Igbo-Londoner, Ezenwanyi Amarachi Rachel Nwokoro is a neurodivergent, disabled & queerly feminine free spirit.  She cultivates spaces as a Creative Healer, Researcher, Mystic and Storyteller. She has collaborated globally as an Actor, Director, Poet, Artist, Curator, Organiser & Public Speaker for more than a decade. While graduating from drama school, she authored her debut book “Little You” (Burning Eye, 2019).  Amarachi is a lived experience expert who uses her journey to build safer, more sustainable healing arts spaces. She advocates for peace, play & liberation as Founder & Creative Director of Black Mind, a grassroots Art-as-Activism organisation centring the collective Mental Health, Wellbeing, Justice and Joy of Black People in Britain.  Previous awards include: the 2020 inaugural Black British Theatre Award for Disability Champion and the Stage Debut award for Best Performer in a Play. Amarachi is a qualified Mental Health First Aider and loves indigenous healing, disability justice, the soul, nature and deconstructing misogynoir.

Andy Davis is the Founding Partner at 10x10 Capital - a pre-seed fund investing in Black founders in Europe, and the Founder of 10x10, Europe's group of Black founders and VCs.

He released the industry-shifting The Black Report, the first qualitative report on Black founders.

Andy was previously an Angel Investor at Atomico - Europe's largest seed fund, and Director at Backstage Capital London, the first diversity-focused venture capital fund, and Investor in Residence at Google for Startups, for their Black founders programme.

He hosts weekly lunchtime hangouts for Black founders where he advises them on fundraising, building products, hiring, and customers.

Davis is spearheading efforts to make European investing more diverse and inclusive by creating access to deals and providing financial and strategic support to Black founders.

Hello, I’m Anthony 'Big Ant' Olaseinde from Sheffield.

I see myself as an entrepreneur with a flare that has allowed me to set up a specialist security company, co-own an innovative young people’s organization and establish Always an Alternative, a non-profit created to challenge the mindset of young people around problems that they may face.

My passion is to make a positive difference, by helping others to see and become the amazing human beings that they are. Additionally, to make change by challenging things I don't think are right.

I've had many achievements: a Degree (1st), Masters (Distinction), both Regional and national awards. Despite being dyslexic, I wrote a book called One Knife Many Lives, which looks at the wide spread devastation that knife crime causes. I've also prevented over 500 weapons from reaching the streets of South Yorkshire by providing free weapons collections in communities and raising funds to install 8 portable weapon amnesty bins.

Dr Clare Anyiam-Osigwe BEM founded Premae Skincare, in 2011 as the worlds 1st Allergy friendly certified vegan beauty company. Honoured by the Queen in 2017 for services to dermatology and received 17 business awards with international distribution through Amazon Luxury and a SKY TV shopping channel. 

Her  film journey began in 2014 as the MD and lead script juror of BAFTA, BIFA, AMAA accredited British Urban Film Festival (BUFF) which streams on Apple TV and Bohemia Euphoria. Her directorial debut  NO SHADE secured international theatrical release making Clare the 6th black British woman to secure cinematic distribution in 2018. Streamed to over 16 million on Amazon Prime in 2019 and licensed to Apple TV in 2020.  

Commissioned by The Voice Newspaper to produce WINDRUSH STORIES celebrating 70 years of the first Caribbean settlers to the U.K. in 2018. 2nd black female TV director to direct soap series HOLLYOAKS for summer 2022. Shadow director on EASTENDERS in summer 2022. 

Now showrunner/writer/director EP FINDING FOREVER starring Tim Reid, Arnold Oceng and Femi Oyeniran and an Afro Sci-Fi series set in Nigeria and London backed by Lagos government for 2023.

Senior Consultant at Guidehouse, a consulting firm (Life Science Strategy) and Biotech startup Founder: SökerData Ltd.

At Guidehouse, I focus mainly on developing strategies to increase market access for innovative drugs to populations most in need. 

SökerData is committed to using high throughput proteomics to identify therapeutic & diagnostic bio markers in viral infectious diseases and bacterial infections that have developed anti-microbial resistance to make pre-clinical and clinical trial processes more efficient, diverse and inclusive.

Passion

Health equity

Equality in Access to Opportunity

Salsa Dancing

Achievements 

"The Ebola Medal for Service in West Africa" by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the II

Forbes Afrique feature: the "Sciencepreneuse" - The 'Science-Entrepreneur'

European Commission Young Leader, 2016

 “Top 50 Most Inspiring, prominent and influential black voices in UK Tech” by TechNation,

“One to Watch” by Northern Power Women,

Non-Executive/Board positions:

      - Independent Council Member, University of Salford

      - Advisory Board, Science and Industry Museum Manchester

      - Board of Trustees, Smart Works Greater Manchester

      - General Assembly, University of Manchester

Guidehouse 2022 Vita Navitas (Life Energy) Nomination for spirit of pursuing external interests while simultaneously providing exceptional work at Guidehouse

Ph.D. Infectious Diseases and Global Health and BSc Molecular Biology with a year in industry from the University of Liverpool

Ezechi Britton (or Ez as he is commonly known) is a Principal, CTO and Founding Member of Impact X Capital, a VC fund dedicated to funding underrepresented entrepreneurs. He is also Co-Founder of Code Untapped working to support diverse technologists and tech startup founders. He was Co-Founder and former CTO of multi-award-winning financial wellbeing provider Neyber. In a former life, Ezechi spent over 10 years in Investment Banking Technology. 

One of Ezechi’s great passions is supporting and increasing participation in the technology sector, to that end he actively mentors for and advises several organisations including Venture Studio from Crisis, Spring Innovation (Water transformation), MSDUK, Tech Nation, Foundervine and the Amos Bursary.

In 2019 he was named VC of the Year by Inclusive Tech Alliance and then named MBE for services to diversity and young people in the 2022 New Year Honours List.

Hannah Chukwu is an Editor at Penguin Random House UK, where she works on literary fiction and non-fiction, working with authors such as Biyi Bandele and Tao Leigh Goffe, and she is fiercely passionate about supporting those from underrepresented backgrounds. 

She is editor for Five Dials magazine, and the series editor for Black Britain: Writing Back with Bernardine Evaristo. She is Policy and Campaigns Consultant for ‘Lit in Colour’; run by PRH and the Runnymede Trust, the campaign aims to diversify the English GCSE curriculum. She is a Trustee at education equality charity The Brilliant Club and a Board Member of Creative UK.

 In 2021 she won the LBF Trailblazer Award, the Rising Star Award at the British Business Awards and was named as a EMpower Ethnic Minority Future Leader. In 2022, she won the Print Charity Rising Star Award and has been nominated for a Black Talent Award.

Your passion - Dance 

Your achievements - Becoming ambassador of Gaynor Minden, the first brand that created skin color pointe shoes, for us dancers of color. 

Your qualifications - Professional Ballet Dancer, Ballet and Contemporary dance Teacher, Ballet be Fit instructor. 

Bio 

Isabela Coracy was born in Brazil and trained at the Centro De Dança Rio. She had been dancing for 14 years as a professional Ballet Dancer, and started a international career in the end of 2013, when she moved to London, she is currently a Senior Artist with Ballet Black. 

Isabela has danced with Projeto Deborah Colker, São Paulo Companhia de Dança, Ballet Jovem do Rio de Janeiro, Companhia Brasileira de Ballet and has toured Russia performing Dining Swan. 

Isabela also was featured in the documentary, Only When I Dance, directed by Beaide Finzi. 

In February 2019 she was Cover and dancer of the month featured at The Dancing Time magazine.

As a choreographer she  created a small piece for the documentary, “ Blind As a Beat “. 

Recently collaboration with BIFA premiered at Aesthetica Short Film Festival in 2021, teamed up with Audible Uk. 

In 2021 Isabela launched Coracy Dance, with online ballet classes, ballet be fit and more. 

In collaboration with Fredasilk, Isabela launched FredaBela a new collection of Ballet Skirts as a creative designer. 

Izzy Obeng is an entrepreneur and business coach. She is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Foundervine and sits as a Non-Executive Director for Traverse (Office for Public Management) and as a Non-Executive Director for Capital Enterprise.

At Foundervine, Izzy leads a consultancy for creating systemic change in entrepreneurship. Foundervine has launched accelerators in the UK that support early stage companies, providing entrepreneurs from under-represented communities with mentorship, training and financial support. By 2022, Foundervine had helped over 5,000 leaders build new skills, supported over 300 entrepreneurs start and scale new businesses and raise capital.

In 2021, Izzy joined the Hamilton Commission, a commission appointed by seven-time world champion Sir Lewis Hamilton to increase the representation of Black people in U.K. motorsport. She currently acts as an Advisor to Lloyds Banking Group and is a member of the Race Equality Commission. Izzy has been featured in the BBC, The Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian and in 2022, Izzy was listed in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Social Impact.

Jason is Chief Executive of Mission 44, a charitable foundation launched by Sir Lewis Hamilton to boost social mobility in the UK. 

After starting his career as a teacher in east London, Jason has spent the last fifteen years working in leadership roles in the non-profit sector, including at Teach First, the #iwill campaign and Youth Futures Foundation. 

He also has strong experience of the political sector, having served as a senior local councillor in London.

MORE TO COME

Featured on Forbes, Julian ‘The Ultrapreneur’ Hall is the founder of multi-award winning Ultra Education CIC, a social enterprise who's mission is to use entrepreneurship as a vehicle to increase the life chances of children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. 

Starting his first business at 18 yrs old, having a background in technology and investment banking he is the best selling author of three business books. 

Julian has co-written three University  0degrees in entrepreneurship and launched the UK’s first mobile game for kid entrepreneurship called Start-up Dash and AI chatbot, #AskUltra which teaches entrepreneurship autonomously.

He has been the entrepreneur in residence at some of the UK's top schools and is pioneering the integration of entrepreneurship into the curriculum. 

A freeman of the Company of Entrepreneurs, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, member of the Association of Business Mentors and Shakespeare Globe Council, co-founder of UkBlackTech, Julian has been honoured by the British Citizen Award with a medal for services to education.

Kike Oniwinde Agoro, is the Founder and CEO of BYP Network, a platform that connects over 150,000 Black professionals to each other and 1000+ corporations. BYP was created to “change the Black narrative” which it successfully does through mentorship, thoughtleadership events, industry specific insight and the annual BYP Leadership Conference. 

Kike's proudest moment includes the BYP $1m crowdfund that saw 1200 community investors. Kike has an Economics degree from The University of Nottingham and a MSc Management from The University of Florida in which she gained a sports scholarship as an ex-Great Britain Javelin thrower. 

Kike is a Forbes 30 under 30 and is the Vice Chair of the London Chambers of Commerce Black Business Association, Getting on Boards and is a London Tech Ambassador. Kike is a proud wife and mother to her daughter, Yetunde, who was named after her mum that passed away 7 months before her birt

Lavinya is a writer, activist, and Founder and CEO of The Black Curriculum. Graduating with a first class from SOAS in 2019, she has most recently authored a paper exploring Maroon ecology in Jamaica and Brazil. Lavinya was recently named as one of the Sunday Times 50 Women of the Year and was awarded Trailblazer of The Year by Hello Magazine, as well as featuring in Vogue, and GQ for her activism. 

The Black Curriculum is a social enterprise founded in 2019 and having recently celebrated it's 3rd birthday, it continues to work to teach and support the teaching of Black history all year round, aiming to empower all students with a sense of identity and belonging. Lavinya is currently writing her debut book on Black History ‘Omitted’ due out for publication in Spring 2023.

Lee Chambers is a business psychologist and entrepreneur. He is the founder of PhenomGames and Essentialise Workplace Wellbeing. Born in Bolton, he has worked in various industries, from corporate finance to elite sports, while building successful businesses. He is passionate about health inequalities and inclusive leadership, and openly shares his journey with his mental health and learning to walk again after illness. 

With Essentialise, he supports organisations to build and deliver inclusive wellbeing strategies, and their clients range from FTSE 100 firms to innovative social enterprises. For his work, he received the Great British Entrepreneur Award for Service Industries in 2021 and won the Professional Services Startup of the Year at the National Startup Awards in 2022. Outside of work, Chambers coaches a disability football team, is an ambassador for SEND schools and is a mentor for Black STEM graduates. He lives in the Ribble Valley with his two children.

Leanne’s ultimate mission in life is to inspire people to be the best version of themselves.

In addition to this she has a passion for healthcare, and currently works as a medical doctor. In 2018 she co-founded a charity - The Armitage Foundation - which exists to increase diversity across UK medical schools. 

In 2018 she was awarded the UK Queen’s Young Leaders award by Her Majesty the Queen, in recognition of her foundation. Leanne has also featured in the 2021 edition of the Future Leader’s Magazine as number 4 out of 150 of the UK’s most outstanding African-Caribbean students and new graduates.

 In 2020 she was named a LinkedIn Top Voice and she has featured in multiple news outlets including Channel 4 News, BBC Radio and the Telegraph.

In her spare time Leanne loves exercising, dancing and socialising with friends.

Leon Mann MBE

Leon Mann MBE is a sports consultant, campaigner, film-maker and broadcaster. 

He is a co-founder of the Football Black List, an initiative that highlights the achievements of the Black community in the sport. He is also the founder of the Black Collective of Media in Sport, a group campaigning for greater diversity in the sports media, as well as a board member of the Professional Game Match Officials Limited. Leon is the Vice Chair of the Sports Journalist Association and co-founder of the Sports People’s Think Tank.

Leon has interviewed some of the biggest stars in sport - including David Beckham and Shelley-Anne Fraser-Pryce. As a film-maker he has made two critically acclaimed documentaries on Usain Bolt for the BBC and owns Refresh Sports consultancy and productions, a leading consultancy advising industry leaders, athletes and brands on communications and EDI.