Early Careers Conference 2025

Cordelia is a Director and Consultant with 15+ years' experience leading diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), social mobility, and talent development initiatives across different sectors. At BT Group, she played a key role in developing its first comprehensive diversity and inclusion goals, integrating DEI into the Responsible business strategy, designing its first ever group-wide reciprocal mentoring program, and leading the first ethnicity pay gap report. Her impact earned her the 2024 BT Group Race Equity award. She has developed leadership programs for National Grid and the London Metropolitan Police and conducted a nationwide DEI review at the NSPCC. She has also provided consulting services to Tesco, Clarks, and the Ministry of Justice. 

As Operations Director at a youth employability charity, she managed 50+ CSR initiatives, and as Business Development Manager at a digital inclusion charity, she supported community-based charities in southern England. A Clore Social Fellow and trained coach, she is a Trustee at a multi-academy trust that supports 7,000 children across 10 schools. Cordelia has been recognised as the 2023 Baton Awards' Thought Leader of the Year, selected as a 2024 UN Women UK delegate, and honoured as "Community Champion" by Commonwealth Business Women Africa (CBW-Africa). She speaks regularly about DEI issues, leadership and social equity.

Christina O’Connor is an experienced International Talent Acquisition leader specializing in sourcing and hiring high-performing talent across diverse regions including Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific, and North America, particularly within hyper-growth organizations. With a robust corporate talent management background spanning over 15 years, she has demonstrated her leadership acumen in focusing on go-to-market customer talent and niche technical talent delivery on a global scale, with significant in region experience in the UK, UAE and Singapore.

In her current role at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Christina serves as the EMEA Sourcing Leader within the Central Sourcing Team, spearheading the establishment of a new offshore sourcing model and is also part of the Gen AI recruiting ambassador program.  Previously, as Head of Diversity Sourcing EMEA at AWS, Christina’s leadership was instrumental in driving initiatives to enhance diverse employee representation within EMEA. She orchestrated successful Diversity Sourcing campaigns across various sectors and played a pivotal role in building sourcing strategies for a number of new build businesses across AWS.

Prior to her tenure at AWS, Christina held key positions at Rapid7, Symantec, Intel Security and McAfee, where she honed her skills in international talent acquisition, business partnering, and organizational effectiveness. Notable achievements include implementing hiring analytics, diversity hiring strategies, and agile hiring transformations, as well as overseeing the successful implementation of Workday as a new ATS.

Christina holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and History from the University of Portsmouth and is known for her process-driven approach, innovative mindset, and commitment to driving change to center the talent agenda. As a seasoned D&I advocate and change agent, she thrives in scaling agile programs and enhancing organizational effectiveness within hyper-growth environments.

I am an experienced Head of People & DE&I lead with experience in both agency and in house with a passion for people, talent and creating inclusive recruitment strategies to diversify the workforce.

I have had the privilege to have worked across several industries including Travel, Retail & Hospitality, FMCG, Engineering and more recently Creative & Social Media.

Outside of creating recruitment solutions, I run an award winning motivational and lifestyle blog which discusses the realities of modern motherhood, mental health and navigating the world as a plus size woman. This also includes running empowerment events and workshops to encourage positive thinking, confidence and empowering teams both personally and professionally. I have also had the opportunity to write a book about this called OWN IT and is available at all major book retailers.

I also support several charities including small local charities supporting women and children as well as various Cancer Charities including Coppafeel and Black Women Rising.

Chloe is the Global Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Manager at Version 1 – a global technology company specialising in digital transformation. She has nearly 10 years’ experience in the field of Diversity and Inclusion, working across many sectors and regions, including beginning her career working within D&I in the recruitment space working with clients like Morgan Stanley (North America) and Rolls Royce. She is passionate about driving systemic change within organisations, allyship, and ensuring that businesses have D&I at the core of their organisations.

As an Agile Talent Resourcing Lead, I oversee our contractor talent pool at Grant Thornton. With over 1000 consultants supporting our business and clients, I am responsible for recruitment, allocation of talent, and workforce planning. I have been with Grant Thornton for 8 years, where I was originally recruited to build the in-house perm recruitment offering. Prior to this, I managed teams within the Professional Services space in recruitment agencies for over 10 years.

Award-winning Talent Acquisition leader with a demonstrated history of excelling within fast-paced corporate environments. In-house recruitment background encompassing hiring at all levels (early talent through to c-suite/executive search) across EMEA. Experienced in building successful partnerships with senior stakeholders to effectively meet business needs. Knowledge of leveraging data and analytics to measure output and identify areas of growth. Expert in forming, maintaining and fostering relationships with existing as well as new and emerging talent. Solely responsible for all social media management and employer branding for our UK entity (LinkedIn, Instagram & TikTok). My creative outlook, goal-oriented mentality and passion for DEI enables me to consistently deliver results to a high standard whilst maintaining a candidate-centric focus.

I am a Talent Acquisition Director at Sage, a global leader in cloud business management solutions, and have over ten years of experience in the technology, sales, and professional services sectors. I have earned multiple certifications from Salesforce and IBM that demonstrate my expertise in client relationship management, consulting, and strategy.

My core competencies include leading global TA delivery teams, creating TA M&A strategy, using data-driven insights, and ensuring quality and experience for candidates and clients. I am passionate about enabling business transformation and growth through talent acquisition. I have successfully led the EMEA TA strategy for IBM’s biggest ever Go To Market transformation, as well as the Systems, Research, and CHQ functions. At Sage, I manage the teams helping the best Tech talent find their ideal role in the product and technology business units, as well as supporting the global acquisition portfolio.

Dan has spent the past 5 years focused how talent attraction initiatives intersect with diversity and inclusion. This has put him in front of an incredible amount of inspiring individuals who are passionate about the need to shift the diversity needle.

15 years spent working on contingency, retained and multi-hire assignments globally for tech start-ups, oil and gas operators, investment banks, hedge funds and professional service organisations. He has spent the past 12 months meeting with HR Directors, Heads of People Development and Heads of D&I across multiple sectors that has allowed him to understand the multiple challenges organisations face when addressing diversity and inclusion.

Neil helps organisations get the most out of technology, having held product, marketing and sales roles in leading tech businesses like Sky, BT and Plusnet. At Tribepad he's passionate about transforming the recruitment landscape, to make TA fairer and more effective for companies and candidates.

Tribepad is used by more than 25 million people across the globe in 16 languages. Clients include The BBC, Tesco, Subway, NHS Professionals, Grant Thornton and The Church of England.

I'm a passionate Equity, Diversity & Inclusion advocate and LGBTQ+ Ambassador which allows me to bring real benefits to clients, candidates and colleagues as a Project & Engagement Manager.

Having implemented managed service, RPO and large scale sole supply solutions across many private and public sector clients I, along with the other members of my team, bring specialist knowledge, integrity, and decades of experience to our work. Alongside this I work with all departments within Reed to ensure that LGBTQ+ candidates, Co-Members, and clients can be themselves every single day, consulting on training, policy, and inclusion activities.

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.