Speakers

Abigail is an award-winning Senior Policy Advisor, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Champion and Neurodiversity Advocate with over eight years’ experience in building and maintaining strong working relationships with community groups and supporting voluntary and marginalised groups. She currently works in the Start for Life Unit on early years health workforce policy.

Abigail won the 2020 Civil Service Rising Star Award for her dedication to public service making significant impact to communities and being instrumental in leading on race discussions in the Civil Service and enabling uncomfortable conversations with senior leaders and amplify the voices of ethnic minority people in the department in order to create inclusive,

Mark Baker has decades of experience connecting business communities to accelerate change.

Mark founded Sircula Ltd to enable B2B communities to connect, learn and grow. In June 2018 Mark launched d&i Leaders to bring together global diversity, inclusion and HR related professionals. Since then, Mark and the team have established an annual programme of strategic in-person and online summits and conferences,

Georgina is a Diversity and Inclusion Specialist, leading the Disability and Accessibility Inclusion agenda at Vodafone UK. She has been with the organisation for 9 years in multiple roles across HR. Prior to working at Vodafone, Georgina was a registered nurse, working in Cardiac Intensive Care and a variety of Primary Care trust roles such as General Practice.

Meike leads the neurodiversity programme at BP and is responsible for developing, driving and executing bp’s global neurodiversity strategy. She is the proud owner of an ADHD brain and a strong believer in achieving neuroinclusion by normalising adjustments that individuals with neurodifferences benefit from, for example by establishing ND-friendly HR processes and everyday workplace experiences.

Sally is the Chief People Officer at Global Media and Entertainment where she is responsible for creating a great employee culture and fostering diversity and inclusion.

She worked with children’s homes in the UK and Australia for many years and is passionate about supporting young people to achieve their potential and take care of their mental health.

Pebble is an autistic student who recently worked as an intern at Global Media and Entertainment as the Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator.  She has A-Levels in Sociology, Religious Studies and Classical Studies, and will be studying at the University of Kent on the Classical Studies undergraduate course come September. Pebble is passionate about making sure the workplace is a safe place for people of all walks of life,

At Texthelp, Paul is VP Customer Acquisitions and one of our Accessibility and Inclusion Specialists. Working across a number of key sectors including Government, Public Sector, Health, Third sector, Housing and Private Sector SME’s, Paul and his team provide assistive software solutions that help support organisations in their diversity, inclusion and accessibility journey.

Prior to joining Texthelp in 2017,

Atlanta is Chair of Vodafone UK’s Disability Inclusion Network, the VodABILITY Network. Prior to becoming Chair, she held multiple roles within the Network including founding and leading the Committee Engagement function. Atlanta is particularly interested in workplace accessibility for individuals with non-visible and fluctuating disabilities, using her lived experience of both Chronic Illness and Neurodiversity to champion for greater understanding and culture change.

Tristan has a Master’s degree in cognitive psychology, works as a senior content strategist, writer and editor at global health technology provider Philips. He is the founder and chair of the Philips Neurodiversity Network, an Employee Resource Group with over 300 members that aims to advance neuro-inclusivity in every aspect of the employee experience at Philips – from talent recruitment to leadership development as well as mental health programs.

Hannah is an award-winning Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Antiracism Leader and keynote speaker. Her experience spans across industries such as Automotive, Construction, Retail, Financial Services and Technology. She has been recently credited as a Top 100 Influential Muslim in the UK and as a Top 10 Influential Muslim in Retail, Food and Hospitality. Hannah is a South Asian,

Serena Lloyd-Smith is the Head of Diversity and Inclusion for Global, where she is responsible for driving the D&I strategy, interventions and initiatives, and oversees Global’s staff networks.  A key part of her role is influencing the approach to D&I as well as working with senior stakeholders by using data to capture key insights to drive real measurable progress.

Nigel is an inclusion strategist and well known for his passion in supporting and guiding organisations to create spaces where everyone can access opportunities, chances and tools to thrive and where people can bring their authentic, unique selves to work. He has built global strategies, and intersectional ID&E programs supporting diverse communities in his current role at Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Rachel (known by everyone at the Dyson Institute as Rae) set out as a secondary maths teacher back in 2005 and spent over a decade in this area. Whilst teaching maths has always been enjoyable, a real passion came early on in her career for additional pastoral roles including head of year and SENCO. She didn’t imagine that one day she would work for Dyson!

Meghan has worked with Diversity and Ability since 2017 and was appointed as Director of Innovation in October 2022.

With lived-experience at its core, Meghan leads on all Training and Innovations at D&A, including managing the Inclusion Specialist and Needs Assessments team. She is an expert in facilitating workshops; designing e-learning and group learning courses;

Tash is an ambivert Creative Director with a background in art direction (despite being kicked out of art class in school!) As a neurodiverse leader, Tash uses her unique experiences of being a working Jewish mama to her hooligan toddler, overcoming mental illness, and leading from an early age with youth leadership to create initiatives and inspire change in the workplace and through her creative work.

Once upon a time I was a professional Actor. I now use my thespian skills to entertain my daughter and son, and also love writing and curating content as #ChatTalent European Editor. In my current role as VP Customer Acquisition at Zinc Work, I help organisations understand how in 1-2 clicks they can automate all their background and reference checks globally in one go.