Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Conference 2025

Christina is a speaker, career coach, and trainer with a focus on emotional intelligence, inclusivity, and gender-diverse leadership. She founded Herizon to support individuals and businesses in driving performance through inclusion and retention.

For her, inclusivity isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s essential for performance. She believes that inclusive behaviours and gender-balanced leadership are the DNA of high-performing, game-changing teams.

Rachel is a multi-award-winning People & Culture Director, recognised as ENEI’s 2023 D&I Influencer of the Year and a 2024 d&i Inspirational Leader. Currently at a global infrastructure consultancy, she oversees HR operations across Europe and India, including Strategy & Growth, ED&I, wellbeing, employee engagement, and ESG.

With a strong track record in complex, high-profile organisations across sectors, she is a respected ED&I expert, international speaker, and Chartered CIPD member. She also holds MBTI, 360 coaching, and ILM Level 7 Executive Coaching credentials.

Vanessa is a talent and social value expert, currently driving inclusive hiring and impact at Cognizant. She’s held senior roles at KPMG, Barclays, and Police Now, and previously led Cognizant’s UK Early Talent Strategy. A former ISE Board Member, she’s passionate about building diverse, award-winning programmes.

Sophie is a former investment banking operations apprentice and now an experienced early careers recruiting manager, with a track record of recruiting early talent at RBS, PwC, and EY. She brings a holistic skillset, focusing on delivering an exceptional candidate and stakeholder experience, from attraction and pipeline management to the onboarding of students for graduate, undergraduate, and apprentice roles.

Kianna is the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Manager for UK & Ireland at IPG Mediabrands. With a background in Talent Acquisition, she was the company’s first Senior Talent Acquisition Business Partner and first UK DE&I lead.

As an Inclusive Excellence Champion, she drives change to support under-represented talent. She previously led the OPEN Heritage Network and now oversees IPG Mediabrands’ six award-winning ERGs. She created the MyFuture DE&I programme for Black Talent and is the Social Media Manager and co-host of The Black Recruiters Network podcast, BRN Talks.

Martin is a global leader specialising in Talent, Organisation Design and Inclusion. Martin’s passion for inclusivity led him to found TalentMapper, where he is supporting clients to create diverse, inclusive and optimally designed workforces.

Prior to leading TalentMapper, Martin led Talent functions, globally at The Body Shop, Wolseley PLC and Halfords, where he designed and delivered global transformation projects and talent management strategies which brought about significant business benefits.

Erica is a passionate advocate for equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging (EDIB), with over 30 years’ experience as a global business leader. At The Body Shop, she has championed inclusive workplace culture—co-founding the company’s LGBTQ+ network and spearheading the development of wider employee networks across gender, ethnicity, disability, and mental health. Erica brings an ethical, pragmatic approach to leadership, believing that inclusive leadership is not just the right thing to do—it’s a business imperative that drives performance, engagement, and transformation.

Iain has 20+ years of EDI&B experience and has been a key leader at Reed Talent Solutions since 2012. He delivers consultancy, training, and audits, supporting clients with inclusive recruitment strategies.

With a background in supplier engagement and as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, he brings both lived and professional insight. Iain also drives internal inclusion efforts and mentors others, helping clients implement best practices at scale.

Hayley helps organisations adopt ATS and onboarding platforms to improve hiring efficiency. With 25 years’ experience in customer service and sales, she is passionate about delivering great customer experiences. Focused on the Social Housing sector, she supports modernizing recruitment to attract top talent and streamline hiring for all stakeholders.

An multi award-winning business psychologist, Jamie has designed or overseen the design of embedded end-to-end selection processes in over a third of the UK’s top 100 employers across varied sectors, winning numerous industry awards for improving validity, candidate experience, and EDI outcomes.

Pil Byriel, Co-Founder and CEO of Develop Diverse, helps companies reduce bias in recruitment language to attract more diverse talent. With clients like IKEA and AB Agri, her platform has driven measurable increases in female and ethnically diverse applicants. Pil empowers organisations to communicate inclusively and access the full talent pool.