London, England, United Kingdom
I am Chief Executive at AbilityNet, a Digital Accessibility and Disability Inclusion Charity whose vision is "A Digital World Accessible to All". Experienced in senior leadership, strategy, sales, operations, change and transformation, I possess a challenger mindset that strives to identify the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ to unlock collective action within and across organisations and deliver lasting social value and impact. I believe that access to digital without barriers is a human right. With the digitisation of society, many millions of people are being left behind or excluded due to lack of visibility and understanding of how to design and develop accessible digital services and / or lack of access to a suitable device, data, assistive technology, digital skills and confidence. AbilityNet is 100% dedicated to addressing these challenges, supporting people to access digital and supporting organisations to embed accessibility and digital inclusion throughout their culture and processes. Having spent 15 years working in the corporate world, specialising in providing business solutions and working in a variety of roles across sales, operations, general management and transformation, I wanted to apply my skills and experience to champion social justice and deliver public benefit. I joined AbilityNet in 2016, as Service Delivery Director, drawn by the opportunity to leverage technology to remove barriers to participation for disabled people and create a better digital experience for everyone. It really is true that once you see accessibility barriers you really cannot unsee them and this mission has become all consuming for me ! AbilityNet's core values of Integrity, Innovation, Inclusion and Collaboration are closely aligned to my personal values and have enabled the team and I to triple our impact and public benefit delivery during my time at the Charity. Partnership working and collaborating to go further faster with a range of corporates, public sector and third sector partners has been fundamental to this. If you share our vision and want to work with us to create a digital world that welcomes the widest audience, please connect and let’s talk!
AbilityNet is a unique charity that uses technology to remove barriers to inclusion at work, in education and in day to day life - Our amazing team of digital accessibility consultants, digital skills trainers, comms, online knowledge and events, free helpline and nationwide IT volunteer service work tirelessly to raise awareness, support individuals to close the digital divide and support organisations to bake accessibility into their digital services. We provide quality advice and thought leadership here on Linked In, through webinars, events (including our flagship event TechShare Pro) and via online resources, factsheets, downloadable tools and white papers. For organisations that are struggling to embed accessibility in their organisations, we provide a complete range of consultancy and training services to support organisations to provide an accessible and inclusive experience for their customers and colleagues. This includes practical support through testing and user research to help make sure that websites and apps are accessible (and legal) but also from a strategic perspective helping organisations transform their ways of working to be inclusive by design. We also work with our clients as employers or education providers - giving them the tools and one to one help they need to support their diverse student or employee base to achieve their objectives. We invest a lot of energy into convening and amplifying the conversation about accessibilty and disability inclusion. This includes a series of training and events including the annual digital accessibility event TechShare Pro. If you are interested in finding out more about how AbilityNet could help your organisation get ahead of the game in terms of accessibility and inclusion or you are an individual in need of support please do not hesitate to contact me.
The Charity IT Association is a registered charity (1168721) and we have a passion for helping charities get the most from their IT. CITA founding members first came together in order to survey the charity sector about their experience of using and managing IT. By talking to mid-sized charities about their experiences, we learned that they were typically under-resourced in the areas of IT, didn’t know whom to ask or to trust about their IT problems, and weren’t aware of the resources available to them in terms of IT expertise. Through our own individual experiences, the members of CITA were also conscious that many charities have a tactical, rather than strategic, approach to IT. We therefore set out to create a simple, easy-to-consume entry point for charities to engage with the free volunteers who were willing to help them to get more advantage from their IT. Our vision is a world in which charities are able to harness the full potential of technology to increase their potential for good. Please contact me if you are interested in using our services or indeed joining our team of volunteers.
Go Native is the largest operator of Serviced Apartments in the UK with 1750 apartments across 23 buildings. Our pipeline of new purpose built developments includes a further 2,200 apartments in prime city centre locations across the UK. We’re independent, operating buildings on behalf of a range of institutional & private equity investors including Starwood Capital, Grosvenor, CBRE Investors, Kennedy Wilson, Aviva and LaSalle. Our inventory is sold across multiple sales channels including corporate, OTA, E-commerce and Agency with our corporate relationships accounting for the largest share of our demand. We’ve won numerous industry awards for the quality of our buildings and corporate account management including the coveted Business Travel Award for best UK serviced accommodation provider. In 2014, we were identified by the London Stock Exchange as one of the 1000 fastest growing SME’s in the UK.