2021 speakers

Akua Gyekye is the Co-Lead of WhatsApp’s Public Policy team covering Europe, Middle East and Africa. In her role, she oversees the development and strategy for policy engagements across the region. Prior to this, Akua was Facebook’s Public Policy Manager for Elections in EMEA and has been with the company for 6 years.

Before joining Facebook, Akua was working as a project finance lawyer, qualified to practice in New York and the United Kingdom, in the Finance & Capital Markets practice of the law firm Clifford Chance. Akua previously worked in Nigeria and Liberia as a legal adviser and rule of law specialist at the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation and as an anti-corruption lawyer at USAID. Akua also has years of experience working for and with a variety of government departments, NGOs and international think tanks in Europe, the US and in various countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Akua holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Law and Society with minors in International Relations and Spanish from American University, a Law Degree from Cambridge University in England and a Master of Laws in International and Comparative Law from The George Washington University Law School. She is also qualified to practice law in New York and the United Kingdom.

In 2019, Akua was selected for a Most Influential Person of African Descent (MIPAD) Award in the Politics & Government category. This recognition occurred in line with the United Nations proclaiming the years between 2015 and 2024 as the International Decade for People of African Descent.

‍

Amy Boxi Wu (she/they) is part of the Pioneering Responsibly team at DeepMind, focusing on putting AI ethics into practice. Prior to this, she was a Program Manager working with AI research teams that focus on NLP and Vision. Before DeepMind, Amy worked as a strategy consultant at PwC’s Strategy&, at an early-stage health-tech startup and within economics and policy research at Melbourne University. Amy is interested in the social impacts of AI technologies and the participation of historically marginalised groups in its development.

An entrepreneur and executive leader with extensive experience building and operating some of the world’s most successful online games over the last 25 years for companies including EA, Codemasters, Heatwave Interactive and Daybreak Games. Most recently, Anthony established independent games development studio Protagonist Games.

Arlan Hamilton is an investor and the founder and Managing partner of Backstage Capital. In May 2020, Hamilton released her first book from Penguin Random House entitled It's About Damn Time, which is based on her personal journey into entrepreneurship and venture capital

‍

Bukola has spent nearly two decades in HR and has held a variety of roles within the profession, ranging from early careers talent acquisition, graduate development, performance management centre of excellence and more recently as the senior Human Resources Business Partner for central functions within a FTSE company.She is passionate about diversity and career development and has won several awards from the ‘RecruitingDiverse Talent’ award from Race for Opportunity in 2014 to more recently the ‘We Are The City Award’ for HR and Recruitment in 2021. It is from this passion that the & accelerate Black Futures initiative was born which focuses on enhancing the narrative around young black talent via a group mentoring programme and monthly scale up events. A family renowned foodie, she enjoys travelling with her husband and three children to experience new cuisines and in her (very little) spare time leads a 6-week pre-marital guidance course for couples.

Dan is Freetrade's senior investment analyst and author of the Honey daily newsletters and Weekend Read. Before Freetrade, Dan was senior investment writer at Fidelity International covering stocks, macroeconomics, investment strategy and personal finance. His investment commentary is regularly featured in the BBC, Financial Times, the Telegraph and the Guardian. You can catch him every week on the VoxMarkets podcast with Justin Waite.

‍

Denise joins Sky from Marks & Spencer, where she has been part of the People Leadership team since June 2018. Prior to this, Denise spent 8.5 years at The Coca Cola Company where she held a number of key, global leadership positions, latterly as HR Director, Global Head of Talent Management & Global Functions Capability, based in Atlanta, GA. Earlier experience was gained at BP, GE Money and Tesco. In these roles, Denise developed a significant track record of creating and delivering commercial, people-focused strategies to drive performance, business transformation and a culture of inclusion.

Denise Peart has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and philosophy from University of Hertfordshire in 1992 and a Master of Arts in Human Resource Management from University of Hertfordshire in 2002.

Dr Stacie CC Graham (pronoun: she) is a management consultant, executive coach, founder, speaker and writer. Her work has been featured in countless digital and print publications including BBC, Essence, Huff Post, i-D, and Refinery 29. In her first profession as a management consultant, she supports companies, teams and individuals in reaching their fullest potential with the help of practices and tools such as mindful leadership, intersectional attunement as well as emotional and social intelligence. Her holistic wellness brand, OYA: Body-Mind-Spirit Retreats, is dedicated to underrepresented communities typically underserved by the mainstream wellness industry.  She is also the founder of Colour Balance Images, a digital media platform empowering local creative communities to tell their own stories by delivering images and footage to media and advertising. With an MS in economics and a PhD in psychology as well as experience living and working in different parts of the world, she continues to cultivate a nuanced understanding of underlying drivers of human motivation and behavior in true Scorpio fashion.

‍

Dr Zubaida Haque is the Deputy Director of the Runnymede Trust. Zubaida has a strong research and policy background in ethnicity and inequality within education, employment, housing, health, poverty, and criminal justice areas. She has also written widely on race and crime, citizenship and integration issues. Zubaida has worked for several government departments, think tanks and universities and has participated in several national panels and commissions, including two Government-sponsored reviews of riots in Britain.

Some of her recent major projects include a survey of loneliness among BME communities, a qualitative study of the experiences of young black men in employment, evaluations of projects in prisons, detention centres and within the community, survey and qualitative study of the experiences of BME teachers within schools and producing statistical reports on deaths in custody.

Zubaida is Commissioner on the Women’s Budget Group Commission on a Gender-Equal Economy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Bernard Parsons is the CEO and Co-Founder of Becrypt. Establishing Becrypt in 2001 with the aim of addressing the growing security requirements of endpoint technology, Bernard has built the company into a leading supplier of end-user device security products and services, with a focus on product assurance, multiple platform support and flexible delivery: from being embedded within the platform, to hosted within the Cloud. Furthermore, Bernard has ensured Becrypt helps the most security-conscious organisations to be positioned as leaders in enabling value from the use of secure technology. For his dedication to digital technology, Bernard was bestowed with an MBE in the 2018 New Year’s Honours List.

I Studied Electrical and Electronic Engineering at UCL. After graduating from my Masters, I started my first graduate job at Cisco training Systems Engineer working in Presales. The graduate programme lasted a year in which after I was transferred to my new role within the Global Virtual Engineering team. I spent 1.5 years in that team until I realised I wanted a change and pursued a career at Dell. I started under a programme as an Associate Systems Engineer with on the job experience. I completed the program and became a fully fledged Systems Engineer working with Dell Partners.