Claire Curran | Linaker
I’m the MD. I’m 38 and the only female MD of a sole M and E business in the UK. We have over 100 engineers (HVAC -combustion, f gas, electrical and fabric)
I manage the entire business completing both maintenance activities and projects.
We are 26 years old operate in the commercial sector supplying services to Amazon, Whitbread, Whetherspoons, RPC, Sucdens to mention just a handful of our 500 strong client base)
I have grown the business by 50% in just 2 years.
I also, with my superwoman pants on look after 3 children (Zeph 2, Jorgie 5 and Milan 14) with my husband of 10 years. I am originally from Stoke on Trent but now reside in Kent.
I am the first female non exec board member of BESA. Where I help to promote the engineering industry. Getting involved in curriculum for apprentices and the development of SFG20.
I have worked in facilities and hard service engineering since the age of 19. I started my working life at GSH, one of the then leading UK providers of commercial engineering services in the UK, I moved to SES (now Wates) and then Thames engineering (purchased by Rentokil Initial now Integral) I was a solution manager helping to provide clients with bespoke service solutions to overcome their building challenges. Sort of like a QS in construction terms.
I won FM excellence in a major project with BIFM (now IWFM) in 2010 having transitioned from build to operation the HO of Johnson & Johnson medical in the UK.
My first director role was for ISS looking after professional service contracts (Stanley Morgan, A&O, Deutsche bank) at 30.
I then moved to Kier where I operated a large business unit of key account across all FM services including engineering circa £150m, I was shortlisted for leader of the year in the construction awards.
I have a NEBOSH General cert and a welding qualification (i’ve never used it) I also have a HND and MBA. So I am a business women in STEM not a grass roots engineer.
I am very technically knowledgeable but the majority of my craft has been learnt from the grass roots of operating buildings and pricing large corporate contracts - my largest win being leading the UK component of Barclays at £153m.
Therefore my knowledge comes from actually operating and “hanging about plant rooms for too long“ fixing building issues for prestigious clients.
I am extremely passionate about the industry, which has been so very good to me, the built environment and the impact the way we service our buildings has on our general quality of life. Buildings are pretty cool too!
I would love to utilize this accolade to further promote how much our sector rocks and be a positive role model for how exciting it is to work in our field and what you can achieve! It would also be great to shout out to some of the people who have supported me fearlessly along the way.
Ana Perez | Oracle
I am currently Senior Director at Oracle’s Consulting UK & Ireland business.
I am responsible for managing the operational efficiencies of the UK Consulting Business, leading the overall UK headcount capacity planning as Oracle continues to see dramatic shifts in the market and the skills required to support these changes. I am also responsible for the commercial relationship with 3rd party suppliers and for the UK-wide team communication as well as a number of initiatives that have impact across teams. One of those initiatives is our graduate program which I originally set-up and now I have oversight of, this program has hired over 250 professionals since its inception, it am very proud to see people coming out of this program to become our top talent in the team. I am particularly proud to have driven the program to gender parity.
I wanted to create a more gender-balanced workplace which led me to take on the leadership of Oracle women’s network (OWL) to to support the growth and development of current and emerging women leaders which I have taken to new heights since taking over.
I am also a trustee and company secretary for Smart Works Reading, a charity that supports women to return to employment by providing high quality interview clothes, styling and interview coaching to women in need. I have actively helped the charity get established since starting in 2015 through my trustee oversight and fundraising initiatives. The charity has helped over 400 women find employment in the Thames Valley area since starting.
Jennie Koo | Capital One
Jennie specialises in Risk Management and is currently the Head of Operations Risk Management at Capital One.
Throughout her career, Jennie has undertaken a range of roles from Credit Risk Management, Risk Transformation projects to a high profile role in Risk Performance conducting risk assessments on executives and business areas for demonstrating compliance to CRD IV and remuneration principles, and lastly Interim Head of the Chief Risk Officer’s office in a large corporate banking environment.
Jennie balances her day job with a myriad of volunteering work including a role on the Board of Women in Banking & Finance (WIBF), a non-profit organisation run by volunteers for the promotion and advancement of women in the financial services industry. Jennie founded and now Co-Chairs the WIBF regional branch in Birmingham, recently set up the Manchester Branch and is now working on a branch in Belfast. Through this, she supports a far wider audience and multiple organisations with their gender agenda through providing personal development workshops, access to influential senior leaders, and mentoring and networking opportunities. She is also driving an initiative to bring male ambassadors on board to leverage the support of others by hosting WIBF’s International Men’s Day to further the agenda of inclusivity.
In addition to her work with WIBF, Jennie is an advisory board member to the Aston University Enactus team, and mentors with the Prince’s Trust where she proactively supports the pipeline development and challenge of social mobility into Financial Services, enabling young people to succeed and achieve their full potential.
In her previous role at RBS, Jennie was Global Chair of the Multicultural Network as well as the Birmingham Regional Chair for the bank’s women's network, which boasts more than 12,000 members, the primary focus of which is to supporting female colleagues with the skills and guidance they need to reach their potential.
Jennie’s recent move to Capital One was partly driven by their internal D&I programme and their proactive presence through Women in Tech alongside their Corporate & Social Responsibility programmes. Since joining Capital One, Jennie has supported in the continued development of their inclusion agenda with an intersectionality lens. She recently hosted an Inclusion session for her leadership team to start a wider consideration of inclusion such as culture and age crossed with gender; enabling leaders to think differently about potential biases. She has also recently been appointed as the UK lead for their Women’s Resource Group – EmpowHer. Through this and her passion for inclusion, she is actively involved with working to raise awareness of diversity through newly established resource groups for Mental Health and Ethnicity.
Her passion for wider female inclusion spreads across both her day to day activities and her volunteering work, but she has always been able to link it in with her day job in Risk. Previously it was an imperative as part of her role on compliance and assessment against the Remuneration Code, now it is embedded in all risk work through Operational Risk and Risk Culture which inevitably features inclusion and an organisation’s approach and commitment to driving progress.
Jennie has received several industry accolades for her contribution to diversity in financial services including most recently the HERoes 50 Women Future Leaders 2019 list and has been recognised in the EMpower Top 50 Ethnic Minority Leaders list for two years in a row.
Lindsay Law | NatWest
Lindsay joined RBS in 2001 after completing a Honours degree in Psychology at the University of Edinburgh.
Starting in Technology Services as a technical analyst, she has moved into progressively more senior roles in project and programme management, then programme assurance, and is now Head of Audit in Retail Banking. Lindsay completed a part-time Masters in Information Systems, sponsored by the Bank; her research focused on women’s career experiences in a male-dominated environment. Passionate since a young age about equality, her research rekindled this interest, and she has become an evangelist of the message that businesses, universities, and politicians need to understand the barriers that even high-achieving women face, and do more to support them in overcoming them. Very active in the local community, she has been involved as office-holder in Parent Councils since her older daughter started nursery in 2006. She is chair of the Board of Connect an independent, national organisation for parents which influences policy development to support parental engagement in their children’s education. She is also a Board member of Scottish Women’s Aid, the leading policy and advocacy organisation in Scotland working to influence policy to enable the eradication of violence against women and children. She is also on the board of the National Youth Choir of Scotland. She is determined to be a voice for change, ensuring that decisions taken within the organisations she work in have fairness and equality at their heart. As co-chair of RBS/Natwest Women network she is a visible and vocal champion of women and their potential within RBS/Natwest.
Sarah Owen-Vandersluis | KPMG
I grew up in a rural part of Canada, leaving home at the age of 17 to attend the London School of Economics. I excelled academically, achieving a first (the only women in my class to do so) and then undertaking a PhD.
I joined KPMG in 2005 as an analyst. I was attracted by the range of consulting projects, the opportunity to add value specifically to the public sector through Government consulting – and because all of my interviewers at every stage were women.
Since 2005, I have led large strategy consulting projects focused on helping Government better leverage private sector capabilities (e.g. through joint ventures or improved contracting)
From 2014-2017 I was based in Spain, where I had the privilege of working as the Strategy lead for KPMG’s Global Deputy Chairman.
I have been a Partner since 2014, focused on Public Sector and Infrastructure Strategy. Since earlier this year, I am also the Lead for Future Mobility.
Anya Navidski | Voulez Capital
Anya is the Founding Partner at Voulez Capital – Europe’s First VC fund for female founders – providing Seed and Series A capital for high growth businesses.
Currently women get less than 1% of growth capital and Voulez Capital is working to redress this imbalance.
Having started her career with the likes of Goldman Sachs, PwC and NERA, she became an unrepentant entrepreneur, with almost twenty years of experience building businesses in multiple sectors and geographies, from running a £250m renewable energy venture and founding an incubator for social impact businesses, to turning around multiple tech ventures on behalf of investors. She has advised a European government on setting up and execution of an innovative “SME Champions” fund, acted as an advisor to JP Morgan in the area of renewable energy and innovative funding instruments and was a Director of the INSEAD Centre for Entrepreneurship.
Anya is an Investor in Residence at Google for Startups, the winner of the Women in Finance “Specialist Investor of the Year 2019” award and has been featured in many publications, including the Financial Times, Techworld and by the BBC.
She is the founder and champion of Fair Venture Principles, which overhaul how investors deal with and interact with female founders, fostering a funding relationship built on human relationships, decently, inclusiveness and fair play. In 2020, led by Anya, a number of other investors have also adopted Fair Venture Principles and joined the Pledge.
Rachel Murphy | Difrent
I started out as an interim who worked for Big 4 consultancies and then moved on to lead projects and then teams and businesses around IT/Digital and Business Transformation.
I have worked across the Public and Private Sector for companies like Kier as their Services Director and then Department for Education as their Chief Information Officer. I led the patient facing transformation of the NHS and then 26 months ago I set up my own company https://difrent.co.uk and we provide consultancy into the public and private sector building and designing services.
Judy Kawaguchi | Refinitiv
Judy Kawaguchi is a senior technology executive at Refinitiv, with a proven 20-year track record of leading large-scale global organisations through disruptive change and delivery of complex, business-critical programmes and business transformation enabled by technology and innovation.
She has held various CIO/head of technology roles working and living in Asia, US, and Europe, and joined Refinitiv last August as the Global Head, Programme Delivery & Enablement, leading all cross-technology programmes globally as they embark on their large-scale transformation and modernisation journey.
She has been passionate about moving the needle on the D&I agenda for over 15 years, especially for women in technology and multi-cultural ethnic groups. Judy actively mentors and coaches aspiring leaders and students to overcome ethnic and gender stereotypes and to turn their diverse experience into professional strength.
Judy also has a passion for change outside of her workplace. She was on the Board of Solace Women’s Aid for 8 years, and currently serves as their expert advisor. Judy is also the Founder of eCubed, a non-profit organisation, with the mission to Engage People to Empower Communities to End Violence across London, raising unrestricted funding for local non-profit organisations with an aim to build safer lives and strong futures free from sexual and domestic violence.
Alexandra Knight | Amey
She is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer, Fellow of the IMechE, Member of the IAM and a Trustee on the Board of the Women's Engineering Society.
Alex graduated top in her class with a 1st class Honours in Mechanical Engineering from Brunel University. She then went onto complete an MSc in Medical Engineering at Imperial College London. Alex's first job was working for a small start up medical engineering company and then she moved in engineering consultancy, working for Frazer-Nash Consultancy. She worked her way up to a position of Group Leader, leading a group of consultants delivering projects across a range of markets including healthcare, defence and power distribution. Alex then moved to Amey where she is now a Technical Director with Amey Strategic Consulting, specialising in asset management and systems engineering. She has led projects such as the implementation of Amey's cloud-based real-time remote condition monitoring system on the Forth Road Bridge crossing. Alex sits on the International ISO Committee for Asset Management (TC251) as part of a group of experts that represent the UK to develop the ISO standard for global development of the discipline. She is also a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor for Asset Management and Inclusive Professional Skills at Brunel University London.
April Pardoe | Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust
I am currently Executive PA to the CEO, Chairman and Director of Finance which involves a lot of diary and meeting management as these individuals work very hard, our Chairman is also chairman to a neighbouring hospital which necessitates a lot of coordination between me and his PA at the other Trust to ensure he meets all his obligations for both trusts.
My CEO operates an open door policy and likes to speak to staff at all levels regularly which means a lot of juggling around shift patterns etc. This is a highly confidential role and I am a valued part of the Executive team.
I supervise the executive team PAs which means I coordinate annual leave and cover. I am working hard to make the team work smarter not harder, collaborate more and support each other. I am a PHE trained Loggist for major incidents and am very proud to be a Mental Health First Aider for the Trust.
Over the course of my career I have always worked in either the public sector or the charity sector, both of which have been equally interesting and valuable. I have worked my way up from Administration Assistant to C Suite PA and now have over 10 years experience at this level. 1 am very proud of what I have achieved - the majority of my CPD and training has been self-funded; I am a member of EPAA and have been since the Association was founded and in June 2019 I became one of the first cohort to be awarded Practitioner status to reflect my commitment to the role and the CPD required to stay at the top of my game. I am passionate about the difference a good PA can make to an executive - you should be a second pair of eyes, ears and hands, a second brain, a confidante, a sounding board and a supporter. You can enable your exec to be the best they can be and allow them to lead while you manage.
I love my job because every day is different, I cover a lot of meetings and diary management but alongside that I can be dealing with research, projects, compliments coming into the trust, complaints and visitors ranging from patients to politicians and everything in between. As a PA you have to be 2 steps ahead and anticipate the needs of your execs as an NHS PA you have to be ready to deal with anything from lost property in the hospital to, complaints about parking and patients and visitors who have got lost on their way somewhere! I have also been involved in organising major events including AGMs, conferences and award ceremonies.
I work hard and I love my job - I like helping people and using my skills to help them be their best, I am a completer finisher which means I like to see a project through to the end and the impact it has.