Amali de Alwis | Code First: Girls
Amali de Alwis is CEO of Code First: Girls, a multi-award winning social enterprise that works with companies and women directly to increase the proportions of women in tech and entrepreneurship. They do this by running free and paid coding courses for men and women, by advising companies on tech talent, and by running a community of 5500+ women who are interested in tech. Over the past 3 years they’ve provided £2.5 million+ worth of free tech education, and taught 4000+ women how to code. They are the largest provider of free in person coding courses for women in the UK.
Amali previously worked as a consultant at PwC, which included a secondment to the World Economic Forum. Prior to this she was a senior research and strategy consultant at TNS Global.
Outside of the day job, she is a member of the steering committee at the Tech Talent Charter, a small business mentor through Start-up direct and CommonwealthFirst, a Tech London Advocate, and a fellow at the RSA.
Mohammed Zafran BEM | All 4 Youth & Community
Liz Dimmock | Women Ahead & Moving Ahead Group
Ruth Oshikanlu | Goal Mind Limited
Ruth Oshikanlu – Award-winning Queen’s Nurse, midwife and health visitor and parenting expert. She is the founding director of Goal Mind Limited, and has over 22 years track record in delivering secondary and primary health care services in the independent, statutory and voluntary sectors. She is an inspirational professional who is passionate about women and children having supported a vast amount of women from conception, birth and beyond.
Ruth is a published author of Tune In To Your Baby: Because Babies Don’t Come with An Instruction Manual; a holistic self-help parenting book that promotes maternal and infant mental health. She runs a private practice in London’s Harley Street supporting women who have had assisted conception or previous miscarriage to enjoy their pregnancy without fear.
Ruth is a champion for nurses, midwives and health visitors, enabling her colleagues to be better practitioners and deliver excellent standards of care to the women and children they serve. To date, she has penned over fifty articles in several nursing and healthcare journals that encourage colleagues to challenge their mindset and be proactive about finding solutions to problems at work.
Ruth was involved in developing the recent Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) pathway for The Department of Health/Public Health England for health visitors and school nurses. She regularly speaks at national conferences on issues affecting women such as FGM, domestic abuse, parenting.
Ruth is a a member of the Chief Nursing Officer Black and Minority Ethnic Advisory Group and uses these roles to influence policy and raise professional standards. In her spare time, Ruth volunteers as a mentor/coach for young girls with low self-esteem. She has been able to make an impact to women and children despite being a single parent to a 12 year old boy.
Ruth Grant | Hogan Lovells
Ruth Grant is a Board member and lead diversity Partner at Hogan Lovells. Over the last ten years, her global diversity agenda has created a cultural shift within the firm and transformed its reputation as a diversity pioneer.
Ruth is the founder and chair of the firm's Global Diversity and Inclusion and London Diversity Committees. She was the London Managing Partner from 2005-2009 and sole woman on the firm's International Executive Committee. She was previously a member of the firm's International Operations and New Partner Committees and was People Development Partner from 2009 to 2015.
As lead diversity Partner, Ruth has created and grown a comprehensive programme of activity to promote diversity globally, and many of her efforts have specifically focused around recruiting and developing women and other minority groups. Ruth is also a role model for gender equality externally and actively promotes diversity and inclusion throughout the legal profession. She is a member of the Solicitors Regulation Authority's Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee.
Ruth's efforts have been affirmed by the firm's many diversity rankings and awards, and last year she was awarded The Law Society's Woman Lawyer of the Year and BSN's Diversity Champion awards.
Dana Denis-Smith | First 100 Years
In 2014 I founded the First 100 Year project (www.first100years.org.uk), my business, funded initially and has helped coordinated since 2014. It all began with an image from 1982 – that of one woman surrounded by a group of 50 or so male partners marking the 100th anniversary of one of the City of London’s best known law firms. I was fascinated to understand how it felt to be the only woman and what her journey in the legal profession had been. I was anxious to ask her how it felt to be a lonely star? And I am delighted Dorothy Livingston, the woman in the middle, has embraced the project and shared her story with us all.
The aim of the First 100 Years project was ambitious and clearly defined from the outset: a 5 year project (2014-2019) to create the world’s first digital museum (www.first100years.org.uk) dedicated to the journey of women in law. It would include 100 video personal stories of women lawyers as well as hundreds of digitised artefacts and exclusive content to chart our own journey in the legal profession since 1919 to the present.
There’s no doubt that as I reflect on the project to date, we have achieved a lot: we have a great following on social media, have acquired partnership from all of the main legal bodies (including the Law Society and the Bar Council), we filmed numerous videos with lawyers from Cherie Booth QC to Baroness Hale and Dame Janet Gaymer. Our visitors to the project website spend an average 5 minutes reading our stories. It is about to expand into Australia/ France/Ireland with local chapters.
There’s something empowering about understanding one’s history and celebrating. Although the family tree for women in law goes back less than 100 years, it is for us all to bring each piece of the puzzle we possess to make the picture complete. If not for our sake, for the sake of the next generation of women in law who need to build on the confidence of the past to secure an equal future.
Sally Clark | Barclays
Brigid North | Reed Smith
Chuck Stephens | Google
Chuck is a recognized leader in Diversity and Inclusion (D&I). Leveraging more than a fifteen years’ of experience building, deploying, and managing D&I practices, Chuck delivers measurable, business-focused solutions that meet the demands of complex organizations. He has guided some of the world’s largest companies in addressing their D&I challenges while increasing their eminence as diversity leaders. He has deep experience establishing and governing broad-based D&I practices that are tailored to the needs of individual business units while leveraging knowledge across the organization.
He is a long standing champion of equity and equality for all. Creating pathways for organisations, leaders, and individuals to move from tactical to transformational is a hallmark of his career. This is achieved via building awareness, changing attitudes, and promoting behaviours to create new outcomes.
Established relationships with Fortune Magazine, Human Rights Campaign, Stonewall, Race for Opportunity, UN Women, Working Mother, OpportunityNow, OutStanding, The Guardian newspaper, and others have contributed to drive brand eminence and D&I impact.
