Speakers

Deirdre is an experienced occupational psychologist and researcher with expertise in inclusive leadership, gendered working practices, flexible and hybrid working, and work/family challenges in varying cultures. She is an Academic Fellow of the CIPD, a Chartered member of the British Psychological Society, a member of the EDI Committee to the Chartered Association of Business Schools,

Winnie has just started in the role as Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Royal Mail. Prior to this she was Vice President, Diversity & Inclusion, UK, Europe and Middle East at Barclays. She was the co-chair of the Colleague Ambitions Taskforce for Race at Work at Barclays, which aims to ensure the successful delivery of the global Race at Work ambitions and drive ethnicity equality and equity.

Doyin is an internationally-recognised expert on leadership, diversity, intersectionality and organisation culture. Doyin is a psychologist, scholar practitioner, a regular media contributor and multi-award winner for her innovative methodologies in promoting inclusion and excellence. She is Dean of the Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford university and also director of Delta Alpha Psi, a niche leadership and Inclusion consultancy.

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,

After a decade as an academic scientist, following a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, Ambily moved to GSK Regulatory Affairs. Whilst leading GSK’s UK Brexit preparations for Regulatory Affairs across all of GSK’s Business Units, Ambily led a race and ethnicity Employee Resource Group at GSK, where she worked with the CEO, Chief Executive Team and Board members to implement global changes to ensure equity for ethnic minorities.

Rukasana is a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Leader with 10 years of industry experience in Media, Technology, Professional Services and Higher Education. Rukasana is currently at Warner Bros Discovery leading the Workforce DEI Strategy for the International market. In her time at Google Rukasana led the DEI agenda across Google’s EMEA technology business working with leaders/key partners to build an evidence based approach to achieving EMEA aspirations.

Jonny joined Aviva as the Group Head of Talent Acquisition in January 2016 with responsibility for global recruitment, in 2018 he additionally took on the global Inclusion function. In 2021 he became the Diversity, Inclusion Director. Aviva is committed to moving D&I from being initiative led to having an Inclusive culture. He was previously Head of Talent Acquisition at Thomson Reuters (IP&S) for three years where he established a central sourcing hub,

Sally has driven EY’s approach on DE&I, which is firmly regarded as core to the firm’s strategy. EY believes different perspectives, shared in an inclusive environment, creates commercial advantage and will help the firm to respond to the fast pace of change in the workplace of the future.

A flexible working advocate, Sally works at EY four days a week.

Marie’s career started in retail 26 years ago with Tesco when she was 16 and has worked in various roles across the business including retail management and Head Office Project Management . Marie graduated from Middlesex university with a Criminology degree, and later went on to graduate in her Masters of Human Resources.

Marie now leads the People Operating Model and is responsible for leading the delivery of all work that contributes to operationalising the business strategy and People Priorities by building a People Function of the Future.

Nii is the CEO and Co-Founder of FLAIR, a startup leveraging data to help organisations drive meaningful progress on racial equity. In 2022, Nii was chosen for the Forbes 30u30 for the social impact of his work tied to FLAIR. Prior to this, Nii was the CEO of Flair Football, which was the UK’s first social network app for young,

Leana is an Inclusion & Diversity Expert currently working in the technology sector, having just left Clifford Chance as their Inclusion & Wellbeing Manager. Previous to this, she supported a number of FTSE 100 organisations to drive ethnic minority inclusion in the workplace. Leana was the first recruiter to actively drive a partnership with the CIPD and Kings College London to run ‘Employability Workshops’ and now focuses on driving inclusion and a more equitable workplace.

Leon has ten years of retail experience across big box, e-commerce, discount and telecoms; with functional expertise spanning operations, commercial buying and logistics. Leon works for Tesco, and he is currently the Head of Buying and Supply Chain for Tesco Mobile, as well as the Black Action Project Leader for the Tesco group. Leon is a diversity,

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.

Miguela is the head of Diversity and Inclusion at Abcam, a global biotech firm headquartered in Cambridge. In her role she has the opportunity to view equality and justice through an international lens, placing inclusion at the heart of all conversations. She also partners with several organisations to drive inclusion across industries.

Miguela is also a visiting lecturer at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism,

Binna is particularly interested in the study of gender bias and unconscious bias in organisations. He is the author of three critically acclaimed books on these subjects – ‘The Invention of Difference: The story of gender bias at work’, ‘The Value of Difference: Eliminating bias in organisations, and ‘Racism at Work: The Danger of Indifference’.

Sandra is the National Campaign Director for Business in the Community’s Race Equality campaign, a business led network of organisations from the private and public sector working and committed to race equality as part of their good business practice.  Sandra works together with the Business in the Community Race Equality board to set the agenda for race diversity in the UK as a business imperative.

Sam is the Race Action Plan Lead for Lloyds Banking Group, accountable for the ongoing development and implementation of the Group’s race action plan, delivering outcomes that achieve measurable progress.

The first FTSE 100 company to make a commitment to increase representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic colleagues to reflect the customers we serve.

Sufia is Inclusion Equity and Diversity Director at Wunderman Thompson and charged with embedding long term, sustainable positive action. With several years’ experience in learning and development, employee culture and engagement, Sufia is committed to building an ethos of belonging and creating conditions of psychological safety across all employees; thus empowering people to unleash their potential driving business growth.

An ICF trained Executive Coach, Lucinda is a warm and energetic professional who draws on 15 years of commercial and sales experience in the publishing world working with global clients such as Emirates, BSKYB and Novartis.

As Head of Working Parents at Talking Talent Lucinda’s coaching focus is on effecting positive change. She believes that life and work are inextricably linked and uses a variety of tools to help individuals or teams to understand what might be holding them back.

Arbi currently leads the Graduate and Undergraduate Recruitment at Lloyds Banking Group and previously has undertaken various roles specialising in different areas of recruitment. Arbi is passionate about driving inclusion within his role in Early Careers and more broadly through the Lloyds Banking Groups Race Advisory Board and the Institute of Student Employments Diversity and Inclusion Working Group,

Ade is Group Director of Diversity and Inclusion at ITV, and is a member of the Management Board. She has responsibility for all diversity and inclusion related matters across the Group, including leading, developing and growing ITV’s Diversity & Inclusion strategy on and off screen.

Prior to that, Ade led the Creative Diversity team at Channel 4 and spearheaded the delivery of the broadcaster’s 360° Diversity Charter.

Deepak is Director of the UK Commercial Business at AXA. He is responsible for leading several businesses across AXA UK, including E-trading, Delegated Authority, SME, Commercial Direct. Deepak leads the development and execution of AXA’s commercial strategy through all these distribution channels which are key areas of the AXA business.

Deepak is ever focused on the customer,