IB100 - Most influential BAME leaders in uk tech sector in 2019

Reshma Sohoni is Managing Partner of Seedcamp, the European seed fund she co-founded in 2007 with a strong belief that European entrepreneurs have the power to compete on a global scale. Seedcamp invests early in world-class founders attacking large, global markets and solving real problems using technology. The Seedcamp Nation includes more than 300 companies building breakout businesses that change the way we live, interact and buy and includes three European unicorns: TransferWise, Revolut and UiPath.

Reshma is passionate about the intersection of business and technology and has degrees in Engineering and Business from UPenn and M&T as well as an MBA from INSEAD. She describes starting Seedcamp as a “once in a lifetime opportunity and one that she jumped into with a strong desire to help the European founder realize global success.” Reshma is frequently listed as one of the most influential women in technology and VC and sits on the Digital Economy Council, working alongside the UK government and leading tech industry experts to provide policy advice to support tech startups and innovation in the UK. Reshma was recognised on Forbes Midas List for Europe as one of the most influential VCs on the continent in both 2017 and 2018.

Dr Claudia Natanson started her early career as a nuclear scientist, specialising in atomic spectroscopy and later in the field of Computer Science. To date she has spent over two decades working in the field of Information and Cyber Security. As Chief Security Officer and Cyber Security consultant she has developed and implemented security transformation programs globally for FTSE 100, Fortune 500 companies, and government. Her remit to embed security into the cultural fabric of organisations has included the responsibility for over 180 markets and up to 115 countries. She is recognised for her experience in security program development for the underpinning of complex digital transformations. Using a risk based platform her innovative approach is one of finding solutions that will align to business and strategic goals while supporting revenue and cost efficiencies. A registered European Commission Security and Cyber security expert, she has worked across many technical areas and European projects in the areas of electronic identities, cloud, digital agile development environments, mobile application security, biometrics and SCADA systems. Qualified at Masters and Ph.D. levels and a British Computing Fellow, she is a recognised industry security speaker, information and cyber security researcher.

Priya Prakash is designer-founder of award-winning D4SC – Design for Social Change.

A London based urban-tech R&D studio working with cities, infrastructure services and location data providers.

D4SC specializes in real-time collaborative systems combining human and machine intelligence (AI and machine learning) leveraging sensor and crowd-sourced data to develop collective intelligence systems and ethical algorithms making cities smarter, more human and anti-fragile inspired by nature, to co-solve urban problems and improve life in cities for everyone.

Prakash has been featured in IBM’s People for Smarter Cities, in FT, Sunday Times, BBC, Wired, Guardian and the Queen’s 2017 Honours list for award winning work in Chinese smart cities using data to improve public safety.

As BSI SmartCities standards contributor and external examiner at University of Dundee’s Social Digital, Prakash enjoys driving best practices across policy and education to shape the design, architecture and application of responsible purposeful technologies for systemic change.

Prior D4SC, Priya led global design teams launching affordable smart phones for Nokia and was lead-designer and co-inventor of BBC iPlayer with joint patents.

Dr Sam Shah is a Digital Health Advisor to a few technology suppliers. He was previously Director of Digital Development for NHSx. Sam has worked on a number of initiatives across the NHS, including the flagship project to digitise urgent care. He had two main portfolios spanning digital development of the health ecosystem and some national technology programmes. Sam is experienced in delivering transformation supported and enabled by digital technology, having worked on the launch of online shopping services and online banking systems. He has supported the development and adoption of a number of technology projects in England but has also worked with digital health start-ups from across the world. Sam is one of the inaugural members of the NHS Digital Academy, aimed at developing the digital leadership in the NHS. He is committed to the development of individuals from BAME backgrounds and has one of the most diverse teams in digital services. As a clinician with a background in primary healthcare and public health he is aware of the need to design services through a citizen-centric approach.

He has been championing an approach to digital transformation with a focus on users, their needs and improved outcomes.

A leading C-suite technologist, Jacky is recognised as a transformational global leader and a passionate advocate for women and BAME groups.

In late 2017, Jacky took civic leave from Microsoft to join HMRC as their Chief Digital Information Officer, leading one of the largest digitally-enabled transformations in Europe and the technology decisions underpinning HMRC’s EU Exit plans. Her strategy choices will help deliver HMRC’s ambition to become one of the most digitally-advanced tax authorities in the world by 2020.

She regularly speaks on leadership and digital transformation, the positive changes and the ethical implications brought about by technological advances, as well as the importance of creating an inclusive environment.

A long-time advocate of equal opportunities, her influence through her involvement with the Institute of Coding, techUK, City University of London, Year Up and WISE, is helping break down barriers to digital learning and employment.

She holds an honorary doctorate from Aston University; her recognitions include top BAME100, 100 Women to Watch, Computer Weekly Top 10 Women in Tech, Accountancy Age Top 10 Financial List 2019, Powerlist 100, and No.1 top UK tech influencer 2018.

She has recently returned to Microsoft as Chief Digital Officer & Corporate Vice President, Microsoft US.

Shaheen leads Accenture’s Health & Public Service Business in the UK and Ireland. Drawing on her experience as a Technology Leader in the Financial Services Industry, she leads a team that delivers transformational solutions across the public sector using new platforms and ways of thinking. As a ‘’hands on’’ practitioner, she has personally driven some of the most complex Global cross industry implementations in Public Services and Capital Markets. She is a recognised advisor to senior clients at the forefront of digital transformation; driving first-in-kind innovation from inception to execution.

Shaheen is a passionate campaigner for Inclusion & Diversity in the City, with a specific focus on Gender, Race and Social Mobility. She was identified in the Cranfield School of Management’s 100 Women to Watch, 2018 and is a board member of the Prince’s Trust, Business in the Community Race Leadership team. Shaheen is a regular guest lecturer at the LSE’S Global Masters programme, focusing on organisational culture and next generation leadership. Outside of work she is a co-founder of Outsiders, a not-for-profit organization focused on the intersection of youth education and digital technology.

From child prodigy to MBE, Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon is Head Stemette and co-founder of STEMettes, the award-winning social enterprise inspiring the next generation of females into STEM roles via a series of prestigious events and opportunities. One of the youngest ever to be awarded a Master’s degree in Mathematics & Computer Science by the University of Oxford, aged 20, Anne-Marie, unsurprisingly, continued to soar. In 2018 alone, she was listed among the top 50 women in tech in the world by Forbes, voted the 5th most influential woman in IT by Computer Weekly and was the recipient of the prestigious Barclays UK ‘Woman of the Year’ award. In recognition of her influence and achievements, Anne-Marie was awarded an MBE in the 2017 New Year’s Honours for services to young women and STEM sectors. As of June 2017, she is now Honorary Fellow at Keble College, Oxford. Not only a champion of getting women into STEM positions, Anne-Marie has previously worked with Goldman Sachs, Hewlett-Packard and Deutsche Bank, amassing a wealth of experience. A recognised thought-leader in the tech space, sees her speaking at numerous keynote events such as SXSW and Founders Forum and to clients across the globe including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Lufthansa and ASOS.

Gordon Sanghera was co-founder of Oxford Nanopore, together with Hagan Bayley and IP Group. He was appointed CEO in June 2005. He brings over 20 years’ experience in the design, development and global launch of disruptive platform sensor technologies.

Dr Sanghera’s PhD in bioelectronics sensing was followed by a career at MediSense an Oxford spin-out that delivered a new generation glucose technology to the market. Following the acquisition of MediSense by Abbott Laboratories Dr Sanghera held both UK and US VP and Director-level positions, including VP World Wide Marketing, Research Director and Manufacturing Process Development Director. Before its acquisition by Abbott, Gordon led the R&D of Medisense Inc. where he was instrumental in the launch of several generations of blood glucose bio-electronic systems for the consumer and hospital medical markets. He has also developed and validated production processes to meet with the regulatory requirements for USA and Europe.

Gordon has a PhD in bio-electronic technology and a degree in Chemistry.

David is RSA’s CIO for Group, UK and International. He leads the company’s long-term technology / transformation vision, and is responsible for technology, cyber and compliance. He also chairs the RSA global technology community.

David’s key strengths include responsibility for everything that underpins the smooth running of the business. This includes all aspects of Technology, IS Change and IS Operations.

Prior to joining RSA David worked for Royal Bank of Scotland, as Head of Technology and Operations within Commercial & Private Banking. Looking after Back Office operations for a number of brands including Coutts, Ulster Bank, NatWest, Lombard and Invoice Finance. Adding operational rigor to strategic decisions, working with the leadership teams to devise and implement growth and efficiency objectives, identifying current and emerging risks / opportunities, then taking the lead directing transformation programmes.

David’s prior experience includes Capital Markets COO/CAO at Deutsche Bank, Retail Chief Operating Officer at Close Brothers, EMEA Chief Information Officer at GE Capital for B2B Financial Services and Corporate Finance. He has also held Senior Technology and Transformation roles at LCH Clearnet.

David operates in Europe, Middle East and North America.

Obum joined DeepMind in September 2019 and currently leads educational programs and partnerships aimed at significantly increasing access to Artificial Intelligence (AI) education globally and building a more diverse and inclusive AI community.

Before DeepMind, Obum spent over 12 years at Google managing education programs across many countries and with a range of partners from universities to NGOs and governments. Most recently, Obum was leading Google’s computer science (CS) and digital skills education programs in EMEA to ensure that every student has access to the collaborative, coding, and technical skills that unlock opportunities in the classroom and beyond–no matter what their future goals may be.

Obum is on the management board of Computing At School – a UK organisation that provides leadership and strategic guidance to all those involved in computing in schools. Obum is also a member of the Digital Skills Partnership Computing in Schools delivery group – set up by the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sports to support teachers to gain the knowledge and skills to teach the new computing curriculum in England effectively.

Obum Ekeke holds a Higher National Diploma from Yaba College of Technology, Lagos; a Master of Science degree from City, University of London; and an MBA from Imperial College Business School, London.

A 2018 Sunday Times Rising Stars in Healthcare award winning operational strategy expert, consulting expert, blockchain advocate, technology enabled clinical trials (direct to patients/Virtual Trials) and patient engagement thought leader with over 17 years in the NHS on commission by the DOH and in Industry (Hoffman La-Roche, Amgen, ALMAC, ICON and Biogen). An R&D transformation change champion and DIA Patient Engagement Voluntary Community Leadership. Far-reaching and varied knowledge across a broad range of Phase I, II, III and IV trials including Immunology, Neurology, IBD, Rare Disease and Gene Therapy. Experience across creation and execution of successful strategies for trials protocols and CRO oversight, patient and site feasibility, technologies such as eCOA and IVRS, optimal drug packaging and administration concepts, mapping the patient journey, planning and executing effective global site and patient engagement campaigns using direct to patient methods, leading and coaching remote and complex global teams. Founder of a non-profit called Emerging Markets Quality Trials (EMQT) that aims to advance technology enabled clinical trials using AI and blockchain in emerging markets. I am a professional international Speaker and Trainer and also an Allbrights Academy Ambassador and mentor women in Berkshire.

Ajay Bhalla is President of Cyber & Intelligence at Mastercard and serves on the company’s global management committee. His team develops product solutions that enhance safety, security and experience for consumers, merchants, partners and governments around the world.

Under Ajay’s guidance, Mastercard has transformed from a pure-play financial services provider and payments network – that securely and conveniently processes over 75 billion transactions each year – to a technology solutions leader in many different fields.

Ajay is a passionate advocate of collaborative digital platforms that enable AI, biometrics, cybersecurity and digital identity to deliver positive social impact as we move into an age of people-literate technology. He views ethical considerations as core to future business success and is a firm believer in moving the conversation from compliance to ‘doing the right thing’.

Ajay is a CEME (Council on Emerging Market Enterprises) Senior Fellow at The Fletcher School at Tufts University and a Connection Science Fellow at MIT.

Ajay sponsors Mastercard’s Girls4Tech signature education programme, which drives STEM interest among girls around the world. Now in its fifth year, the programme has reached more than 400,000 girls across 25 countries.

Ali has more than 17 years experience in tech engineering, and has worked in payment for the past 10 years, most recently at PayPal and Wonga. Ali is a serial innovator in the payment and tech industry having submitted 16 patent applications and launched many products including PayPal Here during his time at PayPal. Ali’s passion for coding and technology started when he was 15 when he learned coding in Quick Basic and learned how to assemble computers from parts. Later on Ali went to one of top universities in Iran to study Software Engineering and had different part time jobs in different tech industries (Network, Hardware and Software) during his study. Ali moved to the UK from Iran in 2009 and started his career in the UK almost from scratch in Payment Tech and has established himself as a tech leader within payment and FinTech industry.

Amali de Alwis is the UK Managing Director of Microsoft for Startups, which supports leading B2B tech startups grow with Microsoft support. Prior to this she was CEO of Code First: Girls – a multi award-winning training company focused on increasing diversity in tech.

Outside of the day job, Amali is a Board member at Ada National College for Digital Skills, a member of the D&I Board at the Institute of Coding, and Advisory Board member at the Founders Academy. She is a founding member at Tech Talent Charter, and a CommonwealthFirst business mentor.

Amali is a London Tech Week Ambassador and Judge for the Lord Mayor’s Dragon Awards; and was recently inducted into Computer Weekly’s Hall of Fame in recognition of her lifelong commitment to the industry. She was additionally awarded an MBE in the New Year’s Honours list 2019 for Services to diversity and training in the Tech Industry.

Andy Ayim is an author, product leader and business builder. He is currently an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with OneTech and working on an Angel Investing school to train diverse operators how they can get started in investing in startups lead by diverse teams. He was the Managing Director of Backstage Capital, where he led their London Accelerator programme and they invested almost ¢2.5m into 25 startups. He has worked in a range of product roles in companies such as WorldFirst, acquired by Ant Financial for $700m.

He is passionate about creating pathways into business for people with potential from low income backgrounds. He serves on the Boards of YSYS and Mixtape Madness – a startup which is a market leader in the music scene he cofounded with his brothers and friends.

Andy believes talent is widely distributed but opportunity isn’t.

Anisah is the founder and CEO of 23 Code Street- a trailblazing and award-winning coding school for all women and non-binary people that gives them the tools and skills that are required to build our future. They strongly believe that our workforce must represent the society we live in. 23 Code Street teaches digital skills to women in the slums of Mumbai with a percentage of the profits they make.

Previously, Anisah was the Director of the London arm of Backstage Capital- a venture capital fund Investing in underrepresented founders, namely women, people of colour and LGBTQ+ founders and, prior to that, was Operations Director at corporate innovation firm, The Bakery.

This year, Anisah was named as part of Forbes’ 30 under 30 list. Creative Review also named her one of their Creative Leaders 50.

Anya is the co-founder of Syrona Women, a leading digital health startup looking to democratise women’s health. She previously worked in lifescience venture capital as one of the very few female investors in deeptech businesses. Prior to that she worked at Goldman Sachs in London and also for the Investment Banking arm of the European Union in Luxembourg. She is an alum of Cambridge and Oxford University. She advocates for diversity in entrepreneurship and is passionate about mentoring female students to take up STEM subjects.

As Group COO, Aseem leads strategic initiatives and delivery for cloud products at IMImobile, covering product propositions, roadmaps, marketing, presales, operations and customer support globally.

IMImobile is a leading enterprise cloud software provider that enables automation of communications between enterprises and their consumers, with several FTSE 100 companies and household brand names as customers.

Prior to IMImobile, Aseem co-founded and built one of the largest online aggregators of tours and activities globally- isango!, a leader in the tours and activities sector, acquired by TUI Travel Plc in 2013.

Aseem started his technology career after an MBA from INSEAD. He joined Cluster Consulting, a telecom and internet focused strategy and operations consulting firm, now part of PWC. Aseem led projects in Europe, N. America, and Asia, driving implementation of new initiatives, business planning, data services and marketing strategy for his clients.

Prior to his MBA, Aseem built an Architecture practice in Mumbai. As an Architecture student, Aseem won a number of accolades in photography and for research projects, including pioneering research on the unique architecture of Malana, a tribal settlement by Alexander’s soldiers in 300 B.C.

Aseem enjoys mentoring start-up businesses in angel investor and advisory capacity.

Azeem Akhtar, is currently CTO at BT Global where he engages with multi-national clients at C-Level to articulate BT’s vision for digital transformation to deliver the client’s desired business outcomes. After graduating from King’s College London in Mathematics and Business Management, Azeem went on to complete a Masters in Sea-Use Law, Economics and Policy Making at The London School of Economics. He commenced his professional career working first in the oil and gas industry before moving into the telecommunications industry just as the dot.com era was really taking off. Azeem has held senior commercial, finance, business development and technology leadership roles to date and has extensive international experience where he has utilised his multi-lingual skills.

A committed sportsman, Azeem plays cricket, football, squash and tennis and is a die-hard Liverpool FC supporter. He currently holds a non-executive director role as Chairman of Active Essex and passionately leads the charge against physical inactivity to improve the quality of life for all people, of all ages in Essex. Azeem has also recently joined the Board of Sport England.

In 2016, Azeem was named in the UK’s Top 100 Most Influential BAME Business Leaders. Azeem is married with 3 children.

Bayo Adelaja has been awarded by Durham, Harvard and Oxford University’s Business Schools for her work to create and foster opportunities for under-served communities through technology. 3 communities/initiatives she designed to support underrepresented people in tech, were named “Top in Europe” by FT backed digital news platform, Sifted.

She was once the youngest person working in a professional capacity at the House of Commons and has enjoyed a 10 year entrepreneurship journey during which she has helped over 2000 individual founders build better businesses. Bayo was recently been invited by Bill and Melinda Gates to join Goalkeepers 2019 after excelling at work funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

An international speaker, having spoken in stages across 3 continents, Bayo currently works with high-profile organisations to create movements that spark a massive shift in the discussion around African tech ecosystem and the UK’s underrepresented population (people of colour and low socioeconomic background). She is Chief Do-er at Do it Now Now where she works tirelessly government departments, charities and corporations to create campaigns and programs that edify and equip communities of colour through entrepreneurship.

Bill Liao is a Chinese Australian entrepreneur who has grown unicorn companies in both the southern (Davnet) and northern (Xing) hemispheres. A General Partner of the global investment fund, SOSV, he founded and is Managing Director of the world’s first bio-tech accelerator programme, RebelBio, at Imperial College, London. He is co-founder of CoderDojo (now part of RaspberryPi) which currently has more than 12,000 volunteers running coding clubs for children in 93 countries. As Chair of the Social Tech Trust (formerly Nominet) Bill is instrumental in changing lives through tech. A keen innovator, Bill values the experience and aspirations that BAME communities bring to the development space. As a child bullied at school for his dual heritage, he found salvation in tech where the way one looked or the place one came from was immaterial to success: “Tech enables the young. It is a force for good. You can change the world in minutes.

Snr Business Development Manager, Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Cloud (AIIC), Microsoft. Bunmi covers strategic engagements in Europe and emerging markets, building technology partnerships leveraging Cloud, IoT, data analytics, AI, cognitive services and emerging technologies. She also works with the Airband Initiative, helping to drive affordable access connectivity solutions, and regulatory relations.

She advocates for “technology for good” and diverse digital inclusion, whilst sitting on the Women@microsoft UK Board as the spokesperson for underrepresented ethic groups. Through her own Global Future Observer programme, she aims to demystify industry by encouraging the inclusion and participation of young people in events that shape their future.

A dynamic public speaker and thought leader Bunmi has addressed the UN, technology conferences and emerging market trade events about bias in AI, responsible technology in emerging markets, affordable internet access, digital inclusion, being a Women in Tech and Leadership.

Previously, Bunmi managed a UK/US Media Licensing team that licensed content for Microsoft business groups including Xbox and MSN and led complex music collecting society negotiations.
She has a BSC in Law and Psychology, an MSc in Intellectual Property and is a qualified Lawyer, specializing in Intellectual Property protection. Bunmi is married with four children.

Cec believes digital technology can drive social change and business benefit so created the Slenky brand and platform to better understand how we connect 2 important audiences; business and young people. Guiding Slenky through extensive testing, Cec has focused on creating a product for a future where personalised mobile content is the standard for business communication.

Cec developed a content platform for young people to explore businesses and access opportunities often perceived to be out of reach but relevant to their Passions. Slenky has created new channels for branded content, helping business to interact, build relevance and use big data to drive meaningful engagement with a future workforce and consumer.

Involving global brands such as the FA, Sony and Microsoft in testing, Cec has also developed partnerships with key stakeholders such as Cities and Councils, Chambers of Commerce, Universities, Colleges and Schools, addressing issues from Diversity and Inclusion to Future Skills needs. Past Slenky users are building careers and businesses in sectors diverse as advertising, sport, music and aviation.

Slenky’s test platforms have received award nominations including the Mobile Marketing Association ‘Smarties’ Awards. The team (+ Cec) is currently working towards the commercial launch of Slenky 3.0, partnering global tech company e-Spirit.

Cecil is the UK Managing Director for global Technology company Hiberus, and also a Director at Foundervine, a social enterprise that helps diverse individuals create startups from scratch. He has spent the last 9 years of his career working in the technology industry starting off as a technical service desk analyst and working his way through various consulting roles to become a partner at his current firm. Cecil has worked for major big 4 consultancies including Accenture and EY on projects at international corporations such as Shell, RBS, and Barclays. In his current position at Hiberus, he is responsible for UK operations and has oversight of teams of people in software development, business development, and marketing to further the success of the company. At Foundervine he is focused on strategy, business development and technology initiatives.

Chaitanya (Chai) is the Executive Vice President and Head of Europe for Zensar Technologies and is a part of Zensars’ Management Council. An experienced business leader with significant success in the Industry, Chai has built a strong base in Financial services, Manufacturing, Retail and Telecom industries.

With over 22 years in the IT and Process Outsourcing Industry, Chai has experience in managing business in Europe, US, India, Middle East, Singapore and Australia.

Prior to joining Zensar, he served a 9 year tenure at iGATE as the European head of the Manufacturing, Retail & Distribution and GE businesses. His responsibilities included P&L, HR, Recruitment and Analyst/Advisory Relationships, with a keen focus on large structured deals. He has previously held senior roles in Xansa and Hexaware.

Chai is evangelising the efforts for taking the Zensar digital mandate and ‘Return on Digital’ across the market in Europe. He is also a board member of a non-profit social organisation in the UK which is actively involved in children education, he is passionate about working with the Millennial generation and seeks to create innovative spaces for them.

Charmaine Hayden is certainly a force to be reckoned with. Before entering the world of Venture Capital as one of the only Women of colour in the UK to be a General partner; she was no stranger to kicking down diversity doors.

When Good Soil was founded Charmaine had already built 2 popular diversity brands (5x award winning model agency – Face4music and Goal Digger power circle – a hub for female entrepreneurs) before many people were even thinking about braving the “diversity” conversation. She credited her thick skin and solution focused attitude to her tough upbringing.

Her passion for industry disruption still remains. Only this time Charmaine’s mission is deep rooted in the world of tech startups. Good soil Vc is a fund dedicated to investing in startups with high growth potential with a focus on women, minorities, and/or unconventional backgrounds

Whilst Charmaine’s entry path via empowerment, and entertainment could be considered an unconventional path into venture capital. She has managed to marry the two, and is leveraging her position as host on one of the hottest online talk shows “Not for the radio” (which amasses an average of 100,000 views per 60 minute episode) to increase deal flow.

Christian is passionate about human capital development, particularly focusing on digital transformation for small businesses in ethnic minorities. A firm believer in knowledge & skills transfer, Christian travels around the world educating business leaders on cost-effective IT strategies for achieving excellent customer services, brand awareness, maximum productivity and profitability.

Christian is an Oxford University double-certified Digital & FinTech Strategist, with first-rate taught and practical experience gained within the IT industry. He maintains an impressive portfolio of over 300 successfully executed projects within various disciplines and has trained and influenced over 1,000 business owners across 10 countries in Europe, Africa & The Caribbean.

Christian is the Founder & CEO of RHICS, an international Digital Agency headquartered in London, UK with branches in Grenada, Guyana, Nigeria, Trinidad & Tobago. In this role, he has consulted on numerous IT projects for international clientele; managing stakeholders and workforce spread across several countries. Most recently, he has led the design of projects for brands including Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) London, Virgin Atlantic, British Airways, Co-op Bank, Antigua High Commission London, Caribbean Confederation of Credit Unions (CCCU), Cooling Tech, Edward B. Beharry Group, Standard Chartered Bank amongst many others.

Known as the “IT Guru” he is passionate about exploring modern technology; social and new media platforms towards value creation. Christian is currently working on several initiatives, platforms and ideas to promote financial inclusion in the un-banked and under-banked emerging markets.

His hobbies include travelling, football, reading, socialising & “staying connected online”.

Colleen started Techsixtyfour’s My Gator Watch when her children were 18 months and 4 months old.

My Gator Watch is a mobile phone and GPS/WIFI tracker made initially for children between the ages of 5-11. It does not have access to the Internet, social media, camera or games. The watch is designed to offer peace of mind to parents who have a child too young for a smartphone but old enough to want some independence.

Now, the inspirational mother of two plans to develop the product from a tracker for kids to a wearable mobile device for seniors that can track location and detect falls, to allow the aged population to live independently with confidence.

Colleen has 13 flexible working staff on her team, most of whom are mums of young children. Colleen strongly believes in the flexible work culture because so many mums and dads just want to put their children first but can’t or feel guilty doing it. Colleen hopes to build the first technology brand which hires only flexible working staff.

Colleen is a Sky Women in Tech Scholar 2019 and has won AXA’s Health Tech and You Award in 2018.

Damian is a charismatic leader who has held several senior positions within Accenture UK’s Technology business, leading delivery on several large enterprise clients. He has 20 years’ experience on large scale transformational programmes, working with a variety of digital technologies, across several industries, delivering game-changing ideas at scale. Most recently, Damian has been leading Accenture’s UK/I Oracle Customer Experience (CX) practice, bringing together the best of the Accenture and Oracle digital ecosystems. He is responsible for building capability and driving growth across Oracle CX cloud platforms, supporting client value creation across 14 Industry groups.

He is demonstrably passionate about addressing the UK digital skills gap, providing opportunities for those with an interest in technology, especially when from diverse and socially disadvantaged backgrounds. Damian performs multiple internal and external roles to support this. He leads Accenture’s Apprenticeship programme, with 240+ current apprentices working towards a Technology degree while gaining valuable work experience. He co-leads the Accenture Technology Analyst Group, ensuring their development towards successful and impactful careers at the leading edge of technology. Externally he is a member of the London Apprenticeship Ambassador Network, DfE Data and Digital Business T-Level Panel of Professionals and Tech Partnership Degrees Digital Apprenticeship Board.

Dan is CEO of CyberOwl, a startup focused on protecting industrial and maritime systems from cyber attacks. CyberOwl was a pioneer in the first GCHQ Cyber Accelerator Programme, is part of the UK Government’s cyber innovation centre of excellence – the London Office for Rapid Cybersecurity Advancement (LORCA) and was selected as one of the top 13 UK’s Most Innovative Small Cyber Security Company.

Beyond his day job, Dan is an active mentor on UK tech programmes such as the DCMS’ Cyber Security Academic Startup Accelerator Programme and the Digital Catapult’s Cyber101 Programme. Dan was also Chair of a Working Group at the IoT Security Foundation and member of the Council for the Digital Technology Group of the Society for Maritime Industries in the UK.

Before building CyberOwl he was Associate Director at KPMG, where he focused on the Defence, Security and Industrial sectors. During that time, he led a team working extensively developing propositions, market entry and commercial strategies for global cyber security, defense, technology and engineering multinationals. He was also a member of KPMG UK’s Diversity Action Group.

Dan has repeatedly been in the Top 100 Asian Stars in UK Tech and was selected into the Top 5 Startups list for 2017.

Dara joined Twitter in November 2012 initially heading up the sales team before becoming Managing Director at the start of 2016. With approximately 200 staff, Twitter UK is the only office outside of our headquarters with multiple disciplines including Engineering, Sales, Partnerships, Comms & Marketing.

Previously Dara was at Google for 5 years overseeing the sales team for YouTube and Display.

Prior to Google, he began his career in the TV media market, leading teams initially at Flextech Television and later Eurosport.
Dara is married with two girls, has a dog called Dave, loves sport (he says he is great at watching, not so good at playing) and enjoy boxsets.

David has led multi-billion pound infrastructure and technology programmes in the UK and internationally. His experience at executive director and board level spans rail, water supply, commercial buildings, highways and power.

Born in London, David obtained degrees in engineering from Coventry and Imperial College. He began his career teaching maths in east London and then worked on transport and water projects in the UK and West Africa. He joined the rail industry working for the Docklands Light Railway and moved to the Jubilee Line Extension, working on delivery and integration strategy for operations to meet the high-profile Millennium deadline.

In 2003 he became Executive Director of the Strategic Rail Authority, leading £3.5bn cross-industry programmes. He was the UK representative on the European Rail Agency, as well as being a non-executive director of the Rail Safety and Standards Board.
From 2005-16 he was at London Underground as Director of Engineering, then Capital Programmes, leading delivery of the £10bn tube upgrade plan through a variety of PPP and in-house arrangements. His most recent executive position was Managing Director of the UK’s Digital Railway, leading on the multi-billion pound replacement of analogue technology.

In 2019 David moved into non-executive work and he currently sits as a non-executive director on the boards of Thames Water and the Hinkley Point C nuclear power project.

Dayo is the founder of Africlick, a new, dating and networking app targeting 1 billion, underserved global Africans. In a market of inauthentic, affiliate dating; Africlick’s matching algorithm uses cultural data like life-goals and religion to be the best at helping Africans “click” and make meaningful connections. Africlick received three Entrepreneurship awards from University College London.

She holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Manchester and a M.Sc. in Technology from University College London. Her background is IT Management Consulting, with several years of delivering analytics and fintech programmes at Accenture and Deloitte & Touche. She has designed solutions and led global teams at companies including the London Stock Exchange, Lloyds Banking Group and the Ministry of Defence.

Dayo has educated on diversity in technology at various organisations including, DIFID and Starling Bank. Your Startup Your Story is a thriving startup community of technologists on a mission to make a difference. In 2018, Dayo co-founded Your Startup Your Story Consultancy Ltd, where she consulted for Capital Enterprise via the JP Morgan Chase Foundation on London’s OneTech programme. Here, she pioneered a methodology to measure “diversity in technology accelerators” and advised accelerators including, Techstars, Startupbootcamp and Space Camp.

Deborah Okenla is the Founder and CEO of YSYS (Your Startup, Your Story); a startup community for founders, developers, creatives, and investors on a mission to open doors of opportunity for diverse talent within the startup ecosystem. YSYS run two programmes: FoundersDoor the first UK pre-accelerator for women and BAME entrepreneurs, supported by The Mayor of London and TalentDoor a series of career focused events for diverse talent. Since 2017 they have provided access to opportunities for over 8,000 individuals across the UK, in partnership with FT, Linkedin, Google, JPMorgan and more.

Deborah is a passionate advocate for women of colour in entrepreneurship and regularly mentors women leading community groups across London.

Devie Mohan is an influential writer, speaker and commentator on fintech, and is the co-founder and CEO of Burnmark, a fintech research company, that supplies research and data to all players of the fintech ecosystem.

Devie is also a proponent of a fintech ecosystem where banks and startups collaborate to drive innovation and advises several banks, regulators and startups globally to achieve this. She is a panel member on the ING Group Think Forward initiative where she works on initiatives for better financial decision making. She is the author of the upcoming book “The Financial Services Guide to Fintech” and a columnist with several publications. She also teaches at various universities, and tutors the Harvard University fintech short course.

Disa has years of experience working in technology and innovation especially in the pharmaceutical industry. In her current role as Director Head of Innovation within the Global Clinical Sciences & Operations at UCB, she is responsible for evaluating and piloting innovative solutions in clinical trials. Prior to joining the pharma, she was a co-founder of an IT company. She has an EMBA and B.S. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry. In 2017, Disa started a cross-industry collaboration on blockchain via PhUSE. She was also an advisor for a non-profit organisation and ambassador for corporate and entrepreneur women academy. Recently, she was awarded Top 100 Women in Technology and featured on the cover of CIO Look celebrating Women in Tech 2019. Her passion is on closing the gap for patients with unmet needs and exploring the right digital technologies to accelerate the implementation of end-to-end patient solution.

Sheriff specialises in designing and scaling up innovative healthcare services leveraging technology. He has worked with clients & partners in the UK, Middle East, US, Africa & Asia.
At GE Healthcare Sherff supports Strategic Partnerships & value-based healthcare solutions in UK&I, as part of a Europe wide team. He focusses on creating disruptive business models, driving strategic partnerships and building new healthcare services in a way that transforms patient’s lives and improves overall outcomes.

Sheriff is particularly driven to explore partnering arrangements that solve major societal challenges and create long term value. His work extends from novel approaches to using technology to improve clinical trials through to designing novel service models for transforming cancer diagnosis enabling early detection in an affordable way.

Prior to joining GE Healthcare in 2017 as a Partner in the Consulting arm, GE Healthcare Partners, Sheriff worked in PA Consulting rising from a Programme Management Consultant to a leader in the Business Design team, focussing on Healthcare.
Sheriff completed a Doctorate in Engineering (EngD) and MSc. (with Distinction) from Loughborough University and a BSc. in Architecture from Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria.
Outside of work, Sheriff enjoys spending time with his family.

Dr Nira Chamberlain is an eminent mathematician. In the last five years he has been recognise as the World’s Most Interesting Mathematician, Science Council UK’s Top 100 Scientists, Power List 5th Most Influential Black Person in the UK (2018), the first Black Mathematician to appear in the Who’s Who. He has also been named as one of the Greatest Scientific Minds to come out of Loughborough University.

The holder of two mathematical doctorates (a PhD from Portsmouth University and an HonDSc from Greenwich University for “his inspirational and unique contribution to the field”); Dr Chamberlain currently has three positions; President Designate of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), Senior Data Scientist at Holland & Barrett International Technology and Visiting Fellow at Loughborough University.

Dr Chamberlain will become President of the IMA on the 1st January 2020.

Dr Nneka Abulokwe, OBE is the Founder and CEO of MicroMax Consulting. She serves on several boards as a non-executive director.

She has introduced an innovative form of people-centric governance for the digital world. Dr Abulokwe has had an extensive career over the last 25 years, driving innovative technology and business transformation initiatives for some of the largest multinational digital transformation organisations. She holds an Executive Doctorate in Business Administration from the Cranfield University School of Management and was recently conferred with an OBE for Services to Business.

Dr Abulokwe is one of the first black female professionals to sit on the board of a multi-national tech company in the UK. Highly regarded in the field of tech enablement and governance, she was recently ranked number 4 in the Inclusive Boards and Financial Times Top 100 Black, Asian, Minority, Ethnic (BAME) Tech Leaders for 2018. She was named as a finalist for Governance Professional of the Year 2018 Award by the Governance Institute. She was also named in the 2019 Powerlist 100 most influential black business leaders. She was 9th overall in the 2018 and 2019 Financial Times EMpower Ethnic Minority Executives and Role Models List. Forbes Magazine has interviewed her about boardroom diversity. She is a Freeman of both The City of London and The Technologist Livery Company (WCIT) and a Fellow of The BCS and The APM.

Saritha Arunkumar, BE MBA PhD is a Security Leader and Master Inventor. Saritha has 19+ years of experience all being in IT Security space and has been working in wide span of roles such as Security Lead, Consultant, Specialist, Senior Architect and now Security Leader.

Saritha has gained deep expertise in Identity and Access Management solutions, Blockchain Security, Web Services security, and Public key Infrastructure, Cryptography, Privacy solutions and Internet security. Most of the projects that she has been involved revolve around creating end-to-end security architectures, designs and security solutions. Her vast experience with major banks, insurance firms, social security organizations, telecommunications, trading organizations, retail has made her Subject Matter Expert in defining end-to-end security architecture, high level and detail security designs and Infrastructure security solutions.

She has presented in a number of conference proceedings and has published papers on Security and has a big list of patents. Her research contribution to the wider community has been demonstrated from time to time by chairing and presenting at Internal security seminars/workshops. She has enhanced her personal eminence through external collaborations and connections and is a Fellow of the British Computer Society. Winner of Top 100 Asian Stars in UK Tech 2018, Winner of TechWomen50 2017, Outstanding Innovation Award winner 2017 at IBM, Runner up of Women of the Future 2013 – these are some of her many accolades.

Edosa has over 20 years of international experience in various senior data leadership roles and he currently is the Head of Data at AXA insurance – the world’s second-largest financial services company by revenue. In his current role Edosa is driving a significant people, data and cloud transformation; accountable for data vision, strategy, architecture, engineering, science, AI, governance and operations.

Prior to AXA, he had the privilege of helping over 20 other organisations get tangible value through data – having held leadership positions within a number of household multinational brands. His industry footprint spreads across a wide variety of economic sectors – including, banking, insurance, asset management, management consulting, real estate, utilities, media, IT consulting, gaming, aviation, multilateral organisations and the public sector; his corporate footprint cuts across a a broad spectrum – including Barclays Group, the European Commission, Allianz Cornhill Insurance, HMRC, DEFRA, Channel 4, Lloyds Banking Group and British Sky Broadcasting Corporation.

Beyond his day job, Edosa is a keen blogger and vlogger: two channels that enable his passion for sharing. He is also engaged in a number of mentoring and charity activities.

In his personal life, Edosa is an alpine ski instructor, a semi-pro photographer and a sports enthusiast.

Ed is the founder of ESRC Consulting Ltd a digital innovation consulting and advisory organisation focused on bringing a more human focus to technology innovation and disruptive change. A highly experienced strategist and innovator passionate about technology to improve the world we live in. A great believer and advocate of collaborative working, knowledge sharing, servant leadership and team empowerment. He has led, managed and coached award-winning teams to design, develop, and maintain exceptional innovative digital products and services for organisations such as BBC, University of Reading, Specsavers, Center Parcs, Nature Publishing, Allen & Overy, and George (ASDA), to name a few. Has been at the forefront of introducing digital technology innovation and new ways of working into established organisations in the UK, Europe and Africa.

Eileen Burbidge is a Partner at Passion Capital, the pre-eminent early-stage technology venture fund based in London. She brings extensive operational experience to her investment activities gleaned from business and product roles at Yahoo!, Skype, Apple and elsewhere. On behalf of Passion, Eileen serves as non-executive director on a number of fast growing SMEs including Monzo Bank, Digital Shadows, Tide, Prowler.io and Focal Point Positioning, among others.

In addition to Passion Capital, Eileen is also the Chair of Tech Nation, formerly TechCity UK which is the British government-backed organisation supporting the digital economy across the UK. She is also HM Treasury’s Special Envoy for FinTech appointed by the Chancellor; Tech Ambassador for the Mayor of London’s office and served on former UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s Business Advisory Group. Eileen also serves on the board of Dixons Carphone, the FTSE 250-listed consumer electronics retailer. She was made an MBE for services to Business in June 2015 and holds a BSc Engineering degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Emma Joy Obanye is an entrepreneur, advisor, mentor and tech geek from Hackney and has spent the last 15 years building products and leading teams in tech for both corporates and startups.

On a mission to increase diversity and inclusion within the London tech startup ecosystem, Emma leads on entrepreneur facing activities of Capital Enterprise’s ‘OneTech’ initiative as Entrepreneur In Residence. As well as an advisory group member of Lambeth Councils mission to support diverse talent and open up the creative workplace through Elevate.

An entrepreneur herself, Emma does this whilst splitting her time between her ventures Mindful Team (a tech platform to measure and improve the culture of teams) and Journe (a tech platform for people to share knowledge recipes).

Emma previously co-founded and sold the award-winning, music-focused loyalty and influencer platform BuddyBounce. With over 70K users, BuddyBounce connected fans, bands and brands, attracting a wealth of clients including all three major labels, O2 and Penguin Random House.

Enass is the co-founder and CEO at H2GO power ltd; an award winning spin-out company from the University of Cambridge developing energy storage technologies. She completed her PhD at Cambridge University, where she also was a postdoctoral fellow and elected Cambridge University Energy Champion. Currently she is also a Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellow and a technology expert consultant to European Commission (REA) .

She has 10 years of research and business experience in hydrogen production & storage, catalysis, renewable energy and energy storage. Enass is passionate about climate entrepreneurship and clean energy technology policy. She often gives keynote speeches at international forums and participates in high impact roundtable discussions on clean energy, energy security and women entrepreneurship in tech.

Enass won few recognition awards and grants to support the development of H2GO Power and recently won the visionary of the year award by MIT Tech Review Innovators Under 35 Europe, the best energy start-up award at the Global Hello Tomorrow Summit and others. In 2015, she was selected by the Cartier women’s initiative awards as one in 18 best women entrepreneurs globally and one in 3 representing Europe. She travelled to Africa, China and central Asia on government-supported partnership missions, delivered speeches and recommendations about clean energy technologies as a tool to combat climate change. Enass spoke at impactful forums like the World Economic Forum, MIT Tech Review EmTech, Financial Times Energy Summit, Women’s Forum, One Young World, UN Global compact – LEAD symposium, TEDx, Middle East Mediterranean Forum and Google @ Think (A moonshot for clean energy).

Genevieve Leveille, Founder and CEO of AgriLedger Ltd, is one of the few women who lead the world in the adoption of emerging digital technology today.

In her role as an innovator in the fintech sector and advocate for cross-cultural exchange of value, she tests and develops new models for business, partnership and collaboration among all participants in the food supply chains of smallholder farmers in developing countries like China, Haiti, Mali and India.

Genevieve is leading the collaboration of AgriLedger with the Haiti Ministry of Commerce and Industry and other local partner ESIH for the delivery of a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Pilot sponsored by the World Bank. The solution is addressing the Haitian fruit farmers, their customers and families who can look forward to this year’s harvest and to reaping the benefits of market inclusion and improved food security.

Prior to her current endeavours in streamlining global supply chains and supporting ground-breaking startups in the digital space, Genevieve led change in large corporations and banks for over 25 years. Her background is in corporate and institutional banking with a reputation for delivery of disruptive technologies in large scale projects.

Harris Irfan is a Partner at Gateway Global LLP, Chairman of the UK Islamic FinTech Panel, and Board member of multiple tech companies, including the Islamic/ethical economy accelerator, iE5.

An investment banker with 25 years’ experience, Harris is one of the world’s leading authorities on Islamic finance and Shari’a compliant fintech. He co-founded the world leading Islamic finance team at Deutsche Bank and was the CEO of Deutsche’s Islamic finance think-tank. He was Global Head of Islamic Finance at Barclays and Head of Investment Banking at European Islamic Investment Bank.

Through Gateway and iE5, he advises the rapidly growing global Islamic fintech industry, and digital Islamic/ethical economy. He co-founded the UK Islamic FinTech Panel to boost London’s status as a centre for the Islamic finance industry, to create an ecosystem and support network for Islamic and social impact fintech companies, and help clear policy hurdles within government. He launched iE5, the world’s first Islamic and social impact accelerator.

Harris is author of the critically acclaimed Heaven’s Bankers: Inside the Hidden World of Islamic Finance and his blog of 11,000 followers is widely read in the industry. He holds a degree in Physics from the University of Oxford.

Hassan leads on Digital Health and Data for The UK Department for International Trade (DIT), regularly meeting the most innovative UK organisations ready to export, working with and promoting a diverse group of innovators, partners and entrepreneurs. He also regularly meets foreign Governments and health ministries as well as the best foreign firms ready to invest in the UK.

Prior to joining the DIT, he was a founder and Chief Commercial Officer at Health iQ – an award-winning HealthTech firm based in London’s Tech City. His career spans health and social care, specifically in frontline social work, NHS informatics, commissioning, commissioning support, registries and public health. Hassan is a Committee Member at the PM Society and also holds an Honorary Research post at the Department of Primary Care and Public Health at Imperial College London for his work in data science.

Imtiaz Adam is the founder and CEO of an AI startup, Deep Learn Strategies Ltd (DLS).

At DLS he has been working on projects related to applications of Machine Learning to improve the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors, Fintech, predictive analytics for enhancing the efficiency of manufacturing and renewable energy.

Imtiaz holds an MSc in Computer Science (Distinction) with research in AI Deep Learning from the University of London, and is a Sloan Fellow in Leadership and Strategy from London Business School.

He served as an Executive Director of Morgan Stanley for 8 years where he built a business from inception to global scale in financing renewable energy projects, carbon trading and principal private equity investment into clean infrastructure development.

Imtiaz was a speaker on AI during the WEF at Davos 2019, and serves as an Ambassador to AI Tech North and World AI Show. He is rated as a leading influencer on social media for Digital Technology, 5G and AI by leading ratings agencies including Onalytica.com (London and New York), MarkTechPost.com (San Francisco) and IPFConline.fr (France).

His articles have been published by Kdnuggets.com and theFinancialBrand.com and he speaks at conferences around the world.

Irfan Khan, ACMA, is CEO of Yielders, the UK’s first Islamic FinTech crowdfunding platform to be directly regulated by the FCA. With over 17 years’ experience in financial services, he has delivered multiple large-scale technology transformation projects at top-tier financial institutions. Irfan is a tireless advocate for the industry, sitting on both the All Party Parliamentary Group on Islamic Finance and the UK Islamic Fintech Panel, as well as representing the industry as part of government delegations to Malaysia, Turkey and Brunei.

The inspiration for founding Yielders came when Irfan tried to invest his own money as a young professional, yet could not find investment opportunities that offered competitive returns without ethical compromise. Finally, in 2015, people could become part-owners of UK real estate from as little as £100.

Rewarded for his efforts, he was recognised as a ‘business big shot’ by the Times in 2017. Never one to rest on his laurels, Irfan capitalised on his earlier entrepreneurial success, guiding Yielders from bootstrapped startup to revenue-generating SME. The product of many late nights and weekends, the company successfully scaled and closed its Series A funding round in 2019, making it one of the largest Islamic FinTechs in the world.

Ismail Ahmed is the Founder and CEO of WorldRemit, the leading digital money transfer company that’s pioneering a mobile approach to sending money around the world. Ismail founded the company in 2010. Since then, it has secured $220 million in funding and has been named the fastest growing technology company in the UK. Serving previously as a compliance advisor to the United Nations, Ismail founded the company on the principles of strong compliance procedures, recognising that the only way to meaningfully reduce the risks in the money transfer industry was to bring the entire process into the digital world. Ismail has been named third most influential black Britons in the UK and won EY Entrepreneur of the Year, London and South. Originally from Somaliland, he has worked with the UN in Nairobi and Dubai. He received a scholarship to attend the University of London and has a business degree from London Business School and a PhD in Economics.

Ismail Amla is Chief Growth Officer at Capita Plc, the UK’s largest tech-enabled BPO provider. As one of the top 100 most influential Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) leaders in the UK tech sector, Ismail was specifically recognised within a group of five ‘highly commended disruptors’.

He has enjoyed a high profile, technology-focused career, spanning Europe and North America. He joined Capita from IBM, where he was managing partner for the IBM Services business in North America. Prior to that, he was the CEO of FIS, which included Capco, where he was a member of the global leadership team. Ismail has also held positions as an Accenture Partner and was Vice President and UK Board member for CSC, leading the financial services business in the UK and Ireland.

Ismail has an MBA from Manchester university and an honorary doctorate from the University of Bolton. He was a member of Mosaic, a charity founded by HRH The Prince of Wales. He also plays an advisory role at the Weissman Center for International Business in New York.

President@techUK | President@digileaders | Co-Chair@Institute of Coding

Non-Exec: Rightmove plc | Costain Group plc | FDM Group plc | Business Advisor & Mentor at Merryck

Advocate for diversity and inclusion in all its forms. Passionate about redressing the gender balance via advisory positions at @BigYGroup, @accelerate-Her and the @girlguiding association.

In 2016 she entered the @Computerweekly Hall of Fame after being voted Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Woman in IT 2015; she was listed on Debretts ‪2016 500‬ People of Influence and named in Europe’s Inspiring Fifty most inspiring female role models for 2017. Presented the 2017 Catherine Variety Award for Science & Technology.

2018 Women in Tech Award for Advocate of the Year acknowledging her contribution to diversity and #IB100 – Most influential BAME leaders in tech. Awarded the Digital & Technology Award at the Asian Women of Achievement Awards 2019. Included in World’s 100 most influential people in digital government 2019: https://tinyurl.com/y2rel5p7

Jacqueline was honoured as CBE for Services to International Trade in Technology in the Queen’s New Year Honours list 2018.

“If we are to thrive in our digital future, all our voices must be heard when designing technology. If not, we risk creating a world for the few and not for the many.”

A former competitive athlete who traded the track for the gavel, in the last five years alone Joan has founded and sold her own IP technology business and led CPA Global’s customer transformation practices across Europe. With a relatively new promotion under her belt and an unyielding passion for IP, Joan is establishing herself as a woman you will want to watch. Having graduated with a law degree and an MBA in applied finance, Joan had a brief stint with Lehman Brothers before joining CPA Global to act as an advisor to the firm’s management team. The world of IP – as she saw it – proved to be the perfect match of business, technology and law for Joan, who went on to launch and run her own IP technology business, NovumIP (subsequently acquired) between spells at CPA Global.

In her role as Managing Director, she is now tasked with overseeing a team of c.500 fantastic colleagues and continuing to drive CPA Global’s success in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Joan also spends time advising other women considering STEM subjects and a career in technology.

Joyeeta Das is a true visionary, an Oxford Fellow, a motivational speaker and a techie who is also a serial entrepreneur. She is the founder and chief executive of GYANA founded in 2016 – a BigData and Artificial Intelligence tech startup in London. Gyana is a trillion-dollar vision, a new infrastructure for how any company can leverage data and AI with zero expertise.
In addition to this, she is Ambassador for Women in Innovation for UK department of international trade and has represented the UK at trade delegations such as the US-UK space mission, UK- Canada AI mission and the UK-Brazil Newton Fund Mission. She balances her art life and deep tech life effortlessly.
Joyeeta’s activities have inspired many women (and men) to reach out to her and share their stories of courage and hope across the world.
• Her TEDx talk gathered 200+ emails from many unknown individuals across the world, and every time she speaks at the Oxford Entrepreneurial Society, or UCL.
• She has mentored at least 40 grad and post grad students in Oxford, UCL, Dartmouth(USA) etc.
• “Rising star 2019” award by EG Tech.
• “Women of the Year 2019” award by TiE – A Global Entrepreneurship Organisation.

Joysy is the Director of Education, leading Nesta’s work in education across innovation programmes, research and investment. She is the former Chief Industry Officer of Ada, the National College for Digital Skills. Prior to this, Joysy headed up international strategic development for EF Learning Labs, led business development for Emerge Venture Lab, Europe’s first education technology accelerator and advised Level 39, technology incubator in Canary Wharf.

Passionate about education, entrepreneurship and women’s empowerment, she helped launch three non-profits focused on education. She founded Founders Fit to help startup leaders find the right cofounders. She is the Trustee and founder of the London chapter of the Startup Leadership Program, a global initiative (across 23 cities, with over 2500 Fellows). Joysy has over a decade of experience in technology, business management, strategy and sales roles with JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley in Singapore, US and UK. She was the youngest person selected into the Future Leader Development Programme at JP Morgan Chase.

She holds a Computer Engineering (Honours) degree from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and an MBA with Distinction from London Business School where she was the President of the Women in Business Club and a Forte Scholar.

Judy Kawaguchi is a senior technology executive in the FinTech sector, 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 recently joined Refinitiv as the Global Head, Office of the CIO, leading all cross-technology programmes globally as they embark on their large-scale transformation and modernization 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 stereotypes and to turn their multi-cultural 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, Empower, and End Violence across London, raising unrestricted funding for local non-profit organizations with an aim to build safer lives and strong futures free from sexual and domestic violence.

Named the 6th Most Influential BAME tech leader by the FT in 2018 and 15th Most Influential Woman in Tech by Computer Weekly, June Angelides is an investor at Samos Investments. Prior to joining the world of venture capital, she founded a social enterprise, Mums in Technology, which was the first child-friendly coding school in the UK. She is a strong advocate for the rights of working mothers. June is also passionate about getting people from all backgrounds into careers in tech and helping more underrepresented founders gain access to funding. She is also a mum of three young children. In her spare time she can be found on commercial and film sets with her children.

Growing up in East Anglia with Indian and German parents, Justin always sought to make technology work for everyone.

Inspired by the BBC’s text information service, ‘Ceefax’, Justin graduated with a first in Computer Science from Reading University, joining Sun Microsystems as a systems engineer; later moving to the BBC to work on ‘Red Button’ TV services including ‘Wimbledon Interactive’ and ‘Digital Text’, the update to Ceefax, fulfilling an early career goal.

Justin undertook an MBA at Henley Business School and joined Google as a technical account manager. He later rose to senior manager within technical services, where he drove initiatives to increase gender diversity for technical hires in EMEA.

Justin now leads strategic broadcast partnerships for the UK and Ireland and is a key spokesperson for Google on broadcast ad technology. This year he was a member of the steering group for the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) conference in Amsterdam, speaking on the topic of digital, diversity and innovation and working to make industry events more diverse and inclusive.

Passionate about television, technology and people, Justin believes that by empowering everyone to thrive and innovate in broadcasting, the industry can better represent its viewers and improve services for everybody.

Kay Kukoyi CSM FITOL is a software delivery specialist, tech startup mentor, speaker, lecturer, and the author of 5 books for SMEs and entrepreneurs, including the Amazon international bestseller, Don’t Hire a Software Developer Until You Read this Book.

Kay is the founder of Purposeful Products, a business, technology and training consultancy that has supported startups in more than 12 countries, and provides specialist books, mentoring, and bespoke workshops and programmes for tech startup founders.
The company’s training arm, Tech Startup Academy™ offers clients more than 50 hours of content designed to meet the needs of technology entrepreneurs without a technical background, and its services have been used by award winning startup accelerators and initiatives funded by the European Institute of Innovation & Technology, and the Mayor of London.

Kukoyi works with a number of startup accelerators, including NatWest, Zinc VC, FoundersDoor, and We in Social Tech, has a Meetup community of over 1000 entrepreneurs, technologists and investors, and has mentored students on university entrepreneurship programmes across the capital.

Having spent more than a decade in “corporate tech”, working on multi-million pound projects for companies including Sky News and The SThree Group, she is on a mission to support entrepreneurs in starting and running their tech businesses the SMART way, helping them to navigate challenges, avoid business pitfalls, and increase their chances of success.

Keji is Head of Network & Operations at Connect Ventures and joined the team in 2017 having spent much of the 5 years prior, working in and consulting with early/seed stage tech startups on operations and strategic partnerships. She discovered her passion for startups after qualifying as a barrister and quickly realising that this was not the career path for her. At Connect, Keji is responsible for continuously developing ways to best add value to the portfolio companies. She is particularly passionate about the leadership development and founder wellbeing pillars of the Connect Founder Network and focuses on helping the portfolio’s founders transition from great founders to great leaders. In addition to her work at Connect, Keji is actively engaged in giving back to the community and serves as a mentor to the next generation of female founders and leaders, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds who are trying to break into the tech industry.

Kevin Obi is MD of Synergy Inc. He currently acts as a Senior Adviser for a Private Equity owned global technology solutions company. He is also Chair and Founder of NIDSG, a charitable programme that provides medical support to victims of Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria.

He was formerly Global Chief Operating Officer for Hive, the UK’s No.1 consumer internet-of-things company. Other previous roles include; Chief Strategy Officer at Weve (JV of EE, O2 and Vodafone) and Senior Vice President, International Digital Businesses at NBC Universal International, where he led a new division with responsibility for new digital businesses and international JVs/alliances/acquisitions in all markets outside the USA, including investments in the $250 million NBCU/GE Peacock Private Equity Fund. He was also Head of Corporate Development at Orange, the mobile operator, and Digital Business Development & Partnerships Director at Yell.

In the mid-to-late 1990s Kevin worked as an Engagement Manager for Strategy and Operations Transformation in TMT at Deloitte Consulting, and was a co-founder of Deloitte’s Merger Integration Practice. He spent his early career working as an Engineer – including 2 years with UN, during the war in the Bosnia. He is a tech start-up mentor and was an early member of Tech London Advocates. Kevin holds B. Eng. M. Sc Eng from University of Leeds and an MBA from Cranfield.

Kike Oniwinde, is a BSc graduate of The University of Nottingham, University of Florida MSc scholar, and an ex-Great Britain javelin thrower. After graduating with her Masters in Management, she worked in Business Development at a fast-growing financial technology start-up firm for two years. She’d previously worked at the likes of Barclays, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and CitiBank, but gave up her job to focus on her true career passion – building BYP.

This year, Kike was named in Forbes 30 under 30, Maserati Top 100 Most Innovative Companies, and in the Financial Times Top 100 BAME Leaders in Tech.

BYP Network, described by many as “LinkedIn for black professionals” helps to connect ambitious future leaders for networking purposes and with corporations for job opportunities. Their mission is to ‘change the black narrative’ by bringing together like-minded individuals to collaborate on ideas and to progress within the workforce. Currently, they have a job board, host diversity conferences and have an app currently downloaded in 65 countries. With a network reach of tens of thousands, they have worked with top companies such as Spotify, Accenture and Deloitte and have featured in both The Times and the Financial Times.

Kish Hirani is the CTO of Terra Virtua, an entertainment-focussed digital collectibles platform across Mobile, AR and VR, with social, videogaming and creative experiences, enabled by blockchain. He has also been on the tech advisory board for esports and other immersive media startups.

He started in the video games industry in 1996 as a programmer the day after graduating with a Masters from Edinburgh University, moving to technical leadership roles at notable development studios and publisher houses (Acclaim, BBC Multimedia, THQ) for the first half in the industry. He then moved over to platform-holders starting with Microsoft and soon after to Sony as their Head of Developer Services, running the PlayStation developer technology services division.

He has also been the founding Chair of BAME (Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic) in Games and an Advisory Board member for Women in Games, both voluntary positions with advocacy orgs that exists to encourage more diverse talent working in the videogames and the wider entertainment industry.

He was listed as the Top 100 Asian Stars in UK Tech by Diversity UK in 2018 and awarded the Diversity Star award, voted by his global peers in the videogames industry, this Summer at the Develop:Star awards.

Louise Broni-Mensah is the CEO and founder of Shoobs, the leading online discovery and booking destination for urban events. She is the first black female entrepreneur to secure capital from the prestigious accelerator Y Combinator, with only 2% of capital venture investments going to women. Having previous experience in the finance industry and the music industry, Louise uses her diverse combination of experience and skills to add to her increasing success within the tech industry. Gaining a BSc in Mathematical Economics at The University of Birmingham, after graduating Louise completed a number of internships at record labels in London and ultimately attained senior positions in leading organisations in the banking and finance sector.

Louise works vigorously to close the gender and ethnicity gap in tech, building and developing a dynamic global company. Louise believes it’s important to encourage young black women to believe in themselves and their ability to achieve. Most recently, Louise was recognised as one of Britain’s most influential Black people under 40 by Powerful Media and honoured as Entrepreneur of 2019 at the Black Magic Awards.

Lucy is Director of Public Policy at FiveAI, Europe’s largest company dedicated to developing the software to power shared, self-driving vehicle services across Europe. She has played a globally leading role in educating and advising public authorities about automated vehicles, promoting the development of policies and legislation to support their safe and timely introduction to the market.

Prior to FiveAI, Lucy spent nearly fifteen years building internationally renowned tech companies, and establishing and growing groundbreaking technology policy teams in government. This included roles as COO at UK-founded, high growth companies SwiftKey (exit Microsoft) and Cucumber (exit SmartBear), and policy roles at the International Telecommunication Union, the Cabinet Office, Department for Transport, and the UK government’s Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles.

Lucy has spoken extensively on themes of technology and society to diverse public audiences including SLUSH, the Cambridge Union, and the IET. She represents the tech sector on the City of London Transport Strategy Board; is a Director at the Institute for Ethical AI and Machine Learning; and has previously served on the boards of Reconfigure.io, railtech innovators HackTrain, and Ada – the National College for Digital Skills. She holds a degree from Imperial College specialising in computational chemistry.

Manisha is a technology leader of more than 15 years’ experience, with a background in strategy consulting in the field of digital transformation of service operations and workforce culture. Having graduated from the University of Derby with an MBA and CMI Chartered Manager status, Manisha has spent much of her working life within the IT and digital domain, advising and implementing strategic people, culture and service transformation programmes.

In her present role as the Head of Digital Culture for R2 Data Labs, Manisha is accountable for the development and delivery of a global ‘digital-First’ enablement & learning ecosystem for Rolls-Royce, that supports the industrialisation and application of digital skills across its entire workforce, supply chain and customers.

Alongside her current role, Manisha is an active change agent of Business in the Community (BiTC) and a keen STEM ambassador. She is also a big believer of lifelong learning through investing in the local community, regularly volunteering to support local events as well as being an FA qualified grassroots football coach & welfare officer.

Marcel was Born in Bolton, grew up in Germany, High School in Texas, now works and lives in London with his wife of 3 years. Loves solving problems with technology. From age 11, Marcel began learning 3D and graphic design and by age 16 his father began teaching him web technologies.

He joined Amazon in 2011 and spent over 3 years working in their advertising department designing and building digital experiences across Europe, for companies such as Google, Samsung, Barclays, Sony, Vodafone, Emirates and many more.

In 2014 Marcel joined AND Digital and, as Tech Lead, he is raising and setting the standard for how the company builds websites. At AND, he doesn’t just consult, but is hands-on in building digital experiences for clients, as well as teaching developers in the company about product development.

The following year Marcel designed and built a vehicle management website – UseMoto.com, which has grown to be used by more than 600 users.

Marcel co-founded Unubo with his brother two years ago. Unubo makes it easy for developers to deploy websites. He designed and established its brand identity, built the entire platform, and created a user experience that is loved by developers worldwide, across more than 50 countries.

Nader Henein has over two decades of battle-worn experience on either side of the fence, working with regulators supporting the development of modern privacy laws and working with organizations helping them to understand the regulatory, and more importantly, the ethical aspects of better handling personal information.
A Fellow of Information Privacy, he is a staunch advocate of personal data protection, at Gartner, his role is that of thought leader, working hand in hand with clients across a wide range of verticals to address privacy and personal data management challenges brought on by ever-increasing technology adoption and regulatory cadence. He has championed the concept of privacy becoming a conviction-based motivator similar to ‘organic’ and ‘cruelty-free’. Mr Henein believes that individuals today are more than ever likely to choose who they do business with based on where their personal details and those of their families are best protected.

Nafisa Bakkar is the CEO of Amaliah, media company, amplifying the voices of Muslim women and insight agency helping brands to meaningfully understand and reach Muslim audiences. Through Amaliah’s insight agency [insights.amaliah.com], Amaliah has worked with global brands and agencies to create cultural change, their clients include LUSH, Universal, Spotify, eBay, M&S, AMVBBDO, Mediacom, WGSN and Pinterest.

Earlier this year Amaliah acquired Halal Gems, halal food discovery platform and street food festival which has seen over 150,000 attendees in London.

Nafisa has written for titles like Ad Age, Campaign Magazine, the Independent and Forbes. In Feb 2019, her essay on the representation of Muslim women in media and advertising has been published in “It’s Not About The Burqa”, an Amazon bestseller in 4 categories. This year Nafisa was awarded Ad Age’s Women to Watch award and recognised in the Evening Standard Progress 1000 as one of London’s most influential people in media.

Namrata Sarmah started her career as a software engineer in Bangalore (India) more than a decade ago. She developed her career internationally and moved into Product Management after finishing her Masters in 2012. Throughout her career, she has worked in a variety of sectors like IT, FMCG, Telecom, Media Production, Healthcare, Beauty, and Broadcast. Namrata likes to challenge the status quo and innovate in every assignment she undertakes. She has worked with large, mid-sized, and start-up companies and launched products from ground up. Currently, Namrata works as a Senior Director, Product Management at Viacom. She continues to be involved with several start-ups in London as an Advisor at incubators like Antler and Virgin StartUp. She also sits on the Board of the Middlesex Learning Trust and few other organisations as a Non-Executive Director.

Namrata is passionate about causes like Women in Tech, Diversity in Boards, BAME leadership, Working Mothers, and leads several initiatives supporting them. She is a seasoned speaker and panellist at several tech conferences, and a jury member at industry awards. She is an alumna of the University of Cambridge and Manchester Business School.

Noor is a biotech entrepreneur. After finishing her computer scientist engineering in Syria, she followed her passion for AI around the world. She was appointed an assistant professorship position at Aalborg University in Copenhagen for her achievements that include co-authoring a book, more than 50 publications, 1700+ citations as well as being the main inventor on a number of patents. She has won a number of awards and grants for her research. Her entrepreneurial journey, which she started in 2017, is driven by her personal experience seeing her mother fighting cancer. Noor’s mission is to cure cancer through novel applications of the most advanced AI technologies.

For her work and achievements both academically and as an entrepreneur, Noor has been recognised as an Innovator under 35 by MIT, and she is named one of BBC 100 women for 2019. She was also awarded the Cogx raising star award by the former British Prime Minister Theresa May. Noor is a believer in the critical role that data and algorithmic innovations play in solving hard, socially impactful challenges especially in healthcare and precision medicines. She spent the majority of her time implementing solutions that make people’s lives healthier and longer.

Norma Dove-Edwin is the Group Chief Data and Information Officer at Places for People, managing the Group’s technology function. She is also responsible for the Places for People Innovation Lab, which was initiated to find innovative startups companies to collaborate with.

Norma is a strategy focused executive with considerable experience in driving global business transformation and change programmes, which she has gained from working in top FTSE multinational, complex organisations, such as BAT, Shell, Unilever, HBOS, QBE Insurance, Labatt, BP.

Embracing her core values of integrity, honesty and collaboration, Norma has a deep understanding of the partnership required between the technology function and the business functions to unlock the strategic values of the partnership.

Since joining Places for People, Norma has launched the Digital Business transformation programme across the Group. The strategic objective of the Digital Business is to improve the experience of the Group’s Customers and increase the Group’s operational agility, which includes shifting the culture to be one that is more open, dynamic and innovative, in preparation for tomorrow’s world. The programme of works will enable this by deploying modern technologies and using analytical insights to transform the way that the Group works and delivers its products and services.

Pae Natwilai is a cutting-edge innovator, technologist and thought leader in drone innovation and digital construction. As CEO and founder of Trik, she has developed and launched software that uses drone photography to create real-time 3D mapping of buildings and other architectural structures. The technology, which represents a revolution for the structural inspection industry, has won Pae a host of accolades, including selection for the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe, Industry list.

Pae completed a BEng. in Mechanical and Robotic Engineering at Chulalongkorn University in her native Thailand. She started her career as an inspection and maintenance engineer at the Thai national oil and gas company, PTTEP, before winning a scholarship to study an MA/Msc. in Global Innovation Design at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art (RCA), where she discovered her passion in drone and machine vision technology. The technology she created in her master’s degree in combination with her industry knowledge in infrastructure inspection become a base for her startup, Trik, today.

Pawiter is a successful leader and seasoned ICT polymath, with 32 years’ experience in Tech. After completing his apprenticeship in 1987, Pawiter started his career in an engineering role. Since then Pawiter has been a software engineer, Director of Engineering, CIO, and is currently heading Service, Partner and Vendor Management. Pawiter has also been identified as a Distinguished Engineer and top technical talent at Fujitsu.

Radiating positive energy, Pawiter brings intensity to the debate, earns the customers confidence, delivers commitments and evangelises the need to transform and change continuously. Warm in interaction and fearless he believes nothing is a barrier.

Pawiter’s appearance shows his Sikh roots and he’s proud to have a rich depth of culture from Punjab, India and the UK. He mentors others helping them see their strengths and is an active member of the Cultural Diversity Network, where he is supporting colleagues to have a voice and drive change.

Pawiter has worked as a Non-Executive Director, with the Dudley and Walsall Mental Health Trust removing the taboo around Mental Health illness within the Punjabi community. He is married with three daughters and has recently completed the Birmingham Velo as a cyclist beginner.

A former Dragon on BBC 2’s Dragons’ Den and Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire, Piers Linney is an entrepreneur and investor with experience across a range of sectors including technology, converged communications and, most recently, additive manufacturing. Piers is well-known as a champion of entrepreneurship and SMEs and is in the process of developing a new technology-led business focused on the UK’s 5.7m SME businesses. His #Startup & #ScaleUp content and course provides entrepreneurs with access to practical advice and support.

Piers has a professional background as a qualified solicitor and investment banker at Credit Suisse. His career has involved a broad experience of the financial and operational challenges that face start-ups, SMEs and high growth businesses as a founder, adviser, director and investor.

Piers has been recognised as one of the UK’s top 100 most influential Black Britons and in 2018 he was recognised as one of the UK’s top 20 Ethnic Minority Executives. Piers is a Trustee of Nesta, the UK’s leading innovation endowment. He is also non-executive director of British Business Bank, the UK government-owned development bank that has facilitated over £12bn of funding to unlock capital for small and medium-sized businesses.

Priya is a Venture Partner at Merian Ventures, a Venture Capital firm investing in women-led innovation. She is also a Member of the Innovate UK Council (part of UK Research and Innovation) and Adjunct Faculty at Hult Ashridge Executive Education, supporting their work on disruption, innovation and leadership. Priya was previously Ecosystem General Manager for RocketSpace, a San Francisco HQ-ed company that helps high-growth tech startups and corporate innovators bring the future to market, launching their UK operations. Prior to RocketSpace, Priya was a career diplomat posted as British Consul General to San Francisco.

She used her platform to support technology and innovation businesses. In her diplomatic career, Priya was also posted to New Delhi and Madrid. Priya is on the Advisory Board of Tech London Advocates, Chairs the Board of Trustees of Modern Muse, a charity empowering girls to make more informed career decisions to increase diversity in the workplace and close the gender pay gap. She is also an Advisor to the Big Youth Group, a youth-first services start-up whose goal is to improve the odds for young people. Priya was named 2019 Top 5 Asian Investors in UK Tech and 2018 Top 50 Most Influential Women in UK Tech.

Priya Lakhani OBE is the Founder CEO of CENTURY Tech, the transformative, award-winning teaching and learning platform for schools, colleges and universities which is uniquely engineered using learning science, ai and neuroscience. In 2008, Priya left her career as a barrister to launch a successful FMCG and social impact venture. Priya was awarded Business Entrepreneur of the Year by the Chancellor in 2009 and an OBE in 2014. She has been a member of the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills’ Entrepreneurs’ Forum, was appointed to the government’s AI Council in 2019 and is a regular commentator on world news, politics, business and technology for the BBC.

Raj is the CEO of Building Digital U.K. (BDUK) leading delivery of digital infrastructure programmes for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. The portfolio currently covers 5 programmes with a total whole life cost of £10Bn.

The UK Fibre Programme is a £5Bn programme delivering gigabit capable connectivity to the hardest to reach 20% of the UK and aligns the Prime Ministers ambition for accelerated rollout of digital connectivity. This programme relies on interventions developed under three other programmes Superfast Broadband, Local Full Fibre Networks (LFFN) and Rural Gigabit Connectivity, and combined with the 700Mhz Clearance programme which is making available spectrum for resale for 5G, this makes up the other £5Bn.

Raj works closely across government, with regulators, industry bodies, local authorities and telecoms operators to deliver the digital infrastructure that underpins the UK’s telecommunications and digital sectors.

Rajeeb Dey MBE is passionate about helping people connect to opportunities and flourish in their careers. Most recently he launched Learnerbly – the professional development platform supporting employees to achieve their goals by connecting them to the best development experiences (courses, conferences, articles, coaches and more) and enabling businesses to engage, develop and retain talent.

Prior to this he founded Enternships, a portal connecting students and graduates to roles in over 7000 startups and fast growing businesses for which he was named the “02 X Young Entrepreneur of the Year” and the youngest recipient of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion in 2013. Rajeeb is also the Co-Founder of StartUp Britain, a national entrepreneurship campaign launched by Prime Minister David Cameron in 2011 and served as Trustee of UnLtd, the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs for over 10 years.

He graduated with First Class Honours in Economics and Management from the University of Oxford in 2008 and was appointed as the world’s youngest Young Global Leader (at 26) by the World Economic Forum in 2012. He was appointed Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the Queen’s 90th Birthday Honours List in June 2016 for services to Entrepreneurship and recognised as one of the 1,000 Most Influential People in London by The Evening Standard.

Reece Chowdhry is the Founder and CEO of RLC Ventures, and has over 10 years of operating and start-up investing experience. A winner of 2018 & 2019 Top UK Asian Tech Investor by KPMG, he has invested in 32 start-ups and sits on the board of six portfolio companies, with a focus on diversity. Currently, 80% of founders in the RLC Ventures portfolio are from diverse backgrounds. Passionate about giving back, Reece has created the RLC Ventures Pledge where a percentage of RLC Ventures exit profits are donated to a social cause of the founder’s choice.

He is a mentor to the Mayor of London Business Start-up Entrepreneurs Programme, London and Partners and London Sports Tech hub. Reece sponsors and actively organises events for the LSE VC society and gives keynote speeches at universities such as LSE and Cass Business School to inspire next generation of diverse investors. His work has seen him become one of the youngest ever investors to be profiled in The Sunday Times as well as appearing on Channel 4 News. Prior to RLC Ventures, Reece was a management consultant at EY and charted as a management accountant.

Born in the UK, half Asian, half Irish, Saleha Williams is a global digital technology marketing senior business executive. Her 25+ year technology career includes senior positions with BT, BBC, Siemens, the London2012 Olympics and board positions with VC funded UK tech companies, in addition to her own global digital consulting business.

With extensive experience setting and implementing business vision, leading consulting and technology teams and driving successful new business initiatives, she has scaled and managed multimillion businesses and technology innovations across the globe.

She is currently a Digital Partner in Cognizant Comms Media & Technology practice, where she drives multi-million-dollar digital transformation programmes for media and advertising clients leveraging Cognizant’s cloud, data, VR, AI and digital strategy capabilities.

Passionate about people and technology, Saleha is one of the few people in the world with extensive digital technology experience combined with a Master of Science (MSc) in Positive Psychology – the scientific study of optimum human functioning, specialising in neuro creativity, engagement and motivation.

A popular ‘Ted style presenter’ Saleha presents and debates digital technology and D&I thought leadership at tech Industry conferences in London, Las Vegas, New York, Dubai, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Shanghai and Sao Paulo.

Seyi is the Global Head of End User Technology at HSBC, responsible for desktop and tooling requirements for staff in Digital Banking, which services Retail Banking and Wealth Management (RBWM) customers. These products enable efficient performance in today’s fast paced digital landscape. He has built meaningful relationships with global stakeholders, external third-party vendors and internal customers.

As a leader, he has built successful teams acting as a role model and mentor to colleagues, focussing on their career development and progression.

Outside of HSBC Seyi has tirelessly campaigned to advance the conversation and engagement of UK industry in relation to diversity and inclusion, sitting on panels and giving talks about the benefits and positive impacts of a diverse workforce.

He has worked in a variety of roles in HSBC, which serves more than 40 million customers globally, since joining the company as a graduate. He was the Global Mobile Service Owner responsible for crafting and implementing strategies to deploy a range of corporate and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) mobile devices and solutions to staff.

Seyi is passionate about diverse leadership – with his wide network he has championed initiatives focused on attraction, retention and progression of diverse candidates/staff to leadership positions.

Listed as one of the UK’s Top Most Influential Women in Tech & an international multi-award winner for her services to Diversity & Inclusion in industry, Sheree (@nirushika) is the Head of Diversity & Inclusion, Monzo; Board-Appointed Global Ambassador, Women Who Code; Contributor, Forbes.

Sheree is a global Diversity & Inclusion leader, having worked in many regions providing leadership and training to C-suite/Executive leadership to develop fully formed focused diversity and inclusion strategies. She has created tailored data driven strategies through engaging all employees, including C-suite, which has enabled authentic change.

As a passionate advocate for gaining/retaining women in the industry, she launched & led the award-winning U.K. expansion of Women Who Code (womenwhocode.com), since 2013.
Sheree & her work have been featured in many publications, such as Forbes, FastCompany, Evening Standard, HuffPost, Business Post, Marie Claire, Wired, ComputerWeekly, The Guardian, Sunday Telegraph, Newsletter & many more.

The aim of her career is ensuring people are aware of the fantastic opportunities the industry has to offer & make certain that all humans are able to benefit from these & reach their full career potential.

Sofia is the Founder of Future Positive Capital, the first Pan-European fund dedicated to companies developing advanced technologies to solve the world’s most pressing challenges/needs such as feeding the world’s growing population sustainably, tackling climate change and coping with an ageing population.

Her investments includes Ynsect – the global leader in alternative protein supply, Meatable, who are pioneering the next generation of lab-grown meat, BioBeats, the world’s first unified computational platform for preventative mental health and What3Words – the global multi-award winning location technology company, providing unique 3-word identifiers for any location.
At the intersection of entrepreneurship and investment, her career has encompassed tech innovation throughout with stints at Index Ventures, Europe’s top venture capital firm, and Deezer, the worldwide digital music service, where she was in charge of international expansion.

Sofia has been recognised by Forbes as “30 Under 30”, by the World Economic Forum as a “Global Shaper and is part of Founders Forum.

She started her first not-for-profit organisation at 17 and have co-founded two since then (all education related). One of these – a literacy project Laboratoire des Histoires – was selected by the French government as a Top 15 social initiative in France.

Stacy-Ann Sinclair is the CEO and founder of CodeREG, a regtech startup codifying natural language regulation into machine executable regulation. They use machine learning and cutting-edge natural language processing techniques to better understand regulations and its impact in real-time.

A Computer Scientist who has spent the last 10 years building trading systems and globally scalable data platforms for UBS, Barclays Investment Bank and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Stacy-Ann strongly believes most problems can and should be solved in software, to this end she has founded CodeREG. CodeREG is on a mission to make regulatory change as simple as a software update.

Stacy-Ann is an active advocate for increasing the number of women in tech and introducing coding at an early age to children, especially young girls. She supports and work with initiatives positively contributing to these causes – such as Stemettes and Code First Girls.

Sudhir Chaturvedi is the President & Executive Board Member at LTI. He leads a dynamic sales, marketing and alliance team globally. Sudhir has been a key strategist of LTI 2.0 – company’s transformation program that is responsible for industry-leading business growth.

Sudhir possesses a unique blend of rich experience in Consulting, IT Services and Software products across Europe, USA and, Asia. He is a specialist in the areas of digital transformation, strategic sourcing and, building smarter organizations. Before joining LTI, he served as the COO for NIIT Technologies Ltd. and SVP and Head of Financial Services Americas at Infosys. Sudhir has also worked at Ernst & Young in the UK, and with AF Ferguson and O&M in India.

Sudhir is a leading advocate of diversity and inclusion initiatives. At LTI, his team represents a diverse and multi-cultural mix of executives representing 25+ nationalities. Sudhir is a mentor to young managers and is the executive sponsor of LTI’s award-winning initiative, iRise that is expanding the pool of young leaders across functions. Sudhir is a Mechanical Engineer with an MBA in Marketing and also an MBA in Finance and Information Systems.

Sukhi Jutla is an award-winning entrepreneur, author of 3 books and co-founder of MarketOrders, an online marketplace for the gold and diamond jewellery industry. A sought after international speaker, thought leader and qualified IBM Blockchain Developer, she has won numerous awards including Asian Women of Achievement, Female Entrepreneur of The Year and named Top 100 European Digital Pioneer by The Financial Times and Google.

In April 2018 Sukhi made global headlines becoming the World’s First #1 Bestselling ‘Blockchain’ Author. Named as a Top 100 Woman in Tech, Sukhi is a regular media commentator on tech, blockchain and digital disruption, having been featured in over 100+ UK and international press including Chinese and Spanish media. In 2019 Sukhi was appointed Board Member to the Mayor of London’s Digital Skills Partnership.

Suranga joined Balderton as a General Partner in 2014. He was previously an entrepreneur and engineer. Suranga founded blinkx, the intelligent search engine for video and audio content in Cambridge in 2004. He lead the company for eight years as CEO through its journey of moving to San Francisco, building a profitable business and going public in London where it achieved a peak market capitalisation in excess of $1Bn.

Before founding blinkx, Suranga was an early employee at Autonomy Corporation – joining as an engineer in the Cambridge R&D team and ultimately serving as the company’s US CTO in San Francisco.

Suranga has a MA in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge. He holds patents in the area of video discovery and online video advertising and was awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering’s annual Silver Medal for his work in the field. He was also elected a Fellow of the Academy in 2012 and was chosen as one of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders in 2009.

In 2017, Suranga joined the UK Government’s Council for Science and Technology. Suranga was granted an OBE for services to technology and engineering in the 2018 UK New Year’s Honours.

Suranga invests across Europe.

Talal is the Head of Programme for techUK’s Cyber and National Security programmes.

Having originally joined techUK as Programme Manager, Talal manages strategic relationships between Government and industry members on cyber and national security related issues, in particular through the Cyber Growth Partnership – a government and industry backed forum set up to help further the UK’s cyber security sector. He also led techUK’s work on the Investigatory Powers Act and has managed a number of cyber security related research projects. He is a regular industry speaker and has been a regular judge at the Cyber Security Awards.

He has a parliamentary background having joined techUK from the Industry and Parliament Trust (IPT), where he managed the IPT’s business relations and led on the Trust’s Cyber Security Commission. Prior to that Talal worked for Quilliam, a counter-extremism think tank, running their public sector training programmes and leading on a number of research projects and events.

Talal has an MA in the History of International Relations from the London School of Economics.

Talal is based in the UK.

Tariq is Vice President of Consumer Experience at Cotys in-house technology accelerator, Beamly. Coty is one of the world’s largest beauty companies owning cosmetic, fragrance & hair brands such as Max Factor, Gucci, Ghd, Boss, Rimmel, Burberry, Calvin Klein and Wella.

Previous to Coty Tariq has spent the past 20 years building and leading technology teams to create digital products that have delivered results for the world’s biggest brands. He started his career during the early days of internet within FT on some of their early digital news products. Subsequently he moved to agency side working on a wide variety of marketing technology projects collaborating with clients including HSBC, Diageo, McLaren Automotive, ASOS, BBC, Unilever and British Airways.

Outside of his role at Coty Tariq is also a member of the British Interactive Media Associations Diversity & Inclusion Committee and an active participant in a number of mentoring programs. Tariq is also a regular speaker and judge at industry events and has featured in a number of publications including HuffPost, eConsultancy, City AM, Marketing Week, WARC and Management Today.

Tom Ilube CBE is CEO and founder of London based Crossword Cybersecurity plc, a Non-Executive Director of the BBC and a member of RBS Technology Advisory Board. Previously he was Managing Director of Consumer Markets at Callcredit Information Group, founder/CEO of Garlik, a venture capital-backed identity protection company, sold to Experian and Chief Information Officer of Egg plc, the pioneering British internet bank. His career has included Goldman Sachs, PwC and the London Stock Exchange. Tom led Crossword in its successful admission to AIM, the growth market operated by the London Stock Exchange in December 2018.

Tom is Chair of the education charity, African Gifted Foundation and launched the African Science Academy, the first girls’ science and technology school on the continent. He is an Advisory Fellow of St Anne’s College, University of Oxford and has been awarded Honorary Doctorates by City, University of London and the University of Wolverhampton. He was named as Britain’s most influential Black person in 2017 and was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2018 Birthday Honours for services to Technology and Philanthropy.

Systems Analyst turned Tech Strategy Advisor, Public Speaker and Angel Investor Tomi Davies (TD) is Collaborator-in-Chief at TechnoVision, co-founder of the Lagos Angel Network (LAN) and President of the African Business Angel Network (ABAN).

His graduation from University of Miami in 1982 was followed by two decades in the corporate world leading implementation of innovative technology-led transformation initiatives in the Oil & Gas, Retail, Information Technology and Telecommunications industries for influential global brands Elf Aquitaine, Marks & Spencer, Ernst & Young and Sapient across Europe, the United States and Southeast Asia.

In 2002 TD’s focus shifted to Africa where he has helped create the African Agriculture Technology Foundation (AATF) in Kenya, led the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative in Nigeria and delivered a World Bank pilot of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) that uncovered over 20,000 ghost workers in the Nigerian Government. His goal-oriented approach to project delivery which consistently delivered remarkable results inspired the book “The African Project Manager”.

Using knowledge gained from nurturing a growing portfolio of tech-enabled early stage business ventures originating from Africa as a Business Angel, TD’s personal goal is to help “drive the development of Africa through entrepreneurship that uses innovation and technology to create social and economic value”. TD is a Non-Executive Director at MBO Capital (Private Equity) and Big Cabal Media (Media & Entertainment) and Chairman of TextNigeria (Telecoms).

Tommie Edwards is a highly versatile Serial Tech Entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Eventbree, an event management software for businesses owners, corporations, agencies and independent event planners to plan, collaborate, manage and promote every aspect of their event.

A member of G20 YEA, she represented the UK at the G20 YEA Summit in Argentina 2018 and Japan 2019. Tommie has been nominated for numerous Tech awards for her work at Eventbree and Tedbree digital.

Tommie began her career in the corporate world, where she spent 12 years analysing various digital solutions and their strategic deliveries within the financial services industry. She navigated the corporate world by successfully delivering on large transformation projects with multiple channels.

Since the creation of Eventbree, Tommie has tapped into Artificial Intelligence to develop a Social media and content marketing platform called TedbreeSocial, which serves as the promotional arm of Eventbree.

Business growth is a state of mind, having great ideas and incredible passion is essential, but so is cultivating a gritty mentality and versatility. Today, Tommie continues on her pursuit to leverage technology by following tech trends in solving common frustrations in today’s world..

Valerie Moran is the wealthiest black female in the UK – The Sunday Times Rich List 2019. Valerie, who has been described by a reader of The Financial Times as the “UK’s Oprah,” is the only black female ever to enter the list in the 31-edition history of the publication. From Forbes to CNN, BBC to live in-studio with Sky News and a feature in OK Magazine, her Diversity and Inclusion story has captured the imagination.

Valerie brings a refreshing air of tenacity to the worlds of FinTech and philanthropy. Now, Head of Operations & Client Relations at PFS, she held the honour of being Employee No.1 in 2008 as the company’s Implementation Project Manager. Over the years, her analytical mind and suave management style have helped to put the company on the global Regulated Financial Services map. Valerie and her husband Noel are one of the world’s most successful couples in Financial Technology. Their company has now returned profits for 11 consecutive years and is eyeing an IPO in 2020. She oversaw the donation of the equivalent of 200,000 school meals to hungry children in Mali in West Africa with PFS, Mastercard and the United Nations World Food Programme.

Wincie Wong uses her background at the leading edge of creative and disruptive innovation in the banking industry to break down barriers and tap the huge unrealised economic potential of female entrepreneurs by making the UK one of the best countries in the world for women to start and grow a new business as recommended in the Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship.

An international speaker and a digital evangelist, she is passionate about spearheading the growth of a diverse technology workforce as co-founder of the NatWest Girls Can Code network and founding member of Tech She Can, an organisation of 130+ corporates working together to increase the number of women in technology roles in the UK through education.

She is also co-host of the NatWest Technically Speaking podcast series discussing current topics in the evolving world of tech. A serial entrepreneur herself, she has been featured in Season 2 of BBC’s My Million Pound Menu with host Fred Siriex for her business running Burmese supper clubs – now available on Netflix globally. Having grown up in New York City, she’s spent the last 10 years across the pond in London where she is passionate about making innovation useful for customers.

Yaseed Chaumoo is the Co-Founder and CEO of Waive, a Marketing Intelligence Platform that uses AI to identify and predict consumer trends before they happen. Formed in 2017, it is growing into one of the most innovative marketing startups in the UK.

Yaseed is a recognised digital leader with a diverse background. With a degree in Digital 3D Design and an MSc in Human Computer Interaction, creating exciting, usable products that connect with their audience has always been at the heart of everything he does. His passion for enabling transformation brought him to Stanford where he did an Executive business course and Entrepreneurship which inspired him to marry design, engineering and business strategy to amplify the impact of his work.

Over the years he has been a champion for both the Asian and LGBT communities. Being an openly gay muslim carries a lot of taboos which Yaseed is trying to address. In the past he has raised money for LGBT Muslim charities and is currently working to create a Tech London Advocate network that specialises in promoting diversity and LGBT inclusion for startups and SME’s. Yaseed is also an active member in the community with numerous inclusion groups, highlighting that diverse backgrounds bring diverse thinking.

Yinka combines a 12- year career in Pharmacy, National Programme for IT experience, entrepreneurship, and an unrelenting passion to prevent illness through the adoption of technology. She is driven by impact and legacy.
Her career trajectory has been motivated by experiences as a young Pharmacist, which revealed the unsustainable down-stream costs of disease management. This catapulted her into the world of health tech in 2004.
Over the course of her 26-year career, Yinka has worked for Accenture, CSC, GlaxoSmithKline, Singapore General Hospital, and multiple NHS organisations across the UK.
Serving as Programme Director at DigitalHealth.London, Yinka has grown London’s position as a global commercial destination for digital health innovation, through programmes that support payors and digital health suppliers.
Yinka is an entrepreneur who founded and led the commercialisation of a tech start-up Vitalfootprint. Together with her background as a clinician and technology implementer, she offers a powerful blend of expertise that fuels her ability to lead the fast-growing London digital health ecosystem.
Yinka has been featured in the media including the Guardian; National Health Executive; Tech City News, and is a regular speaker at industry events. Yinka sits on the Smart London Board and the London Child Obesity Taskforce..

Yudee Uzowulu is CEO and founder of Ninos Global Tech, a company focused on building innovative technology solutions for families and young people.

A Law graduate from the University of Benin, Yudee has spent over a decade leading complex programmes for blue-chip organisations in numerous sectors.

Yudee has a mission to lead and inspire, approaching work with infectious enthusiasm and keeping close her values of positivity, integrity and purpose.

Her passion for making a difference inspired starting Ninos Global Tech. First-hand experience and extensive research identified a gap in the market – a lack of affordable, accessible, family-friendly technology in Africa … and so Ninos was born.

Since inception in 2016 with 1 employee, Ninos now employs nineteen staff and enjoys a presence in the UK, Nigeria, Ghana, and South African markets. Their innovative app and virtual learning environment improves communication between school and student and helps families stay connected.

Outside work Yudee continues to make a difference, leveraging her extensive experience to provide coaching and mentoring for fellow project management professionals as well as volunteering in support of charitable organisations.

Zia Yusuf is a leading tech entrepreneur who believes in the power of exponential technologies and artificial intelligence to improve human lives. Profiled in Esquire, Forbes, WSJ, Fox Business and CNBC, Zia is one of the eight most influential Goldman Sachs alumni in Fintech as named by Business Insider. He is a member of the Forbes Technology Council.

A graduate of London School of Economics, Zia enjoyed a successful career in finance, including becoming an Executive Director at Goldman Sachs aged 28. He then quit his job and co-founded Velocity, a tech startup whose mission is to inspire and facilitate extraordinary lives in the digital age. Velocity Black, its flagship product, is a revolutionary technology to enhance and optimise your life. A 24/7/365 always-on digital assistant powered by human and machine intelligence, which simplifies and enriches your time.

Velocity has a CAGR of over 400% in the last 2 years, with this growth driven by next-generation products based on pioneering artificial intelligence. Through harnessing AI, Velocity has been able to generate $700k of revenue/employee, 5-10x greater than old-economy players in the space.

Velocity has raised over $30m in venture capital, and has offices in London, New York and Los Angeles.