BIMA and You Make It Networking Breakfast | Curated by the BIMA Diversity Council

Speakers

Asma Shah – Founder and CEO of You Make It

My passion for equality and inclusion agendas led me to establish You Make It in 2011, an award winning self-empowerment charity that ensures young BME women from less privileged class backgrounds are able to access opportunities to fully realise their voice, value and potential in their professional lives. While middle class now and having spent most of my prior career working in management within the cultural and creative industries (Creative Skillset, Channel 4 and Roundhouse), I’m the youngest of four girls raised by an immigrant single mother, and was brought up on a Peckham council estate with a troubled background in state school education. I so easily could not have made it. My powerful lived experience of the barriers that have to be overcome to get ahead, and my consequent work to even the playing field out there with You Make It, has been recognised with my appointment as a Champion/ Advisor on the Mayor of London’s Equalities, Inclusion and Diversity board.

Josie Klafkowska, Director of Marketing at Cognifide

Josie is a brand and B2B marketer with over 15 years of experience and a BIMA 100 name for 2019. In a career that began in advertising, working for global brands such as Nissan, Carlsberg and AXA, she has specialised in helping agencies to grow their brands and business. She joined marketing technology agency, Cognifide in 2015, shortly after the company’s acquisition by WPP. The company now employs more than 500 people worldwide, delivering exceptional customer experiences for some of the world’s biggest brands. Josie is a published author and passionate about building brands through storytelling and powerful content marketing.

Harriet Adams – Product Directory at Red Badger

In my current role as Product Director at Red Badger, I’m responsible for supporting the continued growth of our people, our clients and our company, and ensuring quality in everything we deliver. Over the last 10 years, I’ve worked with household names, from global organisations to charities, to help them innovate, solve complex problems and build digital products with measurable impact for their end-users.

As a Maths graduate myself, I’m on a mission to inspire and encourage women and girls into STEM subjects and the tech industry. Growing up with strong female role models around me such as my grandmother, I feel compelled to support others without the same privileges, so they too can become role models themselves. It’s for this reason that I became a mentor for You Make It.

Honesty Haynes-Williams – You Make It Alumni and Digital Marketing Apprentice at Red Badger

As queer young black woman of mixed heritage living with a life long illness, my passion for driving change is non-optional. Born and raised under the poverty threshold of East London to teen parents – I was never afforded the option of ignorance in a world for which my success will always stand as rebellion. I was a participant on You Make It myself last year where for the first time I was provided validation, taught my own value and given the chance to enter previously gate kept /out of reach spaces. I was mentored by Jen Speirs, Head of People at Red Badger and also accessed a marketing-based work placement with Red Badger too. You Make It’s support in combination with my experience-based passion has since led to me becoming a Stonewall young campaigner for LGBTQIAA + POC as well as working to support young people from diverse backgrounds within many cultural organisations including Lauderdale House, The London Transport Museum, TfL and The Wellcome Collection. I am now also really proud to be the first Digital Marketing Apprentice at Red Badger!