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.
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.
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.
Eiman Raza | EY
Eiman is a Senior Tech Consultant in EY’s FSO Capital Markets practice joining the firm as a graduate in 2018.
She is also currently the co-chair of the EY Muslim Community. In this role, Eiman leads 750+ global members in building an environment where people of all faiths and backgrounds can bring their true authentic selves to work every single day.
She has worked on several high-profile engagements with some of EY’s largest global clients, and as a result has constantly been recognised as an outstanding high-performer and a rising star in the technology space.
Passionate about diversity and inclusion, Eiman works to ensure those at EY feel like they belong – becoming one of the youngest co-chairs of a Community whilst still being a graduate and launching several new initiatives including the EYMC Women in Leadership series. Eiman is a regular public-speaker, and a mentor for several BAME/Muslim females across the UK. She speaks extensively on tech, inclusion, gender-parity, allyship and leadership.
Kathryn Tingle | Sainsbury's
Kathryn sits within tech leadership at Sainsbury’s as a Senior Technical Programme Manager.
She leads multi-million pound cross-functional technology programmes driving innovation sponsored by Sainsbury’s Chief Information Officer and the Chief Executive Officer's Board. She joined Sainsbury's over four years ago from Deloitte. She has a strategy consulting background including time spent at Gartner working on FTSE 100 companies transformation programmes. Kathryn joined Sainsbury’s from Deloitte in 2016 to lead a series of transformation programs, notably digitally integrating the company’s clothing and cosmetic beauty verticals into Argos after its acquisition, enabling new multi-million-pound revenue streams.
Promoted to the technology leadership team at the end of 2020, she brings along her unwavering focus on business and customer value and ensures the route towards it is as agile and efficient as possible. The digital and tech integration of Sainsbury’s clothing line, Tu Clothing, into Argos was the first major commercial project post-acquisition and earmarked as a unique customer and commercial opportunity. Both businesses brought substantial legacy technology and historical ways of working with them. Multiple disparate systems had to be integrated from end-to-end. For example, Sainsbury’s supply chain systems would need to show up on Argos’ network and financial reporting systems needed to be synced. Substantial integration and automation work was required to bring thousands of new products from one organisation to another while ensuring a seamless customer experience. Kathryn was at the heart of this large scale change, working with cross functional teams, unlocking issues. Kathryn was central to getting this programme over the line which now contributes to the bottom line revenue. Kathryn has now been recognised as “Top 20 Digital Transformation Innovators: Europe 2021” by Contino and TLA for this work.
Kathryn is the founder of “Non-techies Journey to Tech” which showcases trailblazers within tech who have come from a non-technical background. Kathryn is passionate about equalising access to tech for all, especially girls and women. Having a non-technical background and therefore not knowing how to code or not holding a STEM degree, comes up as a barrier for many girls and women when wanting to launch a tech career. Kathryn is committed to busting this myth and showing there's room for all to have a thriving tech career, if they choose.
Torgyn Erland | QuantumBlack
I am a Machine Learning consultant and Data Scientist, specialising in Algorithmic Transparency and Explainable AI.
As part of QuantumBlack, I am helping organisations worldwide to tackle some of their toughest problems with the power of data and advanced analytics. I am trusted to design, implement, and deploy innovative Machine Learning systems that support – in a safe and open way - decision makers from CEOs to nurses alike.
My background is in Computer and Information Engineering. I come from a rural school in a post-Soviet country, where in early 00s power outages were getting in the way of learning coding and sub-zero indoor temperatures caused the ink in pens to freeze. From this position, I feel very privileged to be representing in this prestigious award all those dreamers in science and technology who had to break down language, geopolitical, socio-economic, gender and other identity barriers.
I never could have imagined that my strive for academic excellence would bring me this far along my dreams. While studying towards the Bachelors’ degree, I earned the title of “IT/Computer Science Undergraduate of the Year” in a UK nationwide competition. My alma-mater is Warwick, where I have won numerous accolades for “Outstanding Academic Performance”, as well as my involvement in frontline student initiatives, such as Green Gown Award for building one of the world’s largest DIY wind turbines on a university campus, or setting up a Machine Learning bootcamp for fellow students in our Australian partner university.
It was during research for my Ph.D in Applied Machine Learning that I began to appreciate the real-world impact that advanced analytics can have. I collaborated with the local NHS trust and a medical school in Oxford, deploying Machine Learning to assist doctors with clinical decision making, harnessing biomedical data to highlight which treatments would be most effective. This grew into a variety of applications, from modelling how likely kidney transplants were to be accepted or rejected, to prediction models for a patient’s risk of developing diabetes over ten years.
In 2016 I won McKinsey’s Next Generation Women Leaders award and founded an outreach initiative that aimed to inspire and enable rural schoolchildren to learn programming. Ever since, I view myself proudly as a teacher. I teach computers and humans to learn complex patters from simple observations and data. My personal dream is to empower talented underrepresented youth from developing world to become the future IT-professionals that would shape a more open, accessible, and creative technology sector.
Hosanna Hali | The Tech Cornr
Hosanna graduated from Cardiff University with an undergraduate degree in Business Management in 2016 and a Master's Degree is Computing and IT Management in 2018.
Hosanna started her career at Microsoft in September 2018 as a Technology Strategist in the Public Safety and National Security industry. Her role as a Technology Strategist was to be the digital CTO and trusted advisor for her customers by supporting them with the planning and execution of their digital strategy, she led the implementation of Microsoft technologies across 16 enterprise customers by orchestrating technical virtual teams across each product area of Microsoft to drive consumption of products and revenue.
In December 2020, Hosanna was offered and accepted to role of Azure Specialist in the Education space. She is now the product lead for Azure services across education customers and she supports them with their journey to the cloud and their adoption of Azure services.
Hosanna has participated in many activities to champion diversity and inclusion and empowers young women to believe that they can also begin a career technology. Hosanna has keynoted at events run by organisations like Coders of Colour and Color in Tech to speak about her experience and share knowledge with young people from her community.
Hosanna has also recently started her own platform called The Tech Cornr which she uses to give advice to women about how to start a career in Tech.
Arka Raina | IBM
Arka is a Consultant at IBM. She specialises in designing and delivering inclusive products/services via Agile and human-centred design methodologies, and leads teams to deliver this digital transformation.
Passionate about Tech for Good, outside of her day job she is a Design & Delivery Lead for the IBM Call For Code Racial Justice Challenge, leading a global team to design a solution starter that addresses systemic racism for diverse representation, to be deployed externally. She is also a core team member of IBM’s BAME employee network, delivering various initiatives for increased diversity, equity and inclusion at IBM, its clients and wider society. In particular, she has facilitated client roundtables to discuss DE&I strategy, organised a social media campaign to show Black STEM role models for Black History month, and has organised a mentoring scheme to match BAME early professionals with senior mentors.
Outside of work, Arka likes to participate in hackathons to design solutions for social good. She was a Design Lead for the Code First Girls 'Hack from Home' challenge last year where she and her team designed and built a fake news checking website. This year, she participated in the joint Code First Girls and Financial Conduct Authority Economic Empowerment Techsprint to design a solution to tackle financial abuse which disproportionately affects women. Arka has volunteered as a web development instructor for Code First: Girls to upskill 25 female university students and increase gender parity in the technology industry. She also writes articles and blogs at LMFNetwork, a non-profit that upskills 35,000+ womxn and underrepresented groups into tech, business and entrepreneurship. She is a design mentor at ADPList.org, where she mentors 20 junior professionals/career changers who have been affected by the pandemic to further their design careers. In particular, she reviews portfolios and CVs, advises on best practice design principles and advocates for building inclusive and culturally-sensitive products/services.
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.
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.