batch', other companies heard about what we were doing and wanted to use our product and service to send some letterbox positivity to their colleagues too.
Before long, I was able to start working at Colleague Box full time and left my previous job. A side project became my career and little did I know I was about to embark on the biggest learning curve of my life!
Learning on the job about marketing, branding, PR, brand awareness, buyer personas...an alien world to me and far cry from the insurance checking admin role I had just left!
But not wanting too shy away from a challenge, I set about shouting about Colleague Box, got us national media coverage, TV appearances and radio interviews. Guest speaking on webinars, and interviews all paying off. We went from having one box in our collection, The Original Colleague Box, to now having over 50 gift boxes to choose from.
We sent out our first box in May and now, 10 months on we have sold over 85,000 boxes and have turned over more than £1million. We have two properties and have taken on our very own colleagues!
It's been hard work particularly juggling homeschooling a three year old and 13 year old daughters! (Oh and a puppy too!) I faced some of the toughest days in my work life but also felt the most proud to see what we have been able to achieve.
For me, it's much more than a gift box company, it's putting smiles on faces and for me, that's priceless.
Alice Hendy | R;pple Suicide Prevention
Alice Hendy tragically lost her brother, Josh, on the 25th November 2020 from suicide. Josh was her only sibling, and sadly passed away too soon at just 21 years of age.
Alice’s day job involves working in IT and Cyber Security, with experience in working for global financial institutions and insurance firms in the city of London.
After examining Josh’s phone and laptop following his death, Alice found that Josh had been researching techniques to take his own life via internet searches, suicide forums and video tutorials.
The content available online following a harmful online search is far too readily available and fails to provide enough of an intervention between a user searching for harmful content and the subsequent display of the search results.
To ensure more help and support is given to individuals in mental health crisis and searching for harmful content online, Alice set up R;pple Suicide Prevention.
R;pple addresses the lack of intervention and instead provides an immediate, vibrant display on a user’s device once they have been flagged as searching for online content relating to self-harm or suicide.
R;pple is an online nudge technique which consists of a powerful message of hope, as well as providing a selection of mental health support resources in a range of different communicative options (call, text, webchat, self-help app, pocket resources).
Through R;pple, an individual feeling despair and researching harmful content will be urged to instead seek mental health support they deserve and need in a way that works best for them.
Amandine Flachs | WildMeta
Supporting early-stage startup founders for the past 10 years in France, the USA and the UK, Amandine has helped transform technical solutions into understandable commercial offers, launch innovative products, build communities, and bring technical & non-technical teams together.
In late 2019, she co-founded WildMeta to help video game developers create smarter and more human-like AIs with machine learning. Using WildMeta's custom framework, the team can build AIs that play video games as bots, players or NPCs to support the development of the next generation of games and improve players' experience.
Amandine is also an active VC scout, a startup mentor involved in several programmes and accelerators, and the producer and host of Entrepreneurs Playing Games - a series of bi-monthly live video AMAs with founders to deep dive into their journey and challenges.
Sophia Parvizi-Wayne | Trado Technologies
I recently graduated from Duke University, North Carolina with high distinction in History and Journalism, with a minor in Innovation and Entrepeneaurship.
In the last year I founded Trado, a narrative technology company that uses NLP and modern storytelling techniques to tell any story using voice. Over the last nine months, we not only built out our product but hired, raised and created a product that hundreds are already excited to be a part of.(https://tradobooks.com)
Before that, I was involved in the early stages of the fem-tech company Freda, a period care company changing the way women view menstruation. Building out a company in a time where periods were incredibly stigmatised teaches you a lot about brand narrative, sales and partnerships for sure. You can find out more about Freda here (https://myfreda.com).
At school, my focus was in the mental health space. Having suffered from Anorexia Nervosa, I launched a nationwide campaign to get mental health on the national curriculum. From hundreds of tv and radio appearances to working within parliament, our pilot scheme is now running with 30,000 children. That was the first time I knew I could solve a problem when I saw one.