Mark is an accomplished and people-focussed recruiter working with the Talent Acquisition team in Citi, with over 10 years of experience in recruitment, people management, and leadership. He currently supports the technology and operations recruitment strategy and execution across the UK and Europe. With a passion for the arts, Mark has held NED board positions for local and grassroots opera companies, advising on technology adoption, people management, and outreach.

Hanna Naima Mccloskey (she/her) is Algerian British and the Founder & CEO of Fearless Futures. Before founding Fearless Futures she worked for the UN, NGOs and the Royal Bank of Scotland, across communications, research and finance roles; and has lived, studied and worked in Palestine, Italy, USA, Sudan, Syria and the UK. She has a BA in English from the University of Cambridge and an MA in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, with a specialism in Conflict Management. Hanna has worked with leaders in the largest tech companies in the world building their capacity and advising them on how to embed equity into their policies, processes and products. She brings systems thinking, anti-oppression praxis, socio-political analysis and change management expertise to complex problems; among them, responsible AI. Hanna is the Co-Author of Fearless Futures' White Paper - DEI Disrupted: The Blueprint for DEI Worth Doing and a qualified body/breastfeeding peer supporter with the ABM.

Starting as a software engineer, I have been building software across a number of industries over the last 15 years. I am part of the Telematics team at Samsara, building our connected operations platform. Prior to this, I was at AWS, where I was part of the MSK team.

Currently an Infra Transformation Specialist at Accenture, helping organizations streamline operations and accelerate digital transformation. Recognized for her contributions to diversity in tech, she has previously spoken at the Black Tech Fest and was a finalist for the Inspirational Woman of the Year Award.

Shore Delano is a British-Nigerian cultural advocate and founder of The Rendition. Her heart lies in community building, serving the collective and making theatre accessible to all, especially Black communities. In 2019, drawing on over a decade of experience in production and project management within corporate and agency environments-and combining this with her expertise in connecting audiences to theatre shows at scale -Shore launched The Rendition.

Abi Mohamed leads Community at Diversity VC, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to setting a global benchmark for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in the venture capital industry. With over seven years of experience in startups and venture capital, Abi has supported scaling founders, worked in investing, and led initiatives aimed at building a fairer and more inclusive world.

Stephen established Beyond Education in 2019 as an initiative to help his peers struggling to secure job opportunities after graduation. Today Beyond Education is a talent and employer branding agency with an online community of over 120,000 followers, helping underrepresented talent access career opportunities with inclusive employers. Beyond Education has helped employers save £131,000 in recruitment related cost to date, reached over 16 million candidates online through content and has worked with organisations across various industries: LinkedIn, HSBC, BBC, Octopus Energy, BNY Mellon, St James Wealth Management, IQ-EQ, Federated Hermes, Octopus Investments, Octopus Money, 10,000 Black Interns Foundation, Wasserman, Uswitch, JumpStart Careers, CISI, EY Foundation, Samsung. Stephen graduated with first-class honours in Banking and Finance from the University of Northampton. Despite attending a ‘non-target’ university, he has worked in competitive industries such as FinTech, Consulting, Private Equity, and Asset Management before progressing into the CEO position at Beyond Education full-time. He is a passionate advocate for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, spearheading Beyond Education’s growth efforts through marketing, sales, and strategy development.

Dr Abigail Otchere holds a BSc in biomedical science (Roehampton university), a MSc in neuroscience (Kings college London) and obtained her PhD in biomedical science from Aston University(2021). Currently she works as a medical writer at Excerpta Medica, a global medical communications agency under the Adelphi group. Abigail is also the co-founder of SiSTEM, an initiative which aims to connect and support women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) particularly black women and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Prior to her PhD, she worked in the clinical trials sector, mainly working on flu, asthma and virology studies and HIV/AIDs trials. Together with her sister (co-founder of SiSTEM) she dedicates her time to improving the retention and the uptake of black women in STEM by inspiring early years to working professionals and changing the narrative on STEM.

I am a Lead Business Analyst with over years of experience, qualified life coach and Master Practitioner of NLP. This winning combination allows me to build rapport with individuals at all levels, taking the time to find out what makes them tick, which achieves great results. I am an excellent team manager, coaching and developing people to be the best version of themselves. Outside of business analysis, I run workshops for women on empowerment, getting them out of their own way and showing how to be a trailblazer for themselves, their children and their peers.

An ambitious, conscientious, innovative, and entrepreneurial individual who is passionate about making a positive impact on the world through bringing people together.

Throughout her career, Catherine has achieved a lot from running two businesses (GLOW and Social) to making the career change into community management using her automation and communications expertise.

In her four years of automation and communications experience, she has achieved impressive statistics and achievements for the communities she's grown, including:

🌟 Automated seven businesses from enquiry to nurture and renewal - in fact one of them saw 9.37% of lost clients convert later on;

🌟 Trained and supported her teams to automate aspects of their roles to save them time;

🌟 Increased open rates and click rates of communities like Circl's where Catherine increased the open rate from 53.21% in Mar 22 to 71.87% in Sep 22 and Colorintech's where the average open rate is 75% and the click rate is 7.1%;

🌟 Has been awarded for managing one of the most engaged groups on LinkedIn and has maintained an 'Active Group' badge for the Colorintech community group.

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If you're interested in hearing more about her community building and communications expertise, then do drop a connection request! In addition, she has six years of speaking experience, including but not limited to:

🌟 Running workshops and training sessions on a variety of topics; 🌟 Hosting in-person and virtual events for audiences for small and large scale audiences;  🌟 Participated on multiple panels surrounding Diversity, Equity and Inclusion;

🌟 MC'd panel discussions both in-person and virtually;

🌟 Co-Hosted a Podcast and Social Media series on Business and the Impact of COVID on Students.

jack of all trades