Watch the webinar
Our discussion panel explored best-practice tips on how to create a more inclusive recruitment process, from your initial search to onboarding and retention.
To expand your talent pool and diversify your tech teams, you must first adopt an inclusive mindset and company culture, removing any barriers to entry. This will help you attract and retain the best tech professionals and encourage people who may be underrepresented in the sector to start their career in tech.
During the event, live viewers had the opportunity to put their questions to the panel at the end.
Our panel
Mike Sealy, Director of Diversity & Inclusion, Informa Markets
Mike is a thought leader with a strong client-centric, customer-experience mindset. He has demonstrable experience in leading teams across complex international matrixed organisations, and a strong track record of delivering results and exceeding performance targets.
As the current Global Diversity and Inclusion Director at Informa Markets – the world’s leading exhibition and event organiser – he leads, coordinates, and champions diversity and inclusion (D&I) efforts across the business. He aims to ensure the long-term sustainability of the D&I strategy in relation to the company’s colleagues, customers, content and communities. Through his own lived experiences, he is deeply passionate about fairness, equity, and inclusion for all.
Mike is a dedicated coach, mentor and motivator who regularly speaks at events and on discussion panels, both to corporate colleagues and students in education. He speaks candidly on his work and social experiences to create awareness of the issues and opportunities within diversity and inclusion, as well as to help build confidence, freedom and motivation in others.
Meera Somji, Director, Clusivity
Meera is a data and analytics enthusiast, with an academic training in gender and race inequalities. She is the Co-founder of Clusivity, a technology platform helping organisations to improve the retention of historically marginalised employees across gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and socio-economic background.
Before taking this lead into entrepreneurship, Meera trained as a strategy consultant with Plural Strategy Group in London and in New York. In 2019, she joined as senior manager to lead the customer success team at Smartxpo, a fast-growing data and analytics company. She has also worked as a researcher into business, human rights and gender for UNDP Asia.
Meera has an undergraduate degree in politics, psychology and sociology from the University of Cambridge and a master's degree in Gender Studies from LSE.
Devi Virdi, Group Head of Diversity & Inclusion, Centrica
Devi is the Group Head of Diversity & Inclusion at Centrica and is responsible for building the global D&I strategy and embedding D&I initiatives for the development and delivery of the group diversity and inclusion roadmap.
Devi was previously head of diversity & inclusion for Women in Hospitality & Travel-Tech, now RaizUp, and supported partners across travel-tech sectors and was proud to have delivered global and regional I&D programmes. She was recently awarded and recognised in 2021 as a Top 50 Women in Travel Industry by WiNiT at the Global Business Travel Association for her work in diversity and inclusion across the travel sector. Prior to that Devi was the managing director and D&I lead for Northern Europe at a tier-one travel technology provider.
With over 25 years of experience in the hospitality and tech industry across HR, sales, marketing, operations, she believes being dynamic, curious, bold, and courageous in today’s business environment is key to achieving lasting success. With a background in HR, her career has taken her to several global hotel chains before moving into the travel technology sector.
Devi sits on a number of UK and global committees supporting and driving diversity, equity and inclusion. She is a mentor with women both in Fast Forward15 2021, 2022 program and The Girls Network, supporting girls from underrepresented backgrounds.
Originally from Hong Kong, she studied in Australia and has been in the UK for over 27 years, giving her a great insight in cultural and regional nuances and has helped her successfully lead across global regions. She now lives in Greater London with her family and two young children.
Karen Hutcheson, Head of Talent Acquisition, Colleague Mobility & Early Careers, Centrica
Karen has been in recruitment for over 20 years, previously working for Dell. She has now been at Centrica for the past 12 years. In her current role, she heads up the talent acquisition and early careers team of 55 people.
She is responsible for around 4,000 hires per year and around 2,000 internal moves, plus delivering the early careers programmes, including the graduate scheme, summer placements and apprenticeships, and ‘year in industry’ placements.
Working hard to increase the ratio of women in STEM, last year, she achieved 34% (120) female entrants into Centrica’s engineering apprenticeship. Originally from Glasgow, she now lives and works in Windsor and is married with four children.
Kevin Dainty, Client Relationship Manager, Reed – Technology
Kevin Dainty is Client Relationship Manager within Reed’s technology division, specialising in leadership practice, with 12 years of recruitment experience. He founded and runs the Reed Women in Technology Mentoring Programme and is an advocate of building inclusivity within workplaces and hiring for diversity.
Kevin has recently been names as a finalist in the FMD Everywoman in Technology Awards for its Male Agent of Change Award.
