Gen is the Director of Women Who Code London and is a very active leader in the Tech community in London. Aside from her involvement with Women Who Code she is a Lead for Google Women Techmakers, NASA Space Apps Challenge and Twitter Developer Community London. She is also part of the leadership committee for Ada's List (a network for women in technology). She is co-organiser of COED:CODE, OpenTechSchool London and London Game Developers. She was the Head of Developer Outreach at Skills Matter and a former VP / Business Development Manager / Project Manager at Citigroup. In 2016 Gen helped lead Anita Borg Institute London and was actively instrumental in delivering the very first 1-Day Grace Hopper Conference in Europe which was held in London.
Luisa Baldini
After 12 years as a TV news correspondent at the BBC covering everything from the Amanda Knox trials in Italy to Royal births, Luisa moved to New York for 3 years with her family in 2014. Having established their new lives, Luisa decided to use her core skills honed at the top level of broadcast journalism in a new context; with an emphasis on wanting to help others find the confidence to present with composure and communicate effectively. Thus, Composure Media was launched with business partner Louisa Preston. Luisa is now back working in the UK but continues to consult US-based clients remotely, including coaching for Vermilion Talent, a womens' career re-entry program based in New York. Prior to working at the BBC Luisa worked at ITV News, Channel 5 News and Euronews in Lyon, France. Luisa has facilitated corporate events for Nissan, Sage, Cannon, Nortel, Cisco, Honeywell, Market Gravity, Barclays Capital and the British Council. As one half of Composure Media, Luisa was invited to be a presentation coach at Cambridge Judge Business School’s Ignite 2017 conference.
Jon Bradford
Jon Bradford is a highly experienced early stage investor. Jon was previously the MD of Techstars London, co-founder of F6S and tech.eu, and an advisor to Dubai Future Accelerator. Jon is the Director of the John Bradfield Centre. Jon launched the first bootcamp accelerator outside of the US in 2009 that subsequently merged with Techstars to become Techstars' first international program. He also founded the Ignite100 Accelerator in the UK, the Start-up Wise Guys Accelerator in Estonia and the Eleven Venture Accelerator in Bulgaria. Alongside this, he helped to launch a further nine accelerators from Montreal to Moscow earning him the title "Godfather of European Accelerators". Jon is also a cofounder of F6S, one of the world’s largest networks for entrepreneurs with over 1.5 million users, as well as a cofounder of Tech.eu, Europe's premier tech news site. Jon was recently inducted into the Europas' "Hall of Fame", Europe's premier start-up awards. Finally, Jon was recently appointed as an Executive Advisor to Dubai Future Accelerator and the Director of the John Bradfield Centre based in Cambridge, one of the largest start-up incubators in the UK.
David D'Souza
- Head of Engagement and London, CIPD
David is the CIPD’s Head of London. Recently described as “one of the UK’s most influential HR and workplace commentators”, he is a respected speaker and writer on progressive HR & business practice. David has expertise on a wide range of areas including organisational development, learning & development, talent and performance management, ethics, employee engagement and the future of work. Prior to joining the CIPD, David worked as an independent Organisational Development Consultant, having held previous roles as Head of People Development at Metrobank and in various HR positions for an international FS firm.
Jo Evershed has a background in psychological science and economics. She is responsible for the science and business aspect of Cauldron, and her personal area of interest is in developing evidence-based interventions for education, and in particular STEM education. Cauldron supports psychological scientists by offering specialist technical support and creating bespoke experimental platforms. They have also created the cloud software platform Gorilla, used by behavioral scientists across the globe to configure and launch behavioral studies. Cauldron’s ultimate goal is to support the transfer of research into front-line evidence-tested interventions that benefit society.
Kirsty Gill
- EVP, People, Arm
Kirsty joined Arm in 2002 and has held various leadership roles in the People Team including Executive Remuneration, Rewards, Organizational Effectiveness, People Services and Systems. She is known for her achievements on developing programs that deliver high performance, high engagement and progressive organizations. At Arm she is focused on creating a workplace where people love to collaborate, growth is encouraged and innovation flourishes, all done in Arm’s own unique way. Prior to Arm, Kirsty was HR Director for a start-up company, GF-X, and started her HR career at Accenture.
Roger Gorman
- Founder and CEO, ProFinda
Serial entrepreneur Roger Gorman combines 20 years of experience leading transformation, change and innovation across some of the world's largest corporates and networks. With a background in psychology and digital innovation, in 2011, Roger launched ProFinda; an AI powered expertise finding platform that transforms the potential of a workforce. Whilst scaling ProFinda’s core business, Roger also works on a number of projects that focus on his passion for communities of change, social impact and philanthropy. Through the development of ProFinda, and its new approach to disruption, Roger has had the opportunity to recently lecture at The White House, feature at Davos – including speaking on the panel at Davos 2017 for CNBC’s ‘Reshaping the Future of Jobs’ alongside the CEOs of ABB, EY and Manpower. In addition – he was recently quoted following the release of ProFinda’s 2016 white paper: The Disconnected Organisation in: Bdaily, Global Banking and Finance Review, The Marketing Blog, Business Matters, Digital Marketing Magazine, Incentive and Motivation, BizReport and Recruitment Buzz.
Peter is a freelance researcher in artificial intelligence based in London with a focus on the multi-objective optimisation of DNNs by evolutionary means. The most recent of his escapades involves working with a team at King’s College London; the most amusing being shortlisted in the BBC’s national Young Composers Contest with a computer-generated score. In his spare time, he is the Chief Editor at the Young Scientists Journal, heading an international team of students on a mission to publish the work of the scientists of Generation Z. His life currently revolves around three things: chilling, going ‘with the flow’ and desperately hanging onto the final dribs of childhood.
Jan set up Head Heart + Brain to change the way businesses are managed and led. Her consultancy takes the findings from neuroscience and applies them to leadership and business practice. With a Masters qualification in NeuroLeadership, she’s the driving force behind their brain-savvy approach. Before Head Heart + Brain Jan ran her own successful consulting business and was COO at an investment bank, so brings a huge amount of experience to the table in leadership and dealing with practical business issues. She is the author of three books including Brain-savvy Business: 8 principles from neuroscience and how to apply them.
Faye Holland is founder of cofinitive Ltd, a PR and corporate communications company based in Cambridge. cofinitive has launched and transformed dozens of projects, undertaken numerous branding development and execution projects, and are experienced communicators working cohesively at all levels of organisations and their stakeholder communities. Their client base includes many of the most exciting tech companies locally, nationally and internationally. Faye currently sits on the Combined Authority Business Board and the Cambridgeshire Chamber of Commerce, and previously sat on the board of CW. Internationally she is the master of ceremonies a major technology event, is the lead of the East of England Engage for Success chapter, and is a co-founder of Impact Women's Network. Prior to founding cofinitive, Faye ran the European and Asia-Pacific operations of a global media company; worked internationally at IBM on numerous emerging technology projects; after originally cutting her teeth at PIPEX where she was responsible for UK and Ireland marcomms for direct and indirect sales, and launched the first iteration of PIPEX Dial. Faye has recently been the recipient of many awards and accolades as an entrepreneur and as a woman in tech.
Daniel Hulme
- CEO, Satalia
Daniel is the CEO of Satalia, a London-based company that provides Artificial Intelligence (AI) inspired solutions to solve industries hardest problems. He is also the Director of UCL’s Business Analytics MSc, applying AI to solve business and social problems. Daniel is a popular public speaker specialising in the topics of Philosophy, Technology, Innovation and Organisational Design. He is a serial TEDx speaker and speaker for the Singularity University. Daniel has a Masters and Doctorate in AI from UCL, lecturing in Computer Science and Business, and is passionate about how technology can be used to govern organisations and bring positive social impact. Daniel is the co-founder of ASI Data Science and has Advisory and Executive positions in many companies. He holds an international Kauffman Global Entrepreneur Scholarship and actively promotes positive entrepreneurship and technology innovation across the globe.
Ross Keeping
- Arm
Ross joined Arm in 2016 and leads a fifty-person engineering team that develop tools to support scientists using supercomputers to solve large-scale challenges like weather prediction. Ross is known for his positivity and energy, and is committed to building engaged collaborative teams that deliver quality. In 13 months, Ross has grown the team from 18 to 50 people, including the successful integration of an acquisition whilst improving diversity. Ross’s journey of continual improvement and passion for enriching others gets him out of bed each morning (if it’s not his young children). Prior to Arm, Ross has held various engineering and leadership positions in technical start-ups and IBM. Parallel to Arm, Ross writes stories and occasionally performs on stage.
Sylvia Lu
- Corporate Strategy, u-blox UK, Member of Advisory Board, UKTIN
Sylvia Lu is an award-winning Chartered Engineer and Non-Executive Director. Sylvia has over 15 years of experience in the Telecom industry for four mobile generations with chipset vendors, currently with u-blox at the Corporate Strategy group – a Swiss vendor of positioning and wireless communication chipset, modules, and services.
Sylvia serves on several national and global industry Boards: she is an elected board director of CW (Cambridge Wireless), and serves on the Advisory Board of UKTIN, which provides independent advice on the telecoms sector, champions the opportunities in telecoms research, development, and innovation for the UK, and helps UKTIN provide impartial input to government. She also serves on the Board of 5G-ACIA (5G Alliance for Connected Industries and Automation), and joins forces with global industry stakeholders to influence 5G development and deployment in line with industrial imperatives to accelerate Industry 4.0.
She holds a first-class Electronic Engineering degree from Birmingham University and a Master of Science degree in Communications and Signal Processing from the University of Bristol. She graduated with a Distinction from the University of Oxford in PGDip Strategy & Innovation, and an Executive MBA degree from the University of Cambridge. Sylvia is also an artist.
Jhumi Naha
- Enterprise IT Portfolio Manager, Vodafone
Jhumi is currently working at Vodafone, in Enterprise IT as a Portfolio Manager for Cloud & Security Products. Jhumi studied her Masters in Electronic Engineering at Kings College London and has always been very passionate about motivating young women to study and work within the technology sector. Vodafone is currently involved with the Step into STEM programme, which encourages and supports young girls who study STEM subjects at sixth form to pursue a career in STEM. This programme was set up by the women network’s at Ericsson, BT, O2 and Vodafone to address the lack of women entering the STEM sector.
Arjun founded Naha Digital, a software development company, where last year he launched a high altitude balloon into the stratosphere. He had a team of four, who he taught how to use the radio communications software they used to track the balloon. His team then presented to their school about how they prepared, launched, tracked and then recovered the balloon with a focus on getting students to take STEM subjects at a higher education level. He won a scholarship from Apple to attend their Worldwide Developer Conference 2017 in San Jose where he met with developers from all around the world. He is currently interning at Content Guru, a cloud communications company, as an Application Engineer where he is working on their award-winning storm platform. Arjun is currently studying for his GCSE’s and inspires to specialise in cyber-security.
Abhi Naha
- Digital Accelerator Director, PwC UK
Abhi Naha is the Digital Accelerator Director at PwC. He is creating and leading a new tech division for PwC. The Digital Accelerator solves innovation challenges using the power of scale ups and ecosystems for greater insights, impact and value creation.
Abhi was the CCO of CW Cambridge Wireless and CEO of the Product as a Service Consortium. At CW, Abhi initiated and lead on the 5G private network testbed in Cambridge, corporate digital innovation accelerators and high value collaborations.
Abhi was the CEO and Founder of Zone V a Cambridge start up backed by Qualcomm and ARM focused on empowering people with aging eyes and visually impairment through inclusively designed smartphone software. He held senior roles at Powermat, San Jose based Synaptics and advisory roles for Goldman Sachs and Silver Lake in the area of mobile user interface technologies. Abhi is a senior advisor to an autonomous vehicle mobility scale up Conigital, Industry Partner (Digital Infrastructure) for Arjun Infrastructure Partners with 5 Billion Euros of assets under management and an Ambassador for the United Nations Global Sustainability Index Institute. Abhi studied Electronics and Electrical Engineering, has an MBA in International Marketing and authored a book on Mobile Handset Design when approached by Cambridge University Press. More recently Abhi has created an initiative to help train widows in developing countries learn python programming, gain financial empowerment and become future leaders.
Louisa Preston has been a face on national news for nearly 20 years. She currently presents and reports on BBC London News and has been part of the presenting team for major national events, including the London 2012 Olympics and Royal Wedding in 2011. Louisa joined the BBC after working for ITN’s ITV News as well as Five News, where she became the youngest national newsreader aged 22. In addition to presenting corporate videos, Louisa chairs and facilitates numerous large corporate events including award ceremonies for Shell, HSBC, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and the Home Office. Harnessing her expertise from a long career in broadcast journalism, Louisa co-founded Composure Media with Luisa Baldini to help others face the media with composure and communicate effectively. As one half of Composure Media, Louisa was invited to be a presentation coach at Cambridge Judge Business School’s Ignite 2017 conference.
Heather Richards
- CEO, Transversal
Heather is CEO of Transversal, a Cambridge-based cognitive knowledge company. Having originally moved to the UK from the USA in 1998 to complete a MPhil at Cambridge University, Heather joined Transversal as part of the founding team in 2000. She excelled in a variety of roles within the company, including VP of Professional Services, before being named CEO in 2014. She has been instrumental in growing the company from a small start-up, to the recognised leader in knowledge management solutions it is today. Heather is passionate about finding creative approaches to solving complex problems, and encourages cross-disciplinary collaboration as a way of embracing and capitalising on change.
Michelle Senecal de Fonseca
- Area Vice President, Citrix
Michelle Senecal de Fonseca is currently Area Vice President, Northern Europe at Citrix. She is responsible for the continued growth and development of Citrix sales and services operations in the Northern Europe region (comprising UK/Ireland and the Nordic countries) by driving revenues, executing an aggressive growth strategy and cultivating the company’s valued partner ecosystem. Citrix technology makes the world’s apps and data secure and easy to access, empowering people to work anywhere and at any time. Michelle has 25 years in international telecommunications and technology; managing large scale corporations and small entrepreneurial start-ups; operational experience in more than 50 countries. Prior to joining Citrix, Michelle was global managing director for Vodafone Cloud and Hosting Services – responsible for all areas of the business including sales, strategy, product and service development. Over her 25-year career she has also held positions at Cable and Wireless, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and NextiraOne. She is also a non-executive director at FDM Group, and a co-founder and board member of the Women in Telecoms and Technology (WiTT) group.
Sara is Director of Programmes at Fearless Futures. Fearless Futures engages people in critical thought to understand and challenge the root causes of inequalities and grow powerful new ways of leading transformative change. Sara’s expertise lies at the intersection of equalities pedagogy, research and facilitation: and she has brought unique diversity and inclusion thinking to organisations in the public, private and not-for-profit arenas. Alongside her BA in Politics, Psychology and Sociology from University of Cambridge, she has an MSc in Social Policy from the London School of Economics.
Gary Stewart
- Director, Wayra UK
Gary Stewart is the Director of Wayra UK and Telefónica Open Future_ (UK). He is also an associate professor and the Entrepreneur-In-Residence at IE Business School in Madrid. Gary co-founded Nuroa.es, a Barcelona start-up that raised over €4M in funding before being sold to an Australian competitor. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Gary worked as a lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in London, and Freshfields Brackhaus Deringer in Spain. Gary graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University and was the Executive Editor of The Yale Journal at Yale Law School.
Angela Yin
- Organisational Psychologist, Satalia
Angela is an organisational psychologist at Satalia with a background in cross-cultural developmental psychology. She assists in organisational structure design and culture development, and integrates a human-centred approach in her work. She's passionate about diversity and inclusivity in the workplace and integrates her passion into anything from organisational structure and design to analysing internal company data. At Satalia, Angela serves on the Humans Inclusive committee and has conducted multiple workshops addressing cognitive biases that occurs with increased transparency. Satalia also actively collects and analyses internal data looking at gender differences in areas like online communication styles, gendered differences in topic analyses and participation in certain channels, and acts on how we can use data to not only manage but also drive inclusivity.
