UWE Bristol

To mark Ada Lovelace Day 2025, UWE Bristol is celebrating Women in Tech Week - a programme of events and resources designed to celebrate, challenge and change the narrative around gender equity in technology.

The initiative began with a simple question: What would it take to make tech feel like a place where women belong, thrive and lead? The answer is a week that combines visibility, allyship, practical action and storytelling.

To round off the week, this special episode of the Changemakers podcast explores the power of storytelling, with four of UWE’s inspiring women who teach and study technology subjects. They share their journeys, reflect on the challenges facing women in tech, and discuss how we can all play a part in changing the narrative.

In this episode we speak with three entrepreneurs and our focus is on innovation in health technology.

We are joined by Professor Matt Freeman, who is the Centre Director at Future Space, which is an innovation centre that has become the gold standard for university-industry collaboration. Future_ Space at UWE Bristol is a multi-award-winning innovation centre designed for pioneering high-tech high-growth businesses solving tomorrow's biggest challenges.

We are also joined by Dr Jenny Bailey Cooper, CEO and co-founder of Ferryx, a university spin-out company developing innovative gut health solutions and Dr Zeke Steer, founder of Milbotix, has developed smart sock technology that's turning this everyday garment into a powerful health monitoring tool.

Links:

⁠https://www.futurespacebristol.co.uk/ ⁠

⁠www.ferryx.com⁠

⁠https://milbotix.com/

In Episode 9 part two, we continue the conversation with Shehzaad to consider how relationships between HQs and subsidiaries are influenced by the dialogue between East and West in terms of ideas about inclusive leadership, how the word for leader in Bengali is understood and his practical tips about how to help inclusive leadership to be successfully transplanted into different contexts.

In Episode 9 part one, Shehzaad Sams, CEO and Founder of Rononiti talks about his experiences of consulting with organisations globally. He reflects upon some of the colonial assumptions of a Westernised approach to EDI and how practices can become much broader and attuned to a local context.

Episode 2: A conversation with marketing and communications professionals from financial institutions on how inclusive messaging is developed, the challenges involved and examples of good practice.

Episode 3: Exploring how designing financial services for accessibility and inclusion from the ground up creates

better experiences for everyone, not just those with specific needs.

In episode 10 we hear from founder and CEO of Oak Agility; Kwasi Owusu- Asomaning who introduces us to his multicultural and multilingual working context as an executive coach. He shares some thoughts on creating inclusive 'we' spaces, the relationships between HQs and subsidiary businesses and some practical takeaways around his own reflexive learning and approaches to EDI.

In episode 11 we speak with Donna Ladkin who is Professor of Inclusive Leadership at the University of Birmingham Business School. We discuss her new book, ' Challenging Colonizing Logics in Management Research: Towards a Broader View of Management'. We take a journey through her own experiences and practices to consider how we can reorientate ourselves to the world through a connecting consciousness to embrace the plurality of voices involved with the complex issues of 21st century organisationall life.

In Episode 8 part two, Marguerite Weber continues to reflect upon how her own cultural background and identity influences her EDI and leadership practices and whether the concept of inclusive leadership can be translatable.

In Episode 8 part one, Marguerite Weber of Weber Michel Associates talks about her experiences in the banking sector as an executive recruiter. She considers how things have changed over the last 40 years and how in setting up her own company she resolved to do things differently.