Dr Vanessa Vallely OBE

Vanessa is one of the UK’s most most prominent figures in gender equality and received her OBE for services for women and the economy in 2018. At the height of her successful 25 year career in financial services, Vanessa launched the award winning WeAreTheCity in 2008 as a vehicle to help women progress in their careers. WeAreTheCity and its sister site, WeAreTechWomen now has over 100,000 members and provides resources/conferences/awards/jobs to women across the UK. Vanessa is the also the founder of UK wide diversity forum Gender Networks. Gender Networks which brings together diversity leaders from 85 cross sector firms to share best practice on a quarterly basis.

Over the past fifteen years, Vanessa has accumulated over 23 industry awards, including Women in Banking & Finance’s Champion for Women, Financial News Top 100 Rising Star, The International Alliance for Women Top 100 Women globally & Brummells Top 30 London Entrepreneurs, GQ UK’s Top 100 Connected Women, the Evening Standard’s 1000 Most Influential Londoners and most recently, the Computer Weekly Hall of Fame. Vanessa is also the author of “Heels of Steel: Surviving and Thriving in the Corporate World”.