Anna Radulovski | WomenTech Network
Originally from Ukraine, Anna began her diversity in tech empowerment journey in 2017 when she started Coding Girls.
Followed the launch of WomenTech Network, a women-led and women-focused organization to empower women globally through mentorship, career development, and networking. She’s the organizer of the WomenTech Global Conference uniting 100 000 women in tech, minorities, and allies, growing the community to 60K members since 2019. Her leadership inspired and empowered +6000 Ambassadors from 172 countries to join and unite women in tech in times of uncertainty.
As a Regional Director at the Founder Institute, her mission is to enable talented and aspiring female founders to become innovators and leaders and start and launch impactful companies. Ever since she joined the Founder institute the percentage of female graduates increased to 65% in 2021.
She is a regular speaker at large conferences in tech and business (Webit, EBAN, WeAreDevelopers) and a startup jury for girls and women contests and competitions like Enterpregirl. She views other women-focused organizations and startups as partners rather than competitors and due date WomenTech Network has over 200+ community members. (We'd be happy to have WeAreTheCity as a community as well)
As an organizer of WomenTech Global Awards, she put the highest priority on making sure women are seen, heard, and recognized. More than 2000+ women were recognized during the WomenTech Global Awards in 2022, with 60 winners in 22 categories including Women-Led Startup of the Year, Diversity in Tech Initiative, Diversity & Inclusion Officer of the Year, LGBTG+ AI Inclusion.
Patrizia Capogreco | 3M
Patrizia is a Senior Application Engineer, supporting EMEA Adhesive Solutions for Transportation Industry at 3M and a STEM role model for the next generation
A Material Scientist, a patent applicant who recently achieved the exclusive European Adhesive Engineer (EAE) certification, granted by the European Welding Federation.
Patrizia was born and raised in Italy. She was full of curiosity, enthusiasm, supported and encouraged in her learning and her aspirations by her family.
She studied materials science at university in Milan and Strasburg in France, specializing in composite materials and soon started working closely with both customers in the transportation market and the 3M Research and Development labs to develop new applications
Following 3M vision, Science needs to approach real applications to solve materials, products, equipment, process related issues and Application engineers play a critical role connecting technologies with the needs of customers, with women typically underrepresented on this career path.
Being part of a multicultural team Patrizia strongly believes in the power of comparison and collaboration of technical teams with different experiences and skills: the creativity that derives from it in solving a problem she thinks is the real key to scientific innovation. And that is how she has been named as an inventor on a patent relating to a high-profile customer project.
Patrizia is a STEM Ambassador encouraging and inspiring young people to consider a career in science, technology, engineering and maths with the mission to support kids to see themselves reflected in the science community, no matter their gender, ethnicity, or ability.
She also advocates for diversity in STEM being Lean In Circle leader and Gold facilitator of #IamRemarkable initiative, empowering women and other underrepresented groups to celebrate their achievements in the workplace and beyond. Her daughter, Beatrice, has been an inspiration for Patrizia to continue her drive to give those who are underrepresented in STEM a voice so they can reach their full potential.
Aparna Saroagi | NatWest
Aparna Saroagi, Vice-President & Head, Credit Risk, India, Natwest Group.
She has been spearheading inclusive workplace practices by advancing organization women's engagement; going beyond, as a key driver in propagating women empowerment across industry sectors by mentoring and guiding women at all levels to achieve their potential to fulfil professional and personal goals.
On inclusive leadership, in her own words, “a diverse and an inclusive society starts with leader’s personal actions and advocacy, to bring clarity to where we (women) are as a gender and the capability required for tomorrow. That journey is by itself a motivation to bring our best selves to work."
Over her 9 years in RBS, Aparna has been instrumental in setting up various teams in RHI, and leading initiatives to ensure a safe and secure customer proposition. She has been committed on achieving business priorities by driving the people agenda (Career Fairs, Women’s leadership mentoring), defining effective Target operating models and driving consolidation of the various controls function.
She has led from the front, supporting teams with opportunities to develop with positive Our View D&I scores and conscious effort to build an inclusive team.
Aparna has made a significant impact in India as the Co-Founder of Women Entrepreneurship and Empowerment Foundation (WEE) which is fully supported by Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and Government of India to strengthen the global Women eco-system. Under Aparna's leadership, WEE Foundation has remarkable achievements till date:
- Mentored 5200 Indian women entrepreneurs in start-ups including AI, Beehiving, Menstrual Hygiene, Tactile technology for differently abled etc;
- Facilitated GBP 125,000 grant as venture capital support
- Drive sustainable environment initiatives on smokeless cooking stoves.
Aparna's achievements continue as a regular TedX and keynote speaker; on behalf of Government of India as a Chair/ Presenter of round-table conferences on women empowerment hosting overseas high-level Government delegations from:
- UK (Jonathan Reynolds, Shadow Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Member of Parliament & Virendra Kumar Sharma, Member of Parliament),
- Canada ( Naveen Bains, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation)
- Israel (Ofir Akunis, Minister of Science, Technology and Space)
She is the winner of the prestigious "Social: India Women entrepreneurship Leadership award 2017". In recognition of her Gender diversity contribution, she has earned an honorary appointment in the Standing committee for Promoting Women in Science, Government of India.
Aparna has been recognized as Young Innovator and Leader by Israel embassy in India.
Aparna has demonstrated that achieving equality is about more than just creating ‘opportunities for women’ – it’s about creating a positive work environment, encouraging colleagues on the importance of diversity and enabling a great workplace resulting in brilliant outcomes for customers, colleagues and the community.
Aparna's work has been covered by leading medias Bloomberg, BBC, Business World, Government of India portal. ( Please feel free to search my name on internet, almost 5 pages talks about our work on women empowerment)
Stephen Gill | Salamander Limited
Over 40 years of progressive responsibility and achievement in the HVACR/Building Services Engineering industry.
A specialist in refrigeration systems and energy efficient solutions for buildings. I also have a keen interest in personal development within the workplace and am involved in a number of initiatives raising awareness of the HVACR sector.
Broad international business and technical experience as company owner, board director, senior manager, design engineer, projects manager, consultant, speaker and technical/business writer. Contributing chapters to several business books and numerous technical articles to trade press.
A champion of a number of industry causes and initiatives in the refrigeration and air-conditioning engineering (RAC) sector: I am the founder of the Women in RACHP network – an RAC industry wide network started in 2016; and founder and Head of Secretariat of World Refrigeration, Air-Conditioning and Heatpump Day (World Refrigeration Day - WRD). A new initiative started in 2019 which aims to raise awareness to the wider public of the role of refrigeration technology and science in modern living. This has received the support of UNEP’s OzonAction programme, and UNIDO. In its inaugural year, WRD was celebrated by over 1000 events in over 153 countries making an overnight industry global success.
After working for several engineering companies in increasingly senior roles, I formed my engineering and business consultancy in 2014.
Lee Chambers | Essentialise Workplace Wellbeing
Lee Chambers is a psychologist, coach and founder of Essentialise Workplace Wellbeing, a wellbeing and inclusion consultancy.
After a diverse career, including time in corporate finance, elite sports and the third sector, alongside scaling a videogame business, he has brought his knowledge and lived experience together to support companies in creating equitable culture, psychologically safe spaces and effective wellbeing strategies. This has been borne from his own lived experience, which has included mental health challenges, time as a stay at home Dad, and learning to walk again in 2014 after illness.
Daniel López Rovira | OLIO
Daniel has been working in Software Engineering for over ten years, after graduating from university in Barcelona.
He worked at Klarna in Stockholm for a few years before he moved to the UK in 2014, where he has worked in a few startups of different sizes. As an individual contributor, he mainly worked on backend and data, which continued when he moved into a leadership position.
Daniel focuses on culture and creating safe and inclusive places where everyone can become the best version of themselves. Nowadays, he's leading teams and driving high performance while building high trust, safe and inclusive teams in startups.
Richard Pickard | Inclusive Search
Equality, purpose and mission are important to me. I want to give back more than I take from life.
20+ years experience personally delivering exceptional recruitment solutions, both on a contingent & retained search basis, to start-up & scale-up tech firms through to FTSE100. Exciting and engaging teams with empathetic leadership, launching new business units for international recruitment organisations.
Having served as a Board Director for 10+ years, I created a business with a clear purpose & mission to represent a broad talent pool of diverse candidates.
Businesses with diversity have a greater balance of voices that enable them to create innovative solutions. Companies need to reflect their customers and the regions they operate in. Also...surely it's just the right thing to do.
The data is in...diverse companies achieve better commercial results, with most successful companies now viewing equality, diversity & inclusion as essential to their business performance and growth.
Inclusive Search works with the highest quality diverse candidates in the market, and with clients who value, reward, respect & celebrate everyone's diversity - and who wish to be proactive in recruiting, retaining & developing high-performing diverse talent.
As an advocate for TLA Black Women in Tech, The 30% Club, and a judge of the WeAreTheCity Rising Star awards, I am actively involved in creating leadership dialogue around equity and allyship, and also advising & mentoring candidates.
I am the author of the ‘Exceptional Female Role Models’ interview series – championing the achievements and excellence of inspirational females trailblazing in business. I won the LinkedIn 'Best Talent Voice, UK' award for 2021. I was listed in the Top 50 Trailblazers in Gender Equality 2021.
William Torrie | Barclays
William is VP of Legal External Engagement at Barclays, having started his career on the 2018 graduate programme following University.
A passionate advocate for change, he quickly climbed the ranks of Win, Barclays’ gender resource group, where he now serves as UK Deputy Chair, and is widely recognised for his campaign for gender equality. He also founded the ‘Alison Scott Scholarship’, a competitive programme awarded to four female undergraduate students at Queen Margaret University – providing the opportunity to upskill, travel and gain work experience whilst they complete their undergraduate studies.
In addition, William sits on the board of an LGBT+ Early Careers group; is a member of a London-based Think Tank, focussing on gender in the UK’s Foreign and Economic policies; and has held various roles in electoral and referenda campaigns in the UK and overseas.
Ian Clarke | Deilight Consulting
A successful, multi-award winning Philanthropist, Entrepreneur, Author and Social Justice campaigner, London-born, racially non-binary and LGBT, Ian Clarke, 36, has been recognized by Rising Stars, Social Entrepreneur and Millennium volunteers as a leading mind globally on human rights, the value of human differences and the costs of oppression.
A 9-times chartered and certified Psychologist, Therapist, Management, D&I practitioner and Investment Banker, with 15 years’ experience advising the world’s top companies across 2 continents, the authority of Ian voice comes from extraordinary life experiences, complex intersectionality and his ability to represent anyone by listening and then projecting empathy.
In 2021, his lifelong work to advance sustainable business practices globally culminated in his 45-page report he dubbed Project Speak Up, cataloguing the causes, costs and solutions of oppression in global financial services. Ian single-handedly delivered the change that led to the first black appointments in history to the board of Europe’s largest bank, and the first black female appointment to any European banking board in history. He now manages Deilight Consulting, a multi-award-winning Culture Transformation practice working at the forefront of boosting representation for marginalized communities everywhere.
r10 Consulting
r10 is a management consultancy, focused on helping the global insurance market embrace change through business and technology transformation.
Since 2012, we envision a better future for the insurance industry and strive to help our clients welcome future challenges and maximise long-term potential.
Our clients include leadership, technology, and change teams of leading (re)insurers, syndicates, brokers, MGAs, insurtechs, and service and software providers.
When our clients need a trusted partner to guide them on their transformation journeys, they turn to r10. Using a diverse network of industry experts and partners, we share insights and deliver outcomes in a bespoke approach for each client's unique scenario.
We provide consulting services that focus on growth, operations, and technology – including business strategy, technology investments, change management, and capabilities enhancement.