From child prodigy to MBE, Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon is Head Stemette and co-founder of Stemettes, the award-winning social enterprise inspiring the next generation of females into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) roles via a series of impactful events and opportunities.

One of the youngest ever to be awarded a Masters’ degree in Mathematics & Computer Science by the University of Oxford at age 20, Anne-Marie, unsurprisingly, continued to soar. In 2018 alone, she was listed among the top 50 women in tech in the world by Forbes, voted the 5th most influential woman in IT by Computer Weekly and was the recipient of the prestigious Barclays UK ‘Woman of the Year’ award.

2017 saw her featured among the top 50 most inspiring women in tech by Inspiring Fifty (an accolade she received for a second time in 2018). In recognition of her significant influence and achievements, Anne-Marie was awarded an MBE in the 2017 New Year’s Honours for services to young women and STEM sectors. In June of the same year she was also made an Honorary Fellow at Keble College, Oxford.

Not only a champion of getting women into STEM positions, Anne-Marie has previously worked with Goldman Sachs, Hewlett-Packard, Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers, amassing a wealth of experience. She is also a recognised thought-leader in the tech space, regularly appearing in the media as a talking head, and giving talks at tech giants such as SXSW and Founders Forum. Anne-Marie’s keynotes topics include Diversity in Tech, Social Media, AI, and Social Entrepreneurship.

Listed as one of the UK’s Top Most Influential Women in Tech & an international multi-award winner for her services to Diversity & Inclusion in industry, Sheree (@nirushika) is a Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Senior Executive; Advisory Board Member, Women Who Code; Contributor, Forbes. She is the Author of “Demanding More” (with Kogan Page Publishing) – a book which aims to teach readers about how deliberate exclusion has been in systems and society, so we can be purposefully and deliberately inclusive moving forward. Order anywhere now!

Sheree is a Global Diversity & Inclusion Senior Exec (currently at Valtech, ex. Deloitte, Monzo & Peakon), having worked in many regions developing tailored, data-driven DE&I strategies, with clear goals and lines of accountability to embed success and inclusion that scales.

As a passionate advocate for gaining/retaining women in the industry, in 2013, she launched & led the award-winning U.K. expansion of Women Who Code (womenwhocode.com) the world’s largest non-profit globally dedicated to women in tech, where she now sits as an Advisory Board Member.

As an industry leader, she has spoken at many global events, conferences and leadership sessions and is regularly profiled for her work, having been featured in many publications, such as Forbes, Business Insider, BBC, FastCompany, Evening Standard, HuffPost, Business Post, Marie Claire, Wired, ComputerWeekly, The Guardian, Sunday Telegraph, Newsletter & many more.

The aim of her career is ensuring people are aware of the fantastic opportunities the industry has to offer & make certain that all humans are able to benefit from these & reach their full career potential.

Abeer Shakweer is currently the Assistant Resident Representative at UNDP Egypt, and the Inclusive Growth and Innovation team leader. She is responsible for digital transformation, SMEs and entrepreneurship, innovation, and governance. She holds a Ph.D., in |Environmental Engineering and a M.Sc. in Computer Science both from the University of Nottingham, in the UK, and a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from Cairo University.

Dr. Shakweer has more than 20 years of experience in ICT, Technology Transfer and Innovation working with national and international organizations. She worked as an advisor to the Minister of Communications and Information Technology for Social Responsibility and Services; and the Founding Executive Director of the National ICT academy for Persons with Disabilities. 

She previously worked as founding Planning and Monitoring Manager and head of International Cooperation at the Science and Technology Development Fund, and Executive Director for the center for future studies at the Cabinet of Minister’s Information and Decision Support Center. Dr. Shakweer worked as a consultant with several reputable organizations including the European Commission, and several UN agencies.

Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck is Director of the Digital Leadership Institute, a Brussels-based international NGO promoting inclusive digital transformation, and recognized by the UN in 2019 for its global leadership in diversity and inclusion in digital fields. In 2018, Google and the Financial Times placed Cheryl among the 100 Digital Pioneers of Europe, and in the same year, Cheryl received a coveted “GLOMO” Global Mobile Industry Leader Award for her grassroots work promoting digital equity around the world.

Cheryl has held progressive leadership roles in the automotive, telecom, cybersecurity and banking sectors in Japan, Europe, Russia and the US. She has spent the last decade advocating at the highest level and leading global digital skills and entrepreneurship campaigns that leverage disruptive technologies for the world’s most under-served communities. She is regularly asked to speak and author articles—on topics of diversity and inclusion, digital equity, workforce of the future, entrepreneurship, innovation, and education—that are featured in scholarly journals and global media outlets including The Economist and Financial Times. Cheryl has presented at the UN, European Parliament, and at global industry events including Mobile World Congress, TEDx, EmTech, OSCON, CPDP and FOSDEM.

Currently, Cheryl serves as Head of EU Delegation to the G20 Women20 engagement group, Co-Chair of Italy’s W20 Digital Working Group, Chair and President of the Women Entrepreneurship Platform (Europe), Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Ambassador, and AWS Cloud Ambassador. Cheryl also advises European Commission projects on Ethics in AI, and diversity, equity and inclusion in RD&I.

Cheryl holds a degree in International Relations, Law & Organizations from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service and a Master of International Business Studies from the Moore School of Business at USC. Cheryl is both Belgian and American, and speaks, reads and writes English, Japanese, Dutch, French, Italian & Russian.

Christiane has been following her passion at the intersection of strategy consulting, entrepreneurship and human empowerment for the last 15 years in Europe and the Middle East. Among other things, she has advised Ministries and multinational companies with BCG, built a medical college in Qatar and currently supports Misk Foundation in growing its portfolio of youth-focused programs. 

Christiane is an avid coach, mentor and trainer, and has co-founded several companies, including INTO Financial Coaching (www.independent-together.com) and Ghaya which both focus on using group coaching formats for enabling individuals during critical transitions.  She likes working with a diverse range of smart, creative people from millennials to senior industry experts who share an ambition for growing the business, continuously developing themselves and others, and building attractive, inclusive and high-performing workplaces.

After living abroad for more than 10 years, she recently relocated to Berlin with frequent international travels.

Çiğdem Kayalı stands at the forefront of the fastest moving technology industry trend: cloud services. She’s spent the past twelve years evangelizing an industry-wide shift to the cloud and the last three years focusing on the cybersecurity market.

A calculated risk-taker with deep industry knowledge, Kayalı has championed cloud services to enterprise and consumer customers. Kayali is recognized for designing, landing, and leading the strategic market strategies for Microsoft’s commercial Cloud Services, mainly Microsoft 365. Throughout her 24-year tenure with Microsoft, Kayalı has built a reputation for developing business strategies, and incubating new business models. She had different managerial positions at Microsoft MEA, CEE and EMEA headquarters. She is now Director of Cyber Security at Microsoft Middle east & Africa.

Kayali holds a MBA and bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering. She has 26 years of experience in sales, marketing and management experience in the IT industry. 

She is one of the founders and board members of Women in Technology Platform in Turkey which turned into a business association to create awareness of the latest technologies within women business leaders in Turkey.

She is actively working to inspire young girls to study STEM and women to join IT in the MEA region.

Claudia Wentsch started at TTTech Auto September 2019 as HR Director for Germany, in January 2021 she took over the responsibility as Regional Managing Director Germany responsible for 131 people in 2 locations. She has a strong background on all topics of developing an innovative Company Culture.  “new world of working”, leadership and organizational development and a strong focus on “Diversity & Inclusion” are some components that are heartfelt focus topics. As HR Director for Microsoft Germany she was also responsible for Microsoft´s Diversity & Inclusion workstream which is very much linked to the area of the new world of work.

Claudia is passionate about the opportunities of an evolving diverse culture, leadership and technology as drivers of a modern, human centric workplace. Now in the pandemic and post-pandemic times she establishes the “new normal” as a natural way of collaboration that fits to the TTTech culture. Here in Germany we have > 34 nationalities, > 15% female engineers.

Claudia is an inclusive and engaged people leader, mother of a 15 year old girl, is married, just finished her systemic coach degree and used to be a jazz singer, loves cooking and gardening. She loves to work in passionate and diverse teams and in international contexts where people, place and technology seamlessly come together.

Dr. Eva Peggy Best has a PhD in Computer Science from Technical University of Munich and a Masters Degree of International Business Management from University Hagen. She is currently Senior Corporate Auditor – Finance, Sales and HR at BMW Group.

After she had studied Computer Science and International Business Management, she worked as project lead in the areas of IT security, compliance and data science at the BMW Group.

Dr. Best has more than 15 years of experience in IT, working at international organizations like BMW, Siemens and IBM with focus on e.g. IT strategy and software rollout projects.

Her main fields of interest include data science, cloud computing and the importance of digital transformation and life-long learning. She has authored a number of articles in the area of standard business software and women in STEM.

Hoda has 17 years of experience in industrialization and economic development projects. She has led and motivated several tech-based industrial investments in the UAE and internationally. She worked on several turnaround projects that were aimed to achieve strategic, financial and operational synergies of industrial and business prospects. She has a specific interest in SDG based investments as well as her current background.

Hoda A. Alkhzaimi is currently the Director of Center of Cyber Security in New York University AD and a research assistant professor in New York University. She served in different posts for research and development in the Technology development sector for the past years, she also played a vital role in developing Cyber Security and Cryptology research and development ecosystems. She headed the Department of Research and Development for Cyber Security and Cryptology in different national initiatives in the United Arab Emirates along with her associations to different security initiatives nationally and internationally. She consults for special projects with national and international technology development initiatives.

Alkhzaimi has specific expertise in cryptology; cryptanalysis, constructing and validating security hardware and software components, constructing trusted security architectures for different environments in different products for the respective industries. Hoda. Alkhzaimi obtained her Ph.D. in Cryptanalysis from Denmark Technical University. Her current research interests include Space, Aerospace, and UAV and autonomous systems security, constructing and analyzing cryptographic primitives, validating, and investigating links between different cryptanalytic approaches and utilizing cryptographic primitives in different cybersecurity architectures as in Internet of Things and big data analysis among others. Her research includes analysis of the effect of AI and machine learning techniques on improving security analytics. She is aswell leading several AI based initiatives globally.

Homa Siddiqui has over 20 years experience in Financial Services delivering innovative, award winning and patented solutions for Clients, Relationship Managers and Risk & Compliance officers and is on the Customer Advisory Board for several leading Fintechs. 

Homa most recently led Digital Transformation & Products Labs (“DTPL”), Tech Strategy & Innovation including leading Wealth Management digitalization for Risk and Compliance, at Credit Suisse based in Zurich.

Homa has held a number of other roles within Credit Suisse including Chief Operating Officer for the Chief Compliance & Regulatory Affairs Officer and the Global Head of Private Banking and Wealth Management Platform Strategy and Governance.

Homa joined Credit Suisse from Morgan Stanley where she led cross-selling initiatives across the Institutional Business. Previously, Homa was Partner at Kanbay, a consulting firm acquired by Capgemini.

She attended the Singularity University for Exponential Technologies and Stanford Business School for Leadership Development. Homa holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Arizona State University.

John is KPMG’s UK Head of Environment, Social & Governance (ESG). He is responsible for embedding ESG practices into KPMG’s UK strategy and for leading the delivery ESG solutions, products and services to KPMG’s clients. 

He has held a number of senior UK, ASPAC Region and Global leaderships positions in KPMG over the last 20 years including:

• Elected member of the KPMG UK Board,  which oversees the stewardship, accountability and leadership of the KPMG UK Firm providing clear sighted counsel on the strategic direction of KPMG and alignment to it’s Vision, Values, and Purpose
• Member of the KPMG UK People Committee – which provides oversight of the KPMG firmwide people strategy including monitoring culture, performance management and considering policies designed to enable the recruitment, wellbeing, motivation, and retention of all colleagues. In 2021, the People Committee oversaw, approved, and the firm published, KPMG’s Black heritage pay gap for the first time in its 150-year history. This significant achievement is in addition to publishing KPMG’s sexual orientation and disability pay gap reports also for the first time, and on a voluntary basis

In addition to John’s leadership roles within the firm, he is a strong external advocate for the ‘S’ in ESG driving inclusion, diversity and social equality outside of the firm. Recent initiatives include:

• Princess Trust – John sponsors and supports a number a number of initiatives with the Princess Trust, including a national volunteering programme which is focused on tackling regional inequality in the UK, support for the support the Terra Carta initiative and the development of green skills – the knowledge, abilities and values needed to create a sustainable society 
• Disability Confident Business Leaders Group (BLG)  – John is the recently appointed KPMG senior BLG representative, which works with government and senior business leaders to develop and implement policies focused on increasing the number of disabled people in work
• British Canoeing Advisory Group (IAG) – John is the Chair of the Inclusion Advisory Group which is accountable to the British Canoeing Board

John is very experienced in leading rapid, complex change. He is a former senior leader within KPMG’s Global Centre of Excellence Mergers & Acquisitions team. To-date, he has led both the overall and technology aspects of some of the largest multi-billion-dollar client mergers, acquisitions, and divestments that KPMG has ever supported across multiple sectors and geographies. Now John’s sole focus is on inspiring and driving rapid ESG related change for KPMG and its clients.

Krishma is an accomplished technical executive with rich and extensive experience in providing innovative global solutions leveraging leading edge technologies in data science and artificial intelligence space. A large part of her experience comes from being a data scientist and pre-sales consultant with IBM Watson Software Labs and was awarded Best of IBM in 2017.

In her current role, Krishma manages the data solutions group spread across multiple geographies (London, Hong Kong, India) focusing on big data, intelligent automation and analytical solutions that generate value for the company and HSBC’s customer base.

Lamia Chaffai is the Chief Executive Officer of the non profit NGO, Education for Employment EFE-Tunisie (May 2012- present).

Prior to joining EFE-Tunisie, she was Senior Adviser for Information Technology to the Minister of   Employment Vocational Training (April 2011- April 2012).

She was appointed Secretary for State for Information Technology on January 2008 and served in this position for three years until January 2011.

Before that, she served as Chief Executive Officer of the Tunisian Internet Agency from September to December 2007.

She also served as Chief Executive Officer of the National Agency for Digital Certification, the National Trust Authority for Electronic Transactions, E-government and E-commerce services from September 2004 to September 2007. She was also member of the board of the Center for Studies and Research in Telecommunications (CERT) and the National Center for Informatics (CNI).

Previously, she worked as Director at the Tunisian Internet Agency and managed several national projects such as the Electronic Commerce Project and the Next Generation Internet (IPv6) project. She was member of the national commission of electronic commerce and member of the board of the national agency for digital certification.

She started her career in 1993 as network engineer in a private company NETCOM and she was in charge of designing and implementing Information systems and IT network solutions for private and public companies.

She has authored a number of articles and presentations on E-commerce and Internet governance.

Lamia Chaffai holds an Executive MBA from South Mediterranean University SMU (Tunisia), a Master in Electrical Engineering from The Engineering School of Monastir ENIM (Tunisia) and a BA in Engineering from the University of Technology of Compiegne UTC (France).

May joined BSF in August 2018 as Chief Human Capital Officer. Previously, she was at Alawwal bank as Human Resources General Manager responsible for leading the bank’s HR transformation.

With extensive experience in the HR field, she has led various change and transformation tracks covering organizational development, performance management and leadership development. Prior to joining Alawwal bank, May was the head of human capital management at NCB Capital and was part of the founding management team since the inception of NCB’s investment arm.Her previous roles include managing leadership development, high potential programs, and organizational/human capital strategy.

May serves as a board and NRC member at Care. May holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and organizational behavior from Boston University of Management and a Master’s in Engineering Management and Knowledge Management from George Washington University., USA.

Dr. Aljamea has a PhD in Computer Security Algorithms Design from King’s College London, she is currently the stc VP/ academy Dean, at Saudi Telcom Company.

As the first Saudi women who occupies an executive position in the company she has a vast experience in cyber and information security. Prior joining stc, Dr. Aljamea was the president of entrepreneurship unit and business incubator and an assistant Professor in cyber security, and considered as one of the Saudis experts in her field. She was named by Forbes as one of the Women Defining The 21st Century AI Movement.

Her main field of interest is Cyber Security attacks with AI and strategies in the Cyber war. She also takes an interest in the field of Digital Economy and the importance of building digital mindset especially at an executive level.

Shilpi Saxena is currently working as the Director of Engineering at Sky where she is responsible for creating a forward-looking data strategy, data engineering, innovation, and governance. She holds a M.Sc. in Computer Science from Staffordshire university. 

Shilpi has held fulfilling leadership roles in the ecommerce, recruitment, carbon trading, telecom, financial services sectors. She has 20 years of experience in software engineering working with multiple companies which include Sky, Amazon, Reed online etc. She led the quality strategy for the key project launches which includes Amazon Instant Video, Prime Instant Video in UK, and Amazon Instant video launch in Japan. These have contributed to her progressive leadership style.

Shilpi has a strong background in developing high-performing inclusive workplaces with focus on quality, agility, operational excellence, continuous improvement and innovation. She is passionate about caring for her people as her prime focus is on the happiness of her team. She truly believes in the idea of “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam”, which translates to “world is a family”. Shilpi invests a lot of time and effort in knowing her team and colleagues, building strong relationships with each of them as she tries to create a family wherever she works. She believes this is the basis of creating an open and honest culture. Shilpi biggest source of learning and inspiration is her seven year old daughter with additional needs, who has taught her patience, perseverance, empathy and resilience.

Bio to follow.

Sylvia is currently serving as the Chief Consumer Business Officer at Safaricom PLC, a purpose-led technology organization with a market capitalization of USD 12 Billion, the most profitable company in East and Central Africa.

She is a purposeful and impact driven leader who is passionate about transforming customers lives using technology as an enabler of positive change that impacts communities and individuals.

As a commercial leader she is responsible for driving the consumer telecoms business, which includes consumer mobile money services (M-PESA). Her role also includes management of the overall brand, and leading the transformation of Safaricom to become a digital lifestyle enabler of its consumers lives. She also champions digital transformation, while also providing strategic leadership to deliver on the company’s agile transformation agenda. Previously, Sylvia served as the Chief Customer Officer at Safaricom where she was responsible for driving the company’s customer obsession strategy to deliver long term shareholder growth as well as create preference for the Safaricom brand.

Over the last twenty years, Sylvia has developed a strong track record in strategic thinking, brand building, new business development, commercial execution, as well as people growth and development in the Telecommunications and Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sectors. She is inspired by driving positive change in society.

Sylvia is the recipient of several awards, which includes her appointment to the Presidential Award Scheme, a self-development programme in Kenya. In 2020, she was named as one of the 100 Most Influential African Women, and has also been feted as one of Kenya’s Top 25 Women In Digital in 2019. She has been cited as one of Kenya’s Top 40 under 40 Women for 3 consecutive years, and is a ‘2015 Young Global Leader (YGL) recipient, an award given by the World Economic Forum to those distinguished as exceptional global leaders under the age of 40.

She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Nairobi where she graduated with the highest distinction of First-Class Honors.

Her passion for transforming lives, leadership, women empowerment and creating community impact has her currently serving on several boards that drive this agenda, including SHOFCO (Shining Hope for Communities), Endeavor Kenya, Food4Education, as well as the Safaricom Foundation. In 2019, she was appointed by the Unstereotype Alliance as one of the four Global Vice Chairs. She has also spearheaded various initiatives to empower women in business and entrepreneurship.

Sylvia is a certified executive coach and mentor in both her personal and professional life. She operates on the principles of partnership, humility, openness and professionalism. But when all is said and done, her most treasured role is that of a mother to her two beautiful children.

Ukinebo Dare is the Managing Director, Edo State Skills Development Agency (EdoJobs)

Uki graduated from the Benson Idahosa University with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science after which she attended the University of Bradford and bagged her Masters degree in Management. She is also a certified Strategic and Conceptual Sales Executive from Miller Heiman Europe.

Uki is a trainer, writer, business strategist, brand manager and business advisory expert whose passion, in her words, is to introduce people to the best version of themselves even as she strives to continually improve herself. Having worked in the private sector, civil society and government, she has implemented programs which have impacted over 179,000 executives, entrepreneurs and job seekers across multiple disciplines, industries and countries as CEO of Poise Graduate Finishing Academy.

She is passionate about youth engagement and employment, job creation and finding practical solutions to previously unsolvable problems through collaboration, problem solving and creative thinking.

She’s experienced in independently managing large skills development and job creation projects simultaneously across Africa. Usually with full responsibility and oversight for design, planning, scope, budgets, schedule, sustainability, risks, resource management, communication, stakeholder engagement, sponsorship.