Speakers

Meet Our 2023 Speakers!

Ciji Duncan
Empowering Women In Tech Panel

Ciji is Chief People Officer at xDesign. She has worked with xDesign for nearly six years and has been an integral part of the business’s growth – having grown from just 60 people to over 400 in 2 years. Ciji helped xDesign achieve the number one spot of Great Place to Work’s prestigious lists for Tech and Wellbeing as a large organisation in 2023.

Leading the Talent Acquisition, People Operations and Learning & Development teams, Ciji is leading the company’s charge to maintain and grow xDesign’s vibrant culture as it undergoes rapid growth, whilst also ensuring a great employee experience for all team members.

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Ciji Duncan

Empowering Women In Tech Panel
Sara Bowley
Keynote Speaker: Empowering Success

Sara is Delivery Director for BBC Product Group. She is passionate about creating inclusive environments in which teams can do their best work. She specialises in helping organisations to grow agile capabilities and works with teams to understand how to apply agile ways of working at scale. Sara has worked in the tech industry for over 20 years in a variety of sectors from commercial businesses and agencies to NGOs and Charities.

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Sara Bowley

Keynote Speaker: Empowering Success
Deborah Gillespie
Panel Host: Empowering Career

Deborah has worked in the HR space for over 15 years. Starting her career in recruitment, having worked for several international consultancy brands, Deborah transitioned into HR in 2008. Since then she has worked in a number of different roles, from start-up through to a strategic business partner, and now in her current role as Head of People at xDesign, a digital consultancy headquartered in Edinburgh. At xDesign the People Operations team lead on the employee experience for all xDesigners, the approach is exciting and progressive and Deborah has enjoyed the transition into a growth business in the tech industry.

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Deborah Gillespie

Panel Host: Empowering Career
Kate Philpott
Action Learning Panelist: KrakenFlex

Kate is Delivery Practice Lead at Infinity Works, part of Accenture. She has worked in the tech industry for nearly 20 years, starting out at agency and then working across a number of industries including media, finance, public sector, and healthcare and for companies such as The BBC and Sky. She is passionate about cultivating environments where people feel able to do their best work and focus on the delivery of value, creating opportunities for women and debunking myths to help make the tech industry accessible for all.

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Kate Philpott

Action Learning Panelist: KrakenFlex
Gemma McCall
Action Learning Panelist: KrakenFlex

Gemma is the Co-Founder and CEO of Culture Shift- a SaaS business that believes in using tech to bring positive change to people all over the world. She was named in the Class of 2020 Insider’s 42 Under 42, she is a feminist, an ally and eternally hopeful!

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Gemma McCall

Action Learning Panelist: KrakenFlex
Fey Ijaware
Action Learning Panelist: KrakenFlex

Fey has worked as a Software Engineer for the last five years, most recently as a Senior Frontend Engineer at DWP. She is the Founder of Codeandstuff, a coding and networking community for female and non-binary developers. Fey was also recognised in the Northern Power Women Future List 2019, and as one of Tech Nation’s 50 Most Inspiring, Prominent and Influential Black Voices in Tech 2019

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Fey Ijaware

Action Learning Panelist: KrakenFlex
Emma Beddoes
Action Learning Panelist: KrakenFlex

Emma started her career in the Energy sector with a Masters in Mechanical Engineering. She has been with the Octopus Energy Group for 6 years and 9 months (more or less since the company was founded!) and in that time has experienced roles in Operations and Product. For the last year Emma has been the Chief of Staff at Kraken Technologies- the technology tentacle of the group.

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Emma Beddoes

Action Learning Panelist: KrakenFlex
Becki Howarth
Action Learning Panelist: KrakenFlex

Becki started her career in Finance with a degree in Economics from University of Birmingham and transitioned into tech. She has worked in positions such as consulting and project management, and she currently works as a Product Delivery Manager at KrakenFlex, where she uses her talents in tech to move us closer to the energy system of the future, and our goal of achieving Net Zero.

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Becki Howarth

Action Learning Panelist: KrakenFlex
Aisha Saini
Community Empowerment Speaker

Hello! I’m Aisha a Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Jaguar Land Rover. I work with Terraform, Kubernetes and GCP to maintain our platform and am currently working on a new Internal Developer Platform to deliver a Platform as a Product. Alongside my role, I am one of the well-being champions in our department. To me, it is important that we have a safe positive space in the workplace and I make sure I encourage this as part of my role.

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Aisha Saini

Community Empowerment Speaker
Sabrina Olson
Workshop Host

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Sabrina Olson

Workshop Host
Olivia Horan
Workshop Host

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Olivia Horan

Workshop Host
Luke Benson
Action Learning Workshop Host

A Mathematics graduate from the University of Sheffield, Luke got incredibly bored of numbers and abstract thinking and embarked upon a 12-week training course in ‘ DevOps/Cloud’ where everything felt very abstract (oops) Following this programme Luke joined CTS in May 2022 as a Platform Engineer and will be one of the hosts of an interactive workshop at Reframe WIT 2023. He is also a Manchester United fan, despite living nowhere near Manchester.

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Luke Benson

Action Learning Workshop Host
Kat Nova
Action Learning Workshop Host

After side-stepping through a number of different professions, Kat has progressed into a career in Data and Analytics and is enthusiastic about showing people that it can be done. She is a Data Analyst at CTS specialising in Looker and enjoys gathering information and skills to further her understanding of Data Pipelines, especially within Cloud environments.

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Kat Nova

Action Learning Workshop Host
Chidi Ekeoma
Action Learning Workshop Host

Chidi is a Lead Platform Engineer at CTS, Europe’s biggest dedicated Google Cloud Partner. Having switched careers from Engineering to Tech in 2018, he has been engrossed in all things Google Cloud; completing 7 of the 9 available professional certifications, working on large-scale projects in various sectors, and working his way up to Team Lead position. It has been a journey of discovery, one aspect of which was the passion for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion – particularly empowering and providing opportunities for URGs in order to diversify not just CTS, but the whole tech landscape.

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Chidi Ekeoma

Action Learning Workshop Host
Ann Ledwith
Action Learning Panelist: SAGE

Ann Ledwith is a Director of Engineering at Sage. After completing a Masters in Bioinformatics, she started her career as a pre-clinical researcher but soon moved across to developing clinical trial systems. She joined Sage 12 years ago and has held many roles in those years. She is an advocate for security, privacy, continuous delivery and DevOps. A self-confessed geek she spends her spare time automating SmartThings or writing Alexa skills to control them via IoT.

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Ann Ledwith

Action Learning Panelist: SAGE
Yasmin Sidat
Keynote Speaker Empowering Career

Yasmin is a Senior Product Lead at Auto Trader UK and has spent the last decade in the UK & Internationally across Tech, Marketing, & Startups and various industries. She is also an award winner of the Talk Talk northwest women in Tech awards 2022 & has featured in the BBC & Metro for different projects. Yasmin is also a strong advocate for supporting & driving underrepresented talent through mentoring, building events & delivering courses across the country to a variety of diverse tech communities.

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Yasmin Sidat

Keynote Speaker Empowering Career
Dame Stephanie Shirley CH
Keynote Speaker: Empowering Success

Dame Stephanie Shirley CH, also known as Steve, is a workplace revolutionary and successful IT entrepreneur turned ardent venture philanthropist. At 89 years old, her story has many strands which, woven together, have produced a lifetime of exceptional achievements.

Dame Stephanie’s story begins with her 1939 arrival in Britain as an unaccompanied five-year-old Kindertransport refugee. This defining experience equipped her with fortitude at a very young age and made her determined to live a life worth saving.

In 1962, she started a software house, Freelance Programmers, and pioneered radical new flexible work practices that changed the landscape for women working in technology. She went on to create a global business and a personal fortune which she shared with her colleagues, making millionaires of 70 of her staff at no cost to anyone but herself.

Since retiring in 1993, Dame Stephanie’s life has been dedicated to venture philanthropy in the fields of IT and autism. She initially founded Autism at Kingwood in 1994 to support her late son Giles, and her charitable Shirley Foundation went on to make grants of nearly £70 million. It spent out in 2018 in favour of Autistica, the UK’s national autism research charity founded by Dame Stephanie. In 2009/10 she served as the UK’s first-ever national Ambassador for Philanthropy.

Dame Stephanie’s memoir Let It Go was first published in 2012 and re-published in 2019 for worldwide distribution. The first translated version was launched in Germany in 2020 and a Spanish translation is coming soon. Dame Stephanie is currently working with The Development Partnership, to make a multi-part TV series with one of the major streaming services. During lockdown in 2020, Dame Stephanie produced her second book, So To Speak, a collection of 29 of her speeches given over the last 40 years. All proceeds from the book go to Autistica.

Dame Stephanie has been much honoured. In 2013, she was named by Woman’s Hour as one of the 100 most powerful women in Britain. In 2014, the Science Council listed her as one of the Top 100 practicing scientists in the UK. In 2015, Dame Stephanie was given the Women of the Year Special Award, and in the same year her TED Talk received a standing ovation from more than a thousand of the world’s most recognised technical entrepreneurs, thinkers, creators and doers. It has since received 2.2m views on YouTube. In 2017, Dame Stephanie received a Companion of Honour (CH), a membership limited to only 65 individuals globally, for her services to the IT industry and philanthropy.

www.steveshirley.com

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Dame Stephanie Shirley CH

Keynote Speaker: Empowering Success
Agnes Beviz
Empowering Belief Panel

Agnes is a recent carer switcher to software engineering from the environmental sector, with a background in physics.

She is in the early career stage of her move to tech having started on the Software Engineering Trainee programme with Driver and Vehicle Licencing Agency (DVLA) in September 2022. This transition which happened very quickly after deciding to learn to code just at the start of 2022!

The biggest factor in Agnes’ career switch was meeting people in my community who were working in roles she aspired to and finding the confidence to just go for it!

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Agnes Beviz

Empowering Belief Panel
Alex Fanning
Empowering Belief Panel

Alex is a Business Analyst at ao.com, she has worked with the organisation for eight years moving into tech 12 months ago and is enjoying working with people in various roles across tech. Outside of work she is a mum of two boys and loves to spend her spare time with her family making memories together.

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Alex Fanning

Empowering Belief Panel
Amaya Souarez
Keynote Speaker Empowering Women in Tech

Amaya Souarez joined Sage in June, 2021 and holds the position of Executive Vice President, Cloud Services & Operations. She leads three major functions at Sage: the ESG Product team, Services Engineering team and the global Cloud Operations teams for Sage, responsible for scaling the global cloud footprint and ensuring ‘always on’ availability of all Sage cloud products. Sage is the global market leader for technology that provides small and medium businesses with the visibility, flexibility, and efficiency to manage finances, operations, people and ESG.

Souarez started her technology career at the inception of the desktop PC era and has held a variety of positions in many tech companies both in the US and the UK. Alongside her impressive IT career. Souarez is married, has 3 adult children and is currently living in Dublin, Ireland.

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Amaya Souarez

Keynote Speaker Empowering Women in Tech
Alicia Easley
Empowering Belief Panel

Alicia is the North West Programme Manager for CodeYourFuture–a coding community that supports volunteers to empower those from under-resourced communities to get good jobs in tech. She’s deeply interested in why people volunteer, and what giving ‘back to community’ means to people.

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Alicia Easley

Empowering Belief Panel
Amelia McVennon
Community Empowerment Speaker

I started out in a customer service role but because of my science background, I was given the opportunity to get into a data science role. I hit the ground running and helped that company gain accreditation important them. As part of that role, I was asked if I could get my own data. That is when I started coding for the first time. Just simple SQL at first “select * from” try not to “delete * from”. It wasn’t long before the dev team asked me to join them officially. Two dev jobs later and with the help of an excellent manager and mentor I knew I wanted to get into a leadership role. Which as of October this year I am now doing and absolutely loving.

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Amelia McVennon

Community Empowerment Speaker
Amy Haley
Keynote Speaker: Empowering Belief

About Amy

I’m a Software Engineer from Yorkshire. I have a 4-year-old little boy who is my absolute world. When I was pregnant, I decided to switch careers to one in technology a decision I have never looked back on.

In the last few years, I have achieved a Distinction in my MSc for Digital and Technology Solutions, passed my first AWS exam, and helped raise over £200k for Macmillan.

I want to empower belief for all other solo parents, for those wanting a career change, and for women already working in technology.

When you want something, don’t let anything stop you.

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Amy Haley

Keynote Speaker: Empowering Belief
Amy Pridding
Community Empowerment Speaker

I’m Amy Pridding, a 21-year-old degree apprentice from Manchester. I’m studying Digital User Experience at Manchester Metropolitan University whilst working for the financial services company AJ Bell. I have been on this course for over 2 years and I’m a huge advocate for the degree apprenticeship route into technology. I am passionate about increasing female representation in the tech industry and have spoken on a podcast for International Women’s Day about the barriers facing women wanting to work in technology. Also, I’ve recently presented at the Manchester Tech Festival about my pathway into tech, hoping to inspire others to take the same route.

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Amy Pridding

Community Empowerment Speaker
Anna Flynn
Community Empowerment Speaker

Anna is the Founder & Director of Actech Recruitment and an associate board member of The WIT Network UK. Anna set up Actech Recruitment in 2020 after working in corporate IT recruitment for almost 9 years. After having her son (Charlie) in 2019, Anna set up Actech because she wanted to be able to offer service-driven recruitment services.She has a BSc in Psychology & Sociology and more recently built on that knowledge by becoming a qualified Career Coach. Anna believes that excellent recruitment isn’t about plugging gaps – it’s about giving intelligent advice and supporting people throughout every step of their journey. Anna is passionate about diversity and inclusion and working with underrepresented groups in technology. When not recruiting, you can usually find Anna with Charlie, out on long walks with their dog Harry, at the gym or preparing for eventing and showjumping competitions on her horse Garfield.

“Due to our size, we don’t fill 100’s of roles per month but every single candidate, every single job and every single placement is vitally important to us. We leave no stone unturned to get roles filled and find people jobs. We love what we do and hope that comes across in the service that we offer.“

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Anna Flynn

Community Empowerment Speaker
Ann Barr
Empowering Women In Tech Panel

I started out as an electronics engineer, followed by a decade working in engineering roles for a large industrial firm. Motherhood meant making some changes and decisions to suit family priorities. Whilst on a career break I completed an OU degree in psychology and then moved on to roles promoting volunteering and helping people find volunteer opportunities. An opportunity to buy a family-friendly, small business kept me busy for the next ten years and taught me the value of sweating the details and keeping an eye on the big picture. Getting to a stage of my life where the family-friendly needs lessened allowed me a chance involvement in conference organising and a very welcoming tech community which was the motivation to propel me towards the Tech Returners Your Return To Tech programme. Now after almost three years working back in tech, I love what I do and I’ve reflected on the technical and non-technical skills that my journey has given me.

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Ann Barr

Empowering Women In Tech Panel
Carly Tarrett
Community Empowerment Speaker

Carly Tarett started her developer career in the previous century, coding C in a unix terminal using vim. She then ran away and joined the circus (well, drama school). She still performs regularly, and came back to the tech industry as a Tech Returner in 2020, working as a Java developer at Booking.com in insurance. She is very thankful for IntelliJ.

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Carly Tarrett

Community Empowerment Speaker
Collette Costello
Community Empowerment Speaker

Collette Costello, founder of “Dyslexic Mum”. Website and on-line community. Designed to support parents and carers of dyslexic children. Giving them the tools to be able to help and teach their own children at home. Collette is a qualified lecturer, she has taught in schools, colleges and universities. She has struggled with dyslexia since childhood, diagnosed only when at university. Now the mum of a dyslexic child. She understands the struggles parents and careers of dyslexic children face. The world of education can be daunting, and complicated to understand. Her aim is to help bridge this gap, using technology. Presenting information about how to help dyslexic children, in an accessible, useful way.

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Collette Costello

Community Empowerment Speaker
Cat Mawdsley
Empowering Career Panel

I’m a passionate advocate of things EDI. Since joining the world of Tech apprenticeships in 2018, I’ve seen the knock-on effect the Digital Skills gap has on the availability of Tech Talent and the need for employers to do things differently.

As an entry-level Tech Talent consultant, I’ve worked on projects with both Microsoft and AWS challenging the traditional methods employers use when acquiring their people. Championing the ‘ not one size fits all ‘ approach to overcoming skill challenges.

I work with employers that are Open to Inclusion, helping them to see past their current processes, navigate the minefield of apprenticeships, and open routes to widen their access to tech talent.

In 2022 I joined the team at Just IT in order to offer a trusted partner opportunity to employers, encompassing both boot camps, upskill career development, and apprenticeships; enabling a strategic recruitment route to entry-level candidates.

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Cat Mawdsley

Empowering Career Panel
Catherine Taylor
Empowering Belief Panel

A Manchester Young Talent Award Nominee for HR Professional of the Year, Catherine is a compassionate and commercial People Expert who embodies integrity. An EMCC accredited Coach, Catherine’s passion for helping others is felt not only by the people in the organisations she has worked with but the wider community.

Catherine’s journey hasn’t been smooth – diagnosed with three gynaecological conditions: endometriosis, adenomyosis and uterine fibroids which affect her day to day, there have been dark times but Catherine hopes to share her story with the aim of empowering others.

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Catherine Taylor

Empowering Belief Panel
Elena Sinel
Action Learning Panelist: SAGE

Elena Sinel FRSA is a multi-award-winning founder of Teens in AI and impact-driven social entrepreneur on a mission to inspire young people across the world to explore a future in tech and AI through collaborative hands-on learning experiences. She is a sought-after keynote speaker and policy adviser with a passion for diversity in tech focusing on female empowerment. Trusted by global FTSE 100 companies and governments to integrate the skills of tomorrow into educational systems today.

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Elena Sinel

Action Learning Panelist: SAGE
Emma Louise Fusari
Community Empowerment Speaker

Emma-Louise Fusari is the Founder of In-House Health. A Nurse for 20 years, Emma has acquired a vast wealth of knowledge and experience in the health sector, mainly through delivering public health programmes and chronic disease management initiatives.

Emma founded In-House Health to help digital tech organisations focus on prevention, get to the root cause of well-being issues and provide actionable strategies and measurable results through a data-driven approach so that they can sustain a high-performing culture.

Recently recognised as a Top 40 Northern Gamechanger and winner of TalkTalk’s Tech for Good award at the Northwest Women in Tech Awards!

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Emma Louise Fusari

Community Empowerment Speaker
Emma Jones
Community Empowerment Speaker

Emma Jones is a multi-disciplinary leader who is passionate about cyber incident preparedness. She is currently a Senior Consultant at CrowdStrike where she is responsible for advising organisations across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa on how to enhance their ability to respond to a cyber attack. Emma’s early career was spent in the UK public sector where she latterly developed national law enforcement cyber capabilities and implemented strategies to protect the public. In both her professional and voluntary capacities, Emma continually champions diversity and works tirelessly to embed everyday inclusion. She is involved in various associated initiatives and has recently been recognised for her pioneering work dedicated to building inclusive cyber response teams.

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Emma Jones

Community Empowerment Speaker
Erin Roesch
Action Learning Panelist: SAGE

In her role at Sage Foundation, Erin Roesch mobilises tech companies and SMBs to join Sage in making meaningful social and environmental impact across the UKI. Erin’s background includes 10+ years in the US nonprofit sector where she worked in senior management roles and fundraising, generating $2M+ to address homelessness and unemployment for low-income families. Erin scaled back her career to accommodate family life and relocation from 2018-2021 and reentered full-time work via the Sage Pathways Program in 2022. Erin holds a B.A. in Political Science from Duke University with a focus on international development, humanitarian interventions, and foreign policy. She also holds a M.Div. from Duke centered on the intersection of politics, theology, and social policy.

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Erin Roesch

Action Learning Panelist: SAGE
Emma Roberts
Community Empowerment Speaker

Career squiggler and mum of two toddlers, high school dropout who overcame the odds to become a successful woman in tech. Now working as an Agile Delivery Manager at Currencycloud (Visa) and passionate about helping others find their way to happy and balanced career.

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Emma Roberts

Community Empowerment Speaker
Emma Stockton
Empowering Women In Tech Panel

Emma is a Full Stack Software Developer who came into tech through Tech Returners Step into Tech scheme with the BBC in 2018. Over her four years of experience, she has worked at 2 other companies before moving to Dunelm where she really feels that she has grown into her role and is thriving both through continuous learning of software development and throughout the wider business.

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Emma Stockton

Empowering Women In Tech Panel
Emily Allinson
Community Empowerment Speaker

I’m Emily, Head of User Centred Design at Opencast Software. My background is in Content Design, and I’ve worked with all sorts of organisations to help them become more user centred. A lot of my experience is in the public sector, including at government departments – I love working with a purpose and believe deeply in helping people through design. Most recently, I’ve established, led and grown teams, and am interested in opening up career moves in UX.

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Emily Allinson

Community Empowerment Speaker
Fatima Nixon
Action Learning Panelist: SAGE

I am the recruiter for the Pathways programme at Sage, supporting communities of people looking to return to work or start a new career. Having worked within investment banking for over 15 years, predominantly in project management, I had a 7-year career-break bringing up a young family. In 2018, I started working as an agency recruiter but always missed being part of a large organisation and working with a variety of teams. When I saw the advert for my current role, I did not realise I was applying for my dream job!! I combine the skills I learnt as a project manager and recruiter as well as provide an incredibly important service to those who need a bit of extra help getting into/back into the corporate world.

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Fatima Nixon

Action Learning Panelist: SAGE
Gabi Talbot
Empowering Success Panel

Gabi Talbot is a Strategic Technology Delivery Manager in Digital Technology & Data at Co-op, with oversight of Portfolio, Governance and Deployment. With a background in foreign languages, a career in technology happened more by accident than design but now after eight years of experience as a Woman in Tech, she is passionate about helping others to reach their potential and explore the opportunities the industry can offer.

Co-op Digital Technology & Data provides solutions and support for customer and colleague-facing technologies to keep our business moving for the communities we serve. With a network of convenience shops, depots, funeral homes, and Legal and Power businesses to support, the Manchester-based team is over 600 strong and has a variety of roles like Service Analysts, Engineers, Product and Delivery Managers.

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Gabi Talbot

Empowering Success Panel
Joanne Liston
Community Empowerment Speaker

After graduating from Salford University in 1998 with a degree in Business, Maths and IT, spent 25 years in the Global IT Services Sector working for Atos IT Services, Fujitsu, Microsoft, Sopra Steria and more recently in the Salesforce Ecosystem. Predominately client-facing leadership role, helping over 100 organisations to digitally transform through the effective deployment of modern technology in conjunction with consulting services.

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Joanne Liston

Community Empowerment Speaker
Jordan Brompton
Empowering Success Panel

Jordan is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of myenergi, a British designer and manufacturer of renewable energy products that improve the rate of green energy self-consumption. Jordan co-founded myenergi in 2016 and currently oversees the daily operations of the sales and marketing divisions, business growth, and corporate collaborations.

Passionate about renewable energy and sustainability, Jordan’s mission is to create a kinder, more sustainable future for our planet. Jordan is also an angel investor and novelist, with her first children’s book being published in 2019. She previously ran a distribution company and worked as a radio presenter.

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Jordan Brompton

Empowering Success Panel
Kerry Heath
Community Empowerment Speaker

Kerry is a Head of Operations at Tech Returners and has 8 years of experience in people-focused operations roles across sport, higher education and recruitment. Kerry is passionate about delivering the best experience for people and focuses on our internal processes, policies, systems, and data at Tech Returners helping to make everything run smoothly both internally and for the learners on our programmes. Outside of work, you’ll usually find Kerry on a hockey pitch.

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Kerry Heath

Community Empowerment Speaker
Laura Pomfret
Community Empowerment Speaker

Laura Pomfret is Co-Founder of Financielle, a female-focussed financial wellness app helping women take back control of their money. Women are behind in every area of personal finance including pay, literacy and wealth and Financielle is on a mission is to close the gender wealth gap through tools, content and community.

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Laura Pomfret

Community Empowerment Speaker
Laura Voineag
Empowering Women In Tech Panel

Laura Voineag is a career changer currently embarking on her journey into tech. Having tried a few careers in finance, law and public service, she discovered and eventually chose tech because she wanted to build, improve and create things. She is currently learning to be a C# Engineer.

Laura wants to support other women/people and demonstrate that you can become a software engineer without coming from a technical background and that your previous experience (life, work) and soft skills can more than compensate for your lack of technical knowledge. She is passionate about ensuring women, minorities or anyone else are not afraid or suffering from imposter syndrome and to empower the belief that everyone can switch to a career in tech.

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Laura Voineag

Empowering Women In Tech Panel
Lauren Black
Action Learning Panelist: SAGE

My name is Lauren Black and I work for Sage as a Billing Analyst within the Cloud Operations Governance team. I joined in October of 2020 on our 2-year graduate program shortly after I finished my degree in Business with Finance. I am from Belfast, although I completed my degree at Northumbria University of Newcastle. I decided to stay in the city after university and was based out of Sage’s Newcastle office. As I have now been a Billing Analyst for nearly 2.5 years I have decided I would like to learn something new, I am currently training to become a Cloud Operations Engineer.”

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Lauren Black

Action Learning Panelist: SAGE
Lucy Galway
Community Empowerment Speaker

Hello! I’m Lucy, I work at Northcoders as Head of Careers & Partnerships. I’ve been with Northcoders for just over three years and my main focus is to lead the team to provide incredible support to our Northcoders students who are transitioning into either a software or data role, alongside providing innovative technical training & hiring solutions to our clients! I’m passionate about pushing the EDI agenda in tech, especially empowering young woman who haven’t followed a tradition career path into tech & leadership. Things to know about me is I Iove tea, and I’m definitely more cheesy than trendy!

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Lucy Galway

Community Empowerment Speaker
Lynn Ainsworth
Community Empowerment Speaker

Lynne is a former Production Designer & Art Director in an animation company. She is currently a freelance creative writing her first children’s graphic novel. She will be speaking about her experiences running a code club in a local primary school for Years 6 girls.

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Lynn Ainsworth

Community Empowerment Speaker
Maha Iyer
Community Empowerment Speaker

Maha has over 15 years experience in the technology sector and currently works at Infinity Works (Part of Accenture) as Product Practitioner helping clients on a daily basis to design, develop and deliver brilliant products and services that delights customers. She is passionate about working at the intersection of customers, business and technology to create new ideas and bring them to life.

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Maha Iyer

Community Empowerment Speaker
Mili Velikova
Community Empowerment Speaker

As the Career & Mindset Lead at Tech Returners, Mili has successfully supported over 60 returners on their journey back into technology through the ‘Your Return to Tech’ programme. She delivers the non-technical teaching on topics such as imposter syndrome, building confidence and emotional resilience, growth mindset, as well as goal setting and interview success.

Mili’s approach is holistic, combining well-known and innovative techniques, and is always focused on providing practical, tangible and easy to implement tools that help people succeed.

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Mili Velikova

Community Empowerment Speaker
Nicola Macken
Community Empowerment Speaker

I’m Nic Macken, I am a Delivery Manager at Justice Digital, the Ministry of Justice’s digital and technology directorate. I’m passionate about supporting our digital teams and leading from the back to drive digital transformation in our prisons and across the Ministry of Justice.

Having joined the Prison Service at 18 and working in a variety of administration roles I found myself becoming a prison IT Manager because I wasn’t afraid to ‘try turning it off and back on again’. I then moved into a live service support role for the national offender management service used across the prison estate.

My willingness to just try things and see what happens has driven my curiosity and enthusiasm for Agile ways of working and the more I learnt about different roles within a digital delivery team, Delivery Management felt like the natural fit for me. It is a role that has allowed me to draw on a wealth of transferable skills from previous non-tech roles and this variety of experience, I believe, is what helps me thrive as a DM.

I live in Preston in Lancashire (home of the butter pie!), with my husband Chris and my son George. Most weekends are spent on the side of a muddy football pitch cheering on George’s team, but I also run a Facebook community group called ‘Penwortham Pavement Plodders’ which I set up in Feb 2020 when I’d just started Couch to 5k. It’s a group for local people who run, walk and plod to connect and share and has proved to be an invaluable motivator for people during lockdowns. We’re now at over 600 members, have our own t-shirts and regularly meet up for parkrun/walk and socials.

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Nicola Macken

Community Empowerment Speaker
Rachel Chenery
Community Empowerment Speaker

Rachel had various roles post-university, before training as a solicitor and practising law for over 10 years. She changed career a few years ago and is now a developer at AutoTrader. She will be speaking about her experiences running a code club in a local primary school for Year 6 girls.

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Rachel Chenery

Community Empowerment Speaker
Rajinder Kaur
Empowering Women In Tech Panel

Rajinder Kaur is an award-winning Software Engineer and a STEM Ambassador. She is a winner of Tech Women 100 and Reframe WIT ‘Believe You Can’ awards.

Following completion of BSc (Hons) in Computing and IT with The Open University, Rajinder completed the Software Developer coding Bootcamp with Northcoders and has since been working in the tech industry as an engineer in different roles, coming to 4+ years of experience.

Rajinder moved to the UK from India and now lives in West Yorkshire with her husband and two wonderful children.

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Rajinder Kaur

Empowering Women In Tech Panel
Rebecca Guest
Empowering Success Panel

Becks works as an Agile Delivery Manager for Pod Point and also volunteers as a Life Coach. Passionately encouraging women into technology and helping people to fulfil their potential. Becks has worked in IT for the past 11 years and has developed a strong sense of community through WIT North, The Confidence Community and other community groups.

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Rebecca Guest

Empowering Success Panel
Rebecca Mahoney
Empowering Success Panel

Rebecca is Director of Delivery at KrakenFlex – a fast growing Manchester based scaleup building technology to drive the energy transition as part of the wider Octopus Energy Group. With a background in consulting, Rebecca has delivered projects & programmes across the UK and South Africa in a variety of domains from public sector to financial services, and coached clients in implementing agile and lean practices to accelerate their impact. She’s a strong advocate for driving greater diversity and inclusion in technology and a firm believer in the combined power of people & technology to create a green and equitable world.

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Rebecca Mahoney

Empowering Success Panel
Rebecca Taylor
Community Empowerment Speaker

Rebecca joined Secureworks in 2014, where she developed an immediate passion for cybersecurity. Rebecca quickly expanded her cyber acumen, moving into Secureworks first Threat Intelligence Knowledge Manager role in 2022.

Rebecca is primarily focused on the implementation of knowledge management processes and procedures for the Counter Threat Unit, the ingestion and management of Secureworks Threat Intelligence knowledge, and its associated quality, storage and maintenance.

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Rebecca Taylor

Community Empowerment Speaker
Ria Kinsley
Empowering Career Panel

Ria is a senior consultant at Infinity works, part of Accenture. Ria is a career switcher and moved to Tech from the Banking and Finance, over 7 years ago. Within Tech Ria has worked in various roles such as Business analyst, Product Owner, Delivery Lead and Account lead, helping and supporting her clients to make a difference through Technology. Ria is passionate about developing people through mentoring and coaching. She is also a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion within Tech and is keen to raise awareness of non-technical IT roles, to encourage more people to consider Tech as a career option.

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Ria Kinsley

Empowering Career Panel
Sally Atkinson
Community Empowerment Speaker

Sally’s career started in academic science, however she rapidly found herself working in Tech with a passion for partnerships and building ecosystems. Initially managing UK then EMEA partnerships for ISVs from start-ups to listed companies, she moved into the world of IoT in 2018, joining Arm to develop the Mbed ecosystem and subsequently leading the global Partner Program at Arm Pelion. An interest in innovative edge technologies led Sally to Edge Impulse, the leading development platform for edge machine learning, where she leads the Account Management function, working with enterprise customers and partners bringing machine learning intelligence to their devices.

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Sally Atkinson

Community Empowerment Speaker
Zahraa Murtaza
Empowering Belief Panel

Zahraa, an Agile Lead (Senior Consultant) at GFT has over 5+ years experience in Agile.

Starting with Waterfall Project Management, only choosing the PM path through a chance encounter with a speaker at university.

Stumbling into Agile when joining Barclays as a Scrum Master / Technical Delivery Manager.From there, Zahraa has grown her skills, as well as her confidence through amazing mentors. This has spurred her on to mentor others to grow.

She continues to grow her Agile mindset as well as Project / Program Management skills at GFT, an organisation with amazing career development opportunities alongside amazing mentors.

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Zahraa Murtaza

Empowering Belief Panel