Paula Bedborough is the director of Secure Socialising. Secure Socialising develops new technology-based solutions for the nighttime economy to enhance customer safety, improve customer experiences and business profitability. Her aim is to help people have a great time in as safe an environment as possible, which is why she has developed a system of keyless, smart lockers so that people can safely store their belongings and charge their phones.
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Dongli Li is the Founder and VP of Technology at gaitQ. The company has developed a unique wearable device to help people with Parkinson's overcome debilitating walking difficulties and remain active for longer. Vote Now

Wendy Merricks is the CEO of Jumar Solutions. Jumar is a leading technology and recruitment business, with Microsoft Gold Partner status, delivering large and small IT projects to clients across five continents and supporting clients across the public sector, financial services and insurance.
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Samara Sydney is a Senior Manager at REPL group and has 17 years’ experience working globally across tech consulting and industry. REPL Group, Part of Accenture, is a world-leading consultancy and technology group specialising in workforce management, supply chain, customer experience and enterprise systems.
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Sophie co-founded VirtualSpeech in 2016 as a way to overcome her fear of public speaking. She realised that VR was uniquely positioned to help people practice skills in a safe environment and build their skills and confidence for real-world situations. In just 18 months of using VR, Sophie went from being too anxious to order food at a restaurant to being interviewed live on BBC World News. Sophie’s journey with VirtualSpeech has been featured in a number of media outlets and she has won awards such as 'Inspirational Woman in Tech' for her achievements with the company. Sophie’s first-hand experience has led to her specialising in the benefits and processes of learning with VR and using VR as a tool for effective immersive learning.
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Sam has over 10 years of experience working within Technology across a diverse range of transformational projects and programmes ranging from end-to-end process and system redesign through to implementation of regulatory based projects and introduction of new capabilities such as Robotic Process Automation and machine learning. She has led Process and Technology project workstreams across organisations and has worked across a multitude of sectors, including Utilities, Automotive, Rail and now in her current role within Real Estate Consultancy as the BA Practice Lead at Knight Frank. Sam is well known for her ability to drive innovative solutions. Her success in project delivery is underpinned by her methodical approach and an emphasis on process re-engineering as a catalyst for change, with both customer and user experience at the forefront of all future designs. This approach is further reinforced by a drive to deliver demonstrable and measurable benefits for the business and for the customer. She has worked for Knight Frank for 2 years, starting as a Process Consultant before being selected to create the Business Analysis capability, leading a team of 15 and setting the BA standards across Knight Frank. Sam is passionate about encouraging women to enter the industry and acts on this in her professional capacity to ensure representation and diversity, as well as supporting and coaching those earlier in their careers. Outside of her professional responsibilities, Sam has long been part of volunteer mentorship programs which both provide a channel for those who have not yet broken into technology through to those who are actively influencing and challenging the Tech landscape.
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Sarah Dowzell is chief operating officer and co-founder of Natural HR, Sarah oversees the wider operations of the business while retaining a key role in customer success — a unique selling point for the brand. Rather than minimising her role in setting up the business — a stereotypical trait for women in positions of power — Sarah is clear and open about her accomplishments. Recognising that her drive and determination to succeed are key components of the company’s growing success, she is proud of her journey.
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Having started her career at Jaguar Land Rover in Global Purchasing Alice joined the Intelligent Automation team in 2017 after working as a subject matter expert for an RPA project. Since then, she has gone on to lead products using Intelligent Automation and analytics capabilities delivering significant value to JLR. Earlier this year Alice was promoted to a Discovery Manager role, responsible for converting complex business problems into Digital solutions and managing the portfolio value of Industrial Operations transformation pillars. Alice is an advocate for D&I and has recently set up a Women in Digital group to support her colleagues in tech.

Helen Winter has been the Programme Director at Fusion Practices for the last 2 years. She works across their portfolio with our clients to shape large programmes of work on transformational programmes along with running product teams. She has a global book deal with Kogan page who are the largest publisher of management books. The Business analysis handbook has been a finalist in 2 major industry awards and has been on the best seller list with Amazon. Helen provides thought leadership in the areas of business analysis, project and programme management. She has also spoken across these topics at European conferences and on webinars along with her online magazine businessbullet.co.uk where she has written over 100 articles. She has also shared her knowledge through other mediums and for professional associations such as the British Computing Society (BCS), International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), Associate of project management (APM) and Project management institute (PMI). Helen took a brand-new software product called Grants Now to market from scratch – built business case, built the team up, set up the approach, mentored the team in agile, created a roadmap and pitched built product to target markets on a global scale. All this was achieved in 12 months. She engaged one of the largest insurance companies in the UK and turned it into a Fusion Practices largest client. She took it from a team of 2 consultants to over 50 by building up rapport and gaining the trust of senior management. She went on to deliver a data hub platform enabling a 70% reduction in the time the client spent on collating inputs, data remediation and manual checking. She won two major accounts worth 1.1 million in the last 6 months by leading on the bid responses, identifying win themes and presenting to the prospects.

Paula Bedborough is the founder of Secure Socialising, a start-up that is developing technology to help people socialize safely. Paula has a background in keeping people safe, having worked as a door supervisor and then training thousands of security operatives. "I love seeing people have a great time safely and not becoming a victim of crime. We are carrying increasingly valuable possessions with us that can have a devasting impact on our lives if they are stolen. So I have developed a system of keyless, smart lockers with phone charging so you can have a great, stress-free day or night out, and keep connected to your friends and family." This new innovation has involved a significant amount of research and Paula has built a team from scratch to develop the software, hardware, and IT. The product has been successfully trialed and soon be keeping customers safe in a national high street chain of bars.
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Sarah Dowzell is chief operating officer and co-founder of Natural HR, Sarah oversees the wider operations of the business while retaining a key role in customer success — a unique selling point for the brand. Rather than minimising her role in setting up the business — a stereotypical trait for women in positions of power — Sarah is clear and open about her accomplishments. Recognising that her drive and determination to succeed are key components of the company’s growing success, she is proud of her journey.
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Gaynor is a serial entrepreneur and investor who developed the myNexus platform, an Entrepreneurial Eco-System. The platform uses game-based assessment to validate entrepreneurial potential.

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The Advanced Prototyping Facility (APF) project encourages and supports small businesses in the West Midlands to use 3D printing, which is also called additive manufacturing. On a large scale the technique has been used within sectors as diverse as healthcare to print face shields, to aviation in producing aircraft components, to fashion to create trainer insoles. The process can make parts and products faster, cheaper, lighter, and more sustainably. Aston University’s APF brings this technology, which is usually only affordable to large companies, to West Midlands small to medium enterprises (SMEs). These benefit from using 3D printing in product development where it can be used to create prototypes that reduce the risk expensive tooling mistakes during the design process, as well as reducing the time to validate a design. Although project is new has already provided significant support for many female innovators and business leaders from the Greater Birmingham and Solihull region. Below example with the enterprise feedback. Inspire-a-Doll https://youtu.be/h-iGPN_psPM Aston University has been at the forefront of using 3D printing, especially with the early adopters of the technology in the medical sectors, for example in the orthopaedic field.

Jo Darby led the Digital Media team for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, responsible for all consumer-facing digital channels. Their data, insights, and software helped sell over 1.5 million tickets, recruit over 14,000 volunteers and launch one very bright, cheeky mascot, Perry the bull, deploying an Instagram filter so fans could #PoseWithPerry. Jo was instrumental in scoping and deploying a website and app, focusing on accessibility to encourage inclusion for all site users and automation to ensure content and results were delivered promptly. In addition, a robust, data-rich CRM enabled invaluable research, powerful segmentation, modelling, and relevant communications. During Games-time, the team delivered world-class, world-leading and cost-effective content across channels ( #1 global digital sports property in the first week of August 2022). This resulted in 154 million impressions, 78 million video views, and 3.8 million posts about the Games globally and encouraged over half the UK to watch the Birmingham 2022. In the Games-time period, Birmingham 2022 recorded more social video views than any leading sports property in the world, ahead of Barcelona (51m), Ronaldo (40.9m), F1 (39.4m), Man Utd. (31m), Real Madrid (23m) and even Kim Kardashian (15m)! The social channels, CRM data, website and app, which started from a zero base point, will now be handed over to the next host region (Victoria, Australia) and have created an incredible digital legacy and blueprint for future Commonwealth Games. Jo is incredibly proud to have been part of a Commonwealth Games which was the most attended ever, featured a fully integrated para-sports programme, more medal events for women than men and, for the first time, Women's Cricket T20 (she's a huge Cricket fan).
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Wise is an onboarding software that helps companies engage a self-employed workforce. Stay HMRC compliant and grow your business with a full suite of tools. The Wise mission is to improve self-employment, for both the individual and the companies that engage them, through technology and services.
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Sam joined the consulting team at NTT DATA after 11 years delivering technology strategy and change in the Third Sector at War Child UK, The Prince’s Trust, Prince’s Trust International and British Red Cross. She has relished how much our two sectors have in common and found consulting a natural extension of her skillset. Sam has done an outstanding job in leading a project for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, (FCDO) that will help save and protect the lives of British Citizens. The project she has led will enable the UK Government to accurately know where British Citizens are abroad, which is critical information in the event of a crisis, in Ukraine, Afghanistan, etc.

Tech has always been my passion which continued to grow more and more with time. I have achieved a First Class BSc honours degree in Computer Science from Birmingham City University. Soon after I started my journey as an IT consultant for a consultancy firm called Crimson where I helped numerous clients to adapt Microsoft 365 technologies. Few years later, I joined forces with West Midlands Trains as an Office 365 and SharePoint Developer where I modernised their existing IT solutions and digitalised their paper-based solutions to make best use of technology. In year 2020, I joined WMFS and being involved in great projects including redesigning and modernising their project management system called 3PT and built numerous other solutions for business to ease their day-to-day activities. I’ve also been involved in migration of large data from old to new solutions. Sadly, there aren’t many women in the field of IT but the number has been growing with years which is a positive change. Being the only women in the team of all men encourages me to achieve more so I can inspire other women. I feel proud as women in my friends and family circle has also started to gain an interest in the tech field after seeing my passion and progression. I aim to continue to make a difference in the world of IT as a woman.
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