Dr Funke Abimbola is a global diversity champion.

In March 2019, she was appointed as a Champion for Action as part of Grant Thornton International’s global diversity campaign, challenging gender-based barriers to career progression including recruitment bias. As part of the Law Society’s Women in Law Group, she contributed to the success of the largest ever international survey of its kind, resulting in the Law Society’s ‘Influencing for impact’ report with practical recommendations for increasing gender diversity across the global legal profession.

Funke provides mentoring and sponsorship to support a pipeline of diverse talent and holds a number of non-exec roles within the diversity space. She has a grassroots approach to driving change and provides talks to approximately 2,000 school children annually.

A regular media contributor for the BBC, Funke has been filmed for the First 100 Years Project celebrating 100 years of achievements by prominent women in law. She is also a notable alumnus of her alma mater, Newcastle University, and was awarded an MBE for services to diversity in the legal profession and to young people in 2017.

In September 2019, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hertfordshire, recognising her significant contributions to corporate and social diversity.

Tuvia Borok is an Executive Director & Senior Counsel in the Legal Department of Goldman Sachs. He co-heads the Structured Finance and Credit legal teams in EMEA. He currently acts as Secretary to the Firm’s Sharia’a Supervisory Board and until recently chaired the EMEA Pro Bono Legal Committee for a number of years. Last year, Tuvia took up a leadership fellowship at Windsor Castle.

Tuvia is also co-founder & CEO of The P3 Network. P3 is a UK based not-for-profit that provides support, advice, advocacy and role models for non-traditional and LGBT+ families. P3 supports almost 3500 families and prospective families across England, and has worked with over 80 leading global businesses, government agencies and regulatory bodies to help these organizations create more inclusive work environments.

Tuvia is a regular speaker on authentic leadership, multi-faceted diversity, re-defining heteronormative stereotypes, and shared parental leave.

Tuvia’s contributions to diversity and inclusion have been recognized with various awards in the UK. He has been recognized as Out & Proud Corporate Counsel of the Year by the LGBT Bar Association, granted a Points of Light Award from UK Prime Minister Theresa May, and recognized by the British LGBT+ Awards as one of top 10 in the category of Outstanding Contribution to LGBT+ Life.

Tuvia has just been awarded LGBT+ Lawyer of the Year by Chambers in their 2019 European Diversity Awards.

When not juggling the competing demands of being an awesome dad, his leadership of P3 or his professional career, Tuvia is an avid Ironman triathlete and regularly participates in father-son adventure races. 

Stephanie Boyce is the Director of Stephanie Boyce Consulting Limited, a consultancy that advises on the management and governance of not-for-profit organisations. Stephanie was admitted as a solicitor in 2002 and has a wealth of experience in corporate governance, regulatory frameworks and professional regulation. Stephanie holds a Master of Laws in public law and global governance from King’s College, University of London. Stephanie has spent most of her career working in complex environments with challenging governance arrangements, from central and local government. She is an experienced General Counsel and Company Secretary who is use to working in complex, multi-stakeholder environments. She has delivered strategic change in those complex environments, bringing clarity to strategic planning and delivering improved legal services and governance frameworks in difficult financial circumstances. Stephanie has recently been elected to Fellowship of ICSA: The Governance Institute. Stephanie is a Council member of the Law Society of England and Wales representing the Women Lawyers Division, she is the Past Honorary Secretary of the City of Westminster and Holborn Law Society, a solicitor member of the Joint Tribunal Service, a former member of the Law Society's Council Membership Committee for Holborn and Westminster, a former member of the Law Society’s Regulatory Affairs Board, an ex-officio committee member of the Women Lawyers Division and Chair of the Conduct Committee of the Law Society. Stephanie also sits as an Independent Person to the Standards Committee of her local authority and as a panel member to the Independent Educational Appeals Panel and is a former presenter on the Women Lawyers Division Returners Course. Stephanie has recently been elected as the next Deputy Vice President of the Law Society of England and Wales becoming the Deputy Vice-President in July 2019, Vice President in 2020 and President in 2021. Stephanie will become the representative body’s sixth woman president and its first ethnic minority President.

Nicholas is a Senior Counsel and former Partner of the international law firm Hogan Lovells and was its global Chair for 6 years. He is the Chairman of PRIME, a charity with over 60 law firm members committed to promoting wider access to the legal sector for school-age students. Last year, he initiated LawSMART, a social mobility action roundtable involving 15 organisations, including CILEx, The Law Society and the SRA, to identify collaborative initiatives to improve access. Nicholas is also Chair of Making the Leap, a London-based charity helping socio-economically disadvantaged young people. He is a member of Women in Law London's Advisory Panel; a founding member of the Senior Leaders Forum of the Lord Mayor's Power of Diversity initiative; a Committee member of Real Estate Balance, which seeks to address the UK real estate sector's gender imbalance and Chair of the British Paralympic Association's Parallel Club. He serves as an Independent Member of the governing Council of the University of Exeter and is a Trustee of ISLP UK, which provides pro bono legal services, and of The CareTech Charitable Foundation.

As a founding partner of Graham Gill, set up 30 years ago as a pioneering Legal Search boutique focused exclusively at partner level, Dominique’s market intelligence and leadership insights have been widely used by law firm management. She is recognised as being at the cutting edge of market intelligence and thought leadership and she is often consulted by law firm management to advise on European growth strategy. This has led to her being retained on a number of merger mandates and she has brokered a number of high-profile firm mergers.

Her expertise and market intelligence have created a demand for her leadership advisory services with her time now equally divided between search and consulting work. Her particular focus is around law firm impact and positioning with much of her work revolving around culture-shaping initiatives. She works with law firms, corporates and individuals on leadership programs and executive coaching, focusing on strategy, impact and communication as well as career transitioning.

Dominique studied literature at Durham University and is an accredited coach, having completed Executive Coaching Programs at Meyler Campbell and the Ashridge Business School. When not at work, Dominique teaches karate and improves her kitesurfing.

Ingrid Hobbs is a partner and board member at Kennedys, a global law firm specialising in insurance and reinsurance litigation. She is an insurance and litigation specialist whose significant experience includes policy coverage disputes and defence of claims across a range of sectors including product liability and recall risks, cyber risks, professional indemnity risks, financial institutions risks, directors’ and officers’ liability, motor racing claims, claims against technology companies in respect of allegedly failed IT projects, construction risks and claims involving off-shore trustees. Acting for many of the world’s largest insurers, Ingrid has represented both insurers and insured entities in litigation, arbitration and mediation in claims relating to all of the risks mentioned above. Ingrid’s work often involves multiple jurisdictions meaning that she has considerable experience in liaising with foreign lawyers, brokers, experts and insurers worldwide having advised on claims in the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe and South Africa. Ingrid is President of London FOIL, a division of the Forum of Insurance Lawyers that supports insurance and reinsurance law firms working on complex claims underwritten in the London insurance market.

Judy is CEO of Rule Ltd, a global legal and compliance services company that provides skilled services as part of better processes to provide peace of mind while lowering costs for their clients. She is a lawyer and qualified to practice in Singapore, the UK and Belgium. Constantly on the lookout to find better ways of doing things, Judy is a recognised subject matter expert on legal service delivery and helps general counsels and chief compliance officers find smarter, more cost-efficient ways of delivering their services.

Judy started Rule with the clear objective to provide our clients peace of mind through service with integrity and a team that is diverse in as many senses of the word as possible. We work hard to focus on diversity in race, culture, gender and social mobility, in the first instance.

Sonya is by profession a disputes lawyer. She was for many years a partner in Herbert Smith, ultimately becoming their head of Disputes. On the merger with Freehills, Sonya continued as global head of practice until taking up the position of joint CEO of the merged firm. She was instrumental in developing the Asia practice and opening the first ever offshore centre in Belfast. She made effecting change in attitudes within the firm to D&I issues one of her key objectives. Since her retirement, Sonya has graduated from the Meyler Campbell Mastered Program and now operates as a coach, as well as taking on occasional consulting and client roles in the legal sector. She is a non-executive on the Council of Nottingham University and is a trustee of RESTART Lives, a small homelessness charity with large ambitions. She is also an Ambassador for the Prince’s Trust’s Women Supporting Women program.

John Malpas is one of the UK’s most senior legal publishers and editors. He was a member of the team that founded Legal Week and went on to become its editor-in-chief and then publisher, overseeing the launch of a host of market-leading events including The British Legal Awards and The Legal Week Innovation Awards. He recently took up the role of publisher at Global City Media.

Moni Mannings is the Senior Independent Director and Chair of Remuneration at Investec Bank PLC, a Non-Executive Director and former Chair of Remuneration at FTSE250 company Polypipe Group PLC as well as being Deputy Chair of leading children’s charity, Barnardo’s. Until recently Moni was also a board member of FTSE250 Company Dairy Crest PLC and of Cranfield University having previously been a Board Member of the Solicitors Regulation Authority and chaired its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Moni's most recent executive role was as COO of AI and IP data analytics company Aistemos Limited and, until March 2016, was a senior partner in international law firm Olswang LLP having enjoyed a career spanning over three decades in private practice. Moni founded and led Olswang’s International Banking and Finance Group and served on Olswang’s Board for 13 years. Moni describes herself as having a Pakistani heritage and a working class migrant upbringing . Arriving in England at age 8, she was the first person in her extended family to attend an English University. Moni is married, has two adult daughters and is an enthusiastic traveller who recently fulfilled a lifetime ambition to visit Antarctica.

Having worked full time in law and studied, Rebecca understands the legal market and the challenges students face. Over the last 10 years Rebecca has been writing on her blog as well as working in the legal sector. Her company helps law firms, chambers, legal tech companies and law schools engage with their audiences online better; whether that’s through training or developing content, social media, podcasts/videos and the creation of strategies. Rebecca regularly speaks at law schools, encouraging law students, sharing advice and insights as well as running workshops to help develop key skills. Rebecca is very interested in legal tech and how it can help lawyers become more efficient and ultimately do more law.

Isabel is an experienced and dynamic leader of innovation and transformation in legal services. She trained as a finance lawyer at Freshfields, then moved from fee earning to set up Freshfields’ Legal Solutions Hub in Manchester. She is currently Freshfields’ Chief Legal Innovation Officer, leading the development of client facing digital products, and has recently also assumed responsibility for the firm’s Knowledge function. Isabel was listed as one of the top 10 innovative lawyers in the FT Innovative Lawyers Report for 2018, and has a strong track record of successfully implementing large scale global change programmes within the sector.

Kathleen became Travers Smith’s Senior Partner on 1 July 2019 having been a partner in the Tax Department since 2001, and Head of the Tax Department from July 2007 to January 2017.

Kathleen specialises in private equity transactions and regularly acts for both institutional investors and management teams. Much sought after by clients for her technical expertise and commercial outlook, Kathleen is regularly instructed on complex and innovative tax matters.

Throughout her career, Kathleen has been particularly dedicated to supporting equality and diversity in the legal sector, and as a member of Travers Smith’s Diversity & Inclusion Board, is one of the key drivers of the firm’s growing gender equality and diversity programme. Her mentoring role and promotion of gender equality is particularly evident in her own department, where six of the nine partners are female. Kathleen is also the first woman to hold the role of Senior Partner.

Kathleen was a member of the BVCA Tax Committee from 2002 to 2017 where she was regularly involved in discussions with HMRC on the BVCA's behalf. She sits on the Board of the Office of Tax Simplification as a Non-Executive Director, providing advice to the Chancellor on simplifying the UK tax system. Kathleen is also a frequent speaker at conferences.

Kathleen is individually recommended by Chambers and Partners UK and PLC as one of the City's leading tax practitioners. She is praised in Chambers UK for her technical expertise in private equity matters.

Julia Salasky is a lawyer and entrepreneur. She is the founder and CEO of Legl (legl.com), which simplifies legal services for law firms and consumers alike. Legl’s flagship product, CrowdJustice, has changed the way people fund legal matters and enabled thousands of people to get legal advice. CrowdJustice was named Technology Product of the Year (2019) by The Lawyer and has been featured in the Financial Times, the Guardian and the BBC as a game changer in access to justice. Julia has been recognised as the Financial Times’ Legal Innovator of the Year, one of Debrett's most influential people in law, Legal Week's Outstanding legal innovator of the year, CityAM's digital innovators power list, and by Marie Claire as a Future Shaper. Julia was previously was a lawyer at Linklaters and at the United Nations, where she led on the UN’s work on online dispute resolution and published on the topic of digital solutions to consumer legal issues.

Pepi Sappal is Founder & Director of fairplaytalks.com – a recently launched global D&I/wellbeing online platform, covering all diversity spectrums across all industries. Pepi has been writing on diversity, business, management, HR and international issues for the past two decades, as a business journalist/content creator for a variety of online and print business publications. She was also the Wall St Journal columnist, covering diversity and recruitment issues, as well as the former Editor of HR World and Global HR, and former Commissioning Editor of the UK’s Human Resources magazine.

Evelyn Styles joined Hays PLC a global professional services company in June 2005. She is currently responsible for managing the UK and Ireland legal team to ensure it delivers a highly efficient and commercial legal service to the business, as well as legal and compliance responsibility for the Hays shared service centre in India. Prior to joining Hays Evelyn had extensive experience in advising companies on corporate, commercial and employment law matters within niche private practice law firms as well as an in-house lawyer.

Laura Uberoi is a real estate finance solicitor at Macfarlanes. She also serves as a council member at the Law Society and is the immediate past president of Westminster & Holborn Law Society. As well as spending time in-house at a leading global bank, Laura has worked on capital punishment cases for the Texas Defender Service, with young people in detention centres and has taught at universities such as the University of Cambridge and the University of Melbourne.

Get connected with a Connectress
Hela Wozniak-Kay aka Totally Hela
Director
Sister Snog

Hela is The Connectress. A charismatic catalyst who connects women brimming with entrepreneurial spirit.

Hela studied law with a view to pursuing a career at the Bar. Despite passing the Bar finals she found she was far more suited to a creative environment. She cut her teeth at an array of agencies in London, delivering campaigns to a collection of high profile brands. She set up her own brand consultancy where she re-branded two law firms and worked with an array of giant thinkers who saw the value a stand out brand would add to their ventures.

This experience provided her with a framework to step into the shoes of a brand owner herself. Today Hela’s the soul of a power-brand led by women-for-women. Sister Snog (www.sistersnog.com) is an ecosystem where like-minded go-getters support each other so they can continue to thrive, boost their bottom line, supercharge their business and invigorate their brand. One sparkling connection at a time.

All members are hand picked. They’re an eclectic mix who have the same thing in common - a burning desire to get on with life-&-business. And connect with as many like-minded-like-minds to help deliver their goals.

• Hela’s depth-&-breadth of knowledge of the entrepreneurial mind-set has made her an ideal judge at The Small Awards for the past 2 years. This year, as well as being a judge, Sister Snog is also a sponsor of the New Kid On The Block category
• She’s one of the hundred female founders in the F:Entrepreneur #ialso 100 Hall of Fame 2019
• Last year Sister Snog joined 99 other small businesses and was featured in the prestigious Small Biz 100 countdown in the run up to Small Business Saturday •
• 2019 ended with Sister Snog being the winner of the Best Networker category at the 2019 Best Business Women Awards • Hela is at the stage of her journey where she’s ready to share her wisdom and experience. That’s why she stepped forward to be one of 50 Mentors on the Pathway to Success Programme organised by BelEVE beleveuk.org
  
  

Hela is in daily contact with a cross section of business women so she both understands the challenges of being a small business owner and the challenges small business owners face. And conquer. On a daily basis.

In Hela’s world connections are today’s golden currency. That’s why she believes everyone should find their tribe. And join it.

Photo credit : Yolande De Vries www.yolandedevries.phototgraphy