Celebrating Diversity & Inclusion within Tech

Alison is an active champion for diversity of all kinds in IT, with a deep technical background coupled with extensive delivery and management skills gained over her 35 year career.

Currently SVP Group IT Services and Operations at Renaissance Re, Alison believes the key to successful delivery is to understand requirements, needs, people and business goals in depth from many different perspectives, and that encouraging and developing diversity in the IT world is an important step in that process - our customers all think differently, so should we. Alison was identified as one of ’50 leading lights for Kindness in Leadership’ in 2019.

Antonia is Chief Marketing Officer of Capita – a £4bn consulting, digital services and software business employing over 60,000 people. The company offers customer management, people and technology solutions to clients across government and private sector.

In her role, she leads the transformation of Capita’s marketing function and is responsible for driving £10bn pipeline, launching a new brand platform and delivering a new operating model.

Previously she led the global transformation of marketing at Thomson Reuters, turning it from a loss making function into a multi-award winning, productive team delivering 17% of gross sales and 34% of pipeline –making $14 for every $1 invested in marketing programs. Before that she was at Accenture where she built an international marketing and communications strategy for $3bn BPO business to accelerate sales, drive customer loyalty and raise Accenture’s profile within the market – as well as lead internal communications for 50,000 people.

She is highly experienced in developing C-suite relationships with clients and is a trusted advisor to the board. Her teams have won numerous awards for marketing and she is a regular speaker at conferences with a particular focus on bringing customer insights to B2B marketing and leading marketing transformation programmes.

Aruna Ravichandran is Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Cisco’s Webex Collaboration, responsible for promoting Cisco’s $6B Collaboration Technology business. A passionate advocate for customers with 20+ years of technology industry experience, Aruna leads product marketing, brand management, digital marketing, demand generation, events, and solutions marketing.

Prior to Cisco, Aruna was Vice President of Marketing for DevOps at CA Technologies (acquired by Broadcom). Earlier experience includes Vice President, Marketing and Strategy for the Software Solutions Division at Juniper Networks, and escalating leadership roles in both marketing and engineering at Hewlett-Packard.

Blair Pleasant is President & Principal Analyst of COMMfusion LLC and a co-founder of ucstrategies.com, an industry resource on the growing UC arena. She provides consulting and market research analysis on voice/data convergence markets, applications, and technologies, aimed at helping end-user and vendor clients both strategically and tactically.

Prior to COMMfusion, Ms. Pleasant was Director of Communications Analysis for The PELORUS Group, a market research and consulting firm, and President of Lower Falls Consulting.

With 20 years experience, her primary areas of focus are convergence applications, including Unified Communications, Unified Messaging, the contact center, computer telephony integration (CTI), and voice processing. Blair has authored many highly acclaimed multi-client market studies and white papers, as well as custom research reports, and provides market research analysis and consulting services to both end user and vendor clients.

Blair’s blogs and articles can be found on www.ucstrategies.com and www.commfusion.com. She also tweets on Twitter as blairplez, and you can find her on Facebook and LinkedIn.

She can be contacted at bpleasant@commfusion.com.

Charlotte is a reporter at MIT Technology Review, where she writes a daily newsletter called The Download. She is a regular BBC contributor with extensive experience as a tech journalist. In her spare time, she runs Jeneo, a venture to boost diversity within the tech sector.

Clare Ashley, is a Vice President in the Cross-Divisional Projects and Architecture team within Engineering at Goldman Sachs. She joined the firm in 2010 focused on delivery of large scale transformational projects.

During her time at the firm she has worked on a number of initiatives, from Physical Commodities trading system implementation to the Rothesay Life divestment and separation project. More recently Clare led the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) implementation for the firm’s new retail business, Marcus by Goldman Sachs and the UK bank entity as a whole, she managed front to back product readiness for Brexit and she is now leading the Global Engineering programme for LIBOR Remediation.

Prior to joining Goldman Sachs Clare worked as a Business Analyst/Project Manager at JPMorgan in the eSwaps trading space for 4 and half years and before that she led the Incident Management team at GE Capital. She has over 15 years’ experience working in a number of Technology/Technology adjacent roles in financial services.

Clare has held a number of roles in the diversity and inclusion space including her current role as co-head of the Black Engineers Network. She has previously served as co-head of the Communications Pillar within the Women’s in Engineering network and co-head of the Career Development pillar of the Firmwide Black Network

David is RSA’s Group, UK & I CIO and leads the long-term technology / transformation vision. He is responsible for transforming both the way that IT is operated and how it interfaces with the overall business. Including reshaping new ways of improving the customer experience and the business.

David’s key strengths include responsibility for everything that underpins the smooth running of the business. This includes all aspects of Technology, IS delivery and IS Operations. Generally bringing together all the teams necessary to deliver a best in class service to customers.

Prior to joining RSA, David worked for Royal Bank of Scotland as Head of Technology and Operations within Commercial & Private Banking, looking after Back Office operations for numerous brands including Coutts, Ulster Bank, NatWest, Trade Finance, Lombard, and Invoice Finance, to name a few. Other responsibilities included adding operational rigor to strategic decisions, working with the leadership teams to devise and implement growth and efficiency objectives, identifying current and emerging risks / opportunities, then taking the lead directing transformation programmes.

David’s prior experience includes Capital Markets COO/CAO at Deutsche Bank, Retail Chief Operating Officer at Close Brothers, EMEA Chief Information Officer at GE Capital for B2B Financial Services and Corporate Finance. He has also held Senior Technology and Transformation roles at LCH.Clearnet.

David is married with three children and when not providing transport to the various sporting and social events he enjoys motor racing with a specific interest in F1.

Erin is a Senior Agile Coach at Tide Bank. Her career has seen her go from law graduate, to the John Lewis IT scheme, to consulting with PA Consulting and now playing in the world of Fintechs and startups.

Despite considering herself to be "non techie", Erin found herself in a world of infrastructure, APIs and firewalls. There she found her niche in organisational culture, and has often been branded the early adopter of new ideas and techniques. Outside of work, she mentors girls and women on confidence and coaches public speaking.

Gail is a founding director of Cavell and leads our Cloud Networking practice. Gail has delivered advisory services to investors, boards and senior executives throughout EMEA. Beyond consulting Gail has vast WAN experience having led the startup and growth of two Tier1 Internet Service Providers as VP, GM at MFS International (Verizon Business) and President, Europe at Level3 (CenturyLink).

Away from reviewing the latest devices, apps and developments Georgie tackles everything from the effects on business and society of advances in technology to the keys to engaging with and motivating millennial and Generation Z employees.

She is also passionate about women working in technology and encouraging school-age girls to learn to code and be involved in STEM subjects. She strives to make technology and the digital world as exciting, relevant and inclusive as possible.

Alongside her work as part of the Gadget Show team, Georgie is a regular on ITV’s Weekend as the show’s resident tech expert and has created reports for ITV Tonight. Other presenting credits include Channel 5’s The Wright Stuff alongside Matthew Wright and live coverage of Formula E. She has also worked on-camera with a range of tech companies including Sony, Acer, EE, Asus, and HP.

Ismail Amla is Chief Growth Officer at Capita Plc, the UK’s largest tech-enabled BPO provider and is recognized as one of the top 100 most influential Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) leaders in the UK tech sector - recognized within a group of five 'highly commended disruptors'.

Ismail has a high profile, technology-focused career, spanning Europe and North America, with a wealth of experience having worked as a senior partner for Accenture; one of the world’s leading global consultancies and for large, multinational companies. Ismail has a track record of delivering value from large, strategic transformations across a diverse range of industry in both the public and private sectors. In a fiercely competitive environment, Ismail’s experience has delivered innovative services, which solve business challenges, enhance services and make organisations more efficient and effective. Specific skills include strategy formulation; technology innovation, sales, marketing and business development; business transformation; project management; and human capital development.

As well as an MBA from Manchester university and an honorary doctorate from the University of Bolton, Ismail holds a number of board positions including: UK Sport; The University of East London; and is an advisor at the Weissman Centre for International Business in New York.

Jennifer started her career training initially as an accountant at Price Pearson and became integral in the design, marketing, selling and supporting of their first software product ‘Tax Shield P11D Manager’, a product that continues to serve over 800 companies globally ranging from blue-chip PLC organisations, through to medium and small SMEs.

With a background in marketing, accounts, project management, and the design of technical cloud-based software applications, Jennifer trains in both the UK and USA with Adobe, Google and Microsoft and is a Fellow member of the Institute of Direct Marketing. She is IT and Marketing Director for Price Pearson Chartered Accountants and Managing Director for IceBlue, a technology focused digital marketing, bespoke cloud-based applications and Microsoft Azure infrastructure company based in Worcestershire.

Passionate about local business engagement, and Innovation she has been integral in the design and drive behind the award winning “find it in” business portals and has led the delivery of hundreds of “meet the buyer” events focused around large, local infrastructure projects for Worcestershire, Birmingham and the Black Country.

She is a board member and SME Champion for Worcestershire LEP, an active board member of Re-Wyre in the Wyre Forest and an advisory board member for BetaDen, Worcestershire’s Tech Accelerator for entrepreneurs and scale up businesses. She regularly speaks at events about digital marketing, software solutions to drive efficiency, Cyber Security and GDPR.

Joel is Chair & Founder of the Institute of Directors’ ERP/Digital Group (London), including being the champion of the IoD’s network of C-Suite technology professionals. He has established strategic partnerships with Digital Transformation Expo and London Tech Week.

Recently, he lead the first Space Technology event at London Tech Week 2020. His company, IEA Global SAP Consultants, is part of the UK Global Entrepreneur Programme.

With over 15 years of experience in research and technology, John provides executive-level leadership, relationship management, and strategy development. He is a published author, technologist, and researcher with areas of expertise in cybersecurity, cloud computing, information security, and next generation technology (IoT, Big Data, SecaaS, Quantum).

John specialises in risk management, third party assessment, GRC, data protection, incident response, and business development within multiple industry sectors, including government. His works and collaborations have been presented in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, SC Magazine, USA today, Information Week, and others.

John's contributions continue with involvement in professional organisations such as CSA, IAPP, ISSA, ISC2, and ISACA. John sits on numerous technology committees in government and industry with the FCC, NIST, ISO, CSA, IEEE, and CIS.

Passionate about combining human centred design with the technical innovation that AI technologies offer, Katie is challenging organisations that implement AI for the sake of AI, instead advocating for identifying the business value that AI will deliver and how to manage the cultural impact by including, rather than replacing, the workforce on their AI journey.

You can read her thoughts on all things AI and women in tech here: https://link.medium.com/h1fYcdkgLZ

Katie King is the AI Business Academy trainer of the ‘Harnessing AI in Sales, Marketing and CX’ live virtual training programme. With over 30 years’ of consulting experience, Katie is a published author, speaker and consultant on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and has advised many of the world's leading brands and business leaders, as well as schools, colleges and universities.

Katie is a member of the UK Government All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) task force for the adoption of AI and is also an Editorial Board Member for the AI and Ethics Journal (Springer Nature – global publisher). Katie is the author of Using Artificial Intelligence in Marketing: How to Harness AI and Maintain the Competitive Edge, published by Kogan Page in February 2019.

An experienced all-round marketer, Liesbet has worked across multiple marketing disciplines in the various industries such as tech, media, banking and oil&gas. Since 2015 she has been part of Barco’s ClickShare team, responsible for global marketing communication strategies and implementation.

She strongly believes in customers insights as driver for a more relevant and effective communication with customers, so she has executed many research studies in the field of meeting room and workplace dynamics.

Lisa Forte is an expert in the human side of cyber security and social engineering. In 2018 she won the “Top 100 Women In Tech” Awards recognising her achievements and contributions to the cyber security industry.

Forte delivers dynamic and engaging presentations based on her expert personal experiences of dealing with cybercrime cases and the research she has done into how cyber criminals use psychological principles in their activities. An experienced cyber security trainer, Forte knows how to effectively communicate her message to all types of audience in a lively, informative and engaging manner.

Lisa Forte began her career in counter-terrorism intelligence for a UK Government agency before moving into one of the UK Police Cyber-Crime Units dealing with serious cybercrime cases both in the UK and abroad. Through these experiences she has gained a unique insight into darker side of human nature and has led to her becoming one of the leading experts on cybercrime cases involving social engineering and psychological manipulation.

Forte founded Red Goat Cyber Security in 2017 to teach companies about the methodologies used by cyber criminals. Her areas of expertise include social engineering, the psychology of persuasion, insider threats and rehearsing for a cyber attack. She has conducted ground-breaking research into the psychology behind insider threats and created the first ever GCHQ certified social engineering course.

Lisa Forte has appeared on national and international radio and is a frequent contributor to BBC news and similar news publications. She has also been recognised for her pro-bono work with charities and the UK National Health Service. She also works closely with the Women’s Tech Hub helping to increase diversity in the tech sector.

Liz is Senior Vice President of Cisco Emerging Technologies and Incubation. She leads the team that incubates new business opportunities, and drives teams working on breakthrough, emerging solutions.

Liz's team identifies and incubates projects outside of the core and creates new markets and businesses for Cisco. This team is also responsible for progressing Cisco's important work with Standards bodies and will help form and manage new research partnerships with leading-edge Universities.

Lorrissa is Vice President and General Manager of Webex Strategy and Online Business. She leads a global team responsible for Cisco’s collaboration portfolio strategy and go-to-market motions to drive future growth. With the recent acceleration of remote work and new ways of working, Lorrissa and her team are laser focused on evolving Webex’s online presence and overall user experience to meet the growing demand of Cisco customers.

Prior to this role, Lorrissa drove the product evolution of Webex Teams. Transforming the modern work experience with a single app that keeps work moving regardless of location. Empowering people to work anyplace and anytime with best-in-class messaging, video meetings, calling and collaboration capabilities, in the cloud and on-premise. An area that she knows very well given her direct experience as a working mom who leads global teams and leverages remote capabilities to be successful. Webex technology and innovation is at the core of who she is as a person and as an industry leader.

Lorrissa brings more than 15 years of experience in product management, productivity software in Microsoft Office, natural language processing, and machine learning with search and NUI experiences,hardware development for sound and video, analytics with Microsoft PowerBI, and business applications for human capital management. She is extremely passionate about innovation and has a track record of thinking outside-the-box with the development of 10 patents over her career.

Mariana is the Director of Email Security Products at Darktrace, with a primary focus on the capabilities of AI cyber defences against email-borne attacks. Mariana works closely with the development, analyst, and marketing teams to advise technical and non-technical audiences on how best to augment cyber resilience within the email domain, and how to implement AI technology as a means of defence.

She speaks regularly at international events, with a specialism in presenting on sophisticated, AI-powered email attacks. She holds an MBA from the University of Chicago, and speaks several languages including French, Italian, and Portuguese.

Mark Martin MBE is an Advanced Skills Teacher in Education and Computer Science. Mark is a thought leader in #EdTech and shares his insights to educators around the world. He’s a popular speaker and travels to different countries to present his expertise. He is an expert teacher / advisor for the major tech brands in the world and continues to advocate for home-grown talent, digital skills and education equity.

In 2018 Martin was awarded the Diversity Champion Award at the London Tech Week TechXLR8 Awards. In 2019, he was awarded London Business Awards for Paying It Forward, was honoured by the Mayor of London for his efforts to make technology more diverse and in June 2019 was awarded an MBE for services to education, to technology and to diversity in UK technology

Mary O’Callaghan is the Director of Technology Engagement at the British Heart Foundation (BHF), growing pioneering partnerships (internally and externally) that co-create opportunities and mobilise the right people who can make them happen.

Prior to joining BHF, Mary was the lead consultant in Z/Yen’s civil society practice, working with a range of organisations, including medical and research charities, trades unions, public sector bodies, financial institutions and hospitals. She was the project manager for the establishment of the award winning CharITyshare, and SPHERE Systems Empowering Healthcare, as well as Z/Yen’s early development of Mutual Distributed Ledgers (Blockchains). Mary is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin and University College Galway.

Mayur is a Senior Solutions Product Marketing Manager at 8x8, a leading cloud communications provider. Responsible for creating and driving awareness of 8x8 solution propositions across the EMEA region, Mayut has more than 20 years of product marketing and product management experience from some of the best known hi-tech companies including Insight, Polycom, Cisco, Skype, T-Mobile and Ericsson.

Prachi works with Omdia and specializes in enterprise communications and collaboration technologies. Prachi has over 15 years of telecom industry experience and expertise in service provider strategies, next-generation technologies, and fixed/mobile convergence. Prachi has authored numerous market share and forecast reports, white papers, and service provider and end-user studies on a range of topics across the telecommunications market.

As well as working as a software engineer with Motorola and AT&T and as a telecom analyst with various boutique research firms, Prachi has worked with GSMA, where she produced research into strategies for increasing youth employment opportunities through mobile technologies and services. Prachi holds an engineering degree in Electronics and Telecommunications from SGSITS, India, and an MBA from Henley Business School, UK. Prachi is fluent in English and Hindi, and based in London, UK.

Praful Shah is responsible for defining the company’s business, product, and marketing strategy.Shah has more than 20 years of experience with major technology companies in the software and cloud industries. Before joining RingCentral, he worked at WebEx from its founding days until its acquisition by Cisco in 2007.

At WebEx, Shah held various executive management positions, including Vice President of strategic communications, online products, product marketing, and business development.

Shah previously served as the Senior Director of Marketing for the database and internet products divisions at Oracle.

Shah holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communications engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in India and a master’s degree in computer science from Pennsylvania State University.

Pritam Pabla, Head of Chrome Customer Engineers (EMEA) at Google, is an expert in end-user device management technologies. Pritam’s prime responsibility is to provide IT consulting and management of ChromeOS and Chrome Browser, also Chrome lifecycle best practices for all of Google’s large enterprise, education and government customers. Prior to Google, Pritam gained extensive experience at Microsoft, Lenovo and IBM.

Sarah Armstrong-Smith is a Chief Security Advisor in Microsoft’s Cybersecurity Solutions Group.She principally works with strategic customers across Europe, to help them evolve their security strategy and capabilities to support digital transformation and cloud adoption.

Sarah has a background in business continuity, disaster recovery, data protection and privacy, as well as crisis management. Combining these elements means she operates holistically to understand the cybersecurity landscape, and how this can be proactively enabled to deliver effective resilience.

Sarah has been recognised as one of the most influential women in UK Tech and UK cybersecurity and regularly contributes to thought leadership and industry publications.

Saumya Upadhyaya is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at GitLab, a tech Unicorn that started in 2015. GitLab is leading the explosive DevOps market with an innovative single application approach for the entire software development lifecycle.

Saumya Upadhyaya collaborates around best practices for End to End DevOps, in particular Operations with major enterprises. Prior to GitLab, Saumya worked as a Senior Product Manager covering DevOps Pipeline Automation and Application Performance Monitoring at VMware & Micro Focus (previously part of Hewlett Packard Software). Saumya has a strong product management, marketing & consulting background in high tech and telecom.

Worked for a leading consulting firm (Accenture) for 9years delivering Contact Centre transformation projects across various industry verticals, (Utilities, travel, Banking). Moved on to work for a Service provider (Vodafone) developing contact centre products to target the SME Market. Current role is to lead technology innovation within the Bupa contact centre across all contact channels.

Sue leads techUK's technology and innovation work which includes work programmes on cloud, data protection, data analytics, AI and Internet of Things as well as emerging and transformative technologies and innovation policy. She has been recognised as one of the most influential women in UK tech by Computer Weekly and as a key influencer in driving forward the Big Data agenda in the UK Big Data 100.

Sue has also been shortlisted for the Milton Keynes Women Leaders Awards and was a judge for the Loebner Prize in AI. In addition to being a regular industry speaker on issues including AI ethics, data protection and cyber security, Sue was recently a judge for the UK Tech 50 and is a regular judge of the annual UK Cloud Awards.

Prior to joining techUK in January 2015 Sue was responsible for Symantec's Government Relations in the UK and Ireland. She has spoken at events including the UK-China Internet Forum in Beijing, UN IGF and European RSA on issues ranging from data usage and privacy, cloud computing and online child safety. Before joining Symantec, Sue was senior policy advisor at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).

Sue has an BA degree on History and American Studies from Leeds University and a Masters Degree on International Relations and Diplomacy from the University of Birmingham. Sue is a keen sportswoman and in 2016 achieved a lifelong ambition to swim the English Channel.

Zeus Kerravala is the founder and Principal Analyst with ZK Research. Kerravala provides a mix of tactical advice to help his clients in the current business climate and long term strategic advice. Kerravala provides research and advice to the following constituents: End user IT and network managers, vendors of IT hardware, software and services and the financial community looking to invest in the companies that he covers.

Kerravala does research through a mix of end user and channel interviews, surveys of IT buyers, investor interviews as well as briefings from the IT vendor community. This gives Kerravala a 360 degree view of the technologies he covers from buyers of technology, investors, resellers and manufacturers.

Kerravala uses the traditional on line and email distribution channel for the research but heavily augments opinion and insight through social media including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Blogs. Kerravala is also heavily quoted in business press and the technology press and is a regular speaker at events such as Interop and Enterprise Connect.

Prior to ZK Research, Zeus Kerravala spent 10 years as an analyst at Yankee Group. He joined Yankee Group in March of 2001 as a Director and left Yankee Group as a Senior Vice President and Distinguished Research Fellow, the firms most senior research analyst. Before Yankee Group, Kerravala had a number of technical roles including a senior technical position at Greenwich Technology Partners (GTP) where he worked with Johna Til Johnson, the founder of Nemertes Research. Prior to GTP, Kerravala had numerous internal IT positions including VP of IT and Deputy CIO of Ferris, Baker Watts and Senior Project Manager at Alex. Brown and Sons, Incorporated.

Kerravala holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.

Kerravala currently resides in Westminster, Massachusetts.

Zoe Kleinman is a leading technology journalist and presenter with a passion for all things tech and 20 years of broadcasting experience.

From gadgets and games to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, she makes tech news accessible to a mainstream audience of millions across national and international BBC Radio, TV and online outlets including Radio 4’s Today programme, BBC World TV and the UK’s most watched news shows.

Zoe has raced drones in the Nevada desert, taken a backseat drive in a driverless car, spent the night in a house full of robots and climbed Mount Everest in Virtual Reality.

She’s reported on the highs and lows of Bitcoin, the gender bias in Silicon Valley, Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, and her exclusive reports about the parents whose children accidentally spend thousands of pounds inside video and mobile games was discussed by politicians and led to a parliamentary committee hearing on gaming and gambling.

Zoe’s wider journalistic skills are hugely respected across the BBC and in 2020 Zoe was asked to work as a senior journalist on the BBC News team covering the Covid-19 pandemic.

A confident and entertaining speaker who is in demand as a host, chair, panellist and lecturer, Zoe’s expertise and knowledge of the tech sector is brought to life by her engaging style. Her networking skills and ability to engage with people from all walks of life ensure many repeat bookings.