easyfundraising has created a workplace where people feel valued, supported and empowered to do their best work, by listening to employees and continually evolving support around what matters most to them.

Every employee is covered by private medical insurance alongside an Employee Assistance Programme offering 24/7 GP access, unlimited mental health consultations, physiotherapy support and lifestyle coaching. The firm also provides life assurance, salary sacrifice schemes including pension, cycle to work, technology and electric car schemes, and an annual bonus. In 2025, it enhanced parental policies to include 26 weeks’ full maternity and adoption pay, continued pension contributions throughout maternity leave, and three weeks’ full paternity pay. easyfundraising also introduced one week of paid leave for employees not eligible for enhanced parental leave, ensuring support is inclusive and accessible.

Wellbeing at easyfundraising extends beyond policy into everyday culture. The firm provides healthy breakfasts and lunches in the office, runs weekly fitness sessions, and organises wellbeing-focused social and volunteering events throughout the year. Employees are also given two paid volunteering days annually, supporting the wider mission-driven culture of raising millions for charitable causes.

In the last 12 months, employee turnover has remained below 4% and sickness absence below 1%, demonstrating the effectiveness of the firm’s strategy in supporting wellbeing and retention. Employees consistently rate the culture highly, particularly the flexibility, trust and genuine care shown across the organisation.

Experian is dedicated to fostering a supportive, inclusive workplace where employees can thrive both professionally and personally. Its strong commitment to gender diversity, family-friendly policies and employee wellbeing is demonstrated through a comprehensive range of parental and family support initiatives that position the firm as a leading employer within the tech industry.

The firm offers comprehensive parental leave: 26 weeks of full pay for maternity and adoption leave, 12 weeks of full pay for secondary caregivers, and eight weeks of full pay for shared parental leave. These enhanced policies go beyond statutory requirements and reflect the belief that employees should be fully supported during major life events, without compromising their career progression or financial security.

Experian’s Return to Work Mentoring Programme supports employees as they transition back into the workplace following family leave by pairing them with experienced mentors who provide personalised guidance, career support and insights into industry developments, helping them rebuild confidence, feel connected, and refocus on their professional goals. Complementing this, Experian’s Buddy Scheme connects returning employees with peers who have recently had similar experiences, offering informal day-to-day support, reassurance and opportunities to rebuild professional relationships.

A Working Families Employee Resource Group (ERG) plays a vital role in advocating for parents and carers across the organisation. It offers a platform for sharing experiences, accessing resources and collaborating on initiatives that promote work-life balance through regular events and discussion forums.

STEM Returners’ structured, paid returnship model delivers measurable results for women returning to technology careers after a break. While the company supports all returners, women remain disproportionately affected by career breaks, often because of caring responsibilities.

STEM Returners partners with employers across technology, engineering, energy, defence and advanced manufacturing to design and deliver structured returnship programmes that combine real technical roles with embedded support. Returners work on live projects, contribute to teams, and rebuild their technical credibility in a supported environment.

Outcomes demonstrate sustained impact: over 640 STEM professionals have returned to work through STEM Returners programmes across the UK; 96% have secured permanent roles within their host organisations; 46% of returners are women, compared with 16.9% female representation across engineering and technology sectors; and 100% of participating companies have successfully recruited returners as a result of their programme.

Success is measured through not only conversion rates but progression. Many women who complete STEM Returners programmes go on to secure promotions, expanded technical responsibility or leadership roles.

Women in Software Empowered (WISE) is an internal employee network at Access Group dedicated to supporting, retaining, and advancing women in tech and product roles.

Built to deliver tangible value rather than superficial engagement, WISE combines structured growth initiatives with an authentic, values-led environment that inspires leadership across the company's global digital ecosystem. Operated by a dedicated steering committee of internal volunteers, WISE supports over 800 members across the UK, Ireland, Romania, Malaysia, and Australia. The network's efficacy is clear: half of the committee members have achieved significant career advancements, attributing their momentum directly to their involvement.

At its core, WISE embeds equity into Access Group’s culture through high-impact initiatives. Its recent International Women’s Day live-simulcast event spanned multiple time zones, attracting nearly 38% of its global membership.

Beyond major events, the community fosters development through digital resources and peer support. A newly launched coaching initiative creates accessible pathways for professional mentorship through small, coach-led groups. Ultimately, WISE serves as a powerful blueprint for how community architecture can successfully bridge individual commercial ambition with genuine social progress across Access Group.

Kingfisher’s colleague-led tech mentoring programme began in 2024 as a small pilot, leveraging mentoring to become a strategy enabler to power the future of the firm. The programme operates on the principle that mentoring is a collective commitment that fosters shared learning and builds a sustainable organisation.

Mentoring is a key enabler for the firm’s high-performance culture, growing people, capability, culture and engagement. Kingfisher’s programme creates structured spaces for real learning through meaningful relationships across roles and domains. Participants are matched based on their skills and aspirations and the mentoring combines elements such as technical excellence, leadership and career development.

The programme also focuses on reverse and reciprocal mentoring to support and enable more inclusive leadership, empathy and allyship; inclusion is a fundamental principle across the programme. Just two years since the pilot, there are now 190 participants (95 pairings). The programme has expanded beyond engineering into wider technology functions within Kingfisher, demonstrating that the programme has adaptability and relevance. Key elements of the programme include clear role guidance, regular check-ins and structured feedback to improve consistency and flexibility. A working group was formed to govern, coordinate and scale mentoring responsibly while maintaining quality. Participants report an employee net promoter score of 90 (the measure of colleague engagement), nine out of 10 participants would recommend taking part, and participants reported increased confidence, clearer direction, and stronger organisational connection.

Combining structured assessment, targeted upskilling and transparent career frameworks, Ecommpay creates an environment where all employees can continuously develop, contribute and advance.

Ecommpay’s learning and development strategy is designed to ensure that employees – including women in tech – build relevant, future-proof skills and progress in their careers through structured, measurable and inclusive learning pathways. Today, the team comprises 414 people, 45% of whom are female, with women making up 25% of the executive team and 45% of management roles.

The firm actively fosters a culture where learning is embedded into daily work, including regular lectures, practical sessions and internal knowledge sharing. To ensure training is valuable in the real world, employees are encouraged to contribute use cases, share best practices and integrate learning into real business challenges rather than abstract training. Its training programmes deliver clear, measurable outcomes, demonstrating the value of support provided to help employees build relevant skills and increase their impact.

Managers are equipped with tools to develop and retain talent within their teams, and internal mobility is supported through skills assessments and transparent criteria. Employees identified as Top Talent receive enhanced development plans and increased visibility. This is particularly important for women in tech roles, helping reduce barriers to adopting new technologies and increasing confidence in high-impact technical work.

Social mobility charity Generation UK supports people facing barriers to employment into life-changing tech careers. It delivers pathways through free, profession-specific, train-and-place programmes with employer-matched recruitment and one-to-one mentoring.

Since 2019, over 1,200 women have participated in Generation UK tech training programmes, with more than 65% progressing into employment. Women account for 45% of learners, above sector benchmarks, but this remains insufficient to shift structural underrepresentation.

In response, Generation UK introduced women-only cohorts as a targeted intervention to address exclusion from early exposure, confidence-building routes and recruitment pipelines. By combining tailored outreach campaigns with practical support, including childcare, it removed key barriers that typically prevent sustained participation, improving engagement, completion and progression.

In 2025, this model enabled Generation UK to recruit 72 women onto programmes in IT Support, Data Analytics, and Cloud Engineering. Outreach deliberately focused on women facing multiple, intersecting barriers to employment and excluded from tech pathways.

Early outcomes have been strong: 20 women have secured roles with average salaries above £30,000 (more than three times their prior income and above the Living Wage).

The UK Early Careers Programme from Leidos goes beyond entry-level hiring to actively remove barriers for women entering STEM, providing structured and supportive pathways into long term technical careers across the organisation.

The programme delivers a best-in-class experience for graduates, apprentices, interns and placement students, supporting early career professionals to grow and succeed in an inclusive environment. Informed by best practice research and alumni insight, the programme has evolved into a scalable talent pipeline aligned to both short- and long-term business needs. Since a 2021 reset, Leidos UK has hired 50 early-career professionals, with a further 23 due to join in September 2026, demonstrating sustained growth and commitment to early talent development.

Gender representation is a clear measure of success. Of those hired since the reset, 39% are female, exceeding the UK company-wide target. Progress continues year on year: in the September 2025 cohort, 53% of hires were female, evidencing the impact of inclusive recruitment practices.

Inclusive hiring is embedded across all early careers recruitment, including gender neutral job advertising supported by gender language decoding tools. The team works closely with employee led networks, including the Women’s Network and STEM communities, engaging female students and their families through career fairs, outreach and networking activities.

Early outreach is a key focus to build the future female talent pipeline. In 2025 alone, Leidos employees delivered over 700 hours of voluntary STEM outreach, reaching more than 9,000 young people across 95+ activities.

Client Server is not simply placing women into jobs – it builds pathways, influences employers, elevates female voices, and creates a more inclusive technology hiring ecosystem. Its impact spans candidate support, client partnership, thought leadership, and industry advocacy.

Over the past 12 months, Client Server has significantly expanded its Women in Tech activity through strategic partnerships with SheCanCode and Women in Tech, two leading platforms dedicated to supporting female careers in technology. Through these partnerships, it has invested in targeted job promotion, employer profiling, community events and educational content designed specifically to reach and engage women in tech.

Client Server works closely with employers to strengthen diverse hiring pipelines through inclusive recruitment practices, including blind hiring support, gender-conscious job advert consultation, and targeted promotion through specialist Women in Tech channels. Every role it advertises carries a clear diversity statement, reinforcing an expectation that the companies Client Server partners with shares its commitment to equitable hiring.

The charity also drives industry-wide change by influencing the wider tech hiring market. Through its Talking Tech content series, diversity-focused market reports,and community events with SheCanCode, Client Server is helping shape industry discussion around inclusion, retention and progression for women in technology.

Sara Bennett has played a pivotal role in transforming the Government digital, data and cyber resourcing landscape, always placing diversity, equity and inclusion at the centre of her work.

She is a passionate advocate for increasing representation, actively designing recruitment approaches and digital products that remove barriers and open pathways for women at all stages of their careers. Her influence has ensured that gender representation is not an afterthought but a fundamental part of strategic workforce planning.

One of Sara’s most remarkable achievements has been successfully influencing the Government People Group to change policy and initiate a large‑scale pilot with implications across all Civil Service professions. Her work directly strengthens opportunities for women entering and progressing within digital, data and cyber roles. This achievement reflects not only her expertise, but her ability to challenge structural inequalities and implement practical, lasting solutions. Alongside policy change, Sara has been instrumental in shaping digital tools, guidance and services that support fairer, more inclusive recruitment.

She consistently pushes for evidence‑based improvements, ensuring that marketing, attraction and outreach efforts speak directly to women and better reflect the diversity we need in tech. Her work has already improved user experience for candidates and hiring managers alike, with long‑term benefits for representation across government.

Sara is widely recognised across departments as a trusted expert in inclusive recruitment. Stakeholders regularly seek her guidance because she brings clarity to complex issues and always grounds her advice in empathy, data and best practice. Her leadership creates psychological safety, encourages development, and models the confidence, resilience and fairness that she hopes to inspire in others.

Silka Patel is an influential leader in the UK technology sector, recognised for her sustained commitment to advancing gender equality and creating meaningful opportunities for women in tech. With more than 25 years’ experience in the technology industry, Silka combines professional credibility with authentic, values led leadership that inspires colleagues, partners and the wider tech community.

As senior marketing manager for national security & defence and social value manager at Leidos UK, Silka plays a pivotal role in embedding inclusion into business strategy, ensuring that social value, equity and commercial outcomes are intrinsically linked. Her work has contributed to improved retention and representation of women in leadership roles across the organisation, demonstrating the tangible impact of inclusive programme design.

Silka is also the founder and Chair of Scotland Women in Technology (SWiT), a not-for-profit organisation she established in 2008 to champion, celebrate and invest in women and girls across Scotland’s technology ecosystem. Now in its 18th year, SWiT has become a nationally recognised platform for mentoring, skills development and leadership progression. Through initiatives such as Women Do Cyber, more than 200 women have been supported to retrain and transition into cyber roles over the past three years.

Silka actively supports graduates, apprentices and women returning to the workforce following career breaks. She played a key role in Leidos’ first Women Returners programme, enabling women with extended career gaps to successfully re enter technical roles.

As the founder of Oliver Bernard, Billy weaves social value and gender equity directly into his business strategy. Under his vision, the company established Future CodeHers, an initiative inspiring secondary school girls to pursue digital careers. By leveraging enterprise relationships, Billy mobilised volunteers from brands like Trainline, Tesco, and Starling Bank. In six months, the programme delivered 15 events, engaging over 80 volunteers and 4,000 students. Focusing on socioeconomically diverse schools, it yielded a 45% uptake in computer science GCSEs and transitioned 92% of advanced students into higher education or tech apprenticeships.

Billy also champions inclusion within corporate tech environments. Recognising the power of male allyship, he addresses male-dominated teams on equal pay, microaggressions, and the commercial value of balanced teams. An expert in inclusive hiring architecture, he hosts leadership forums offering data-driven advice on flexible recruitment, salary benchmarking, and upskilling platforms.

This commitment to structural equity is mirrored inside Oliver Bernard. Billy has fostered a workplace prioritising gender balance and wellbeing through strict diversity shortlists, wellness days, and enhanced parental leave. Driven by personal passion as a father of twin daughters, Billy demonstrates how leadership can successfully bridge commercial operations and genuine social progress.

To deliver a modern, trusted digital tax administration, HMRC depends on inclusive, high-performing technology teams that reflect the society they serve. Recognising that technology has historically been male-dominated, HMRC has made gender balance a strategic priority, taking sustained, organisation-wide action to attract, retain and progress women across its professions.

Inclusive recruitment is a cornerstone of this approach. Roles are advertised flexibly by default, essential criteria are clearly defined, and recruitment processes use anonymous sifting alongside diverse, bias-aware interview panels. These changes have improved fairness and consistency, contributing to increased shortlisting and appointment of women into technical-specialist and leadership roles.

Recruitment reform is reinforced by long-term culture-building initiatives. HMRC actively sponsors its multi-award-winning Women in Tech (WiT) Network, now comprising over 600 members and led by a multidisciplinary, women-led steering group supported by male allies. HMRC also leads the Cross Government WiT network, extending impact by sharing good practice and development opportunities across departments.

As of March 2026, HMRC’s workforce is 52% female and 48% male. What sets HMRC apart is the scale, consistency and sustainability of its approach. By combining inclusive workforce design, data driven accountability, national reach through Places for Growth and supplier led social value, HMRC is delivering systemic change rather than isolated initiatives. This is reinforced through practical development opportunities, including a newly formed WiT steering group and initiatives such as the Agile Hub project, where WiT volunteers are supported in digital career development. Together, these efforts demonstrate that HMRC is reshaping how a national digital organisation recruits, develops and retains women in technology.

The City of London’s Women Pivoting to Digital Taskforce was created to address the lack of women employed in digital roles by inspiring and supporting women to change career. It also helped employers better recognise the value, skills, and ambition women bring to these roles.

In its second and final year, the Taskforce reached audiences of up to 1,000 women via panel discussions at platforms like One Tech World, partnered with 100 employers, and worked with 20 local and national government departments. Through a series of

outputs including policy recommendations, reports, campaigns, and events the initiative encouraged women to transition to new careers and shown employers that hiring women from non-traditional routes and through reskilling programmes can lead to economic growth.

It has ensured that hundreds of women and employers across the UK can engage directly with this work in a tangible and accessible way via its regional roundtables (bringing together over 100 employers across the country), networking events such as Black Inclusion week panels, bringing together 50 Black women aspiring to work in digital roles, and employer webinars, (reaching 200+ attendees across the

events) that created opportunities to explore accessible pathways into digital careers and connect women considering career changes. 

The Taskforce has helped shift conversations around who belongs in digital careers and how businesses can build a more inclusive workforce.

A trusted supplier and talent partner to Heathrow, PeopleScout shares its vision of building a workforce that reflects inclusion, innovation and excellence.

Noting that under-representation of women in critical sectors such as cyber security and architecture were not unique to Heathrow but endemic across the industry, PeopleScout and Heathrow created a long-term strategy rooted in insight, innovation, and impact to redefine inclusion. This began with data, market intelligence that revealed the barriers women face in tech, from unconscious bias in job descriptions to the lack of visibility of female role models in senior positions.

Armed with insight, a tailored plan was developed, including proactive headhunting of female technologists, dedicated outreach on platforms such as Women in Technology to amplify Heathrow’s voice as an inclusive employer and inclusive branding and messaging, supported through a partnership with Blackbridge Communications, creating a compelling talent value proposition aligned to Heathrow’s EVP and diversity goals. Consultative guidance ensured design, language and candidate experience reflected a culture of belonging.

Across one dedicated campaign, PeopleScout filled 70 highly competitive tech roles, with 28% of those hires were women (including placements at senior levels). Three Band B leaders and 10 Band C managers are now bringing their expertise to Heathrow’s technology functions.

In 2025, Equinox made a deliberate commitment to use AI not as a productivity tool but as a means of actively reducing the barriers that disproportionately affect women in business and in tech.

The first illustration of that commitment is Practical Mastery of AI, a structured four-week programme teaching Founders/CEOs how to use AI practically and confidently in their businesses. 70% percent of the first cohort were women, running small businesses who have felt left behind by the pace of AI adoption and intimidated by the noise surrounding it.

Equinox also uses AI equitably in its own recruitment process. A Chief People Officer persona, built and configured in Claude, benchmarks every CV, reviews interview transcripts and helps rank candidates consistently and objectively. This removes the unconscious bias that can disadvantage women at every stage of the hiring process.

Equinox is currently building PULSE Pro™, an AI-powered SaaS product. Designed to give SMEs real time business intelligence previously available only to enterprise organisations, PULSE Pro™ is built with female founders explicitly in mind. Women are statistically less likely to access external funding and more likely to bootstrap their businesses, which means the operational and financial visibility PULSE Pro™ provides is not just useful but transformative for female led businesses trying to scale without the safety net that better funded competitors enjoy.

Diversity isn’t a programme at Unifeye - it’s built into how the company hires, develops and decides. The small business act quickly and deliberately, ensuring women in tech have both a seat at the table and a path to leadership. This starts from the top: 50% of the leadership is female, which is critical to attracting and retaining female talent.

Gender balance is a business priority, not an initiative, at this specialist date and AI consultancy operating within the Databricks ecosystem. Diverse teams challenge assumptions, improve decisions and deliver stronger client outcomes. Without it, innovation and responsible AI are weakened. Unifeye’s approach is practical and embedded: it partners with female-focused recruiters like CloudCo; requires diverse candidate pipelines from all partners; hires based on skills and potential, not CVs alone; and uses balanced interview panels and inclusive processes.

Success is shown by 40% women in delivery teams, strong female representation, increased hiring of women in technical teams, and high worker retention in a competitive market.

The future of technology must be shaped by diverse teams. Gender equity is not a standalone initiative at Totalmobile; it is embedded in how the firm hireds, develops and leads. The field service management software provider headquartered in Belfast supports more than 1,000 organisations and 500,000 mobile workers, combining innovation with a culture where people can grow, contribute and lead.

Over the past 12 months, Totalmobile has strengthened its approach to attracting and retaining women in technology through measurable, employee-led action. This includes inclusive hiring and progression, blind CVs, diverse interview panels, and clearer career pathways supported by manager training and transparent development frameworks.

An Employee Forum, Women’s Network, and refreshed Employee Resource Groups give employees real influence over policies, inclusion priorities and workplace culture. 

Women now represent 30.5% of the Totalmobile workforce, with a 10% increase in female representation in tech roles. 40% of senior leadership roles are held by women, and women reported the highest satisfaction levels across the organisation in 2025 –increasing by 6%, with growth recorded across every team. Women feel heard, valued and elevated, say workers there.

Allianz UK is committed to changing the narrative that the tech industry struggles to attract and retain women. That will be achieved not through tokenism, but through systemic change that makes technology careers genuinely accessible, sustainable and rewarding for women at every stage of their journey.

The firm has created an environment where women can grow and thrive in technology roles at all levels. Across technology and transformation, women represent 49% of the workforce, with 42% of executive‑level roles held by women. This balance reflects Allianz’s focus on inclusive leadership and the flexible working patterns available, which enable women to progress and grow their careers alongside family commitments.  Women returning to work after leave are fully supported with access to best in market technical training content providing the confidence for women to quickly get back on track with career growth.

Training and development is a strategic lever at Allianz, designed to build sustainable, visible and future-ready careers for women through an inclusive approach that is globally consistent and strongly delivered locally. All employees can access LinkedIn Learning for flexible, on-demand development across leadership, professional and digital/technology skills, with completed learning formally recognised in AllianzU to ensure it is valued and linked to structured career pathways. Globally, AllianzU programmes such as Fit4Tomorrow, Fit4AI and the Operations & IT Academy build future-critical capabilities, with strong engagement shown by an average of 12+ hours of tech/data/AI learning in 2025, supported in the UK by protected time for learning (43 hours per year) to remove barriers and enable progression into specialist and leadership roles.

Maria Kelesidou is not waiting to become a leader. She has been leading since her third year of university – technically, professionally and in the community. A first-generation University of Sheffield computer science graduate, in under two years in industry, she has already redefined what early-career excellence looks like in tech. At Lloyds Banking Group, Maria began as a Graduate DevOps Engineer before transitioning into the cyber security team – a move that reflects her hunger to operate at the cutting edge of the industry.

She contributed to software supply chain security through hands-on engineering delivery - writing GraphQL and Golang code, configuring Dynatrace observability alerts and deploying production changes. She also authored a software supply chain security whitepaper and a target security architecture document for one of the UK’s largest banks.

At Lloyds, she launched internal coding sessions for colleagues, participates in Skill Share for Charities, and was named a Next Gen Talent Awards 2026 finalist in the Community category. She serves as the elected charity representative for graduates and apprentices across Manchester and Chester, most recently leading a fundraising campaign for Breast Cancer Now. She is also a registered STEM Ambassador, a Guides volunteer and a mentor to students and early-career professionals from underrepresented backgrounds.

Chinny Odimega has founded one of the most innovative inclusion-first AI companies in the UK. Her speech difficulty had meant that, despite being overqualified, she lost jobs because of the way she talks. She made a decision that nobody would be left behind by AI the way people had been left behind by computers and smartphones before it.

That promise is now two working AI devices, two hackathon projects, community workshops, and a global vision. Her biggest achievement is Befab – an AI-powered voice device built for every communication style: stammering, dystonia, accents, sign language, autism and so on. It listens patiently, never interrupts, never penalises users for how they communicate. It also detects early indicators of stroke and fatigue through voice pattern changes, turning a communication device into a potentially life-saving health tool.

Her second achievement is Guardian Bridge AI — a consent-first smartwatch that recognises behavioural, voice, and contextual patterns associated with human trafficking, coercive control, domestic violence, forced marriage, elder abuse,and exploitation. In situations where pressing a button could escalate danger, Guardian Bridge acts silently – protecting people in the moments when asking for help is the most dangerous thing they could do.

At the national Justice AI Hackathon, Chinny built Justice Bridge – an inclusion-first platform helping ex-prisoners reintegrate into society. She organises the AI Without Borders Hackathon at the NatWest Accelerator Hub. She runs in-person digital-inclusive AI workshops, bringing AI literacy directly to communities the digital revolution forgot.

Jackie Keane is a prominent figure in the UK technology sector, distinguished by her long-standing dedication to engineering excellence and the creation of equitable career pathways within the digital economy. Bringing decades of experience navigating high-stakes public sector technology environments, Jackie blends deep operational authority with a principled, people-first leadership style that resonates with cross-functional teams, enterprise clients, and industry peers alike.

At the helm of Cloudscaler, Jackie has been instrumental in weaving corporate integrity and social impact directly into the fabric of the company's growth strategy. Her approach establishes a clear synergy between sophisticated cloud transformation and measurable human values. This strategic foundation has guided the business to a team of over 100 specialists, and secured the trust of critical institutions - such as HMRC, the NHS, and Santander, where operational resilience is paramount.

A passionate champion for structural equity, Jackie has designed a workplace culture where diversity thrives by design rather than by chance. Her commitment to shifting industry demographics is reflected in Cloudscaler’s internal metrics, where executive positions are predominantly held by women, and nearly half of all incoming talent is sourced from socioeconomically diverse or underrepresented communities. By championing operational transparency, including clear salary structures, objective hiring practices, and a distributed regional employment model, she has dismantled traditional barriers that often restrict professional mobility.

Jackie is equally committed to cultivating the next generation of technical talent, particularly those entering the sector through non-traditional routes. Through the development of a dedicated internal academy, she has established structured entry points for university graduates, career switchers, and professionals re-entering the workforce.

Chief Data Officer at Unifeye, Bianca Stratulat combines strong technical expertise with people-focused leadership. She builds scalable technology and high-performing teams, bringing together vision, technical excellence and inclusive leadership to deliver lasting impact.

Bianca has played a critical role in Unifeye’s rapid growth and technical vision, shaping how the business designs, delivers and scales data platforms. Her leadership spans defining technical strategy and architecture, leading complex client engagements, embedding best practices in governance, scalability and AI delivery, and bridging engineering excellence with real business outcomes.

Having progressed from a hands-on data engineer to CDO, Bianca leads from the front, remaining involved in design decisions while guiding teams through complex technical and delivery challenges. What distinguishes Bianca is her ability to build teams that are both high-performing and highly engaged. She has created a culture where engineers are empowered to take ownership and grow, learning and development are continuous, and collaboration and knowledge-sharing are the norm. She is a visible and accessible leader, deeply invested in her team’s development, as well as a mentor for women entering the data and AI industry. She also contributes to initiatives such as the Data for Her campaign, focused on addressing gaps in women’s health data.

Heathrow Airport Ltd set out to deliver more than 100 hires across 74 specialised technology roles spanning cyber security, architecture, infrastructure, engineering, data and digital delivery.

The initiative deliberately leveraged Heathrow’s existing inclusive recruitment framework, demonstrating how embedded ED&I practices can be applied at scale to deliver ambitious outcomes in complex talent markets. Equality objectives were integrated throughout workforceplanning, attraction, assessment and appointment, ensuring diversity was a core success measure.

Seventy specialised technology roles have been filled to date, achieving 28% female representation across hires and outperforming market benchmarks. Targeted attraction delivered over 45,000 clicks and 2.4 million impressions, while 57% of gender-diverse candidates engaged via Hackajob accepted outreach. In addition, 89.6% of partnership sourced candidates were new to Heathrow, expanding long-term diversity pipelines.

While the campaign is in its final stages, it remains on trajectory to achieve 29.5% female representation. Best practices have been embedded into Heathrow’s Talent Acquisition approach, and the organisation is now working towards 50:50 gender balanced shortlists for all senior hires.

Heathrow’s initiative demonstrates how inclusive recruitment, delivered in partnership and applied consistently, can drive meaningful ED&I outcomes without compromising pace, quality or business delivery, within one of the most male dominated talent markets, while supporting business growth at scale.

Software engineer Kasia Dutch is a passionate advocate for greater diversity, equity, and inclusion in the tech industry. Since entering the industry, she has dedicated her time outside work to educating, mentoring and empowering women in tech. She taught web development and JavaScript to women and non-binary students taking their first steps into coding as a lead instructor with Code First Girls. In addition, she volunteers as a mentor with organisations including One Million Mentors, Women in Tech Global Elevate Women in Tech, and Starling’s internal mentorship programme, supporting mentees with career development, interview preparation and confidence building.

She actively contributes to the Women’s and LGBTQI+ networks at Starling Bank and supports women on the graduate programme and new joiners from Code First Girls to ensure they feel supported and represented within engineering teams. In 2025, Kasia founded Code Your Confidence, a monthly event series designed to help technologists from under-represented groups build confidence and community.

Alongside her advocacy work, Kasia continuously pushes herself outside her comfort zone to better support others. After struggling with a fear of public speaking, she challenged herself to overcome it to openly share her experiences of impostor syndrome, self-doubt and belonging in tech with others. She has since delivered talks and contributed to panel discussions focused on confidence, community, and representation at over 10 events, helping others feel less alone in their experiences. 

She leads with empathy, openness and a genuine desire to create opportunities for others. Through her engineering work, mentoring, teaching, speaking, and community-building, Kasia is actively helping create a more inclusive tech industry, one where more women can see themselves belonging, thriving, and leading.