OUR SPEAKERS
Jane Johnson, Founder and MD, Careering into Motherhood
Jane is Founder of Careering into Motherhood, an online community and coaching platform for women with children who want a truly rewarding career.
She has advised Government on flexible working policy and was the first person to negotiate a Director-level role as a jobshare while at HSBC. She has nearly 30 years of experience leading Corporate Communications for global organisations but in 2017 she started a recruitment business to address the lack of opportunities for people looking for senior roles that offered flexible working.
Unable to meet demand from candidates, Jane started the Careering into Motherhood community. The idea was to create a safe and supportive space where women could go to share ideas, look for jobs and ask for advice. The community now has around 20,000 members, who have access to the expertise of 70 professional Coaches, mentoring programmes, weekly online coaching sessions, an award-winning podcast, masterclasses and during lockdown there was even a Zoom comedy night!
Jane believes the pandemic highlighted that the majority of people do not want to work the way we used to, and there is a lot of work to be done to remove the stigma around flexible working. However there is huge opportunity for women to build an entirely new world of work, that works for us, is more inclusive, equitable and diverse.
With the right coaching and community support, women will lead it.
Sarah Jackson OBE
Sarah is a work-life balance and flexible working expert. Since becoming a parent over thirty years ago, her working life has involved campaigning and practical action to make paid work more inclusive of parents and carers.
She was until 2018 the CEO of Working Families, a role in which at times she job-shared, job-split and worked reduced hours, in order to retain time for her family life. Her experience at Working Families included the annual employer best practice awards, commissioning and editing research into flexible working, and lobbying government on behalf of working mothers and fathers.
She is an expert in workplace discrimination, and in family-friendly and flexible working best practice and policy development.
Her innovation and practical thought leadership has included the Modern Families Index, the now annual survey of working parents in the UK: Go Home On Time Day, and the Happy to Talk Flexible Working recruitment initiative.
Sarah is a member of the Careering into Motherhood Advisory Board, and also Visiting Professor at Cranfield University School of Management, Chair of PiPA (Parents and Carers in Performing Arts), a trustee of Rosa, the UK Fund for Women and Girls, and a trustee of Scottish Opera.
Stephanie Hyde, Chief Executive, JLL UK
Stephanie’s leadership is a transformational chapter for JLL in the UK, the company’s second largest market, at a time when real estate is growing in prominence.
Stephanie joined in Spring 2021 following 25 years at PwC. Her role is to lead the UK business and strengthen JLL’s position as the technology focused and market leading real estate advisor. Stephanie is a passionate big advocate of Sustainability, is focussed on meeting JLL’s ambitious targets and supporting clients to think beyond words to measurable actions and delivery. She is Chair of the CBI’s ‘Centre for Thriving Regions and Nations’, its flagship vehicle for engaging with the government’s levelling up agenda, which is a key priority supports the pivotal role the Real Estate industry can play as a regeneration catalyst.
During her time at PwC, she delivered growth across multiple business lines, developed client programmes in the UK and globally, and ran its industry programme with a key focus on technology, transformation and sustainability. She previously led the UK regional business for PwC and was a member of the firm’s Global Leadership Team and UK Executive Board.
She’s an avid reader, keen swimmer and loves dogs.
Jane Warren, Chief Underwriting Officer & Active Underwriter, Liberty Specialty Markets
Jane Warren is Chief Underwriting Officer (CUO) and Active Underwriter at Liberty Specialty Markets (LSM). She is also UK Legal Entities Managing Director, a role she has held since March 2019.
Jane is responsible for strategic and operational leadership relating to Lloyd’s Syndicate 4472 SBF. She is a Liberty Managing Agency Limited board member and supports the management of Liberty’s underwriting platform at Lloyd’s. Jane is also the UK Branch Manager for LSM’s European company platform Liberty Mutual Insurance Europe SE and the Executive Sponsor for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion for LSM.
Jane joined Liberty in 2019 from Axis Specialty Europe, where she was Chief Operating Officer (COO). She was responsible for Axis’ international insurance operations in Singapore, Bermuda, Dublin, and London Market, including Syndicate 1686, and maintaining regulatory relationships. The role included supporting the strategic development of key countries and their leadership teams. Jane held a number of senior roles within Axis prior to her appointment as COO.
Jane has over 25 years’ experience in the insurance industry in senior management, Operations, Re/Insurance Underwriting, Risk Management, Broking and Regulatory roles.
Ashanti Bentil-Dhue, Chief Executive, Good Soil Leaders
Ashanti is the CEO of Good Soil Leaders, an inclusion work culture and leadership development company that works with organizations to realize a Return On Investment on their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) endeavours.
They help organisations realise these benefits through the identification, selection, and engagement of the right DEI experts and providing training, coaching, and consulting to stakeholders involved in DEI work.
Ashanti is also the host of Good Soils Podcast and Confessions of A DEI Pro: The Podcast for Practitioners & Consultants.
Caroline Iggulden, Associate Editor, News UK
Caroline Iggulden is Associate Editor at The Sun newspaper, part of News UK. In her current role she is responsible for editorial campaigns and partnerships across print and digital such as the award winning ‘Jabs Army’ Covid vaccination volunteer drive and ‘Green Team’ environmental initiative.
Caroline started at The Sun in 2003 as a trainee reporter and has held various positions including Head of Features.
As a writer and editor, Caroline has reported on everything from elections to terror attacks, World Cups to the London Olympics, royal weddings and most recently the death of Her Majesty the Queen.
She spent 5 years in New York where she wrote for The Sun and The New York Post and covered the 2016 US election. Whilst in the States she also consulted on various editorial start-up projects for parent company News Corp.
In 2021 she was nominated for Interviewer of the Year at the British Press Awards. She lives in London with her husband and three children.
Jen Smollett, Accredited Leadership Coach
Jen is a professional women’s leadership coach. She specialises in authentic leadership, supporting women to lead with authenticity, confidence and resilience so that they can thrive in their leadership, with less stress, worry and self-doubt.
A former nurse, Jen and her wife adopted two girls into their family. She is a partner Coach with Careering into Motherhood who has talked about her experience of the adoption process to help other parents going through something similar.
Jennifer Liston-Smith, Head of Thought Leadership, Bright Horizons
As head of thought leadership, and a Business Psychologist Jennifer is a leading influencer in the field of best practice for employers of working parents and carers. For over 20 years, Jennifer has been relentless in pursuit of innovation, identifying, defining and sharing ‘next practice’ for leading global employers in flexible working, family-friendly and wellbeing programmes, closing the gender pay gap and promoting gender-inclusive parenting. She is a sought-after speaker, writer, conference moderator and consultant on these topics and more.
Jennifer is also a parent coaching pioneer, having set-up, and for a decade led, the Coaching & Consultancy side of what became Bright Horizons Work+Family Solutions advising employers in banking, professional services, STEM and wider sectors on programmes for working parents and carers and evaluating their impact and ROI, as well as developing coaches and coaching capability as a Coaching Supervisor. She now focuses on identifying overarching trends through research, advising employers and translating these insights into solutions and practical actions.
Julia Ellis, Partner and Head of Commercial Law, Ignition Law
Julia has decades of experience supporting businesses with a broad range of commercial challenges and legal needs. She started her career in private practice at international law firms Weil Gotshal and Taylor Vinters, then worked in-house for large corporates including Premier Food, TK Maxx and Centrica.
She later moved to Ignition Law, where she leads the commercial practice, and also advises start-up and SME clients on a broad range of commercial matters, including the supply of goods/services (business-to-business and business-to-consumer); procurement activities; intellectual property and data protection. Most of Ignition’s lawyers (including Julia) work remotely on a part-time basis, juggling other roles, businesses and/or the demands of family life.
As well as overseeing the firm’s marketing function, Julia is involved in coaching and mentoring early in career lawyers. She is also a mum of two, and so life is never dull!
Mary Doyle, Disability Inclusion Consultant and Trainer, Accessible Aviation Consultant, Executive Coach.
As a proud wheelchair user, my life and work are dedicated to personal and organisational development to improve inclusion and understanding in society through coaching, consultancy and disability equality training. I want people to rock their difference, whatever it looks like.
Attributes of disabled people are often valued leadership attributes, collaboration, enabling others, empathy, and managing the unknown.
I’m not your regular leadership partner. When thinking about how to optimise personal and organisational performance, collaborating with disabled female leader and IT geek is not the most obvious option. However, to develop different outcomes you need an experienced person offering alternative perspectives and solutions. I will help you take on your most important challenges, find exciting new directions, make brave choices, and turn them into an outrageous success.
I use my wealth of experience from my corporate positions and as a person who successfully deals with a disability in my life to assist my clients to maximise their own potential, build inclusive teams and deliver exceptional service to their own customers and employees.
Michael Mpofu
Michael began his career in South African politics, working for the official opposition and later in government as the spokesperson for the Premier of the Western Cape.
He has influenced policy and led behavioural change campaigns.
A media and Public Relations expert, he advises some of the UK’s most influential firms in his current role as Associate Director with Citigate Dewe Rogerson.
Michael is on the Advisory Board of Careering into Motherhood and shares our belief that social change happens through inclusive discussion and diversity of perspective, he brings his experience of nuanced political and social change to the business as it grows.
Neil Peters, Suicide Prevention Consultant, Nuthatch
Neil Peters is an accomplished freelance programme and project manager specialising in suicide prevention and mental health.
In 2020, Neil set up Nuthatch Consultants to support charities and business with suicide prevention, mental health & well-being advice. They provide guidance, consultancy and project management to support organisations.
He is currently working with Parents 1st to set up a pan-Essex Peer Support Network to support parents in pregnancy and beyond. As a Dad of two young girls, issues around fatherhood are of particular interest to Neil.
Recent Nuthatch projects have included reviewing suicide prevention and intervention pathways for a local authority, programme managing the launch of the National Suicide Prevention Alliance’s lived experience network and working with Samaritans to review Highways England’s suicide prevention strategy.
Prior to setting up Nuthatch, Neil led the award-winning suicide prevention on the railway programme for Samaritans in partnership with Network Rail.
In 2022, Neil presented a 12-part series on Men’s Radio called Men Talk Mental Health. Neil’s experience has shown that men are talking more about difficult subjects but there is still a real barrier to talking about how they are feeling and their emotional and mental health. The radio series explored with friends and others why this is discussed important issues which affect men’s mental health including parenting, fatherhood and supporting partners.
He has also launched Nuthatch Retreats, a side project to support people’s wellbeing by connecting them with nature.
Suman Hughes, Vice President, Mastercard
Suman leads media relations across Europe. A passionate believer in the power of communications, her expertise lies in helping a brand connect with its many audiences through integrated campaigns which enhance both external reputation and employee engagement. She is a trusted advisor to executives on all issues related to communications and reputation.
Suman has around 20 years communications experience spanning agency and in-house roles. She has two sons and lives in South-East London.