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Power 100 Women

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Power 100: TSB's Helen Rose on how she made it
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Too few women get to the top in the finance industry. Time to change that

Jayne-Anne Gadhia
Jayne-Anne Gadhia | Contributor

About Power 100 Women

If one thing was made clear by “heels-gate” - the fiasco caused last week after a young receptionist was sent home from her first day of work because she refused to don a pair of stilettos - it was that despite our best efforts, in some pockets of the City, old-fashioned attitudes persist.

But during our Power 100 breakfast event yesterday, there was a consensus among those on the panel. While we have, for the large part, dispensed with overt sexism, we’re left with unconscious bias. So the next challenge for leaders is dispensing with those subconscious decisions to hire and promote those with the same background.

The panel, which included RSM chief executive Jean Stephens, Tech City chief of staff Caroline Makepeace, A Very Good Company founder Natalie Campbell and Virgin Money chief executive Jayne-Anne Gadhia, agreed: the only way to beat dated views of women’s roles is to “be the best you”. Or, as Campbell put it: “do what you damn well please”.

From bosses to millennials, from property to accountancy, we’ve put together the Power 100 to highlight the talkers, the thinkers, the women influencing policy and changing the way the City thinks. In other words, these are the women in the City who are beating that unconscious bias the best way they can: doing what they damn well please - and doing it well.

Fundamentally, if you're good at your job, you can stand your ground
Jayne-Anne Gadhia, Virgin Money

Power 100 Women

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Beth Brooke-Marciniak

EY
Global vice chair Brooke-Marciniak joined EY in 1981. She has since held leadership roles including US national director of tax advisory services. She also worked in the US Department of the Treasury during the Clinton administration.

Ingrid Waterfield

KPMG
Having trained as an auditor with PwC, Waterfield is currently leading KPMG’s contribution to the 30 per cent Club’s focus on women, producing research in conjunction with the organisation.

Jean Stephens

RSM
After joining RSM in 1996, Stephens was named chief executive in 2006. In 2007 she established the RSM Academy, an international leadership programme aimed at developing the skills of RSM's future leaders.

Maria Pinelli

EY
During over 25 years at EY, its global vice chair of strategic growth markets, who speaks English, French and Italian, has led more than 20 IPOs across three continents. In addition to her role at EY, she is vice chair of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurs.

Michelle Quest

KPMG
KPMG’s UK head of tax, pensions and legal services, joined in 1997 and has been a tax partner for 12 years. She previously headed up the UK private equity and EMA M&A tax practices.

Sacha Romanovitch

Grant Thornton UK
With a masters in chemistry from Oxford, Romanovitch began her career in Grant Thornton in 1990. She became a partner in 2001 and was named the first female boss of a major City accountancy firm last year. At the time, she unveiled a John Lewis-style profit share scheme for her staff, which the company suggested would boost salaries by 25 per cent.

Sharon Thorne

Deloitte
In addition to her role as global managing partner at Deloitte, Thorne is a non-executive director of the CBI. With PPE degree from Oxford, she joined a predecessor of Deloitte in 1986, and was made partner in 1998.

Sharron Gunn

ICAEW
Gunn joined the ICAEW in 2001 as head of development and moved on to become executive director of its commercial team in 2012. Having qualified as a chartered accountant in 1989, she has previously worked for Sainsbury’s as group management accountant and financial analyst.

Stephanie Hyde

PwC
PwC’s head of regions joined in 1995 and became a partner in 2006. She joined PwC's executive board as its youngest ever member in 2011. She is also a member of the Institute of Directors' Good Governance Advisory Panel.

Tracey Groves

PwC
Groves joined PwC as a trainee chartered accountant in 1991. In addition to her role as governance, risk and compliance leader, she is also chair of PwC’s gender balance network, which has been named among the world’s 10 best women employees networks.

Alison Rose

RBS
After more than 20 years climbing the ranks at RBS, the chief executive of its commercial and private banking arm is the lender’s highest-ranking woman, leading a team of more than 16,000 people.

Beatriz Martin

UBS
The chief operating officer of UBS’ investment bank moved to her role in October 2015, having previously held the same role for the UK arm of the bank. She joined UBS in 2012 from Morgan Stanley, where she had run the lender’s solutions sales arm in Switzerland.

Charlotte Crosswell

Nasdaq NLX
The chief executive of Nasdaq NLX has overseen Nasdaq’s London-based interest rate derivatives market since its inception in 2013. She is also board director at LCH.Clearnet, as well as City lobbying organisation TheCityUK.

Francesca McDonagh

HSBC UK
HSBC’s head of retail banking and wealth management joined its graduate scheme in 1997. She has worked in the UK, Indonesia, Mexico, Panama, Hong Kong and Dubai. The Oxford University grad is also on the board of MasterCard.

Helen Rose

TSB
Now chief operating officer, Rose joined Lloyds TSB in 2005, and was responsible for integrating the retail businesses of Lloyds TSB and HBOS, before overseeing the creation of a new challenger bank, TSB. She has held finance roles at Safeway and Dixons.

Ilaria del Beato

GE Capital UK
With 25 years’ experience in commercial real estate, del Beato joined GE in 2003 in its UK real estate business. After becoming managing director of that, she was promoted to chief executive of GE Capital UK in March 2013.

Maria Ramos

Barclays Africa Group
The chief executive of Barclays’ African business - which it recently began the selloff of - joined in 2009, having previously been group chief executive of Transnet, a state-owned South African logistics firm. She has also served as director general of South Africa’s National Treasury, and is on the board of SAB Miller.

Noreen Whyte

Morgan Stanley
The managing director of Morgan Stanley’s global capital markets group, Whyte has more than 20 years of business management and loans experience. Prior to joining in 2005, she spent 12 years at GE.

Stephanie Smith

Allianz Insurance
In December Allianz announced that after 6 years at the company, it was promoting Smith to chief operating officer. She had stints at Rolls-Royce, Deloitte and British Airways before she moved to Allianz in 2009.

Tina Fordham

Citigroup
Citigroup’s chief global political analyst was among the first dedicated political analysts on Wall Street. After moving to London in 2004, she served as senior adviser to Tony Blair’s strategy unit. She is on the UN’s high-level panel on women’s economic empowerment.

Alison Brittain

Whitbread
The former Lloyds retail boss was not the obvious choice to take over Whitbread in January this year. However, chairman Richard Baker described her approach as a “perfect fit”. She is also a non-executive director at Marks & Spencer.

Alison Cooper

Imperial Brands
Cooper joined the world’s fourth largest tobacco company in 1999 and was appointed chief executive in 2010. She has turned Imperial’s strategy towards prioritising high-growth markets, and pursued new products, notably e-cigarettes, through the firm’s Fontem Ventures subsidiary.

Amanda Blanc

Axa Insurance
Blanc was appointed chief executive of Axa Insurance’s commercial lines division in March 2011 and clearly impressed the bosses by January this year her remit was broadened to include the entirety of Axa’s insurance business in the UK & Ireland.

Ana Botin

Santander
Harvard Business School-educated Botin has been executive chairman of Santander since she was appointed following the death of her father in 2014. She spent eight years at JP Morgan before returning to help run the family business in 1989. She was awarded an honorary damehood last Christmas.

Dame Carolyn McCall

EasyJet
The former Guardian boss joined EasyJet as chief executive in 2010. Since then, it has made record profits, paying its first dividend in 2012 - a year before it entered the FTSE 100. McCall was made a Dame in 2016.

Inga Beale

Lloyd’s of London
Beale joined Lloyd’s in January 2014 after stints at Canopius and Zurich. Beale has focused her efforts on modernising the institution, embracing technology and pushing discussions about topics such as cyber-security and terrorism.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia

Virgin Money
Once dubbed the “first lady of UK finance”, Gadhia has been the chief executive of Virgin Money since 2007, leading its £1.25bn flotation last year. Richard Branson appointed her to oversee his bid to buy Northern Rock in 2008 (although the company didn’t get its hands on the lender until 2012). She was asked by the Treasury to head a review into the high rates of women leaving the financial industry.

Liv Garfield

Severn Trent
Garfield is the former head of BT Openreach, where she spearheaded the rollout of its fibre network, before joining the Severn Trent in 2014. She has been named as one of the government’s business ambassadors, and until last year she was a non-executive director at Tesco.

Moya Greene

Royal Mail
The former chief exec of Canada’s postal service is the first non-Briton to head Royal Mail, where she has been since 2010. Named the FT’s Person of the Year in 2014 for her transformation of the company, she led its controversial privatisation in 2013.

Veronique Laury

Kingfisher
Laury was appointed as Kingfisher’s chief executive in 2014, after working at its French subsidiary Castorama from 2003. In January she launched a five-year overhaul of the company, aiming to increase profits by £500m by the end of the fifth year.

Bridget Rosewell

Volterra
Formerly chief economist at the GLA, Rosewell is senior adviser at Volterra, as well as being a non-exec director at Network Rail. Her latest book, Reinventing London, explores post-crisis London. She was awarded an OBE in 2013.

Dame Kate Barker

Office for Budget Responsibility
A former member of the monetary policy committee and CBI chief economic adviser Barker has led two reviews into housing, leading to a CBE in 2006. She is senior adviser to Credit Suisse, as well as non-exec director at Taylor Wimpey and Yorkshire Building Society.

Diane Coyle

University of Manchester
Twitter enthusiast Coyle is a fellow of the ONS and Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester. She has written several books, and has held roles at the Treasury and the BBC Trust. She was awarded the OBE in 2009.

Elga Bartsch

Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley’s chief European economist has been named one of the 100 most influential women in European finance. She is a member of Handelsblatt’s European Central Bank Shadow Bank, and a trustee of German economic think tank the Ifo Institute.

Kristin Forbes

Bank of England
With a much-coveted place on the monetary policy committee, Forbes holds the fate of City institutions in her hands. As well as being a professor of management at MIT, Forbes has been deputy assistant secretary in the US Treasury department.

Minouche Shafik

Bank of England
Once the World Bank’s youngest-ever vice president, and with degrees from Oxford, LSE and Massachusetts-Amherst, Shafik was appointed as deputy governor of markets and banking at the Bank of England by Mark Carney in August 2014, making her arguably the City’s most powerful woman. Having chaired the BoE’s much-anticipated Fair and Effective Markets Review, Shafik has been outspoken on the importance of improving City culture.

Rain Newton-Smith

CBI
Having tackled everything from Middle Eastern financial stability to global forecasting during stints at the IMF, Bank of England and Oxford Economics, the CBI’s director of economics is now attempting to persuade the UK’s electorate to vote “Remain” in June.

Ruth Lea

Arbuthnot Banking Group
An outspoken Brexiteer, Arbuthnot’s economic adviser achieved notoriety in February when she resigned as chairman of eurosceptic Economists for Britain. Lea has held roles at the Centre for Policy Studies, the Institute of Directors and ITN. She was awarded a CBE in 2014.

Vicky Pryce

CEBR
After nine weeks in jail in 2013, Pryce published her well-received book, Prisonomics. She has served as a senior managing director at FTI and as director general for economics at the Department for Business. Most importantly, she’s a member of City A.M.’s Shadow MPC.

Yael Selfin

KPMG
Having held roles at PwC, Volterra and her own consultancy, Edymar, Selfin joined KPMG as head of macroeconomics in 2014, where she works with private clients, as well as providing advice to government departments.

Amanda Staveley

PCP Capital Partners
In 2005 veteran dealmaker Staveley set up her investment vehicle, best known for its role in Barclays’ £7.3bn bailout in 2008. She represented Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, as he and a group of investors rescued the lender from a taxpayer bailout.

Image credit: Getty

Baroness Martha Lane Fox

Entrepreneur
Lane Fox made her name with Lastminute.com, which she floated in 2000. Since then she has founded karaoke chain Lucky Voice and become chancellor of the Open University. In 2013 she joined the House of Lords - the youngest woman ever in the upper chamber.

Image credit: Flickr/Open-University

Elizabeth Varley

TechHub
Varley founded TechHub, the global tech startup community, in 2009. Based in Shoreditch, the firm has co-working spaces in six cities including Boston and Bangalore. She was a founding member of the DigitalEve women in technology organisation.

Julie Meyer

Ariadne Capital
Meyer set up First Tuesday, the network for internet entrepreneurs, in 1998 and sold it for $50m (£35m) in 2000. She built Ariadne Capital to support technology start-ups, and in 2008 she created EntrepreneurCountry Global, a community for digital entrepreneurs.

Kathryn Parsons

Decoded
Parsons co-founded Decoded in January 2011 to “demystify the digital dark arts”. The digital training school now has offices in New York, London and Sydney. The Cambridge classics graduate was Greater London’s Tech City Ambassador in 2014.

Nicola Horlick

Money & Co
Dubbed the City’s “superwoman”, Horlick has more than 30 years’ experience. As well as founding several investment businesses, she is a director of an NHS Foundation Trust and runs a film-development firm Derby Street Films. She now runs crowdfunder Money&Co.

Rebecca Harding

Equant-Analytics
Harding co-founded Equant-Analytics, and has held roles including senior fellow at London Business School, head of corporate research at Deloitte and specialist adviser to the Treasury Select Committee. If that’s not enough, she has also published eight books.

Sam Smith

FinnCap
After qualifying as a chartered accountant and spending three years at KPMG, Smith joined investment manager JM Finn in 1998, where she helped lead the buyout of its corporate finance division in 2007, the result of which was FinnCap. One of very few female chief executives of a City broker, Smith is also involved in various mentoring initiatives, including the Women of the Future awards.

Sarah Wood

Unruly
Wood co-founded her video ad technology company in 2006 - which was snapped up by Rupert Murdoch for £114m in 2015. When she isn’t ruling the internet, she lectures at Cambridge University. She was named Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year this year.

Image credit: Getty

Sherry Coutu

Founders4Schools
Coutu earned a CBE in 2013, having invested in more than 50 companies including Zoopla and Lovefilm. Her former company, Interactive Investor International, made the first ever e-commerce transaction and was the most over-subscribed IPO in history when she floated it in 2000.

Agnes de Guzman

Pictet Wealth Management
De Guzman spent two years at Ariadne Capital before moving into wealth management, first at UBS and then, as senior private banker at Pictet Wealth Management. She has been involved in Tech Tour and global entrepreneur community Founders Forum.

Ana Cukic Armstrong

Armstrong Investment Managers
Armstrong’s chief executive and founding member earned her PhD in economics at Imperial College before moving on to roles at UBS and Insight Investment. She has been on Aberdeen Asset Management’s board since 2005.

Anita Nemes

Deutsche Bank
The global head of Deutsche’s hedge fund capital group, Nemes earned an MBA at Insead, before joining Credit Suisse First Boston in 1997. She has been named the most influential woman in European hedge funds by Financial News in 2014.

Caroline Simmons

UBS Wealth Management
Having started out at Scott Goodman Harris as an investment researcher, the deputy head of UBS Wealth Management’s investment office joined the company in 2004, and was promoted to her current role in 2013.

Harriet Steel

Hermes Investment Management
With an architecture degree from Princeton, Hermes’ global head of business development didn’t start out on a traditional route - but after climbing the ranks of lenders including Morgan Stanley, she joined Hermes in 2011. Steel and her 50-strong team have built a business in which revenues from third parties have grown from 15 per cent to 52 per cent. Hermes has £24.1bn assets under management.

Helena Morrissey

Newton Investment Management
Anyone interested in boardroom diversity will know Newton’s chief executive from the 30 Per Cent Club, which she founded to increase the proportion of women in boardrooms. Morrissey is also chair of the Investment Association, and is on the government’s Financial Services Trade and Investment Board. And that’s just when she’s at work. She is equally notable for her vast brood: there were nine mini-Morrisseys at last count.

Jennifer Mathias

EFG Private Bank
EFG’s deputy chief exec and chief financial officer started out as a graduate trainee at Lloyds, before working her way up to finance director of its corporate bank, helping to integrate HBOS. In 2012, she moved to Coutts, before heading to EFG at the end of last year.

Liz Field

Wealth Management Association
In one of her first acts as the WMA’s chief executive, Field launched a strategic review. After 16 years as the chief executive of trade associations, Field should know the drill: she’s led bodies including the Financial and Legal Skills Partnership.

Lucy Macdonald

Allianz Global Investors
The chief investment officer of Allianz’s global equities team has spent 30-odd years in the industry, joining Allianz in 2001. She is also a non-executive director of Apollo Media and Ibis Media Venture Capital Trust.

Nancy Curtin

Close Brothers Asset Management
With over 20 years’ experience, Close Brothers’ chief investment officer is one of the most senior women in the UK’s asset management industry. Curtin has also spent time at Fortune Asset Management, and has an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Aedamar Comiskey

Linklaters
Comiskey could become the first woman to run a magic circle law firm, after she was shortlisted for the top job at Linklaters in April. She is the lead relationship partner for Linklaters’ FTSE-listed clients for which she was listed in The Lawyer’s Hot 100 2016.

Deirdre Trapp

Freshfields
Oxford graduate Trapp has gone toe-to-toe with global agencies on a number of cases, including Tesco’s bust-up with the Groceries Code Adjudicator. She appeared in the Chambers 100 and has twice won The Lawyer’s Competition Lawyer of the Year.

Frances Murphy

Slaughter & May
Murphy has worked on some of the biggest deals out there, including Burberry’s demerger from GUS, and the £11bn bid for Alliance Boots. She has been named in the Legal 500, Chambers 100 and Square Mile’s 100 Most Powerful in the City.

Jenine Hulsmann

Clifford Chance
Antitrust partner Hulsmann has worked on the likes of BT’s £12.5bn acquisition of EE and EDF’s strategic partnership with China General Nuclear. She is currently advising Sainsbury's on its offer for Home Retail Group.

Kirstine Cooper

Aviva
As the first female general counsel and company secretary in Aviva’s 320 years, Cooper continues to put her money where her mouth is, sponsoring Aviva’s Women’s Network, and is on the board of the English National Ballet.

Penelope Warne

CMS
One of a handful of women running top-20 firms, CMS’s chairman joined in 1993 to set up its Aberdeen office, growing it from one person to the market leading practice in Scotland. She is an honorary fellow and trustee at Dundee University.

Sandie Okoro

HSBC Global Asset Management
HSBC’s global general counsel boasts a wealth of big names on her CV, including Barings and Schroders. But it’s not just the legal world she has impressed in: Okoro has been named the fourth most influential black person in Britain in 2015 and one of 10 women changing the face of the CIiy. She is passionate about the arts too: she was appointed to the board of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2014.

Sascha Grimm

Cooley LLP
Grimm’s day job at Cooley has led to her covering cases involving subjects from the sale of Formula One to a libel claim on behalf of a “prominent” Saudi family. She co-founded Women In Law London in the hope of improving law’s poor retention rates.

Sonya Leydecker

Herbert Smith Freehils
Herbert Smith became the first leading law firm to appoint a woman as (joint) chief executive when Sonya Leydecker was given the job in 2013, after eight years heading the firm’s global dispute resolution practice. She also set up its Belfast operation.

Susan Crichton

TSB
With more than 25 years’ experience, TSB’s general counsel and company secretary previously helped separate the Post Office from Royal Mail ahead of its IPO. She has also worked at Old Mutual/Skandia and GE Money.

Adizah Tejani

Level39
A founding member of the team behind Level39, Europe’s first fintech accelerator, Tejani has helped grow it from six startups to more than 170 across three floors. Partnerships have included World Economic Forum, Paypal and Swift.

Andrea Ferraz

Morgan Stanley
Ferraz set up the first dedicated internet research team at Morgan Stanley in London in 2014 and has since made a name for herself as an expert across trends in different internet subsectors, with an intimate knowledge of startups.

Gemma Godfrey

Moo.la
Godfrey mixes being a chief executive, broadcaster and quantum physicist. Having progressed to head of investment strategy at Brooks Macdonald and even given a Tedx talk, Godfrey’ss now launching Moo.la, designed to make investing more accessible.

Irina Haivas

GHO Capital
Having trained as a medical doctor, Romanian-born, multilingual Haivas is now a principal at GHO Capital, with experience spanning Europe, the US and emerging markets. She has advised multiple private equity funds on healthcare due diligence and post-acquisition projects.

Lauren Hurwitz

Moelis & Company
The Wellesley College and LSE alumnus was at Bank of America Merrill Lynch before moving to Moelis & Company, where she is business manager of its Europe, Middle East and Africa division, and has helped launch its Global Women’s Leadership Forum.

Lucy Baldwin

Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Named as a managing director at Goldman Sachs in her 20s, Baldwin has featured on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list. She is a managing director in BAML’s equity sales management arm in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Marta Krupinska

Azimo
Having run a business in New York and London (during which she oversaw events for London 2012), Krupinska co-founded Azimo in 2012 after discovering how tough sending money home was. It spans 195 countries, 80 currencies and 20,000 banks.

Natalie Campbell

A Very Good Company
Campbell co-founded social innovation consultancy A Very Good Company in 2010, publishing her first book in 2014. She is also a board member of Wayra UnLtd, a partnership with Telefonica’s startup accelerator programme, and the Big Lottery Fund.

Nina Devani

DevaniSoft
Aged 14, most of us were doing little more than arguing with parents over homework and obsessing about [insert pop star’s name here]. But Devani was busy setting up her computer software company. The acorn was her creating a mobile app to help people remember their passwords - whose market is expected to be valued at $700m by 2019. Something to think about the next time you listen to Absolute 70s/80s/90s…

Sunaina Sinha

Cebile Capital
Brevan Howard veteran Sinha is the founder of Cebile Capital, which last year advised on $4.2bn of secondaries deal volume. The Brevan Howard veteran got her MBA at Harvard Business School - and is a certified sommelier.

Ainslie McLennan

Henderson/TH Real Estate
McLennan joined Henderson in 2002, since which she has risen to become director of property. She currently runs Henderson UK Property OEIC fund, which has delivered a 39.25 per cent return over the last five years.

Alison Nimmo

Crown Estate
The Queen doesn’t leave just anyone in charge of her £11bn estate: Nimmo became chief executive in 2012, after helping London win its bid for the 2012 Olympics. She was awarded a CBE for services to urban regeneration in 2004.

Alison Platt

Countrywide
The chief executive of the UK’s largest estate agent’s miles from the shiny-suited stereotype - a former BA stewardess, she joined Countrywide from Bupa in 2014. Platt joined Tesco’s board this year.

Antonia Belcher

MHBC
After 40 years in property, Belcher has worked on everything from the Royal Courts of Justice to Leicester City’s stadium. In 2007 she became a founding equity partner at MHBC. Having transitioned in 2000, she is a vocal LGBT campaigner.

Camille Waxer

Canary Wharf Group
Now its managing director of retail and chief administrative officer, since Waxer started at Canary Wharf in 1990, the area’s retail offering has ballooned from six shops to 1m sq ft and more than 300 retailers, cafes, bars and restaurants.

Dame Alison Carnwath

Land Securities
Appointed as Land Securities’ chairman in 2008, Carnwath steered the UK’s largest commercial property company through the deepest downturn in living memory, and is now overseeing a series of giant regeneration projects, including a £2bn, 2.2m sq ft, redevelopment of the area around Victoria Station. She was made a Dame in 2014 for her services to business.

Lisa Hollands

CBRE
After trendy EA Shaw was absorbed by CBRE in 2012, Hollands became managing director of central London residential at CBRE. She is now regarded of one of the most powerful people in the capital’s increasingly exclusive residential sector.

Liz Peace

LandAid
UK property’s first lady stepped down as BPF chief in 2014 after 12 years, but her influence remains. Not only does she chair LandAid, but she retains a host of non-executive roles. She was awarded a CBE in 2008.

Lucinda Bell

British Land
Bell joined Cheesegrater joint-owner British Land in 1991, and was promoted to chief financial officer in 2011. Chief executive Chris Grigg has said he “hopes” she plans to succeed him. She is also a non-executive director at Rotork.

Melanie Leech

British Property Federation
Stepping into predecessor Liz Peace’s shoes (see below) was a challenge, but former policewoman Leech has made it look easy: since becoming chief executive in 2014, she’s helped secure much-needed reforms to business rates in this year’s Budget.

Baroness Dido Harding

TalkTalk
Oxford-educated McKinsey veteran Baroness Harding of Winscombe joined TalkTalk as chief executive in 2010. She had roles at names such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s, and has championed issues including child internet safety, cyber security and internet freedom.

Baroness Joanna Shields

Minister for internet safety and security
Having worked as digital adviser to David Cameron and chair of Tech City UK, Shields is now the government’s minister for internet safety and security. Recent work has focused on child exploitation, launching global initiative WeProtect.

Caroline Makepeace

Tech City
Having spent several years at UKTI (including in Mumbai), as well as at BBC Worldwide, Makepeace, in November last year Makepeace moved to Tech City UK as chief of staff to lead its strategy and government affairs work.

Claudia Brind-Woody

IBM
Brind-Woody joined IBM in 1996, after a being director of results at Atlanta’s Olympic Games. As well as her job as VP and managing director at IBM IP Licensing, she serves on advisory boards for groups including WorkPlace Pride.

Eileen Burbidge

Passion Capital
Burbidge, a partner at Passion Capital, is one of the most powerful people in Silicon Roundabout, with a list of roles and achievements that would make most people feel exhausted just reading: chair of Tech City UK, member of David Cameron's Business Advisory Group; and HM Treasury's Special Envoy for FinTech just to name a few, she also picked up an MBE last summer.

Jo Bertram

Uber
Love or hate it, there’s no denying Uber’s effect on London. As general manager of UK, Ireland and Nordics, McKinsey alumnus Bertram - who has a pilot’s licence - has been instrumental in its success, while navigating challenges from established rivals.

Nicola Mendelsohn

Facebook
After starting ad agency Karmarama and becoming the first female president of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, she became Facebook’s VP of Europe, Middle East and Africa, and its most senior person outside the US, in 2013. She received her CBE last year.

Reshma Sohoni

Seedcamp
Sohoni started in the US during the dot com boom, but moved to Europe for her MBA and has remained. The strict selection process at Seedcamp - “the Y Combinator of Europe” - which she co-founded, means it boasts an impressive success rate.

Sharon White

Ofcom
An economist with degrees from Cambridge and UCL, this former second permanent secretary to the Treasury responsible for overseeing public finances took on her role as the communications regulator’s chief executive in 2015.

Verity Harding

Google DeepMind
The Oxford and Harvard graduate worked as special adviser to Nick Clegg but joined Google in 2013. After two years leading its European campaign to counter extremism online, she is now getting stuck into Google’s new AI subsidiary DeepMind as its policy manager.