Aritha Wickramashinghe

Associate at K&L Gates

Aritha is an associate in the London office of international law firm K&L Gates. Prior to becoming a finance lawyer, he worked at the Chambers of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania. Aritha is very active in the field of Diversity & Inclusion, has spearheaded a number of initiatives and pro bono projects promoting LGBT rights and was instrumental in lobbying for the Transgender Equality Inquiry by the Women and Equalities Committee of the British Parliament, through his work for Non-Gendered. He is currently advising the UN Human Rights Office on introducing a global curriculum, based on equality and human rights, and the British Government on using business to promote human rights.

Andrew Barratt

Head of Ogilvy Pride (previous)

Andrew Barratt is the former head of Ogilvy Pride. He started his marketing career at PepsiCo, working in brand management, and later joined WPP, a division of the Ogilvy & Mather Group. Whilst at WPP, Andrew brought his passion for diversity and LGBT Inclusion into his professional life by setting up and leading Ogilvy Pride – a key specialist offering to help clients bring visibility of LGBT role models into mainstream marketing content. Ogilvy & Mather have delivered LGBT marketing campaigns globally for brands including Tiffany & Co, Google, Ford, Turner Broadcasting and Burger King. Last year, Andrew was ranked number five in the Financial Times 2015 Top 30 LGBT Future Leaders list, and was awarded PRCA Young Communicator of the Year by Europe’s largest PR association.

Alessandro Commisso

Brand team at Lush

Alessandro Commisso works as part of the Lush Global Brand Team. He is passionate about communication and is a devoted spokesman for LGBT rights, campaigning solidly on the need for acceptance and respect for global LGBT communities. Ale played an integral part in the 2014 award-winning ‘#SignOfLove’ collaboration with All Out, which was Lush’s first global LGBT campaign. He also developed the hugely successful ‘#GayIsOK’ campaign (also with All Out), which saw 825 Lush shops come together to host a campaign for equality, for LGBT rights as human rights. The hashtag then went viral during the celebration for marriage equality in the US, reaching 40 million people, the largest conversation to date on global anti-gay laws.

Caroline Shrader

Business Consultant at Fujitsu

Caroline Shrader is a business consultant with Fujitsu UK&I and Co-Chair of Shine, Fujitsu’s LGBT+ staff network. During her time at Fujitsu, she has assisted in the development of their Diversity & Inclusion Strategy and has created events to raise awareness and representation of bisexual people and LGBT women. She is currently working on the Responsible Business programme for Fujitsu’s global delivery centres, including a global Diversity & Inclusion network capability. She also volunteers with her local LGBT+ support and advice charity, SupportU, as an Arts & Culture Coordinator.

Matt Scarff

Director of the Creative and Events team at ITV

Matt is the Director of the Creative and Events team at ITV and also chairs the internal LGBT network group, ITV Pride. He joined the InterMediaUK Steering Committee in May 2015, and became Chair of the group in December. Matt brings an incredible energy and passion to championing LGBT awareness and does this on top of running the award-winning Creative and Events team at ITV. He is a brilliant Diversity ambassador.

Winner!   DR. MARK MCBRIDE-WRIGHT CEng MIChemE

InterEngineering

Mark co-founded InterEngineering, which connects, informs and empowers LGBT engineers and supporters. Previously, there was no entity in engineering addressing LGBT Inclusion. Mark has grown the organisation to a membership of over 300 engineers and engages prominent engineering institutes and employers. He is a safety engineer in oil and gas at KBR. He was commissioned by the House of Commons to prepare a report for the UK Government on tackling homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in the engineering sector, which was published in November 2015. He was also ranked number two in the 2015 Financial Times Future LGBT Leaders.

RAFAEL CAMPOS VALDEZ

TSB

Rafael has promoted LGBT equality for the past eight years. After moving to the UK, he volunteered at West London LGBT Forum to raise the NHS’ awareness of LGBT health issues. In University, Rafael helped grow the student LGBT organisation and during his MA in Corporate Responsibility, he wrote a paper titled It Pays to Love the Gays: The business benefits of LGBT diversity and inclusion. He now works as a Diversity & Inclusion Manager at TSB Bank, where he is establishing the bank’s first national LGBT network. He was listed in the Top 50 Diversity Professionals by The Economist and continues to advocate the business case for D&I within the corporate sector.

Sarah Fennell

Diversity & Inclusion Manager at HSBC (previous)

Sarah is a Diversity & Inclusion Manager for HSBC in the UK and completed her term as co-chair of their Pride network in July 2015. Under her leadership, membership doubled, HSBC climbed over 200 places in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index to 70th place and they marched in London Pride for the first time. In 2015, Sarah particularly focused on increasing Inclusion within the LGBT community, by ensuring that a variety of voices were profiled, particularly working to increase the visibility of trans issues and hosting a recruitment workshop at HSBC with the networking and advocacy group trans*formation. In her spare time, Sarah volunteers for Switchboard, the LGBT+ helpline and is supporting an international aid charity in setting up their LGBT employee network.