Speakers

Zahoor is Head of Social Mobility, Inclusion and Belonging for the Co-op group with over two decades of experience in equality, diversity and inclusion practice garnered across and range of industries, including the public, private and charitable sectors. As a graduate of psychology, he fosters a behavioural approach, and has been instrumental in pioneering approaches to tackling non-inclusive behaviours and structural inequalities.

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,

Nabeela was born in Kenya but came to live in London at an early age. She keenly enjoys any sport but mostly playing football, going road or mountain biking and running. She has been employed in the pharmaceutical industry for 25years holding a variety of roles and now works at GSK.

Nabeela is committed in influencing a positive change to organisational attitudes towards equity whether that be in race,

Sarah is a senior Human Resources professional with over 30 years’ experience, including 23 years in the specialist area of Diversity & Inclusion. She is one of the country’s most seasoned professionals in this field, is widely regarded as a thought leader and is frequently quoted in the media on issues such as women on boards,

Frank Douglas was the Executive Vice President, Group Human Resources Director for Misys, a global technology company. He worked for a CEO who was considered one of the top 10 international technology turnaround executives. He was part of the executive team that took the business private. Prior to that role, he was the Group HR Director for Transport for London/TfL.

As a keen advocate of DE&I, Katherine takes the lead to drive an inclusive culture globally focussing on the employee talent lifecycle. She previously led Global D&I as well as European Talent Management at Axis Capital, Liberty Global where she established a D&I Council. Katherine brings rounded talent acquisition, talent management and HR experience to her work as a Diversity and Inclusion specialist having worked at a number of large investment banks such as Goldman Sachs,

Steven enlisted into the British army in 1997. He served as an instructor at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and later as the Regimental Sergeant Major of the Army Staff Leadership School. He was one of the founding members of the Army BAME Network and was its Co-Chair for 7 years. He was awarded an MBE in 2020 for services to Diversity &

Currently Inclusion and Diversity Manager at Skanska, Alice has 9 years’ change-management experience working to create ‘better business as usual’ in sustainability, social responsibility and I&D. Alice’s passion is how diversity and inclusion can be used to solve industry challenges; leading an industry first pilot into flexible working to support mental health, and pioneering a Lived Experience Project to understand how under-represented groups experience Skanska’s culture.

Navleen joined Network Rail in September 2021 as HR Director Transformation after more than 20 years experience in various Senior level HR roles in different sectors including Aviation, Oil and Gas , Packaging and Telecoms. Navleen leads Network Rail’s Equity Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) team, a centre of excellence within the company, providing expertise on EDI across the organisation and delivering on our ambition to be a more open,

Lucile is the Head of Diversity and Inclusion at ITN, one of the UK’s most respected news provider, reaching over 10million people every day. A go-getter with a creative mind, she is an award-winning leader with a decade of experience specialising in driving and implementing cultural change as well as empowering individuals to help them become conscious leaders.

Taz spent over 4 years as a teacher before making the move into the Startup space, helping to hire global teams at scale, from Silicon Valley to Singapore. Endless micro-aggressions fuelled her desire to create change. Frustrated with the lack of diversity and inclusion in her industry, she began to focus her efforts onto more strategic hiring;

Gerald is the Global DEI Director at GSK. He has more than 25 years of experience in the pharmaceuticals and healthcare around the world – working in HR, commercial strategy and sales & marketing. Gerald was attracted to DEI’s potential in contributing to the success of organisations which led him to his current role –

Paula has extensive experience of working in large multi-national blue-chip organisations within finance and human resources. She has spent the last 18 years working in the field of learning and development across Western Europe, with a specific focus on leadership development. More recently Paula’s focus has been on working with site-based project leaders to develop their capability to create inclusive work environments and introducing a co-mentoring programme where members of Skanska’s senior management team are paired with a member of an employee network group,

Jay has recently taken on the role of Country HR Director for India at BT Group. Prior to BT, Jay has worked at Entain Group, Virgin Media, Monster.com, Thomson Reuters and VMware.

Jay has lived in London for the past 8 years and has just relocated back to India. He is a lifetime wheelchair user having had polio as an infant and believes that positive role modelling is essential to break stereotypes and preconceived notions.

Jatin is an inclusion, diversity, social equality and advocacy professional with over 12 years’ experience working across the private and charity sectors.

In his current role as Inclusion & Diversity Director at the RFU, Jatin focuses on driving the I&D strategy across four strategic pillars; Game Play, Fans/Followers/Partners, Employee and Board and Game Leadership via multi-year action plans,

Faizza is responsible for overseeing the ethnicity and social mobility programmes at Network Rail, which aim to create a more diverse, inclusive and safer workplace for people of different ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds. Last year, Faizza was instrumental in the rollout of an industry-wide ethnicity training programme, which was delivered to more than 40,000 colleagues.

Mandeep is an accomplished equity, diversity and inclusion change agent with nearly 25 years’ experience of spearheading change to improve organisational practice on advancing ED, creating inclusive cultures and challenging the status quo, using a social justice approach. Specialising in race equity Mandeep has been at the forefront of widely recognised sector leading pieces of work to address institutional racism.

Leona is D&I Leader at the John Lewis Partnership and is well-known for her ability to lead and deliver innovative people-focused strategies, improving employee relations, performance, and reputation. With a 15-year background in developing proactive communication strategies, she’s now cultivated a unique engagement-centred approach to delivering diversity and inclusion.

As a recently appointed member of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime’s external reference group,

Janet is an experienced talent, learning and D&I practitioner. Working in some of the countries most recognised brands, she has experienced and led many people change programmes. She is passionate about people being able to live their best lives, and fiercely believes that more needs to be done to enable under-represented communities to be able to do this.