Dennie Declercq

In daily life Dennie is president and developer at DDSoft, a nonprofit that connects IT to people who are less tech-savvy. Dennie invented technical solutions and systems to help people with disabilities to participate in their daily life. Thanks to his autism he's the right man at the right spot to contribute as a volunteer in function of people with disabilities.

Sapphire Mason-Brown

She is also an organiser of Afrotech Fest a tech festival by and for black people of African and Caribbean heritage.

Having studied Psychology and Linguistics, she is interested in how teams work together and how team members effectively communicate with each other.

Reema Patel

She is an experienced policy professional who has led various citizen engagement and participation initiatives on complex and controversial policy areas in the UK, including the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) Citizens’ Economic Council, which successfully worked with and influenced the Bank of England’s public engagement strategy. Reema has consulted for a variety of international organisations, including the Danish Board of Technology Foundation and Nextdoor.com, San Francisco based technology social media start-up.

Isabel Chapman

Isabel has extensive experience and specialises in reducing risks for young people, supporting young people into EET and reaching their individual goals. Isabel has successfully trained and supported people from wide-ranging backgrounds into careers across the luxury, finance, retail and recruitment sectors, amongst others.

Isabel is considered an expert in the Gender Equality field and is a qualified Safe Lives Young People's Violence Advisor & an Independent Sexual Violence Adviser, specialising in Domestic Abuse and Sexual Assault. Isabel is an established public speaker, regularly speaking at events and conferences; this includes chairing debates in parliament and speaking on the ‘Women in Tech’ panel at the Parliamentary Internet Conference. Isabel also gave a TEDxClapham talk on sexual assault in 2015.

Holly Rafique

After over a decade as an IT Consultant in Financial Services, Holly took some time out to focus on building Lego and cardboard swords with her two boys, rather than building software systems. Now Holly has rediscovered a life-long curiosity for how things work and is reapplying her skills to new technology challenges and helping others to educate themselves in all things digital.

Sam Mercer

Gitte Klitgaard

She has great interest in how people function, how we communicate, how the brain works, what motivates us, how we can feel better about ourselves, and how to be perfect in our imperfections.

Working in different companies in Europe and developing training as needed, her expertise now centre on soft skills, as she has found this to be something missing in many organisations. The past few years she has been focusing on creating psychological safety.

Since 2013 Gitte has been speaking and doing workshops, and keynoting at international conferences across three continents (mainly for developers, agile professionals and testers). Her talks are often about the topics we don't talk about: stress, mental health, inclusion, vulnerability and courage.

Follow Gitte on Twitter @nativewired.

Nathalie Christmann-Cooper

During her career break, Nathalie undertook a self-directed learning path to master HTML, CSS and Javascript through various online courses, all from the kitchen table. Nathalie worked remotely under the branding of SheCodes, building bespoke websites for individuals and SMEs as well as providing digital training for non-tech individuals in managing the presence of their website and social media platforms.

Nathalie co-founded TreatOut, a greenfield food tech startup project which is tackling the issues faced when trying to dine out with food allergies and intolerances. She was accepted onto the 5th cohort of Google Campus for Mums Startup Programme at Campus London in October 2015 and was named one of the 15 small business owners joining the FSB’s national taskforce established to promote women in enterprise in July 2016. To step up to the role of technical co-founder Nathalie undertook a Full Stack Bootcamp with Le Wagon London in 2016 and has since become a passionate advocate for Women in Tech.

Outside of work, Nathalie blogs about her career development from a solo, self-taught coder to becoming an agile software engineer. You can often find her painting in a field with a glass of whiskey and a packet of chocolates somewhere deep in the Kent countryside.

Dr. Charlotte Webb

Recently nominated by the Evening Standard as one of the most influential people in Technology and Science in London, she has been interviewed by media organisations including the BBC, Evening Standard, and Marie Claire magazine for her opinions on the internet, feminism and gendered AI.

She has presented at conferences around the world including TedX, Internet Age Media, Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, Barbados Internet Governance Forum and Online Educa. Described as a ‘deviant academic’, Dr Webb’s PhD was a creative exploration of how the internet has transformed artistic authorship and cultural production.

She has also written for the Huffington Post, Eye on Design and Furtherfield and has +10 years’ experience working in art and design higher education, including the University of the Arts London, Europe’s largest art and design university.

Kingsley Davies

While working to make things better, he’s seen a steady evolution towards functional programming, a sharper focus on development operation teams and tools and decomposing big things into smaller composable things commonly called services.

Most recently he's also dived into the ethical tech and tech for good pools and is keen to encourage and support initiatives in these areas.

Sarah Luxford

Russ Shaw

Since then he has been championing London as a global tech hub and campaigning to address some of the biggest challenges facing tech companies in the UK – diversity, digital skills, immigration, infrastructure and access to funding.

Key achievements for Tech London Advocates (TLA) include successfully campaigning for the introduction of a Chief Digital Officer for London and placing digital jobs on the Shortage Occupation List for the first time.

Russ is a founding partner of London Tech Week, a London Tech Ambassador for the Mayor of London and Advisory Board member for Founders4Schools and the Government’s Digital Skills Partnership. He is a Trustee for Modern Muse Charity, which supports young women and girls who want to study STEM subjects.

He is one of the world’s leading experts on the success of London’s tech ecosystem and has been invited to tech hubs around the world to share his experience. In 2016, Russ created Global Tech Advocates, which now licenses the TLA operating model to countries around the world, including Scandinavia, Belfast, the Bay Area, the North of England, Singapore, Shanghai, Spain and Bogotá.

Russ was previously the Chairman of The Marketing Group of Great Britain following senior positions at Skype, Telefónica, O2 and CEO of a later stage startup called Mobileway. In his role as Marketing Director for O2, Russ brokered the relationship with The O2, the most successful indoor venue in the world.

He is an angel and venture investor and has been non-executive director of a number of high growth businesses, including Dialog Semiconductor and Unwire.

He has a BS from Washington University in St. Louis and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Femi Owolade-Coombes

He has his own business and website, hackerfemo.com and has helped develop a Young Coders MeetUp which is hosted at Red Hat's Open Innovation Labs in London. Presently he has partnered with Imran Hassan to develop an App to help Deaf children with literacy. He also presents inspiring Keynote talks on the topics of Young Coders, Cybersecurity and Open Source community.

Tom Wagstaff

By day, Tom is a data scientist at charity focused-agency, Raising IT. He brings with him a wealth of social sector experience, having previously worked on a variety of issue areas, including global poverty, international development, and UK homelessness.

Alan O’Donohoe

To increase access and opportunity to young digital makers, Alan organises events that include Hack To The Future, Hack Jams and in 2012 established the Raspberry Jam community for people of all ages and backgrounds with an interest in Digital Making. Raspberry Jam events now take place worldwide every week and Preston moves closer to celebrating it’s 100th Raspberry Jam event. In 2015, with the support of Bradford based Exa Networks, Alan diverted his energy to setting up Exa.Foundation to continue his work to inspire, engage and support teachers and learners. exa.foundation @exafoundation.

Ray Coyle

Ray joined the board of auticon Limited from Grow Software, a DRM developer for the additive manufacturing sector, where he was CEO. Prior to that, Ray has been a director of Osborne Clarke, the European law firm and the UbiQ Group, an OEM software supplier. Ray is a qualified UK solicitor and has a Masters Degree in Intellectual property law and brings over 20 years of experience in IT and professional services to auticon. Ray has a longstanding interest in social enterprise and founded the IMPACT team at Osborne Clarke. He also serves as a non-executive director of AltEnergis, an alternative energy tech incubator.

Timothy Quinn

They manage the world's largest structured repository of multilingual hate speech, have been profiled in Wired and New Scientist (among others), and are supporting research on hate speech at several leading universities, including Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and Cornell.

In addition to leading Hatebase, Timothy is CTO at Canadian eprocurement platform OMX, Director of Technology at The Sentinel Project, and an eGovernance expert with the Canadian Executive Service Organization. He's taught at New York University and the City University of New York, and has presented at several conferences.

Emma Obanye

Emma previously co-founded and sold the award-winning, music-focused loyalty and influencer platform BuddyBounce. With over 70K users, BuddyBounce connected fans, bands and brands, attracting a wealth of clients including all three major labels, O2 and Penguin Random House.

Aside from her work at Capital Enterprise Emma also enjoys working on her two current ventures Mindful Team and The Retrospective Game (a tech platform and card game respectively). Both products focus on allowing businesses to measure and improve the culture of their teams. In her spare time, she advises and mentors a number of individuals and startups.

Jaya Chakrabarti MBE

Jaya set up social enterprise TISCreport.org (Transparency In Supply Chains Report) in 2016, to tackle slavery in supply chains. In 2018 TISCreport was a finalist for two anti-corruption technology awards and is arguably the world’s largest anti-slavery register.

She serves as a member of the DCMS Digital Economy Business Advisory Group and the Home Office Transparency in Supply Chains Modern Slavery Strategy & Implementation Group. Jaya was named one of the top 100 Corporate Influencers in Modern Slavery 2018, and also top 100 Asian Stars in Tech 2018 and whole-heartedly believes that transparency data will help to save the world.

Jamie Bartlett

He is also a regular commentator on national and international media outlets and recently presented the two-part BBC documentary series 'The Secrets of Silicon Valley'. His Ted Talk about the dark net has had over 3 million views.

Stella Windsor

Tom Wagstaff

By day, Tom is a data scientist at charity focused-agency, Raising IT. He brings with him a wealth of social sector experience, having previously worked on a variety of issue areas, including global poverty, international development, and UK homelessness.

Christine Henry

She holds a PhD in physical chemistry from the Australian National University, and a law degree. Christine is passionate about making tech with users in mind, and investigating the ethical and social impacts of new technologies and data. She has volunteered with DataKind UK since 2017, and in 2019 is heading up the new Ethics working Group.

Ellie Hale

Over the past four years, CAST has worked with over 500 nonprofits and their funders to embed digital across their services, strategy and culture.

Ellie leads CAST's programme of Design Hops, a series of nationwide free, half-day workshops that offer an accessible introduction to digital service delivery and how charities can take their first steps. She previously ran CAST's Digital Fellowship, a comprehensive digital learning programme for charity leaders, and is CAST's Community Champion, collaborating with other leading organisations to run regular events including the 8,000-strong Tech for Good London, NetSquared London and a number of other Meetups.

Ali Chaudhry

Ali is also running a charity named Renaissance which operates number of charity schools for the disadvantaged communities in Pakistan. His schools focus on quality education where technology is thoroughly integrated in classrooms and day-to-day operations. He has also launched a number of AI-based technology products in Pakistan, disrupting the Agriculture sector through Qurbani App and Education sector through Naseem Education.

Dylan Beattie

Dylan is actively involved in the international software development community. As well as his work with Skills Matter, he runs the London .NET User Group, he's on the programme committee for NDC Conferences, and he's a frequent speaker at conferences and technical events around the world.

Dylan grew up in southern Africa, moving to the UK with his family when he was ten. He's a Microsoft MVP on the Visual Studio and Developer Tools programme, and he holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of Southampton. He’s a guitar player and songwriter, known for creating musical parodies about software development. He's into skiing, scuba diving, Lego, cats, travel and photography, and he's normally found hanging around user groups, pubs and rock bars in London wearing a big black hat.

Read Dylan Beattie's blogs:

The Horrors Lurking in your Legacy Codebase

The Night Before Christmas

Alex Stephany

Beam lets anyone be part of the long-solution to homelessness by funding employment training for a homeless person. Beam is partnered with the Mayor of London and leading homeless charities who refer individuals to the platform. The world's first platform of its kind, Beam has won 1st Prize in the London Homelessness Awards and Best Use of Technology in the Homeless Sector. Beam was named by The Guardian as one of the most important social tech innovations of 2018 and the Financial Times as one of Europe’s 100 digital champions. Before Beam, Alex was CEO of JustPark where he led what was the largest ever crowdfunding round for a tech startup. He is also the author of The Business of Sharing, a leading book on the sharing economy, and a tech advisor to the city of Seoul.

Mark Martin

Mark is an international speaker travelling to different countries advocating tech for good and digital skills. Also Mark is actively involved in the UK tech sector, supporting tech companies and promoting cultural diversity within organisations.

Jenny Martin

Jenny believes that great teams are built on collaboration, shared responsibility and by embracing individuality and diversity. Jenny is active in the software development community as an expert in team collaboration and effectiveness and a regular speaker at events across Europe. She has 20+ years of leadership experience delivering large scale projects on multiple platforms, tools and technologies in the customer loyalty, retail and finance sectors.

www.jennyjmar.com

Twitter @jennyjmar

Nancy Evbuomwan

Follow Nancy on Twitter @nancy_evbuomwan.

Sabine Vreugdenhil

Sabine is in an entrepreneurial couple with Michael Vreugdenhil, who have set up Pink Umbrella Studios to empower (ex)offenders with the means to create their own future using tech. As a result, charities and social enterprises benefit from a professional website at minimum costs. Together, they share a passion for entrepreneurship and campaign for equality in digital tools.

Michael Vreugdenhil

Michael is in an entrepreneurial couple with Sabine Vreugdenhil, who have set up Pink Umbrella Studios to empower (ex)offenders with the means to create their own future using tech. As a result, charities and social enterprises benefit from a professional website at minimum costs. Together, they share a passion for entrepreneurship and campaign for equality in digital tools.

Angela Bates

Born to a family of entrepreneurs and co-founder of two businesses Angela has a passion for innovation. Today she has the privilege of helping developers, be successful with IBM technologies. Angela formulates programmes that build trust and respect via developer advocacy, promotes corporate-to-startup engagement, builds relationships with technical community influencers and defines strategies that support new digital routes to market.

Wendy Devolder

I am very proud of the thriving ecosystem our community has evolved into over the years, the depth and breadth of skills and expertise shared here every day is simply incredible! I look forward to the years ahead, when we will be launching ever more channels and ways to share this expertise with the global engineering community, and love to hear your thoughts and ideas to make it happen.

Richard McMenamin

Richard tweets at @richmcm.

Ali Chaudhry

Ali is also running a charity named Renaissance which operates number of charity schools for the disadvantaged communities in Pakistan. His schools focus on quality education where technology is thoroughly integrated in classrooms and day-to-day operations. He has also launched a number of AI-based technology products in Pakistan, disrupting the Agriculture sector through Qurbani App and Education sector through Naseem Education.

Sara Shahvisi

Jennifer Riggins

Currently based in London, she writes around tech ethics, agility, accessibility, diversity and inclusion, testing, DevOps, happiness at work, API strategy, the Internet of Things, microservices and containers, developer relations, and more. Follow her on Twitter @jkriggins.

Nathalie Christmann-Cooper

During her career break, Nathalie undertook a self-directed learning path to master HTML, CSS and Javascript through various online courses, all from the kitchen table. Nathalie worked remotely under the branding of SheCodes, building bespoke websites for individuals and SMEs as well as providing digital training for non-tech individuals in managing the presence of their website and social media platforms.

Nathalie co-founded TreatOut, a greenfield food tech startup project which is tackling the issues faced when trying to dine out with food allergies and intolerances. She was accepted onto the 5th cohort of Google Campus for Mums Startup Programme at Campus London in October 2015 and was named one of the 15 small business owners joining the FSB’s national taskforce established to promote women in enterprise in July 2016. To step up to the role of technical co-founder Nathalie undertook a Full Stack Bootcamp with Le Wagon London in 2016 and has since become a passionate advocate for Women in Tech.

Outside of work, Nathalie blogs about her career development from a solo, self-taught coder to becoming an agile software engineer. You can often find her painting in a field with a glass of whiskey and a packet of chocolates somewhere deep in the Kent countryside.

Sinead Bunting

Sinead’s ‘day job’ is in marketing, specialising in digital performance marketing and creative brand transformation. Most recently she was VP of Marketing for Monster in Europe, the global jobs website. Passionate about encouraging diversity and success in business, she not only created the TTC but also the ‘Monster Confidence’ programme and tour, working with social enterprise Stemettes for the last three years, helping school children and university students gain greater confidence to achieve and realise their huge potential in a STEM career.

Twitter: @sineadbunting