Meet the Team
Meet the Charlotte Sweeney Associates team of DE&I specialists.

Charlotte Sweeney
OBE

Kay Allen
OBE

Mark Fenton

Howell DiCocco

Liz Pawson-Poon

Michelle Mendelsson

Charlotte Sweeney
OBE
Charlotte Sweeney, OBE has specialised in D&I for over 20 years. Inspired by her global corporate career in the Financial Services sector, she launched Charlotte Sweeney Associates in 2012.
She is a trail blazer in her field and thrives on empowering business leaders and organisations to create inclusive workplaces. The Sweeney Report was produced at the request of Sir Vince Cable and Lord Davies, examining the voluntary code of conduct for executive search firms. She also created the City of London’s Diversity Programme, The Power of Diversity on behalf of the then Lord Mayor of London Dame Fiona Woolf and was previously the Vice-Chair of the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Panel.
Charlotte has won many awards for her dedication to diversity. From Harvard, for her work in the D&I field to the International Alliance for Women for advancing the economic empowerment of women.
She is listed in the Northern Power Women Top 50 Power Women, included by The Economist as one of the Top 50 Diversity professionals in the world and is recognised as one of the Top Ten D&I Consultants by The Global Diversity List. In the 2017 New Year’s Honours, she was awarded an OBE for services to Women and Equalities.
Charlotte is co-author of the best-selling book Inclusive Leadership, published by Pearson/The Financial Times, which was shortlisted for the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) Management Book of the Year. She also writes regularly for professional publications including Hays, Virgin and CSR. As well as delivering keynote speeches and chairing conferences internationally, she is an expert contributor for BBC Radio, TV and the national press.

Kay Allen
OBE
Kay currently works as a Special Advisor to several companies working with them to design and implement responsible business, diversity and inclusion strategies. She is an Associate of CSA, working with Charlotte Sweeney to research issues impacting on inclusion and diversity. She also is a qualified performance coach to C Suite executives focusing on supporting leaders to succeed.
Kay’s previous roles include Director of Business Commitment for the UK Prime Minister’s Office, where she examined the impact of responsible business. Her commercial career includes Head of Social Action and Inclusion for Royal Mail Group, Public Affairs for BSkyB and Head of Inclusion for B&Q.
Kay has also held several Non-Executive roles including, Commissioner on both the Disability Rights Commission and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. She also served as a Non-Executive Director on the Department for Work and Pensions and currently sits on the Ofcom Consumer Panel in the UK.
Kay is a Fellow of St Georges House Windsor, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. As a qualified performance coach, Kay’s personal vision is to always help others to succeed and facilitating individuals to thrive in their chosen careers.

Mark Fenton
Mark supports organisations across all sectors in UK and Europe in designing and delivering sustainable diversity and inclusion strategies to future-proof their success. He is an Associate of CSA, working with Charlotte Sweeney to help clients create a D&I strategy that is right for them as well as support delivery of elements of the strategy.
Mark has over 20 years’ experience in global financial organisations, with a proven track record in finance, audit and business strategy garnered from his time with PwC, Schroders plc, Rothschild & Co, UBS & the AXA Group. Mark is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland and a Member of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment.
Mark has lived and worked in several cities globally. He holds a 1st Class Honours in Executive Coaching from the Irish Management Institute and is an active member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. He sits on the board of Screen Ireland (formerly the Irish Film Board), driving the gender equality and diversity committee and chairing the audit and risk committee.

Howell DiCocco
Howell has over 25 years’ human resources experience within global financial services, specialising in D&I, talent management, and cross-border HR. She is an Associate of CSA, working with Charlotte Sweeney to help clients create and deliver a sustainable D&I strategy.
Howell’s commitment to creating safe, inclusive cultures began as the Senior HR Business Partner to a line of business operating in 30 countries. She is passionate about this work and brings an abundance of practical experience in facilitating organisational assessment and action planning, council development, employee resource group facilitation, and development and delivery of education and awareness solutions.
Howell is based in the US. She has lived, worked and immersed herself in the local cultures of Hong Kong, Toronto and Zurich. She is a member of the Society for Human Resources Management and was previously a member of the Diversity and Inclusion Network (DIAN) of Community Business Hong Kong.

Liz Pawson-Poon
Liz has over 10 years’ experience in the financial and professional services industries, having trained and qualified as a lawyer at a Magic Circle firm and specialised in the financings of high-value mergers and acquisitions. Her previous clients ranged from global financial institutions, private equity funds and cross-border companies. Her legal studies and practice paved way for her pursuit of a career in DE&I, underpinned by the principles of equality, equity and fairness.
Since joining CSA, Liz has partnered with a range of companies as a DE&I Consultant. Projects include audits on policies and practices from a DE&I perspective, inclusion data collation and analysis, DE&I research focus groups, DE&I strategy and toolkit creation, DE&I training and workshops.
Liz has extensive experience managing projects by virtue of her previous transactional roles. She is also Programme Manager for CSA’s DE&I Professional Leadership Programme.
Having lived in Sydney and Hong Kong and worked in Singapore and London, Liz thrives on meeting and collaborating with people from different cultures and backgrounds.

Michelle Mendelsson
Michelle is a highly experienced Equity, Diversity and Inclusion expert and Executive Coach. She has spent the last 20 years of her career in the Financial Services sector as a senior leader in the Credit Suisse, Global Diversity and Inclusion practice, focussing on researching, developing, and implementing their EMEA DE&I strategy. Her remit covered all aspects of DE&I including Gender and Gender Identity, Race, Disability, LGBTQ+, Neurodiversity, Social Mobility and Flexible Working.
Prior to working in the Financial Services Sector Michelle spent 15 years in a variety of commercial management and HR positions at Marks and Spencer.
In addition to her strategic DE&I work Michelle also enjoys supporting and developing clients through 1:1 coaching. This includes helping individuals to overcome challenges, build confidence, improve overall performance, and ultimately to thrive in demanding and complex organisations. Areas of focus include identifying values and purpose, developing diverse networks and sponsorship relationships, leading more effectively, managing upwards, enhancing communication, navigating change and organisational politics. Her approach is naturally warm and empathic but also strategic and goal orientated.
Michelle has served on the Conference Board - Diversity and Inclusion in Business Council (Europe) and was a Trustee of the Credit Suisse Foundation for over 10 years. She is currently a Trustee of the Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice in North London.

Sung Hee Han

Coen Tan

Rodrigo Lolato

Pia Kähärä

Joanna Smit

Sara Crawford

Sung Hee Han
Sung Hee is a career, leadership, and business coach, with a passion for developing Female and Asian leaders. She has extensive global executive leadership experience with Fortune 500 corporations, across 6 countries in 3 continents, Asia Pacific, the US and Europe. With 25+ years of front-line business experience, in High-Tech and FMCG, including Samsung Electronics, The Coca-Cola Company, Mars Inc., and British American Tobacco, she has been helping corporates and individuals to be at their best.
Since she set up her own coaching practice in 2019, she has had 500+ workshops and coaching sessions for clients from 7 countries, across 9 industry sectors. 70% of her clients are female, and 65% are senior managers and above level.
Her specialties include:
- Asian leadership
- Female leadership
- Cross-cultural effectiveness
- Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
- Self-confidence and Self-advocacy
- Creating impact and influence
- Business communication skills, esp. operating in English as a second language
- Career transition planning

Coen Tan
Growing up Coen has his own share of challenges, agonising pains, and tribulations in life. He was able to turn his adversaries into strength and took it as an opportunity to inspire people with his own stories.
Coen has over 12 years’ experience of being:
- A keynote speaker
- Trainer
- Coach, and
- Strategic Communications Consultant
Coen has spoken to and trained over 42,000 individuals and professionals in Singapore, China, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, USA, Canada, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, and Indonesia to name a few. His clients come from various sectors with notable names such as PayPal American Express Citibank. Siemens, Nestle, Prudential, AXA, Roche, Merck, AstraZeneca and Coca-Cola, among others. Coen desires to help professionals, business leaders, trainers, and educators to discover their true potentials as they face their major challenges in their professional and personal lives.

Rodrigo Lolato
Rodrigo is a business leader with more than 15 years of international experience as business executive, executive coach, and facilitator. As an Industrial Engineer, with MBA in Leadership & Specialisation in Psychology (Psychosynthesis), he is motivated to support leaders to grow and achieve their most important goals.
Rodrigo is known for his wide and deep knowledge, combining a practical approach with a profound understanding of human behaviour and motivations. Clients experience Rodrigo as a warm and challenging coach that truly believes in their potential and does everything he can in order to support them.
Topics he teachers (both workshops as well as MBA classes):
- Conflict Resolution
- Effective Leadership
- Productivity and Personal Effectiveness
- People Management
- Change Management
- Influencing others
- Strategic Agility
- Coaching
- Non-Violent Communication
He is also a Master Trainer (trainer of trainers) on many internationally known workshops such as ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, ‘Crucial Conversations’ and many others.
Partner of WYSE International (NGO from UK, affiliated to the UN) on international leadership programs aiming to empower young leaders for global change (working as coordinator, trainer and coach for those programmes).

Pia Kähärä
A Finn with more than 25 years’ broad experience in domestic and international business in managerial positions. After graduation Pia led Finnish company’s Russian and CIS business, also establishing, and managing its representative office in Moscow. She later was responsible for export and international business development, managing and developing sales and marketing functions, consulting, and training.
Core strengths: broad business experience in international setting, ability to see the bigger picture and convert theory into practice, easily connects with different people, team player who is used to working internationally. Speaks several languages including Finnish (native), English & Russian (fluent) and Swedish, German and French (basic).
Since 2008, she has also worked as intercultural management (ICM) as a trainer for various international companies, specialising mainly in training their Western managers to improve their soft skills in operating in the Russian culture (leadership, negotiations, sales, partnership building etc), but also Russian managers to work in some European cultures.
She has a MBA in European Management, London South Bank University and a MA in Russian Translation and Interpretation, University of Eastern Finland.

Joanna Smit
Jo supports clients across 4 continents on delivering on their diversity and inclusion objectives. Her focus areas include designing and delivering inclusive cultures that translate cohesively across multiple geographical locations. She is an Associate of CSA, working with Charlotte Sweeney helping clients deliver on their international D&I strategy.
Jo brings over 10 years’ experience in the financial and banking industries, having worked for a bulge bracket investment bank in a number of countries. Her previous clients ranged from financial institutions, pension funds, hedge funds, government institutions and supranational bodies.
Jo is passionate about equality, diversity and inclusion and guest lecturers on the topic at several universities and business schools. She is a mentor with HERA (Her Equality Rights & Autonomy), supporting women survivors of human trafficking pursue a better life through entrepreneurship. Jo has lived and worked in several cities globally and is fluent in English, German & French.

Sara Crawford
Sara’s career has been within organisational and management roles across multiple sectors and industries and predominantly within early-stage businesses or those scaling up. She has over 30 years’ experience, managing projects and teams and covering all aspects of strategic change - business growth, business improvement, processes and procedures, communication, and sales and marketing.
She has a track record of building effective relationships with stakeholders and peers and strives to ensure the right culture within businesses is successfully delivered against this objective. Sara has ILM Certificate Levels 3 & 5 in Leadership and Management, C&G Award in Education & Training and is a certified PRINCE2 Practitioner.
She is also an experienced mentor, and has mentored individuals on both a professional and personal level.

Elizabeth Pollitt

Zoe McIntosh

Ali Boyes

Brigitte Opel

Anusha G Parshotam

Dr. Barbara Covarrubias Venegas

Elizabeth Pollitt
Lizzie is a CSA Associate Consultant and is passionate about exploring the links between DE&I, society, and our workplaces. Having graduated university with a First-Class honours degree in Sociology, she’s expanding on her existing research into the impact Covid-19 has had on working mothers, identifying ways organisations can mitigate further disparities to benefit DE&I and our clients.
Prior to starting university, she spent three years working in a HR People Team within Financial Services, participating in their Diversity and Inclusion agenda alongside her role in their People Programme Team.
Lizzie supports CSA with research and data-driven insights for our clients throughout the delivery processes, from supporting with listening exercises to help uncover lived experiences, to analysing post-delivery data to help our clients with their next steps. Lizzie also takes a lead on CSA’s bespoke eLearning solution to help clients deliver against their DE&I learning ambitions at an organisational level, covering key theories and concepts to help advance understanding.

Zoe McIntosh
Zoe is a Graphic Designer with a specialism in branding design and supports CSA with all things design and marketing. As a creative, she has always appreciated how every seemingly minute detail tells a bigger story, this fuels her desires as a designer to pinpoint and encapsulate branding essences via bespoke visuals. Through her extensive marketing, branding and design knowledge, she facilitates the elevation of brands that best resonates to consumers.
Having studied Fashion Communication and Promotion at Nottingham Trent University, Zoe found herself engaging in conversation and interest around the lack of diversity in the creative industry which lead her into the world of DE&I.
Zoe is also-founder of Arise Creatives, a platform and podcast that exists to host pragmatic dialogue championing the unheard truths within the creative industry from black female perspectives.

Ali Boyes
Ali specialises in designing and delivering global sourcing strategies; adding value with best practice processes, clear policies, improved product and service offerings. She influences C-suite executives to introduce and accelerate supplier diversity initiatives, and build team capability, inclusivity and credibility. She is an Associate of CSA, focussed on driving forward change in the area of Inclusive Procurement.
Ali has over 20 years experience working in leading global retailers. Having worked up from an in-store manager to a senior Procurement leader, ensures Ali truly understands the challenges clients face to stay customer-centric. Ali's empathetic nature, and strong interpersonal skills bring practical, meaningful and tangible solutions.
Ali's key achievements include:
- Influencing main boards to adopt and launch Group wide policies and processes, including Procurement and Travel & Expense policies, delivering inclusive and equal experiences for colleagues and suppliers
- Overhaul in ways of working in Asian based sourcing teams within global organisations, embedding robust, sustainable and ethical processes along with inclusive cultures between Asian and European colleagues
- Speaker at Procurement conferences, such as Procurecon, bringing together Procurement leaders from across the globe for sharing of and benchmarking of best practices
- Extensive stakeholder mapping and engagement, including design and delivery of communication frameworks, leading to step change of Procurement within organisations and ensuring a seat at the table
Ali has lived and worked in several cities globally, including various European cities, Tokyo and Hong Kong and has a real passion for international travel and experiences. Ali truly understands the benefits and successes from bringing together people from different backgrounds and strives to partner with and foster relationships across all cultures.

Brigitte Opel
Brigitte Opel was born and raised in Germany. She studied and worked in the US, Japan, Russia, Australia and various countries in Europe before settling in the Netherlands. In all these places, she experienced cultures and cultural differences first hand.
She studied the impact of cultural patterns on doing business in the global marketplace during her Masters study at Thunderbird School of International Management in USA and Japan. During her career at IBM in Germany and the Netherlands, she worked in international project teams for 17 years and managed teams across Europe. For more than 8 years, Brigitte has been using her international experience, in combination with professional models to help global organisations to work with the differences in cultures and perspectives and to generate synergies from these differences.
Besides consulting on cultural awareness in general, she has helped clients prepare for negotiations with international partners, improve the communication in a virtual team, develop sales presentations to foreign customers and gain sensitivity on different communication styles. In individual coaching sessions, she also helped expats to learn about the country culture of their next assignment. She has lectured at many Dutch universities on various aspects of National Culture (Communication, advertising, teamwork, sports, Brexit etc).

Anusha G Parshotam
Anusha is a commercial, pragmatic and highly focussed executive coach and leadership and development facilitator. She draws on psychological theories, her working experience and balances this with using practical interventions that are fit for purpose for organisations and individual clients. She continues to receive positive feedback for her ability to understand a client, being relevant, her style and knowledge.
She has worked across industries such as aviation, construction, finance, hospitality and consulting, to name a few. Her passion for D&I stems from her lived experiences and shares powerful authentic stories. Through her various roles in HR, she has been a lead on D&I strategy and execution.
Anusha has over 15 years of experience working in Senior Human Resources roles, working across different sectors and geographies (Global remit, Southern Africa and UK). She has extensive experience working strategically with organisations, leaders and managers in nurturing talent and building high performance teams in various sectors (FMCG, Professional Services, Financial Services, Legal, Education, Aviation, Public Services, Charities and Start Ups).

Dr. Barbara Covarrubias Venegas
Barbara is an Expert for New Ways of Working & Digital Leadership and Culture. She defines herself as a Virtual Enthusiast, researcher by education, speaker by passion and author by results. She is passionate about New Ways of Working & Learning, Positive Leadership & CULTURE overall. For the past 10 years, she has been very involved with the intercultural community across the globe, not only as a researcher or professional, but also as a virtual team leader and team member.
Barbara has specialised in DE&I topics since 2010 when she started to work as a research team lead at a university in Austria. Her PhD was about Gender and Age Diversity and the influence of stereotypes and unconscious bias on our careers.
As an educator, Barbara has been designing virtual learning journeys for the past years: her signature #virtualexchange project is the Global Case Study Challenge, an award-winning global teaching project with more than 600 students from 22 countries across the globe.
She works and teaches in English, Spanish, Italian and German. Besides, she is a passionate dancer (13+ dancing styles) and developed a training concept with the title “Dance your way into leadership”.

Chaka Bachmann

Valeria Rodriguez Brondo

Emma Palmer

Hans W. Jablonski

Irene Afful

Joanna Menezes

Chaka Bachmann
Chaka (she/her) is an experienced equity and inclusion consultant and social justice researcher, who has led large scale state-of-the-nation mixed method research projects and provided full cycle DE&I programmes to a diverse mix of clients.
As an intersectional activist, Chaka has been passionate about social justice and community creation from a young age. Identifying as a queer Femme, that grew up in Germany in a dual heritage , has shaped Chaka's approach to DE&I activism which is built on empathy and accountability. Through this, Chaka facilitates spaces that encourage participants to reflect and engage in the change they want to see, focusing on unpacking dynamics of privilege and power and creating new places of belonging.
Chaka is the founder and director of Impact Culture, a company that achieves sustainable cultural change through an evidence-led approach, providing clients with nuanced insights into their current DE&I challenges and opportunities, which inform the development of contextualised and effective solutions.

Valeria Rodriguez Brondo
Global multilingual facilitator and trainer with a lifelong passion for exploring other countries, continents, and cultures, I always knew my career would be international in scope. I'm based in Paris but have lived in Africa, Latam, and Europe, and worked on five continents.
I'm a multilingual (Spanish, Portuguese, English, French and Italian) facilitator and trainer, specializing in organizational culture, intercultural management and leadership with a DEI view.
I have +15 years of experience in the management of diverse teams, supporting leaders across borders in both the public and private sectors. My expertise in international facilitation and intercultural integration helped me in facilitating international negotiations; I also held positions in project management and international sales.
Some organizations I facilitate include Safran, Saputo, BNP Paribas, Ikea, Glencore, Cartier, UN, OAS, Lyreco, American Tower, Axa and Haines McGregor among others.

Emma Palmer
Emma has worked with several businesses promoting inclusive workplace cultures through speaking, workshops, training, and consultancy. As an accomplished, compassionate, and purposeful leader with 10+ years’ experience serving systemically excluded communities during her work in equity, diversity and inclusion, and policing, Emma applies an intersectional lens to her work and has an excellent track-record of achievement, guiding strategic partnership development initiatives within organisations such as the NHS, where she supported the embedment of their new strategy across all areas of Cancer Services, and as Diversity and Inclusion Manager within a sports development charity where she began developing their first ever EDI strategy.
Emma’s unique background within the emergency services dovetailing with her EDI specialisms, experience, and insight, means she is well placed to support clients shape consciously inclusive cultures within their organisational structures. Emma uses her own lived experience and strategic insight to drive social change and support people to understand equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging at all levels.
She is also on the board of Trustees at LGBTQ+ Young Persons’ Trust, Mosaic, where she helps to advise on the strategic aims of the organisation, so that the most effective services can be delivered to LGBTQ+ young people across London.

Hans W. Jablonski
Hans W. Jablonski is senior consultant, trainer and owner of his company Jbd. He has gained more than 20 years’ practical experience in people and organisational development in different sectors. His expertise is Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Change Management.
With his experience in organisational change as both internal and external consultant, Hans is committed to work systemically to enable sustainable success. In the course of his career Hans Jablonski has worked with companies from a variety of sectors such as Ford, Motor Company, bp plc, Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, Commerzbank.
About ten years ago Hans Jablonski founded his company Jbd. Since then he has provided consulting to companies worldwide about introducing and conducting Change and Diversity Management. About a third of Germany’s DAX30 companies work with him and also many well-known small and medium size companies.
Hans worked successfully with leaders in various countries around the globe such as China, India, Brazil, USA, Japan and countries across Europe.
He was one of the first Diversity Managers in Germany and is co-author of the Diversity Charter in Germany and other European countries. Additionally, Hans is an expert panellist for the GDIB (Global D&I Benchmark tool) and member of the ISO Committee for defining a global D&I ISO/DIN guideline ISO 30415.

Irene Afful
Irene Afful MSc. has had a hugely successful career to date including becoming the first ever black female Inspector in the history of Merseyside Police. Her career incorporated critical incident management, professional standards, child protection, community engagement and serious crime investigations as a Detective Inspector with the Force.
In addition to her core role, she was instrumental in re-establishing, relaunching and chairing the Black Police Association, a support network for BME staff and served as Female Vice President of the National Black Police Association, advancing equality on the national stage.
Irene was also actively involved in the Women’s Network and Part Time & Flexible Workers Network. She is skilled at developing Positive Action initiatives to support the recruitment, retention and progression of minority groups. During this time Irene received many accolades and commendations and was featured in a local history book, ‘Liverpool Black Pioneers’.
Irene holds a Master’s degree in Police Leadership and is a published author of academic research concerning equality, diversity & inclusion, a subject she has had a lifelong passion for and lived experience. She is a trained coach and mentor.
Her expertise incorporates developing and writing ED&I strategies, policy review and development, cultural audits, data analysis, support networks, EDI training, coaching, mentoring and consultancy.
Irene has worked with clients come from a vast variety of businesses in the public, private and social enterprise sectors.
Irene is a highly sought-after keynote speaker, performing at an array of business and educational events and is a TEDx speaker. She is a Non-Executive Director on the Board at The Walton Centre NHS Trust and sits on the Board of Professional Liverpool.

Joanna Menezes
Joanna has worked in HR for over 20 years and more specifically in the fields of recruitment, career and skills development, outplacement and diversity & inclusion. In 2013, she undertook a master’s programme in International HRM and International Mobility during which she authored a research paper entitled “La diversité : un véritable levier de performance pour l’entreprise » (Diversity: a key performance driver for organizations”).
Since 2014, she has worked as a DE&I trainer with the aim of supporting organizations in creating and promoting an inclusive workplace. As such, she regularly delivers in-company training sessions and workshops on diversity & inclusion, intercultural and intergenerational management, gender diversity and inclusive leadership.
In addition to her work in DE&I, Joanna also enjoys helping individuals successfully manage their careers in a complex and ever-changing work environment through 1:1 coaching.
Her specialties include:
- Preparing for a new role or promotion
- Navigating professional transitions
- 4Developing specific skills: communication, interpersonal, organisational using the DiSC personality profiling tool
- Improving performance as a leader or manager
- Career management for women
- Ensuring a smooth expatriation, impatriation or repatriation
- Joanna is a certified coach from the Institute of Leadership & Management in London and is a member of the European
- Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) France
In 2020, she founded the Cala Learning Hub, an international learning community which offers monthly webinars in English and French during which professionals from different walks of life can meet to discuss various personal and professional development themes.

Chin Ru Foo
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Mathilde Kalkas

Francisca Beloso

Chin Ru Foo
Previously Global Innovation Director, Global Brand Director and Digital transformation lead with 25 years marketing and leadership experience, Chin Ru has worked globally in companies like Danone, Mars, Coca-Cola, Diageo & William Grant & Sons.
Chin Ru has led award winning global marketing campaigns, spearheaded organisation change agendas and is a passionate advocate for cultures that foster diversity, creativity and belonging.
She is a qualified Executive Coach (accredited by the ICF, EMCC and AC), passionate about partnering with leaders to build inclusive cultures with a growth mindset.
Chin Ru is the ex-Chair of the Gender Balance agenda, and a volunteer mentor at the Girls Network, a charity that aims to empower girls from disadvantaged communities.
She is a keynote speaker at conferences and a founding member of a community-owned media company on a mission to amplify diverse voices and tell stories of impact.
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Mathilde Kalkas
After a first part of her career within international industrial groups, as supply chain manager and commercial director, she redirected her professional activity towards supporting human potential.
Trained in executive and manager coaching, accredited by the Société Française de Coaching, consultant, trainer, she supports companies and individuals in unleashing their talents. Committed to making the company a place of fulfilment for all, she has designed and leads workshops on Diversity and Inclusion for her clients.
Convinced that true performance goes hand in hand with sustainability, she also trains companies and HR professionals in burnout prevention and stress management.
Specialized in the accompaniment of so-called atypical talents, or high potentials, she leads tailor-made leadership development programs. She has a particular appetite for supporting female talents, eager to enable women to free themselves from limiting conditioning and to unleash their full potential.

Francisca Beloso
Francisca Beloso is a MBA and Fellow CIPD qualified global HR Professional with more than 20 years Human Resources and Diversity, Equality and Inclusion experience.
Francisca has built a successful global HR career in the financial services (GE), Technology (Vodafone, Siemens, 3 and CBRE Data Centres) and Life Sciences (PRA Health Sciences/ICON).
Francisca is a SHL qualified user of ability tests Level A and Level B Verbal and Occupational Personality Tests) and she speaks Spanish, English and Italian.
Her MBA dissertation (Distinction) with Henley Business School focused in Equality and Diversity : ‘The impact that the lack of diversity of Clinical Trials had within an organisation’s Attraction and Retention strategies , September 2021’.

Charlotte Sweeney
OBE

Kay Allen
OBE

Mark Fenton

Charlotte Sweeney
OBE
Charlotte Sweeney, OBE has specialised in D&I for over 20 years. Inspired by her global corporate career in the Financial Services sector, she launched Charlotte Sweeney Associates in 2012.
She is a trail blazer in her field and thrives on empowering business leaders and organisations to create inclusive workplaces. The Sweeney Report was produced at the request of Sir Vince Cable and Lord Davies, examining the voluntary code of conduct for executive search firms. She also created the City of London’s Diversity Programme, The Power of Diversity on behalf of the then Lord Mayor of London Dame Fiona Woolf and was previously the Vice-Chair of the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Panel.
Charlotte has won many awards for her dedication to diversity. From Harvard, for her work in the D&I field to the International Alliance for Women for advancing the economic empowerment of women.
She is listed in the Northern Power Women Top 50 Power Women, included by The Economist as one of the Top 50 Diversity professionals in the world and is recognised as one of the Top Ten D&I Consultants by The Global Diversity List. In the 2017 New Year’s Honours, she was awarded an OBE for services to Women and Equalities.
Charlotte is co-author of the best-selling book Inclusive Leadership, published by Pearson/The Financial Times, which was shortlisted for the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) Management Book of the Year. She also writes regularly for professional publications including Hays, Virgin and CSR. As well as delivering keynote speeches and chairing conferences internationally, she is an expert contributor for BBC Radio, TV and the national press.

Kay Allen
OBE
Kay currently works as a Special Advisor to several companies working with them to design and implement responsible business, diversity and inclusion strategies. She is an Associate of CSA, working with Charlotte Sweeney to research issues impacting on inclusion and diversity. She also is a qualified performance coach to C Suite executives focusing on supporting leaders to succeed.
Kay’s previous roles include Director of Business Commitment for the UK Prime Minister’s Office, where she examined the impact of responsible business. Her commercial career includes Head of Social Action and Inclusion for Royal Mail Group, Public Affairs for BSkyB and Head of Inclusion for B&Q.
Kay has also held several Non-Executive roles including, Commissioner on both the Disability Rights Commission and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. She also served as a Non-Executive Director on the Department for Work and Pensions and currently sits on the Ofcom Consumer Panel in the UK.
Kay is a Fellow of St Georges House Windsor, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. As a qualified performance coach, Kay’s personal vision is to always help others to succeed and facilitating individuals to thrive in their chosen careers.

Mark Fenton
Mark supports organisations across all sectors in UK and Europe in designing and delivering sustainable diversity and inclusion strategies to future-proof their success. He is an Associate of CSA, working with Charlotte Sweeney to help clients create a D&I strategy that is right for them as well as support delivery of elements of the strategy.
Mark has over 20 years’ experience in global financial organisations, with a proven track record in finance, audit and business strategy garnered from his time with PwC, Schroders plc, Rothschild & Co, UBS & the AXA Group. Mark is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland and a Member of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment.
Mark has lived and worked in several cities globally. He holds a 1st Class Honours in Executive Coaching from the Irish Management Institute and is an active member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. He sits on the board of Screen Ireland (formerly the Irish Film Board), driving the gender equality and diversity committee and chairing the audit and risk committee.

Howell DiCocco

Liz Pawson-Poon

Michelle Mendelsson

Howell DiCocco
Howell has over 25 years’ human resources experience within global financial services, specialising in D&I, talent management, and cross-border HR. She is an Associate of CSA, working with Charlotte Sweeney to help clients create and deliver a sustainable D&I strategy.
Howell’s commitment to creating safe, inclusive cultures began as the Senior HR Business Partner to a line of business operating in 30 countries. She is passionate about this work and brings an abundance of practical experience in facilitating organisational assessment and action planning, council development, employee resource group facilitation, and development and delivery of education and awareness solutions.
Howell is based in the US. She has lived, worked and immersed herself in the local cultures of Hong Kong, Toronto and Zurich. She is a member of the Society for Human Resources Management and was previously a member of the Diversity and Inclusion Network (DIAN) of Community Business Hong Kong.

Liz Pawson-Poon
Liz has over 10 years’ experience in the financial and professional services industries, having trained and qualified as a lawyer at a Magic Circle firm and specialised in the financings of high-value mergers and acquisitions. Her previous clients ranged from global financial institutions, private equity funds and cross-border companies. Her legal studies and practice paved way for her pursuit of a career in DE&I, underpinned by the principles of equality, equity and fairness.
Since joining CSA, Liz has partnered with a range of companies as a DE&I Consultant. Projects include audits on policies and practices from a DE&I perspective, inclusion data collation and analysis, DE&I research focus groups, DE&I strategy and toolkit creation, DE&I training and workshops.
Liz has extensive experience managing projects by virtue of her previous transactional roles. She is also Programme Manager for CSA’s DE&I Professional Leadership Programme.
Having lived in Sydney and Hong Kong and worked in Singapore and London, Liz thrives on meeting and collaborating with people from different cultures and backgrounds.

Michelle Mendelsson
Michelle is a highly experienced Equity, Diversity and Inclusion expert and Executive Coach. She has spent the last 20 years of her career in the Financial Services sector as a senior leader in the Credit Suisse, Global Diversity and Inclusion practice, focussing on researching, developing, and implementing their EMEA DE&I strategy. Her remit covered all aspects of DE&I including Gender and Gender Identity, Race, Disability, LGBTQ+, Neurodiversity, Social Mobility and Flexible Working.
Prior to working in the Financial Services Sector Michelle spent 15 years in a variety of commercial management and HR positions at Marks and Spencer.
In addition to her strategic DE&I work Michelle also enjoys supporting and developing clients through 1:1 coaching. This includes helping individuals to overcome challenges, build confidence, improve overall performance, and ultimately to thrive in demanding and complex organisations. Areas of focus include identifying values and purpose, developing diverse networks and sponsorship relationships, leading more effectively, managing upwards, enhancing communication, navigating change and organisational politics. Her approach is naturally warm and empathic but also strategic and goal orientated.
Michelle has served on the Conference Board - Diversity and Inclusion in Business Council (Europe) and was a Trustee of the Credit Suisse Foundation for over 10 years. She is currently a Trustee of the Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice in North London.

Sung Hee Han

Coen Tan

Rodrigo Lolato

Sung Hee Han
Sung Hee is a career, leadership, and business coach, with a passion for developing Female and Asian leaders. She has extensive global executive leadership experience with Fortune 500 corporations, across 6 countries in 3 continents, Asia Pacific, the US and Europe. With 25+ years of front-line business experience, in High-Tech and FMCG, including Samsung Electronics, The Coca-Cola Company, Mars Inc., and British American Tobacco, she has been helping corporates and individuals to be at their best.
Since she set up her own coaching practice in 2019, she has had 500+ workshops and coaching sessions for clients from 7 countries, across 9 industry sectors. 70% of her clients are female, and 65% are senior managers and above level.
Her specialties include:
- Asian leadership
- Female leadership
- Cross-cultural effectiveness
- Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
- Self-confidence and Self-advocacy
- Creating impact and influence
- Business communication skills, esp. operating in English as a second language
- Career transition planning

Coen Tan
Growing up Coen has his own share of challenges, agonising pains, and tribulations in life. He was able to turn his adversaries into strength and took it as an opportunity to inspire people with his own stories.
Coen has over 12 years’ experience of being:
- A keynote speaker
- Trainer
- Coach, and
- Strategic Communications Consultant
Coen has spoken to and trained over 42,000 individuals and professionals in Singapore, China, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, USA, Canada, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, and Indonesia to name a few. His clients come from various sectors with notable names such as PayPal American Express Citibank. Siemens, Nestle, Prudential, AXA, Roche, Merck, AstraZeneca and Coca-Cola, among others. Coen desires to help professionals, business leaders, trainers, and educators to discover their true potentials as they face their major challenges in their professional and personal lives.

Rodrigo Lolato
Rodrigo is a business leader with more than 15 years of international experience as business executive, executive coach, and facilitator. As an Industrial Engineer, with MBA in Leadership & Specialisation in Psychology (Psychosynthesis), he is motivated to support leaders to grow and achieve their most important goals.
Rodrigo is known for his wide and deep knowledge, combining a practical approach with a profound understanding of human behaviour and motivations. Clients experience Rodrigo as a warm and challenging coach that truly believes in their potential and does everything he can in order to support them.
Topics he teachers (both workshops as well as MBA classes):
- Conflict Resolution
- Effective Leadership
- Productivity and Personal Effectiveness
- People Management
- Change Management
- Influencing others
- Strategic Agility
- Coaching
- Non-Violent Communication
He is also a Master Trainer (trainer of trainers) on many internationally known workshops such as ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, ‘Crucial Conversations’ and many others.
Partner of WYSE International (NGO from UK, affiliated to the UN) on international leadership programs aiming to empower young leaders for global change (working as coordinator, trainer and coach for those programmes).

Pia Kähärä

Joanna Smit

Sara Crawford

Pia Kähärä
A Finn with more than 25 years’ broad experience in domestic and international business in managerial positions. After graduation Pia led Finnish company’s Russian and CIS business, also establishing, and managing its representative office in Moscow. She later was responsible for export and international business development, managing and developing sales and marketing functions, consulting, and training.
Core strengths: broad business experience in international setting, ability to see the bigger picture and convert theory into practice, easily connects with different people, team player who is used to working internationally. Speaks several languages including Finnish (native), English & Russian (fluent) and Swedish, German and French (basic).
Since 2008, she has also worked as intercultural management (ICM) as a trainer for various international companies, specialising mainly in training their Western managers to improve their soft skills in operating in the Russian culture (leadership, negotiations, sales, partnership building etc), but also Russian managers to work in some European cultures.
She has a MBA in European Management, London South Bank University and a MA in Russian Translation and Interpretation, University of Eastern Finland.

Joanna Smit
Jo supports clients across 4 continents on delivering on their diversity and inclusion objectives. Her focus areas include designing and delivering inclusive cultures that translate cohesively across multiple geographical locations. She is an Associate of CSA, working with Charlotte Sweeney helping clients deliver on their international D&I strategy.
Jo brings over 10 years’ experience in the financial and banking industries, having worked for a bulge bracket investment bank in a number of countries. Her previous clients ranged from financial institutions, pension funds, hedge funds, government institutions and supranational bodies.
Jo is passionate about equality, diversity and inclusion and guest lecturers on the topic at several universities and business schools. She is a mentor with HERA (Her Equality Rights & Autonomy), supporting women survivors of human trafficking pursue a better life through entrepreneurship. Jo has lived and worked in several cities globally and is fluent in English, German & French.

Sara Crawford
Sara’s career has been within organisational and management roles across multiple sectors and industries and predominantly within early-stage businesses or those scaling up. She has over 30 years’ experience, managing projects and teams and covering all aspects of strategic change - business growth, business improvement, processes and procedures, communication, and sales and marketing.
She has a track record of building effective relationships with stakeholders and peers and strives to ensure the right culture within businesses is successfully delivered against this objective. Sara has ILM Certificate Levels 3 & 5 in Leadership and Management, C&G Award in Education & Training and is a certified PRINCE2 Practitioner.
She is also an experienced mentor, and has mentored individuals on both a professional and personal level.

Elizabeth Pollitt

Zoe McIntosh

Ali Boyes

Elizabeth Pollitt
Lizzie is a CSA Associate Consultant and is passionate about exploring the links between DE&I, society, and our workplaces. Having graduated university with a First-Class honours degree in Sociology, she’s expanding on her existing research into the impact Covid-19 has had on working mothers, identifying ways organisations can mitigate further disparities to benefit DE&I and our clients.
Prior to starting university, she spent three years working in a HR People Team within Financial Services, participating in their Diversity and Inclusion agenda alongside her role in their People Programme Team.
Lizzie supports CSA with research and data-driven insights for our clients throughout the delivery processes, from supporting with listening exercises to help uncover lived experiences, to analysing post-delivery data to help our clients with their next steps. Lizzie also takes a lead on CSA’s bespoke eLearning solution to help clients deliver against their DE&I learning ambitions at an organisational level, covering key theories and concepts to help advance understanding.

Zoe McIntosh
Zoe is a Graphic Designer with a specialism in branding design and supports CSA with all things design and marketing. As a creative, she has always appreciated how every seemingly minute detail tells a bigger story, this fuels her desires as a designer to pinpoint and encapsulate branding essences via bespoke visuals. Through her extensive marketing, branding and design knowledge, she facilitates the elevation of brands that best resonates to consumers.
Having studied Fashion Communication and Promotion at Nottingham Trent University, Zoe found herself engaging in conversation and interest around the lack of diversity in the creative industry which lead her into the world of DE&I.
Zoe is also-founder of Arise Creatives, a platform and podcast that exists to host pragmatic dialogue championing the unheard truths within the creative industry from black female perspectives.

Ali Boyes
Ali specialises in designing and delivering global sourcing strategies; adding value with best practice processes, clear policies, improved product and service offerings. She influences C-suite executives to introduce and accelerate supplier diversity initiatives, and build team capability, inclusivity and credibility. She is an Associate of CSA, focussed on driving forward change in the area of Inclusive Procurement.
Ali has over 20 years experience working in leading global retailers. Having worked up from an in-store manager to a senior Procurement leader, ensures Ali truly understands the challenges clients face to stay customer-centric. Ali's empathetic nature, and strong interpersonal skills bring practical, meaningful and tangible solutions.
Ali's key achievements include:
- Influencing main boards to adopt and launch Group wide policies and processes, including Procurement and Travel & Expense policies, delivering inclusive and equal experiences for colleagues and suppliers
- Overhaul in ways of working in Asian based sourcing teams within global organisations, embedding robust, sustainable and ethical processes along with inclusive cultures between Asian and European colleagues
- Speaker at Procurement conferences, such as Procurecon, bringing together Procurement leaders from across the globe for sharing of and benchmarking of best practices
- Extensive stakeholder mapping and engagement, including design and delivery of communication frameworks, leading to step change of Procurement within organisations and ensuring a seat at the table
Ali has lived and worked in several cities globally, including various European cities, Tokyo and Hong Kong and has a real passion for international travel and experiences. Ali truly understands the benefits and successes from bringing together people from different backgrounds and strives to partner with and foster relationships across all cultures.

Brigitte Opel

Anusha G Parshotam

Dr. Barbara Covarrubias Venegas

Brigitte Opel
Brigitte Opel was born and raised in Germany. She studied and worked in the US, Japan, Russia, Australia and various countries in Europe before settling in the Netherlands. In all these places, she experienced cultures and cultural differences first hand.
She studied the impact of cultural patterns on doing business in the global marketplace during her Masters study at Thunderbird School of International Management in USA and Japan. During her career at IBM in Germany and the Netherlands, she worked in international project teams for 17 years and managed teams across Europe. For more than 8 years, Brigitte has been using her international experience, in combination with professional models to help global organisations to work with the differences in cultures and perspectives and to generate synergies from these differences.
Besides consulting on cultural awareness in general, she has helped clients prepare for negotiations with international partners, improve the communication in a virtual team, develop sales presentations to foreign customers and gain sensitivity on different communication styles. In individual coaching sessions, she also helped expats to learn about the country culture of their next assignment. She has lectured at many Dutch universities on various aspects of National Culture (Communication, advertising, teamwork, sports, Brexit etc).

Anusha G Parshotam
Anusha is a commercial, pragmatic and highly focussed executive coach and leadership and development facilitator. She draws on psychological theories, her working experience and balances this with using practical interventions that are fit for purpose for organisations and individual clients. She continues to receive positive feedback for her ability to understand a client, being relevant, her style and knowledge.
She has worked across industries such as aviation, construction, finance, hospitality and consulting, to name a few. Her passion for D&I stems from her lived experiences and shares powerful authentic stories. Through her various roles in HR, she has been a lead on D&I strategy and execution.
Anusha has over 15 years of experience working in Senior Human Resources roles, working across different sectors and geographies (Global remit, Southern Africa and UK). She has extensive experience working strategically with organisations, leaders and managers in nurturing talent and building high performance teams in various sectors (FMCG, Professional Services, Financial Services, Legal, Education, Aviation, Public Services, Charities and Start Ups).

Dr. Barbara Covarrubias Venegas
Barbara is an Expert for New Ways of Working & Digital Leadership and Culture. She defines herself as a Virtual Enthusiast, researcher by education, speaker by passion and author by results. She is passionate about New Ways of Working & Learning, Positive Leadership & CULTURE overall. For the past 10 years, she has been very involved with the intercultural community across the globe, not only as a researcher or professional, but also as a virtual team leader and team member.
Barbara has specialised in DE&I topics since 2010 when she started to work as a research team lead at a university in Austria. Her PhD was about Gender and Age Diversity and the influence of stereotypes and unconscious bias on our careers.
As an educator, Barbara has been designing virtual learning journeys for the past years: her signature #virtualexchange project is the Global Case Study Challenge, an award-winning global teaching project with more than 600 students from 22 countries across the globe.
She works and teaches in English, Spanish, Italian and German. Besides, she is a passionate dancer (13+ dancing styles) and developed a training concept with the title “Dance your way into leadership”.

Chaka Bachmann

Valeria Rodriguez Brondo

Emma Palmer

Chaka Bachmann
Chaka (she/her) is an experienced equity and inclusion consultant and social justice researcher, who has led large scale state-of-the-nation mixed method research projects and provided full cycle DE&I programmes to a diverse mix of clients.
As an intersectional activist, Chaka has been passionate about social justice and community creation from a young age. Identifying as a queer Femme, that grew up in Germany in a dual heritage , has shaped Chaka's approach to DE&I activism which is built on empathy and accountability. Through this, Chaka facilitates spaces that encourage participants to reflect and engage in the change they want to see, focusing on unpacking dynamics of privilege and power and creating new places of belonging.
Chaka is the founder and director of Impact Culture, a company that achieves sustainable cultural change through an evidence-led approach, providing clients with nuanced insights into their current DE&I challenges and opportunities, which inform the development of contextualised and effective solutions.

Valeria Rodriguez Brondo
Global multilingual facilitator and trainer with a lifelong passion for exploring other countries, continents, and cultures, I always knew my career would be international in scope. I'm based in Paris but have lived in Africa, Latam, and Europe, and worked on five continents.
I'm a multilingual (Spanish, Portuguese, English, French and Italian) facilitator and trainer, specializing in organizational culture, intercultural management and leadership with a DEI view.
I have +15 years of experience in the management of diverse teams, supporting leaders across borders in both the public and private sectors. My expertise in international facilitation and intercultural integration helped me in facilitating international negotiations; I also held positions in project management and international sales.
Some organizations I facilitate include Safran, Saputo, BNP Paribas, Ikea, Glencore, Cartier, UN, OAS, Lyreco, American Tower, Axa and Haines McGregor among others.

Emma Palmer
Emma has worked with several businesses promoting inclusive workplace cultures through speaking, workshops, training, and consultancy. As an accomplished, compassionate, and purposeful leader with 10+ years’ experience serving systemically excluded communities during her work in equity, diversity and inclusion, and policing, Emma applies an intersectional lens to her work and has an excellent track-record of achievement, guiding strategic partnership development initiatives within organisations such as the NHS, where she supported the embedment of their new strategy across all areas of Cancer Services, and as Diversity and Inclusion Manager within a sports development charity where she began developing their first ever EDI strategy.
Emma’s unique background within the emergency services dovetailing with her EDI specialisms, experience, and insight, means she is well placed to support clients shape consciously inclusive cultures within their organisational structures. Emma uses her own lived experience and strategic insight to drive social change and support people to understand equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging at all levels.
She is also on the board of Trustees at LGBTQ+ Young Persons’ Trust, Mosaic, where she helps to advise on the strategic aims of the organisation, so that the most effective services can be delivered to LGBTQ+ young people across London.

Hans W. Jablonski

Irene Afful

Joanna Menezes

Hans W. Jablonski
Hans W. Jablonski is senior consultant, trainer and owner of his company Jbd. He has gained more than 20 years’ practical experience in people and organisational development in different sectors. His expertise is Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Change Management.
With his experience in organisational change as both internal and external consultant, Hans is committed to work systemically to enable sustainable success. In the course of his career Hans Jablonski has worked with companies from a variety of sectors such as Ford, Motor Company, bp plc, Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, Commerzbank.
About ten years ago Hans Jablonski founded his company Jbd. Since then he has provided consulting to companies worldwide about introducing and conducting Change and Diversity Management. About a third of Germany’s DAX30 companies work with him and also many well-known small and medium size companies.
Hans worked successfully with leaders in various countries around the globe such as China, India, Brazil, USA, Japan and countries across Europe.
He was one of the first Diversity Managers in Germany and is co-author of the Diversity Charter in Germany and other European countries. Additionally, Hans is an expert panellist for the GDIB (Global D&I Benchmark tool) and member of the ISO Committee for defining a global D&I ISO/DIN guideline ISO 30415.

Irene Afful
Irene Afful MSc. has had a hugely successful career to date including becoming the first ever black female Inspector in the history of Merseyside Police. Her career incorporated critical incident management, professional standards, child protection, community engagement and serious crime investigations as a Detective Inspector with the Force.
In addition to her core role, she was instrumental in re-establishing, relaunching and chairing the Black Police Association, a support network for BME staff and served as Female Vice President of the National Black Police Association, advancing equality on the national stage.
Irene was also actively involved in the Women’s Network and Part Time & Flexible Workers Network. She is skilled at developing Positive Action initiatives to support the recruitment, retention and progression of minority groups. During this time Irene received many accolades and commendations and was featured in a local history book, ‘Liverpool Black Pioneers’.
Irene holds a Master’s degree in Police Leadership and is a published author of academic research concerning equality, diversity & inclusion, a subject she has had a lifelong passion for and lived experience. She is a trained coach and mentor.
Her expertise incorporates developing and writing ED&I strategies, policy review and development, cultural audits, data analysis, support networks, EDI training, coaching, mentoring and consultancy.
Irene has worked with clients come from a vast variety of businesses in the public, private and social enterprise sectors.
Irene is a highly sought-after keynote speaker, performing at an array of business and educational events and is a TEDx speaker. She is a Non-Executive Director on the Board at The Walton Centre NHS Trust and sits on the Board of Professional Liverpool.

Joanna Menezes
Joanna has worked in HR for over 20 years and more specifically in the fields of recruitment, career and skills development, outplacement and diversity & inclusion. In 2013, she undertook a master’s programme in International HRM and International Mobility during which she authored a research paper entitled “La diversité : un véritable levier de performance pour l’entreprise » (Diversity: a key performance driver for organizations”).
Since 2014, she has worked as a DE&I trainer with the aim of supporting organizations in creating and promoting an inclusive workplace. As such, she regularly delivers in-company training sessions and workshops on diversity & inclusion, intercultural and intergenerational management, gender diversity and inclusive leadership.
In addition to her work in DE&I, Joanna also enjoys helping individuals successfully manage their careers in a complex and ever-changing work environment through 1:1 coaching.
Her specialties include:
- Preparing for a new role or promotion
- Navigating professional transitions
- 4Developing specific skills: communication, interpersonal, organisational using the DiSC personality profiling tool
- Improving performance as a leader or manager
- Career management for women
- Ensuring a smooth expatriation, impatriation or repatriation
- Joanna is a certified coach from the Institute of Leadership & Management in London and is a member of the European
- Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) France
In 2020, she founded the Cala Learning Hub, an international learning community which offers monthly webinars in English and French during which professionals from different walks of life can meet to discuss various personal and professional development themes.

Chin Ru Foo
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Mathilde Kalkas

Francisca Beloso

Chin Ru Foo
Previously Global Innovation Director, Global Brand Director and Digital transformation lead with 25 years marketing and leadership experience, Chin Ru has worked globally in companies like Danone, Mars, Coca-Cola, Diageo & William Grant & Sons.
Chin Ru has led award winning global marketing campaigns, spearheaded organisation change agendas and is a passionate advocate for cultures that foster diversity, creativity and belonging.
She is a qualified Executive Coach (accredited by the ICF, EMCC and AC), passionate about partnering with leaders to build inclusive cultures with a growth mindset.
Chin Ru is the ex-Chair of the Gender Balance agenda, and a volunteer mentor at the Girls Network, a charity that aims to empower girls from disadvantaged communities.
She is a keynote speaker at conferences and a founding member of a community-owned media company on a mission to amplify diverse voices and tell stories of impact.
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Mathilde Kalkas
After a first part of her career within international industrial groups, as supply chain manager and commercial director, she redirected her professional activity towards supporting human potential.
Trained in executive and manager coaching, accredited by the Société Française de Coaching, consultant, trainer, she supports companies and individuals in unleashing their talents. Committed to making the company a place of fulfilment for all, she has designed and leads workshops on Diversity and Inclusion for her clients.
Convinced that true performance goes hand in hand with sustainability, she also trains companies and HR professionals in burnout prevention and stress management.
Specialized in the accompaniment of so-called atypical talents, or high potentials, she leads tailor-made leadership development programs. She has a particular appetite for supporting female talents, eager to enable women to free themselves from limiting conditioning and to unleash their full potential.

Francisca Beloso
Francisca Beloso is a MBA and Fellow CIPD qualified global HR Professional with more than 20 years Human Resources and Diversity, Equality and Inclusion experience.
Francisca has built a successful global HR career in the financial services (GE), Technology (Vodafone, Siemens, 3 and CBRE Data Centres) and Life Sciences (PRA Health Sciences/ICON).
Francisca is a SHL qualified user of ability tests Level A and Level B Verbal and Occupational Personality Tests) and she speaks Spanish, English and Italian.
Her MBA dissertation (Distinction) with Henley Business School focused in Equality and Diversity : ‘The impact that the lack of diversity of Clinical Trials had within an organisation’s Attraction and Retention strategies , September 2021’.

Charlotte Sweeney
OBE

Kay Allen
OBE

Charlotte Sweeney
OBE
Charlotte Sweeney, OBE has specialised in D&I for over 20 years. Inspired by her global corporate career in the Financial Services sector, she launched Charlotte Sweeney Associates in 2012.
She is a trail blazer in her field and thrives on empowering business leaders and organisations to create inclusive workplaces. The Sweeney Report was produced at the request of Sir Vince Cable and Lord Davies, examining the voluntary code of conduct for executive search firms. She also created the City of London’s Diversity Programme, The Power of Diversity on behalf of the then Lord Mayor of London Dame Fiona Woolf and was previously the Vice-Chair of the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Panel.
Charlotte has won many awards for her dedication to diversity. From Harvard, for her work in the D&I field to the International Alliance for Women for advancing the economic empowerment of women.
She is listed in the Northern Power Women Top 50 Power Women, included by The Economist as one of the Top 50 Diversity professionals in the world and is recognised as one of the Top Ten D&I Consultants by The Global Diversity List. In the 2017 New Year’s Honours, she was awarded an OBE for services to Women and Equalities.
Charlotte is co-author of the best-selling book Inclusive Leadership, published by Pearson/The Financial Times, which was shortlisted for the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) Management Book of the Year. She also writes regularly for professional publications including Hays, Virgin and CSR. As well as delivering keynote speeches and chairing conferences internationally, she is an expert contributor for BBC Radio, TV and the national press.

Kay Allen
OBE
Kay currently works as a Special Advisor to several companies working with them to design and implement responsible business, diversity and inclusion strategies. She is an Associate of CSA, working with Charlotte Sweeney to research issues impacting on inclusion and diversity. She also is a qualified performance coach to C Suite executives focusing on supporting leaders to succeed.
Kay’s previous roles include Director of Business Commitment for the UK Prime Minister’s Office, where she examined the impact of responsible business. Her commercial career includes Head of Social Action and Inclusion for Royal Mail Group, Public Affairs for BSkyB and Head of Inclusion for B&Q.
Kay has also held several Non-Executive roles including, Commissioner on both the Disability Rights Commission and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. She also served as a Non-Executive Director on the Department for Work and Pensions and currently sits on the Ofcom Consumer Panel in the UK.
Kay is a Fellow of St Georges House Windsor, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. As a qualified performance coach, Kay’s personal vision is to always help others to succeed and facilitating individuals to thrive in their chosen careers.

Mark Fenton

Howell DiCocco

Mark Fenton
Mark supports organisations across all sectors in UK and Europe in designing and delivering sustainable diversity and inclusion strategies to future-proof their success. He is an Associate of CSA, working with Charlotte Sweeney to help clients create a D&I strategy that is right for them as well as support delivery of elements of the strategy.
Mark has over 20 years’ experience in global financial organisations, with a proven track record in finance, audit and business strategy garnered from his time with PwC, Schroders plc, Rothschild & Co, UBS & the AXA Group. Mark is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland and a Member of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment.
Mark has lived and worked in several cities globally. He holds a 1st Class Honours in Executive Coaching from the Irish Management Institute and is an active member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. He sits on the board of Screen Ireland (formerly the Irish Film Board), driving the gender equality and diversity committee and chairing the audit and risk committee.

Howell DiCocco
Howell has over 25 years’ human resources experience within global financial services, specialising in D&I, talent management, and cross-border HR. She is an Associate of CSA, working with Charlotte Sweeney to help clients create and deliver a sustainable D&I strategy.
Howell’s commitment to creating safe, inclusive cultures began as the Senior HR Business Partner to a line of business operating in 30 countries. She is passionate about this work and brings an abundance of practical experience in facilitating organisational assessment and action planning, council development, employee resource group facilitation, and development and delivery of education and awareness solutions.
Howell is based in the US. She has lived, worked and immersed herself in the local cultures of Hong Kong, Toronto and Zurich. She is a member of the Society for Human Resources Management and was previously a member of the Diversity and Inclusion Network (DIAN) of Community Business Hong Kong.

Liz Pawson-Poon

Michelle Mendelsson

Liz Pawson-Poon
Liz has over 10 years’ experience in the financial and professional services industries, having trained and qualified as a lawyer at a Magic Circle firm and specialised in the financings of high-value mergers and acquisitions. Her previous clients ranged from global financial institutions, private equity funds and cross-border companies. Her legal studies and practice paved way for her pursuit of a career in DE&I, underpinned by the principles of equality, equity and fairness.
Since joining CSA, Liz has partnered with a range of companies as a DE&I Consultant. Projects include audits on policies and practices from a DE&I perspective, inclusion data collation and analysis, DE&I research focus groups, DE&I strategy and toolkit creation, DE&I training and workshops.
Liz has extensive experience managing projects by virtue of her previous transactional roles. She is also Programme Manager for CSA’s DE&I Professional Leadership Programme.
Having lived in Sydney and Hong Kong and worked in Singapore and London, Liz thrives on meeting and collaborating with people from different cultures and backgrounds.

Michelle Mendelsson
Michelle is a highly experienced Equity, Diversity and Inclusion expert and Executive Coach. She has spent the last 20 years of her career in the Financial Services sector as a senior leader in the Credit Suisse, Global Diversity and Inclusion practice, focussing on researching, developing, and implementing their EMEA DE&I strategy. Her remit covered all aspects of DE&I including Gender and Gender Identity, Race, Disability, LGBTQ+, Neurodiversity, Social Mobility and Flexible Working.
Prior to working in the Financial Services Sector Michelle spent 15 years in a variety of commercial management and HR positions at Marks and Spencer.
In addition to her strategic DE&I work Michelle also enjoys supporting and developing clients through 1:1 coaching. This includes helping individuals to overcome challenges, build confidence, improve overall performance, and ultimately to thrive in demanding and complex organisations. Areas of focus include identifying values and purpose, developing diverse networks and sponsorship relationships, leading more effectively, managing upwards, enhancing communication, navigating change and organisational politics. Her approach is naturally warm and empathic but also strategic and goal orientated.
Michelle has served on the Conference Board - Diversity and Inclusion in Business Council (Europe) and was a Trustee of the Credit Suisse Foundation for over 10 years. She is currently a Trustee of the Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice in North London.

Sung Hee Han

Coen Tan

Sung Hee Han
Sung Hee is a career, leadership, and business coach, with a passion for developing Female and Asian leaders. She has extensive global executive leadership experience with Fortune 500 corporations, across 6 countries in 3 continents, Asia Pacific, the US and Europe. With 25+ years of front-line business experience, in High-Tech and FMCG, including Samsung Electronics, The Coca-Cola Company, Mars Inc., and British American Tobacco, she has been helping corporates and individuals to be at their best.
Since she set up her own coaching practice in 2019, she has had 500+ workshops and coaching sessions for clients from 7 countries, across 9 industry sectors. 70% of her clients are female, and 65% are senior managers and above level.
Her specialties include:
- Asian leadership
- Female leadership
- Cross-cultural effectiveness
- Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
- Self-confidence and Self-advocacy
- Creating impact and influence
- Business communication skills, esp. operating in English as a second language
- Career transition planning

Coen Tan
Growing up Coen has his own share of challenges, agonising pains, and tribulations in life. He was able to turn his adversaries into strength and took it as an opportunity to inspire people with his own stories.
Coen has over 12 years’ experience of being:
- A keynote speaker
- Trainer
- Coach, and
- Strategic Communications Consultant
Coen has spoken to and trained over 42,000 individuals and professionals in Singapore, China, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, USA, Canada, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, and Indonesia to name a few. His clients come from various sectors with notable names such as PayPal American Express Citibank. Siemens, Nestle, Prudential, AXA, Roche, Merck, AstraZeneca and Coca-Cola, among others. Coen desires to help professionals, business leaders, trainers, and educators to discover their true potentials as they face their major challenges in their professional and personal lives.

Rodrigo Lolato

Pia Kähärä

Rodrigo Lolato
Rodrigo is a business leader with more than 15 years of international experience as business executive, executive coach, and facilitator. As an Industrial Engineer, with MBA in Leadership & Specialisation in Psychology (Psychosynthesis), he is motivated to support leaders to grow and achieve their most important goals.
Rodrigo is known for his wide and deep knowledge, combining a practical approach with a profound understanding of human behaviour and motivations. Clients experience Rodrigo as a warm and challenging coach that truly believes in their potential and does everything he can in order to support them.
Topics he teachers (both workshops as well as MBA classes):
- Conflict Resolution
- Effective Leadership
- Productivity and Personal Effectiveness
- People Management
- Change Management
- Influencing others
- Strategic Agility
- Coaching
- Non-Violent Communication
He is also a Master Trainer (trainer of trainers) on many internationally known workshops such as ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, ‘Crucial Conversations’ and many others.
Partner of WYSE International (NGO from UK, affiliated to the UN) on international leadership programs aiming to empower young leaders for global change (working as coordinator, trainer and coach for those programmes).

Pia Kähärä
A Finn with more than 25 years’ broad experience in domestic and international business in managerial positions. After graduation Pia led Finnish company’s Russian and CIS business, also establishing, and managing its representative office in Moscow. She later was responsible for export and international business development, managing and developing sales and marketing functions, consulting, and training.
Core strengths: broad business experience in international setting, ability to see the bigger picture and convert theory into practice, easily connects with different people, team player who is used to working internationally. Speaks several languages including Finnish (native), English & Russian (fluent) and Swedish, German and French (basic).
Since 2008, she has also worked as intercultural management (ICM) as a trainer for various international companies, specialising mainly in training their Western managers to improve their soft skills in operating in the Russian culture (leadership, negotiations, sales, partnership building etc), but also Russian managers to work in some European cultures.
She has a MBA in European Management, London South Bank University and a MA in Russian Translation and Interpretation, University of Eastern Finland.

Joanna Smit

Sara Crawford

Joanna Smit
Jo supports clients across 4 continents on delivering on their diversity and inclusion objectives. Her focus areas include designing and delivering inclusive cultures that translate cohesively across multiple geographical locations. She is an Associate of CSA, working with Charlotte Sweeney helping clients deliver on their international D&I strategy.
Jo brings over 10 years’ experience in the financial and banking industries, having worked for a bulge bracket investment bank in a number of countries. Her previous clients ranged from financial institutions, pension funds, hedge funds, government institutions and supranational bodies.
Jo is passionate about equality, diversity and inclusion and guest lecturers on the topic at several universities and business schools. She is a mentor with HERA (Her Equality Rights & Autonomy), supporting women survivors of human trafficking pursue a better life through entrepreneurship. Jo has lived and worked in several cities globally and is fluent in English, German & French.

Sara Crawford
Sara’s career has been within organisational and management roles across multiple sectors and industries and predominantly within early-stage businesses or those scaling up. She has over 30 years’ experience, managing projects and teams and covering all aspects of strategic change - business growth, business improvement, processes and procedures, communication, and sales and marketing.
She has a track record of building effective relationships with stakeholders and peers and strives to ensure the right culture within businesses is successfully delivered against this objective. Sara has ILM Certificate Levels 3 & 5 in Leadership and Management, C&G Award in Education & Training and is a certified PRINCE2 Practitioner.
She is also an experienced mentor, and has mentored individuals on both a professional and personal level.

Elizabeth Pollitt

Zoe McIntosh

Elizabeth Pollitt
Lizzie is a CSA Associate Consultant and is passionate about exploring the links between DE&I, society, and our workplaces. Having graduated university with a First-Class honours degree in Sociology, she’s expanding on her existing research into the impact Covid-19 has had on working mothers, identifying ways organisations can mitigate further disparities to benefit DE&I and our clients.
Prior to starting university, she spent three years working in a HR People Team within Financial Services, participating in their Diversity and Inclusion agenda alongside her role in their People Programme Team.
Lizzie supports CSA with research and data-driven insights for our clients throughout the delivery processes, from supporting with listening exercises to help uncover lived experiences, to analysing post-delivery data to help our clients with their next steps. Lizzie also takes a lead on CSA’s bespoke eLearning solution to help clients deliver against their DE&I learning ambitions at an organisational level, covering key theories and concepts to help advance understanding.

Zoe McIntosh
Zoe is a Graphic Designer with a specialism in branding design and supports CSA with all things design and marketing. As a creative, she has always appreciated how every seemingly minute detail tells a bigger story, this fuels her desires as a designer to pinpoint and encapsulate branding essences via bespoke visuals. Through her extensive marketing, branding and design knowledge, she facilitates the elevation of brands that best resonates to consumers.
Having studied Fashion Communication and Promotion at Nottingham Trent University, Zoe found herself engaging in conversation and interest around the lack of diversity in the creative industry which lead her into the world of DE&I.
Zoe is also-founder of Arise Creatives, a platform and podcast that exists to host pragmatic dialogue championing the unheard truths within the creative industry from black female perspectives.

Ali Boyes

Brigitte Opel

Ali Boyes
Ali specialises in designing and delivering global sourcing strategies; adding value with best practice processes, clear policies, improved product and service offerings. She influences C-suite executives to introduce and accelerate supplier diversity initiatives, and build team capability, inclusivity and credibility. She is an Associate of CSA, focussed on driving forward change in the area of Inclusive Procurement.
Ali has over 20 years experience working in leading global retailers. Having worked up from an in-store manager to a senior Procurement leader, ensures Ali truly understands the challenges clients face to stay customer-centric. Ali's empathetic nature, and strong interpersonal skills bring practical, meaningful and tangible solutions.
Ali's key achievements include:
- Influencing main boards to adopt and launch Group wide policies and processes, including Procurement and Travel & Expense policies, delivering inclusive and equal experiences for colleagues and suppliers
- Overhaul in ways of working in Asian based sourcing teams within global organisations, embedding robust, sustainable and ethical processes along with inclusive cultures between Asian and European colleagues
- Speaker at Procurement conferences, such as Procurecon, bringing together Procurement leaders from across the globe for sharing of and benchmarking of best practices
- Extensive stakeholder mapping and engagement, including design and delivery of communication frameworks, leading to step change of Procurement within organisations and ensuring a seat at the table
Ali has lived and worked in several cities globally, including various European cities, Tokyo and Hong Kong and has a real passion for international travel and experiences. Ali truly understands the benefits and successes from bringing together people from different backgrounds and strives to partner with and foster relationships across all cultures.

Brigitte Opel
Brigitte Opel was born and raised in Germany. She studied and worked in the US, Japan, Russia, Australia and various countries in Europe before settling in the Netherlands. In all these places, she experienced cultures and cultural differences first hand.
She studied the impact of cultural patterns on doing business in the global marketplace during her Masters study at Thunderbird School of International Management in USA and Japan. During her career at IBM in Germany and the Netherlands, she worked in international project teams for 17 years and managed teams across Europe. For more than 8 years, Brigitte has been using her international experience, in combination with professional models to help global organisations to work with the differences in cultures and perspectives and to generate synergies from these differences.
Besides consulting on cultural awareness in general, she has helped clients prepare for negotiations with international partners, improve the communication in a virtual team, develop sales presentations to foreign customers and gain sensitivity on different communication styles. In individual coaching sessions, she also helped expats to learn about the country culture of their next assignment. She has lectured at many Dutch universities on various aspects of National Culture (Communication, advertising, teamwork, sports, Brexit etc).

Anusha G Parshotam

Dr. Barbara Covarrubias Venegas

Anusha G Parshotam
Anusha is a commercial, pragmatic and highly focussed executive coach and leadership and development facilitator. She draws on psychological theories, her working experience and balances this with using practical interventions that are fit for purpose for organisations and individual clients. She continues to receive positive feedback for her ability to understand a client, being relevant, her style and knowledge.
She has worked across industries such as aviation, construction, finance, hospitality and consulting, to name a few. Her passion for D&I stems from her lived experiences and shares powerful authentic stories. Through her various roles in HR, she has been a lead on D&I strategy and execution.
Anusha has over 15 years of experience working in Senior Human Resources roles, working across different sectors and geographies (Global remit, Southern Africa and UK). She has extensive experience working strategically with organisations, leaders and managers in nurturing talent and building high performance teams in various sectors (FMCG, Professional Services, Financial Services, Legal, Education, Aviation, Public Services, Charities and Start Ups).

Dr. Barbara Covarrubias Venegas
Barbara is an Expert for New Ways of Working & Digital Leadership and Culture. She defines herself as a Virtual Enthusiast, researcher by education, speaker by passion and author by results. She is passionate about New Ways of Working & Learning, Positive Leadership & CULTURE overall. For the past 10 years, she has been very involved with the intercultural community across the globe, not only as a researcher or professional, but also as a virtual team leader and team member.
Barbara has specialised in DE&I topics since 2010 when she started to work as a research team lead at a university in Austria. Her PhD was about Gender and Age Diversity and the influence of stereotypes and unconscious bias on our careers.
As an educator, Barbara has been designing virtual learning journeys for the past years: her signature #virtualexchange project is the Global Case Study Challenge, an award-winning global teaching project with more than 600 students from 22 countries across the globe.
She works and teaches in English, Spanish, Italian and German. Besides, she is a passionate dancer (13+ dancing styles) and developed a training concept with the title “Dance your way into leadership”.

Chaka Bachmann

Valeria Rodriguez Brondo

Chaka Bachmann
Chaka (she/her) is an experienced equity and inclusion consultant and social justice researcher, who has led large scale state-of-the-nation mixed method research projects and provided full cycle DE&I programmes to a diverse mix of clients.
As an intersectional activist, Chaka has been passionate about social justice and community creation from a young age. Identifying as a queer Femme, that grew up in Germany in a dual heritage , has shaped Chaka's approach to DE&I activism which is built on empathy and accountability. Through this, Chaka facilitates spaces that encourage participants to reflect and engage in the change they want to see, focusing on unpacking dynamics of privilege and power and creating new places of belonging.
Chaka is the founder and director of Impact Culture, a company that achieves sustainable cultural change through an evidence-led approach, providing clients with nuanced insights into their current DE&I challenges and opportunities, which inform the development of contextualised and effective solutions.

Valeria Rodriguez Brondo
Global multilingual facilitator and trainer with a lifelong passion for exploring other countries, continents, and cultures, I always knew my career would be international in scope. I'm based in Paris but have lived in Africa, Latam, and Europe, and worked on five continents.
I'm a multilingual (Spanish, Portuguese, English, French and Italian) facilitator and trainer, specializing in organizational culture, intercultural management and leadership with a DEI view.
I have +15 years of experience in the management of diverse teams, supporting leaders across borders in both the public and private sectors. My expertise in international facilitation and intercultural integration helped me in facilitating international negotiations; I also held positions in project management and international sales.
Some organizations I facilitate include Safran, Saputo, BNP Paribas, Ikea, Glencore, Cartier, UN, OAS, Lyreco, American Tower, Axa and Haines McGregor among others.

Emma Palmer

Hans W. Jablonski

Emma Palmer
Emma has worked with several businesses promoting inclusive workplace cultures through speaking, workshops, training, and consultancy. As an accomplished, compassionate, and purposeful leader with 10+ years’ experience serving systemically excluded communities during her work in equity, diversity and inclusion, and policing, Emma applies an intersectional lens to her work and has an excellent track-record of achievement, guiding strategic partnership development initiatives within organisations such as the NHS, where she supported the embedment of their new strategy across all areas of Cancer Services, and as Diversity and Inclusion Manager within a sports development charity where she began developing their first ever EDI strategy.
Emma’s unique background within the emergency services dovetailing with her EDI specialisms, experience, and insight, means she is well placed to support clients shape consciously inclusive cultures within their organisational structures. Emma uses her own lived experience and strategic insight to drive social change and support people to understand equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging at all levels.
She is also on the board of Trustees at LGBTQ+ Young Persons’ Trust, Mosaic, where she helps to advise on the strategic aims of the organisation, so that the most effective services can be delivered to LGBTQ+ young people across London.

Hans W. Jablonski
Hans W. Jablonski is senior consultant, trainer and owner of his company Jbd. He has gained more than 20 years’ practical experience in people and organisational development in different sectors. His expertise is Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Change Management.
With his experience in organisational change as both internal and external consultant, Hans is committed to work systemically to enable sustainable success. In the course of his career Hans Jablonski has worked with companies from a variety of sectors such as Ford, Motor Company, bp plc, Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, Commerzbank.
About ten years ago Hans Jablonski founded his company Jbd. Since then he has provided consulting to companies worldwide about introducing and conducting Change and Diversity Management. About a third of Germany’s DAX30 companies work with him and also many well-known small and medium size companies.
Hans worked successfully with leaders in various countries around the globe such as China, India, Brazil, USA, Japan and countries across Europe.
He was one of the first Diversity Managers in Germany and is co-author of the Diversity Charter in Germany and other European countries. Additionally, Hans is an expert panellist for the GDIB (Global D&I Benchmark tool) and member of the ISO Committee for defining a global D&I ISO/DIN guideline ISO 30415.

Irene Afful

Joanna Menezes

Irene Afful
Irene Afful MSc. has had a hugely successful career to date including becoming the first ever black female Inspector in the history of Merseyside Police. Her career incorporated critical incident management, professional standards, child protection, community engagement and serious crime investigations as a Detective Inspector with the Force.
In addition to her core role, she was instrumental in re-establishing, relaunching and chairing the Black Police Association, a support network for BME staff and served as Female Vice President of the National Black Police Association, advancing equality on the national stage.
Irene was also actively involved in the Women’s Network and Part Time & Flexible Workers Network. She is skilled at developing Positive Action initiatives to support the recruitment, retention and progression of minority groups. During this time Irene received many accolades and commendations and was featured in a local history book, ‘Liverpool Black Pioneers’.
Irene holds a Master’s degree in Police Leadership and is a published author of academic research concerning equality, diversity & inclusion, a subject she has had a lifelong passion for and lived experience. She is a trained coach and mentor.
Her expertise incorporates developing and writing ED&I strategies, policy review and development, cultural audits, data analysis, support networks, EDI training, coaching, mentoring and consultancy.
Irene has worked with clients come from a vast variety of businesses in the public, private and social enterprise sectors.
Irene is a highly sought-after keynote speaker, performing at an array of business and educational events and is a TEDx speaker. She is a Non-Executive Director on the Board at The Walton Centre NHS Trust and sits on the Board of Professional Liverpool.

Joanna Menezes
Joanna has worked in HR for over 20 years and more specifically in the fields of recruitment, career and skills development, outplacement and diversity & inclusion. In 2013, she undertook a master’s programme in International HRM and International Mobility during which she authored a research paper entitled “La diversité : un véritable levier de performance pour l’entreprise » (Diversity: a key performance driver for organizations”).
Since 2014, she has worked as a DE&I trainer with the aim of supporting organizations in creating and promoting an inclusive workplace. As such, she regularly delivers in-company training sessions and workshops on diversity & inclusion, intercultural and intergenerational management, gender diversity and inclusive leadership.
In addition to her work in DE&I, Joanna also enjoys helping individuals successfully manage their careers in a complex and ever-changing work environment through 1:1 coaching.
Her specialties include:
- Preparing for a new role or promotion
- Navigating professional transitions
- 4Developing specific skills: communication, interpersonal, organisational using the DiSC personality profiling tool
- Improving performance as a leader or manager
- Career management for women
- Ensuring a smooth expatriation, impatriation or repatriation
- Joanna is a certified coach from the Institute of Leadership & Management in London and is a member of the European
- Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) France
In 2020, she founded the Cala Learning Hub, an international learning community which offers monthly webinars in English and French during which professionals from different walks of life can meet to discuss various personal and professional development themes.

Chin Ru Foo
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Mathilde Kalkas

Chin Ru Foo
Previously Global Innovation Director, Global Brand Director and Digital transformation lead with 25 years marketing and leadership experience, Chin Ru has worked globally in companies like Danone, Mars, Coca-Cola, Diageo & William Grant & Sons.
Chin Ru has led award winning global marketing campaigns, spearheaded organisation change agendas and is a passionate advocate for cultures that foster diversity, creativity and belonging.
She is a qualified Executive Coach (accredited by the ICF, EMCC and AC), passionate about partnering with leaders to build inclusive cultures with a growth mindset.
Chin Ru is the ex-Chair of the Gender Balance agenda, and a volunteer mentor at the Girls Network, a charity that aims to empower girls from disadvantaged communities.
She is a keynote speaker at conferences and a founding member of a community-owned media company on a mission to amplify diverse voices and tell stories of impact.
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Mathilde Kalkas
After a first part of her career within international industrial groups, as supply chain manager and commercial director, she redirected her professional activity towards supporting human potential.
Trained in executive and manager coaching, accredited by the Société Française de Coaching, consultant, trainer, she supports companies and individuals in unleashing their talents. Committed to making the company a place of fulfilment for all, she has designed and leads workshops on Diversity and Inclusion for her clients.
Convinced that true performance goes hand in hand with sustainability, she also trains companies and HR professionals in burnout prevention and stress management.
Specialized in the accompaniment of so-called atypical talents, or high potentials, she leads tailor-made leadership development programs. She has a particular appetite for supporting female talents, eager to enable women to free themselves from limiting conditioning and to unleash their full potential.

Francisca Beloso

Francisca Beloso
Francisca Beloso is a MBA and Fellow CIPD qualified global HR Professional with more than 20 years Human Resources and Diversity, Equality and Inclusion experience.
Francisca has built a successful global HR career in the financial services (GE), Technology (Vodafone, Siemens, 3 and CBRE Data Centres) and Life Sciences (PRA Health Sciences/ICON).
Francisca is a SHL qualified user of ability tests Level A and Level B Verbal and Occupational Personality Tests) and she speaks Spanish, English and Italian.
Her MBA dissertation (Distinction) with Henley Business School focused in Equality and Diversity : ‘The impact that the lack of diversity of Clinical Trials had within an organisation’s Attraction and Retention strategies , September 2021’.