Yvette is a Governance and Inclusion Consultant for Howlett Brown. Yvette joined Howlett Brown from the Bank of New York Mellon where she worked in the EMEA Regional Change group supporting the EMEA Regulatory Governance and Reporting Programmes. Prior to being a Project Manager she was the Company Secretary where she performed comprehensive company secretarial services to a large portfolio of entities in the UK and EMEA region with responsibilities for compliance with statutory and corporate governance requirements. Yvette has over 25 years of Senior Administration experience in large firms, including Accenture, United Broadcasting Entertainment and previously worked as a Senior Analyst at Goldman Sachs, performing Company Secretarial duties. She remains an Associate of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries & Administrators (UK) since 2016.

Yvette graduated from Fordham University in New York majoring in Sociology and French. She completed her MSc in Corporate Governance (2015) gaining a distinction in her dissertation on women making it to the C-Suite. Alongside her main duties, Yvette was involved in many social awareness activities at BNY Mellon having Co-Chaired EMEA Community Partnership; Chair of Business Resource Group, IMPACT Community Affairs sub-committee; and she was appointed as Co-Chair of IMPACT in EMEA where she looked to increase diverse talent pipeline externally and internally.Yvette is a mentor with Inspiring the Future and is also a Non-Executive Director and Chair sitting on the Board of DigiBridge Community Interest Company; a social enterprise providing IT support, recycling, re-use services and activities locally in London and educational support for young people in Africa. 

Yvette is President of the City Women’s Network.  She is a regular panellist or facilitator on topics ranging from Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Courageous Conversations and Hybrid working.

Yvette has a keen interest in the arts having spent her formative years working at the International Centre of Photography and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She is a mother to two teenage boys Chi and Ifa. Fond of yoga and swimming she also occasionally participates in charity runs.

Uma is of Indian heritage and was born in Uganda. She grew up in Leicester and studied in London where she graduated with a degree in Business Studies, Linguistics and Journalism. She is a Non-Executive Director serving on a number of boards both in the private sector and third sector whilst running her own international HR consulting business.

Prior to this, Uma spent over 20 years in senior HR roles across Europe, the Middle East, North America, Asia and Australasia. She has a wealth of directly relevant cross-cultural practitioner experience having worked with the global heads of multiple business lines at ANZ Banking Group Limited, AXA Rosenberg, Deutsche Bank, Cable & Wireless and NatWest. She has operated at C-Suite level dealing with topics including inclusion and belonging, regulatory reform and corporate governance, HR transformation, talent acquisition/development, succession planning and change management.

Uma is a natural connector and uses her wealth of experience, personal background, cultural heritage, and life experiences to transform people/things around her. She is passionate about developing female talent and in particular, supporting women of colour.

She is honoured and privileged (and only the second women of colour) to serve as Chair and President of City Women Network. CWN is one of the longest established independent organisations for professional and business women in the UK, committed to furthering the professional and personal development of female talent in business.

Uma is CIPD accredited, an NLP Practitioner and Strengthscope coach.  Her areas of coaching expertise include:

➢ Inclusive leadership
➢ Cultural sensitivity
➢ Strategy
➢ Performance/Motivation
➢ Inclusion & Belonging
➢ Complex Employee relation matters

Away from the world of work, Uma has a teenage daughter and a gorgeous boy Cavapoo. She is also an ardent Leicester City football fan and is fluent in Hindi and Gujarati.

Geraldine is CEO of the Executive Coaching Consultancy which she started in 1994 and now has over 60 coaches internationally serving a wide range of industries. The Consultancy has a particular specialism in the female journey and has coached over 10,000 individuals through key transitions in their careers. 

Geraldine speaks regularly on the subject of "More women at the top" and "The Future of Gender Diversity" and is a great believer in the benefit of diverse teams.

Geraldine has been a CWN member and member of Events Strategy committee for some time. She is also a founding sponsor of ECC's not for profit The Good Business Initiative that works with organisations to help them build their leadership capacity and unlock their potential for a positive impact. 

She is a Master Coach with the Association for Coaching and her company ECC is a founding member of the AC. 

Her board experience encompasses 16 years (two separate terms) as a NED for Morgan Sindall plc where she chaired the REMco and Sustainability committees. She spent 4 years on the women’s development committee of MicroLoan, a charity which provides small business loans to female entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan countries. She has recently been appointed as an adviser to Real Estate Balance with the express aim of improving the gender diversity of the property business. 

Anne-Marie Balfe is the Talent Partner for EY's EMEIA Financial Services Business. 

Anne-Marie joined EY in New York in 2005, and has worked in a variety of Talent related roles within EY in the US, Japan, Hong Kong and London. 

In her more than 17 years of international human resources experience, Anne-Marie has worked in recruitment, learning and development, organisational development, performance management and diversity and inclusiveness.

Prior to relocating to London, Anne-Marie was the Co-Chair of the Women of Influence committee and a Board member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. 

Anne-Marie lives in Hampstead with her husband Shaun and their two children Cillian and Sophie.

In her spare time, she is a keen runner and cyclist, and loves exploring new countries and cities with her family. 

Barbara Cremer is Director, Senior Relationship Management at RBC, one of the largest banks in Canada.  She covers UK and European banks for RBC’s capital markets business and is responsible for managing the firm’s overall relationship with its financial institution clients. She joined RBC in 2020.

Prior to this, she was an Executive Director at Nomura, an Asian based global investment bank, as Head of Relationship Management in the treasury department.  She was also responsible for debt investor relations in the region. Barbara joined Nomura in 2009.

Prior to her role at Nomura, she worked for a number of investment banks including Merrill Lynch & Co, where she was a Director in the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper group in investment banking in both New York and London.  She has worked in finance for over 25 years with roles in legal and regulatory policy as well as banking. 

Barbara graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada majoring in Politics and Economics.  She also has a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) from the New York University Stern School of Business in New York City with a major in Finance.

Charlene Brown is a lawyer, entrepreneur and culture, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) specialist.

Charlene founded Howlett Brown, the UK’s only people-intelligence company which exists to help organisations build an environment where their integrity, inclusion and purpose thrive and their people risk is low.

Charlene has over a decade of legal, culture and inclusion experience, providing strategic employment law advice on a range of employment matters. Charlene’s approach to helping clients improve their culture is a significant part of her work at Howlett Brown. Charlene and Howlett Brown are often commissioned to undertake independent investigations into a wide range of issues including and related to sexual harassment, microaggressions, discrimination, race, disability, gender and trans rights.

As a DEI specialist, Charlene devises DEI strategies for small and large multi-national companies globally. Charlene also delivers training, facilitates and coaches people of all levels across organisations on matters such as race and ethnicity, intersectionality, and other characteristics (protected and un-protected) in the workplace.

Charlene brings her DEI work beyond Howlett Brown with her role as Chair of the Ivors Academy Ethics Committee and as a member of the advisory board for TNON. For the past two consecutive years, Charlene was named in the top 20 Diversity Professionals in Industry, in the Global Diversity List which celebrates excellence in DEI. In 2023 Charlene was named as the Woman Led Business of the Year for Howlett Brown at the British Business Awards.

Charlotte is a London based leadership and wellbeing consultant, known for her work in the field of CEO wellbeing and mental fitness.

She came to this work as a result of her own journey, overcoming chronic stress and anxiety while working in the fashion industry. Her experience of being a leader in this fast-paced industry made her realise that more needed to be done to support senior team members in the workplace to manage their own wellbeing. She subsequently returned to study an MSc, completed her MBCT trainer certification and MHFA England trainer qualifications to enable her to offer that to future leaders. Her latest research has focused on CEO burnout, exploring key factors that contribute to or mitigate risks of leaders experiencing this stress-related syndrome.

Working with clients such as Accenture, Soho House and Audible, Charlotte now combines her scientific foundation and on-going research, with personal experience to embed positive leadership and wellbeing into the culture of organisations. She is an advisor for The Leaders Council, a member of the British Psychological Society and a workplace advisory board member for MQ Mental Health research charity. She has been featured in the Journal of Public Mental Health and continues to speak worldwide on the topic of organisational wellbeing.

When Charlotte is not working, she is usually found outside, whether that be on a ski slope, in the ocean, or hiking near her childhood home in Derbyshire.

Emily is the Editorial Manager at RBC Brewin Dolphin, one of the UK and Ireland’s leading wealth managers. She plans content across multiple channels and writes and edits copy covering personal finance, economics and financial markets. She was named Financial Journalist of the Year at the City of London Wealth Management Awards 2022.

Emily has over 15 years’ experience writing and managing content for financial organisations and leading consumer and trade titles. Prior to joining RBC Brewin Dolphin, she was a freelance journalist for publications such as the Financial Times, Good Money Guide, Trustnet, Ideal Home and Retirement Planner. She started her career as a Reporter at Incisive Media, before becoming Deputy News Editor at Global Fund Media and then Personal Finance Editor at Shares magazine.

Emily has an LLB (Hons) in Law from University College London. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family, running, reading and attempting (badly!) to re-learn the clarinet.

Kate has worked for over 20 years in the charity sector, in both international and national organisations, predominantly with a focus on enabling children and young people to thrive.  Kate is currently Director of Business Development & Programmes at the leading kinship care charity, Kinship, where she has led the development of a business model for commissioning from local authorities and built this into a solid income stream to enable the charity to grow significantly over the past five years.  Kate's team was highly commended at the Third Sector Awards in September 2021 for their response to supporting kinship families during the pandemic.  

Prior to joining Kinship, Kate worked at Mentor UK, developing programmes for young people to build resilience and prevent substance misuse.  She spent 11 years at Save the Children UK, mainly focused on humanitarian capacity building and child protection, including prevention of child sexual exploitation, recruitment of children into armed forces, child labour and reunification of separated children following a humanitarian emergency.  Kate was part of the senior team that set up the £50m Humanitarian Leadership Academy, a charitable subsidiary of Save the Children UK and previously worked for Cancer Research UK securing corporate sponsorship for events such as Race for Life. 

Kate studied International Studies with French at the University of Birmingham, where she spent a year living in Belgium and worked at the European Parliament in Brussels.  Kate also speaks Spanish, is a keen runner and netballer and has travelled the globe extensively.  She has two children who also speak Spanish with lessons from their Colombian grandmother! Kate has raised over £30,000 for charity personally, through events such as the London Marathon and the Moonwalk. 

After moving to the UK from Sydney, Australia with her family in 2015, and taking up some charity volunteer work with breast cancer charity CoppaFeel, Jules joined CWN in 2017 as Board Secretary in addition to providing operational and event support to the board and committees.

Jules has a background in financial services, working for several years at MLC (National Australia Bank’s wealth management division) across a range of roles, including customer service and graduate program management, training and facilitation, HR projects and business development.

After taking a career break to raise her young boys, whilst moving between Dubai, Singapore and back to Sydney, Jules took on a fundraising and communications role at Australian cancer charity Tour de Cure.

Jules enjoys exploring the rolling hills of the Kent countryside where she lives with her husband Luke, two giant teens, Josh and Sam, and dog Mille, and enjoys traveling home and to other warmer climates when she can.

Milly Sutton is the Director at My London Event Ltd.  Drawing on her 20-year career in events, Milly specialises in working with the London office of international firms that often are not large enough to have a dedicated events team in-house but want to deliver high-end events for their clients and staff.  She draws on her extensive knowledge of London venues and the best suppliers to make each event bespoke and memorable.

Milly recently worked at Cityparents, another membership organisation, growing and enhancing their membership events calendar.  Prior to that, she was the Events Manager at White & Case for 14 years managing their events team and busy events diary.

Outside of work, she has two young girls and is also a leader at their local Rainbows unit.

Milly has a postgraduate Diploma of Marketing from London Metropolitan University, and an undergraduate degree in Marketing and HR from the University of Canterbury, NZ.

Rhonda started her career working in the media on graduating, working for a variety of PR, marketing and top 20 advertising agencies in key account manager roles culminating in heads of new business positions.

Since then, Rhonda has worked for a range of global professional services firms including KPMG, Allen & Overy, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England & Wales (ICAEW) the Centre for Creative Leadership, a global executive education provider, as Regional Director for UK, Ireland & Nordics. Rhonda currently works for Mentore Consulting, a leadership development business specialising in mentoring to accelerate career development of senior leaders.

Having been recognised by Opportunity Now and The Women of the Future awards schemes, Rhonda’s expertise includes gender diversity with credentials including having set up and managed two award-winning programmes to support the advancement of women. The programmes included launching a UK and SE Asian Women in Leadership mentoring and development programme, a returners-to- work for women and men, and a Women on Boards programme for aspiring board members.

Rhonda has just stepped down as Board Member and Mentoring Chair for a not-for-profit women’s network, WICT UK (Women in Cable Telecommunications) where she set up and managed their mentoring programme for middle and senior level women to help prepare them for senior and executive roles.

In her spare time, Rhonda watches live music and comedy, attempts to learn DIY and likes getting out of London at weekends exploring wild countryside.