Karolina Szudrzynska | Mastercard
Karolina is a Digital Acceptance Manager at Mastercard, responsible for European coordination on strategy and sales approach for the company’s digital agenda.
Karolina has worked for Mastercard in London, Warsaw and Singapore. In 2015, she was selected as one of 12 employees worldwide to participate in Mastercard’s exchange program, where she managed online merchant programs across the Asia Pacific. While working in Poland, Karolina made a significant impact by broadening payment acceptance and introducing new payment products and solutions to the market. Her varied experience at a broad range of roles has given her valuable skills, knowledge and exposure that she has continued to leverage.
A keen advocate for diversity, Karolina holds a key role in Mastercard’s Women’s Leadership Network, managing external engagements and supporting female talent. She actively engages in charity and mentoring activities, including volunteering with the First Love Foundation to Mastercard’s Digital Girls’ Day School Trust challenge, promoting girls in STEM.
Prior to joining Mastercard, Karolina worked at the BZ WBK bank (Santander Group), managing onboarding programs for bank customers. Outside of the office, Karolina is Vice President of Membership at London’s Toastmasters Club where she develops her public speaking skills and encourages others to overcome their fears of presenting. She also enjoys adventurous traveling, hiking and backpacking around the world.
Bobbie Mansfield | XL Catlin
Having only started her career at the end of 2015, Bobbie has made herself a prominent part of XL Catlin's innovation transformation. After a successful graduate scheme, she secured the role of Digital Change Manager, responsible for communication, education and colleague engagement for XL Catlin's digital transformation. Her remit has seen her lead the partnership of two InsurTech Accelerators, facilitate ideation sessions with key business partners and speak at conferences and exhibitions on our immersive technology capability.
Notably, she is a founding member of the London office's Future Focused Network, leading the launch of London's first innovation demonstration space where colleagues can learn, experiment and engage with XL Catlin's innovation projects. She is currently managing its global expansion to help create a culture where innovation can thrive, while the London committee has expanded from 3 to 10.
Bobbie has a passion for people and community, evident in her capacity as the colleague engagement representative of the UK Charity committee and member of the women's and LGBT+ networks at XL Catlin. She has been the co-chair of the Associate Board of the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation since it launched its London division 2 years ago, combining the collective support of the industry to make a positive impact in the community. She promotes diversity and inclusion as key catalysts for innovation, sharing her experiences as a young woman in technology at school outreach events and with anyone who will listen!
Her spare time is spent participating in a variety of networks, supporting charitable activities and salsa dancing.
Katrina Young | Katrina Young Consulting (KYC) Digital
Katrina’s 18+ years of extensive marketing experience as a Strategist/Consultant include working on behalf of Research Houses as a usability tester, market researcher and focus group facilitator, managing consumer interviews with clients such as Tefal, Experian, Coutts, Moschino, Vodafone, Volkswagen, Kia, Jaguar, BMW, Sony BMW Mini, Department of Health, HSBC, Persil, Muller Light, Mcvities, Disneyland Paris, Candy and Candy, Levis, Diesel, American Tobacco, AOL, EE, T-Mobile, Verizon and Investec as well as more on Research, Marketing, Focus groups and Advertising campaigns.
She holds a Prince 2 Project Management certificate, a Degree in Marketing & Advertising with a certificate in Teaching and Lecturing with the City & Guilds. She is currently studying Robotics and Robotic Process Automation.
Nadia Johnson | Thales UK
I am Nadia Johnson, 21 year old software engineer for Maritime Mission Systems Thales UK, working on SONAR processing. My current position is one of four third year software degree apprentices, where I study my degree part time alongside my job. I work with languages such as Java and C++ and for the first project at Thales, I had to teach myself python. My role doesn’t only revolve around constant programming, but requires a key understanding of the systems you’re working on.
I’ve taken it upon myself to introduce new innovative ideas never considered before in my department which I demonstrated on my first project with Thales. I was given the role of evaluating and establishing a new automated test system based around a technology called Squish. The technology and the culture of such an automated testing system were new to the software team and department I work in.
I have now moved on and working with our biggest SONAR system S2076 updating the software for our Astute Class Submarines. I have taken it upon myself to investigate new technologies that we can use in future developments of the system. I can combine these aspects of my role to my University projects, giving me a complete understanding from both an industrial and academic view of the technical units and technologies.
In addition to my role, I have owned and led the following activities in Thales:
>Snapchat – I have been the Thales UK lead for snapchat usage. I helped create a snapchat channel for the Thales early careers site showing life as an apprentice at Thales for prospective employees.
>UK Apprentice Committee – I am one of six members of the Thales UK apprentice committee, regularly presenting to the UK management board.
>Work based groups- I am currently a champion for both our ‘Your Employee Society’ (International) and ‘Employee Engagement’ teams at the UK and regional level here at Thales.
>I am a mentor for our new intake of apprentices, encouraging them to get involved in the same types of activities I found myself doing throughout my apprenticeship. I am also there to provide support with University also.
Rebecca Fyans | Royal Navy
After travelling across Asia Pacific in 2004 I realised I wanted to do something different so I joined the Royal Navy in 2007 at the age of 27. I have worked in many different places HMS York, Camp Bastion hospital in Afghanistan and HMS Nelson before I found out I was pregnant in 2012. This is when my life changed for the better, forever.
Sebby was born in 2013 with Down Syndrome (DS). The Royal Navy allowed me to take a career break to dedicate my time to ensuring he had the best start in life. During this time I became closely involved with a children’s charity, the Portsmouth Down’s Syndrome Association. In the last few years whilst volunteering as a charity Secretary, Trustee and new parent liaison; I have delivered training to midwives on how to give a positive diagnosis of DS; lectured college students and educational professionals; spoken at charity events and high profile dinners; been filmed for the Channel 5 Great South Run; organised and taken part in multiple fundraising events; and featured in the Navy News on several occasions.
I am extremely passionate about ensuring new parents have a positive start on their family journey and are given the support they need in the early days following a diagnosis. I actively seek out military families with a child with DS and signpost them to groups and military charities that can support them.
I am part of a global initiative to spread positive awareness of DS, networking with local businesses and organisations UK wide. I thrive on both promoting the charity and the work that we do. I feel proud to be a part of a such a wonderful and close community.
After 4½ years I returned to the RN in June 2017 working in Legal Services at Navy Command HQ dealing with Service Complaints and have not looked back. I am proof that you can have a full-time career in the RN, a husband that is also serving in the military, 2 children- one with additional needs and a Trustee who aims to inspire women to stay in the Armed Forces after having children.
Bethany Kerr | Thales UK
From day one I knew where I wanted to be. A successful, independent and empowering young woman. I left college at 18 with A-Levels in Mathematics, Business Studies and Psychology, I did not want to take the traditional route to university and when I left college I took a year out. Thankfully the common perception of a gap year has substantially changed in the last decade. I was able to gain full time employment whilst commencing on a personal journey which has been instrumental in laying the foundations to develop me into the mature, sensible and compassionate person I am today in both work & life. After considering my options, I knew I wanted to embark on an apprenticeship scheme and I have grown up with family working in both the engineering and defence industry. This led to me successfully gaining an apprenticeship role at Thales & taking the bold decision to relocate to the city of hard work ethic and hub of activity that is Manchester. My current title is a Project Planning and Controls Apprentice.
Samantha Neath | BAE Systems
I, unlike most of my peers, chose not to go to university so my working life began quite a bit earlier than others and my introduction to employment was not via the usual graduate route. I started my career in IT recruitment, which I did for about 3 years; I joined in a support role, but then moved into recruiting, account management and then team leader.
I then wanted to make a change into resource management, so applied for a vacancy with Lockheed Martin UK, who I had actually worked with previously in the recruitment agency. I was successful and was hired as the Resource Manager on a large government IT programme (c.300 people). The programme was a consortium between Lockheed Martin (as the prime), BAE Systems (or what was Detica at the time) and Logica, so the role involved working with the other two organisations as well as recruitment agencies and the HR teams within Lockheed. After almost 2 years in post, the programme contract came to an end so I decided to make another move, both in my job but also physically to London.
In 2015 I joined BAE Systems Applied Intelligence as an Operations Manager, managing the resourcing function across multiple clients and projects in our National Security account in London. After 12 months in the operations team, I wanted to make a change to work in a client-facing role and I was lucky enough to be able to make an internal move into the Business Analysis practice. In early 2016 I took on my first project role in our National Security client group, working as part of a business change team delivering a new IT system to customers and users across the UK. My next project role was in the commercial team supporting a multi-procurement programme within the Home Office, before I moved back into National Security.
In my current project I work in the resourcing work stream to set up and staff a new government body. This has allowed me to bring together all my previous resourcing and recruitment experience, with my more recent knowledge and understanding of the client landscape. It is definitely the most challenging, yet interesting, project I've ever worked on and I am looking forward to it's completion in 2019.
Last year I also took on a voluntary role of leading the LGBT employee resource group, OutLink. in Applied Intelligence. With the support of OutLink and other colleagues, I have managed to successfully launch the Allies programme, communicate key LGBT dates, hold networking and social events, work with our clients on LGBT matters and grow the network by over 20 times in less than a year. I have also agreed to take on the role of co-chair for the network across wider BAE Systems (about 33,000 people in the UK), which I will be starting in June / July this year.
Caroline Gadsby-Bruce | Accenture
Studying Aerospace Engineering in Liverpool prepared me well for my first role at Accenture; based in the factory of an Aerospace manufacturer in the North-West! Since joining Accenture in 2012, I have worked within Technology Consulting in Aerospace and Defence. My main focus area is the implementation of multispeed (agile elements) into large ERP transformation programmes to improve performance. I love using skills from my engineering and consulting background to fix client problems with such a tangible product.
Harjinder Kaur | PwC
Dr Harjinder Kaur is a research, monitoring and evaluation (M&E), and gender expert gained from working in the Government, NGO and private sector. At PwC, she works in the international development practice leading on M&E and gender. Previously she worked as an M&E and gender advisor at Plan International UK; a research/M&E and gender independent consultant in Africa and Asia including Deputy CEO for a local NGO in Cambodia; and as a UK Government Senior Gender Advisor to the Minister for Women and Equalities and Minister for International Development, where she represented the UK at the EU, US/UN, and the Commonwealth.
She has given numerous presentations and published extensively for academic, policy and practitioner audiences on gender and engaging men and boys for gender equality. She has an extensive record of community and professional engagement and been a Board Director and Advisor to a number of NGOs and charities such as Westminster Women’s Aid, Domestic Violence Intervention Project (DVIP), UN Women, MenEngage Alliance, and GREAT Initiative Great Men Advisory Panel. She is also the founder and director of www.menandboysforgenderequality.org The aim is to raise awareness of the need to, and to, engage men and boys in promoting gender equality and ending violence against women and girl.
For her gender work, she has been shortlisted for and won a number of awards including the Asian Women Achievement Award in 2017 for Public Service. Concurrently, whilst working full-time, she also completed a MA, MSc, PhD (on gender) and an Executive MBA.
Kirstie Watson | Accenture
As a Technology Consulting Manager within Accenture's Communications, Media & Technology industry group - Kirstie has led a variety of Technology Consulting programmes across a number of Accenture's Diamond Telco Clients in the UK. Since joining Accenture in 2014 from a background in Archaeology, Kirstie has dived headfirst into the world of Technology Consulting - and is now a Technology Consulting Practitioner with deep expertise in the Communications industry. Her experience ranges from managing programmes across Data Migrations, to Robotics Process Automation, GDPR Readiness and Offshoring - where she has helped her clients to manage security compliance issues, and to further realise significant operational improvements and savings through technology.
Kirstie is also a passionate advocate for Girls in STEM - where she looks to inspire the next generation of female Technology leaders - and is a leader in Accenture CMT's Gender Balance programme.