GROUNDBREAKERS -

Voluntary Sector Women Leaders

Areeba Hamid, Co-CEO, Greenpeace UK:

Areeba is co-CEO of Greenpeace UK with Will McCallum. Areeba worked at senior levels in Greenpeace offices around the world from 2006-2020, campaigning on issues like marine conservation, coal expansion in India, rainforest destruction in Indonesia, and tar sands in Canada and North America. Areeba re-joined Greenpeace from The Sunrise Project, where she led their global finance program. She was a board member of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants for four years. Born in India, she is the first woman and first person of colour to lead Greenpeace in the UK.

Alex Kent, Co-CEO, Restless Development: Alex is the Co-CEO of Restless Development. She is a feminist leader, committed to power shifting and over 20 years experience working on social justice issues and campaigns. She is an advocate of Youth Power as one of the best ways to achieve a more just and sustainable world. Alex has worked for WaterAid, Save the Children, Comic Relief, the Global Campaign for Education, and led the 1GOAL: Education for All, in South Africa. She also has a Geography Degree and Masters in Education and International Development. She now lives in North London with her wife and 5-year-old twins.

Sheridan Ash MBE, Co-CEO, Tech She Can:

I am the founder and co-CEO of the charity, Tech She Can, an industry-led tech education and careers charity that creates initiatives and pathways to increase the number of women in technology. It has over 250 member organisations spanning more than 40 sectors across all regions of the UK.
My background is working with boards and senior executives in multiple sectors, formulating and leading technology- and innovation-driven strategy and transformation programmes, including digital transformation. I previously worked at Accenture and led Technology and Innovation at PwC.

I was named by Computer Weekly as the third most influential women in UK Technology in 2023 and as one of the 30 most influential women in Cyber in 2021. In 2023 I was recognised by Forward Ladies as Business Women of the Year and Social Impact Leader of the Year. In 2020 I was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for services to young girls and women through technology.

Gwen Hines joined plant conservation charity Plant Heritage as CEO in March this year, after nearly three decades working on child rights and international development at senior levels for the World Bank, the UK Government and the charity Save the Children UK where she was CEO until February. This new leadership role represents a big change, both in terms of subject matter and scale: Save the Children UK has over 800 staff and last year raised over £300m whilst Plant Heritage has the equivalent of 7 full time staff, relies heavily on volunteers and its income last year was around £500,000. Gwen explains that she’s lucky enough to have two passions in life – child rights and plants – and decided that her 50s were the perfect time for a career pivot to focus on the second one. Plant Heritage is best known for the National Plant Collections which are a living library of around 95,000 special garden plants, including the first Collections in a pub and in a women’s prison. Its thousands of members and local groups share plants, stories and skills, from seed sharing to propagation.

Register in advance for this meeting:

https://ndcs-org-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwrdequrDojGtx3N9saBOmWeHFuH3rZiJpl

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Dame Lesley Regan is Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Imperial College, St Mary’s Hospital, London. Having graduated from the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London in 1980, Professor Regan pursued her career at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, where she first became enthused by clinical & laboratory research, completing an MD on miscarriage, the commonest complication of pregnancy. She went on to set up the world’s largest recurrent miscarriage clinic at St Mary’s.

Professor Regan was the 30th President (2016-2019) of the RCOG, during which time she co-chaired the national Women’s Health Task Force and published the RCOG Better for Women report which highlighted the need for an NHS led women’s health strategy. Lesley was awarded a DBE for her services to women’s health in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List. She was appointed chair of the WoW charity in October 2020 and became the first ever Women’s Health Ambassador for England in July 2022, to help implementation of the Government’s recently launched Women's Health Strategy to improve the health and wellbeing of girls and women nationally.

Email our Chair Susan Daniels to book your place ASAP.

This event is in-person, and kindly hosted by our sponsors Bates Wells, at 10 Queen Street, London EC4R 1BE