Meet our speakers

Abidemi O-Thomas is an experienced Accenture Digital Senior Manager with a demonstrated history in delivering innovative Digital Transformations and Solutions. Additionally, he's a passionate people advocate focused on cultivating a society that cares and nurtures individuals as humans first.

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Alex Alleyne is an award-winning sales expert and Founder of Growth iQ and My Sales Agency. His career was built on delivering eight-figure revenue numbers for multi-national companies along with teaching, coaching and mentoring individuals all over the globe around sales and marketing execution.

Alex is renowned for delivering daily content, helping people to build their brand and grow their income while avoiding common career pitfalls. This culminated in Alex being recognised as LinkedIn’s #3 Top Voice in the Sales Thought Leadership Category in 2019.

Alexis Williams is Fashion Publisher of The Guardian, which he joined in 2017. Previously, he was Head of Arts Advertising and Global Client Director for Men's Fashion at the Financial Times (FT). A specialist in fashion and arts sectors, Alexis relaunched the FT arts website in collaboration with advertisers, and launched the Art of Fashion magazines as part of the refreshed FT Weekend portfolio.

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Amali de Alwis is the UK Managing Director of Microsoft for Startups, which supports leading B2B tech startups grow with Microsoft support. Prior to this she was CEO of Code First: Girls – a multi award-winning training company focused on increasing diversity in tech.

Outside of her day job, Amali is a Board member at Ada National College for Digital Skills, a member of the D&I Board at the Institute of Coding and Advisory Board member at the Founders Academy. She is a founding member at Tech Talent Charter and a CommonwealthFirst business mentor.

Amali is a London Tech Week Ambassador and Judge for the Lord Mayor’s Dragon Awards, and was recently inducted into Computer Weekly’s Hall of Fame in recognition of her lifelong commitment to the industry. She was additionally awarded an MBE in the New Year’s Honours list 2019 for Services to Diversity and Training in the Tech Industry.

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Andrew Lawson is Senior Vice President of EMEA at Zendesk. A champion of diversity and inclusion, he was recognized two years in a row in Management Today's Agents of Change power list.

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Bejay Mulenga is an award-winning entrepreneur. At 20 years old he was the youngest person to receive Her Majesty the Queen's Award for Enterprise Promotion in 2016. Bejay founded Supa Tuck at 14 years old, a franchise of student-run tuck shops in schools and has gone on to consult and work for brands such as Sony Music, Uber, Coca-Cola, Facebook, River Island and Nike. His recent venture, Supa Talent, is a fast-growing training and employer brand consultancy working on diversity campaigns and programmes for large corporates and SMEs.

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Ben Narasin is a Venture Partner at NEA. A prolific entrepreneur and highly regarded early-stage investor with three decades of company-building expertise, Narasin has focused on emerging technologies and new markets throughout his investment career. With a portfolio comprising key early successes in some of today's fastest-growing sectors, such as fintech, digital marketplaces, mobile and connected devices, his overarching focus in seeking new investments is, in his words, “to find founders who make me say 'wow'."

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Caroline Dinenage was appointed Minister of State for Digital and Culture in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on 13 February 2020. She was Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Care from 9 January 2018 to 13 February 2020 and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions from June 2017 to January 2018. She was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Women, Equalities and Early Years at the Department for Education from July 2016 to June 2017. Caroline was elected Conservative MP for Gosport, Stubbington, Lee-on-the-Solent and Hill Head in 2010.

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Caroline Omotayo is an associate of Latham & Watkins. She is passionate about technology law, business and personal development. She represents emerging, public and private companies on commercial and intellectual property transactions.

Check Warner is one of the founding partners of Ada Ventures. She is also the Co-Founder and CEO of Diversity VC, a non-profit made up of interested individuals working in venture capital who seek to increase diversity of thought in the venture and tech industry.

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Chris is currently the LIVE Ops Manager at TikTok, heading up the technical and operational execution for TikTok LIVE in the region. His career has spanned multiple territories, managing broadcast systems and event spaces for Google in EMEA, executing tour management for O2, providing technical event directorship for Facebook in EMEA and brand activation for Channel 4. Outside of working in the tech industry, he has delivered concerts for Carlos Santana, Wretch 32, The Viennese Philharmonic, and various other musical acts.

As well as being involved in various mentorship programs for young black men, he was also one of the founding architects behind the Black Googlers Network and Facebook Hackathons and one of the people helping drive TikTok's Black History Month Campaign.

David Burnand is Senior Director of Global Digital & EMEA Marketing at Box. He's an experienced international marketing leader with a history of working in B2B markets, particularly SaaS, telecoms and professional services.

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Dr Ciira Maina is a lecturer at Dedan Kimathi University of Technology (DeKUT) in Nyeri, Kenya, where he also conducts research in bioacoustics, IoT, machine learning, data science and more.

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Dr. Djamila Amimer is CEO and Founder of Mind Senses Global, a boutique AI consultancy that helps businesses and organizations apply artificial intelligence and unlock their full potential.

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Dr Mahlet (Milly) Zimeta is Head of Public Policy at the Open Data Institute (ODI). Before joining the ODI in September 2020, Milly was Senior Policy Advisor at the Royal Society, the independent scientific academy of the UK, where she led the Society's policy programme on Data and Digital Disruption including projects on data governance, data science skills, and privacy enhancing technologies.  Milly was previously Programme Manager at the Alan Turing Institute, Britain's national institute for data science and AI, where she managed the Turing's research partnership programmes in Health and in Finance/Economic Data Science. She has also worked at the Medical Research Council, and served on an Advisory Group at Chatham House.  Mahlet holds degrees in philosophy from Oxford, Cambridge and York (UK) and is a mentor in the African Academy of Science's mentoring programme for early-/mid-career researchers across the continent.

Ernest Mwebaze is a Research Scientist at Google Ghana where he is working on advancing applied and fundamental research in AI. He is passionate about finding and implementing better, simpler and more cost-effective solutions to address some of the prevailing problems in developing countries.

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Karen Robinson is Vice President of Intellectual Property and Litigation at Adobe. In addition, she is the Executive Sponsor of Adobe's Black Employee Network and works to drive diversity and inclusion within legal and across the company. 

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Kate Kallot is a technology-driven AI enthusiast who specializes in creating strategic alliances that empower the ecosystem to drive innovation. Kate has a special interest in using tech for good and a strong belief in the power of AI to drive social change.

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Katrina Ffrench is Chief Executive of the charity StopWatch, which campaigns for fair and effective policing. She has a wealth of experience in community development and is a confident communicator who possesses a strong commitment to community empowerment and social justice.

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Lavinia Osbourne is a #Blockchain, #Fintech & #Welltech specialist! As well as a Financial Wellbeing & Business coach.

She is the founder and director of Butterfly Wealth Creation - A Holistic Financial Wellbeing and Money Mindfulness consultancy for over 10 years. BWC promotes financial wellbeing and money mindfulness to both individuals, groups and corporates, including WeWork, MFW and other high profile brands.

In addition to the above, she is the host and founder of Women in Blockchain Talks- the UK's no.1 female-led and award-winning Blockchain educational and networking events platform in the UK.

Women in Blockchain Talks' premise is to elevate female leaders in the Blockchain tech sphere with the objective to promote inclusivity and diversity in the space by encouraging other women, as well as all types of individuals, to come into the industry and create a career in it.

Blockchain is the future of both business and money, and it is important that we all take our place in it as well as show others how to do the same.

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Maria Raga is the CEO of Depop. Since being promoted to the position in 2016 from VP of Operations, she has presided over every element of the business from finance and engineering to marketing and product. An open and collaborative CEO, Maria is dedicated to her team, which has grown to 250-plus employees in five offices worldwide in the last three years alone. Perhaps most importantly, since she took over as CEO, she has raised close to $100 million in funding, which has helped to grow and nurture the community on Depop – now 20 million users. Prior to Depop, Maria held successively roles at Groupon and Privalia. Having graduated from Insead MBA, Maria joined Bain & Company as a consultant. Born in Valencia, Spain, Maria now resides in London with her husband and three children. In her spare time, Maria enjoys connecting with Depop's entrepreneurial Gen-Z constituency and promoting women in the workplace.

Naomi Kellman is Rare Recruitment's Senior Manager for Schools and Universities, leading Rare's campus recruitment, school work experience programmes and university employability schemes.

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Niklas Zennström is CEO and Founding Partner at Atomico. He is an experienced technology investor and entrepreneur, having previously co-founded and managed globally successful technology companies including Skype, Kazaa and Joltid.

Oluchi Ikechi built and now leads Accenture's business restructuring unit in the UK and Ireland for capital markets. She is a vocal advocate for next-generation leadership, diversity and inclusion in business, with a focus on young leaders and those from the BAME community.

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Paula has over 20 years of private equity and investment experience with early-stage companies and is an expert in developing and deploying targeted investment funds, including Oakland, California's equity fund; Axxon Capital’s $54 million fund for women/minorities business; and Triumph Capital’s $800 million in economically targeted and other funds.

Shakir Mohamed is a Senior Staff Research Scientist at DeepMind, which he joined in 2013. He works towards the goal of developing intelligent and general-purpose learning systems. Shakir also leads a non-profit organization called Deep Learning Indaba.

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Sharmadean Reid is the Founder and CEO of Beautystack. Her mission is to use technology to economically empower women in the beauty and wellness industries, globally. A former fashion stylist and brand consultant who started WAH as a hip hop magazine for girls in 2006 while still at university. She then founded WAH Nails as a side project in 2009.

WAH completely changed the beauty landscape with its millennial voice, feminist attitude and innovative salon space. She then wrote two books, delivered global pop up nail salons for 100s of brands, created a product line with Walgreen Boots Alliance and was awarded an MBE from HRH Queen in 2015 for services to beauty.

Alongside all of this she shared her journey by organising business events for young female entrepreneurs culminating in futuregirlcorp.com.

In 2016 she opened a dreamy salon in Soho, London, showcasing a Virtual Reality Nail Design app in collaboration with DVTK. She is constantly looking for ways to push the salon experience further through technology.

With her experience from WAH, she founded Beautystack, a new way to book beauty through images.

Sian Keane joined Farfetch in December 2012 and is currently the Chief People Officer. She guides the company's global people strategy and champions a focus on culture, engagement and the development of people by managing the implementation of company values, global career ladder and global employer brand.

Susannah Clark is Vice President of Communications at Farfetch, responsible for corporate and consumer communications globally. Prior to joining Farfetch, she served as Communications Partner at EQT Ventures, working with portfolio companies to define their communications strategies and help with storytelling and PR.

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Temitayo Odukoya is the Startup and VC Lead at Colorintech. She leads programs and initiatives for early-stage entrepreneurs and startups.

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Vanessa Spence is the Menswear & Womenswear Designer at ASOS, where she has been since 2007. Starting out with a team of just two, she has grown her team to 65.

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