Speakers
Declan Curry has been a writer and broadcaster for more than twenty-five years covering business, the economy and politics.
He broadcasts daily on LBC News. He was the business presenter on BBC One’s breakfast TV for almost a decade. He presented BBC Two's Working Lunch, and his own programmes on BBC Radio 5 live and the BBC News TV channel.
He chairs conferences and speaks at events around the world, in person and virtually on Zoom or other digital platforms. He has won several awards for his broadcasting, and is an honorary doctor of Middlesex University.
Jenn is a culture change and EDI specialist and psychologist and UK Lead for ESG and EDI for the fifth largest professional services firm, Grant Thornton UK LLP. She is responsible for designing and leading the firm's distinctive ESG strategy. Her team are focused on reducing the firm's environmental impact, creating an inclusive culture that prioritises wellbeing and improves community impact. Jenn is addressing this through robust governance and measure, chairing diversity and sustainability boards, respectfully challenging board behaviour and business decisions, innovative policy change, and utilising technology to remove barriers in the operating model. Prior to this role, Jenn was People Experience Director, where she shaped the employee value proposition and influenced senior leaders to change behaviour to improve the people experience. Jenn has expertise in psychological culture change and is an executive coaching and leadership specialist. Prior to Grant Thornton, she worked in senior roles with The Co-operative Group, BAE Systems and BAA at Heathrow, where she led the transformation of people behaviours to improve customer service in preparation for the Olympic Games in 2012.
Jonathan is currently CPO at Slaughter and May. Prior to that he spent 11 years with two other law firms (Freshfields and Kilburn & Strode) and 10 years at PwC across a number of people focussed roles. He is chair of a board of trustees at a London based charity and loves to read fiction and potter in his allotment.
Nina Goswami is Clifford Chance's first Head of Inclusion UK. She is responsible for developing and implementing the law firm's inclusion policies and campaigns within the London and Newcastle offices.
Before Clifford Chance, Nina was the BBC's Creative Diversity Lead and headed up 50:50 The Equality Project. The multi-award-winning initiative uses data monitoring to ensure media content better reflects society.
She also led work around inclusive language and supported BBC News with its diversity and inclusion strategy. This included launching impact-driven partnerships such as Reframing Disability with the Media Trust.
Nina also worked as a journalist for The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph and the legal press. This was prior to her roles at the BBC, which included TV News Editor. Nina has named as Inspirational d&i Leader 2024.
Nina was named in the Inspirational d&i Leader list 2024. Nina has also featured in the Global Diversity List as Head of Diversity (2023), Champion (2021) and Diversity Professional (2020).
Toni's career has been in professional services, starting with PwC where she qualified as a chartered accountant and worked with FTSE 100 clients in the pharma and retail sectors. She then moved into human resources, taking on both internal and client facing roles, and working across multiple disciplines, business partner, compensation & benefits, employee relations, and resourcing. She joined A&O in 2016 as global Head of Reward and in 2017 became the firm’s first Global Head of Wellbeing, a role she is passionate about.
Mark has delivered numerous diversity and inclusion projects in the UK and internationally for organisations across a wide variety of sectors, including The Financial Reporting Council, Lloyds Market Association (UK and International) Inclusive Recruitment review, Bermuda Hospital Board, Groupama Insurance, The BBC, Sheffield University, NHS Clinical Commissioning Group Boards, Highways England, ITV, DR TV Denmark, Lloyds Market Association & The Bermuda Human Rights Commission and The Law Society.
Mark is a published author on the topic of Equality and Diversity having authored the Law Society E&D Risk & Compliance Toolkit which assists law firms to comply with regulation and is the co-author of research published for Arts Council England on Goal 5: Equality & Diversity for Young People in the arts.
Mark is an executive committee member of the R.I.D.I. (Recruitment Industry Disability Initiative) campaign and just completed a 3 year term as a Non-executive Director of NHS Property Services with responsibility for People, Culture, Diversity & Inclusion.
In January 2016 Mark took up the role as Head of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion for HS2. Under Mark’s leadership, HS2 have won a number of EDI Awards including the 2017 ENEI Awards for Inclusive Procurement, Innovation with impact and Overall Public Sector Winner categories, three REACH Society awards for its work Inspiring Young BAME Individuals, Professional Role Models & Corporate Champions categories, The Apollo Award for Best Supplier Diversity Programme, the Women in Rail “Top Employer” 2018 award, ENEI Inclusive Procurement Award 2018, Gold Award for the ENEI TIDE benchmark, MSDUK Global Inclusive Procurement Award 2018 and the VERCIDA No.1 Gender Inclusive Employer in the UK 2018. In 2019 Mark won Head of Diversity of the year at the Inclusive Companies annual Diversity Awards and in 2020 was named on the People Magazine Top 20 Diversity & Inclusion Powerlist and in 2021 was recognised by D&I Leader co. as one of the Top 100 Global inspirational D&I Leaders. In 2021, Mark was awarded FCIPD, fellowship status of Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development.
Mark joined Lloyd’s as Head of Culture in January 2022. In September 2022 Mark was recognised by Hive Learning as one of the Top 75 DEI professionals in EMEA making a lasting impact on inclusive culture.
Mark has lead Lloyd’s to Gold standard on the Clear Assured Accreditation framework, to Disability Confident Leader status and won awards for Lloyd’s diversity focussed leadership and mentoring programmes. Under Mark’s leadership, the international Diversity Festival, Dive In has evolved and now includes an outreach and reverse mentoring programme, engaging over 35,000 people with participants from 84 countries globally.
In 2023 Mark was made a Fellow of the 5% Club, a group of major employers investing in apprenticeships and early career opportunities.
In 2024, Mark won the VERCIDA Inclusive Initiative of the year and was awarded Race Equality Matters Trailblazer status for his work on the research into Lloyd’s history with Trans-Atlantic slavery and Inclusive Futures, Lloyd’s response.
Elliott Rae is the founder of the parenting platform MusicFootballFatherhood, called the ‘Mumsnet for Dads’ by the BBC. He is the curator of the bestselling book, DAD, presenter of BBC One documentary ‘Becoming Dad’ and co-founder of the Working Dads Employer Awards.
Elliott created the Parenting Out Loud campaign which supports employers to build workplace cultures where dads can be loud and proud about their caring responsibilities at work.
Elliott is the ex-Head of DEI Delivery at HM Treasury and one of the UK’s most prominent speakers on fatherhood, men’s mental health and masculinity.
He has written for publications such as The Independent, The Telegraph and Grazia and frequently appears across the media, including a feature on Loose Women and regular contributions to Radio 5 Live and BBC Radio London.
His work on gender equality has been recognised by the United Nations and he was awarded the #HeForShe award by UN Women UK.
Emma has a proven expertise in strategic and operational transformation and growth. She works with a collaborative, pragmatic, coaching mindset to achieve results, flexing her approach to meet the needs of colleagues and key stakeholders.
Emma has over 30 years’ human resources experience across a range of industry sectors, including professional services. Her areas of interest include: employee relations, mergers and acquisitions, learning and development, coaching and leading HR transformation. She has worked both in-house and advising clients on people matters across the entire employee lifecycle, with a real passion for wellbeing, and diversity, equity and inclusion, and is always delighted to comment in the media or speak at an event.