What is The Swindon Inclusion and Diversity Network?

Emma Feltham, Head of IT Delivery, National Trust

Emma has worked at National Trust since September 2012 in a variety of senior leadership roles in IT. She is responsible for the end-to-end IT portfolio for public-facing and revenue-generating IT services, delivering projects and programmes and supporting the associated live services. Emma has chaired the Collaboration, Innovation, Technology Forum (CITF) Gender Balance and Diversity Committee since January 2017. She has been involved in the group since 2015. She was shortlisted for the Women in IT Advocate of the Year Award in January 2018 and nominated for the Everywoman in Technology Leader Award  in October 2022.
Emma says, “Diverse teams enable us to be much more effective, bringing different experiences and varied perspectives to everything we do”.

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Claire Farrow, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Lead,  Reaction Engines

Claire’s work in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) began when working in technology and engineering recruitment where she supported clients with inclusive recruitment audits and training, as well as delivering inclusion conferences to facilitate the sharing of best practice. At Reaction Engines, Claire is responsible for leading the EDI strategy, whether that’s ensuring equity in policies and processes, developing training materials and creating safe spaces for sharing learning and experiences, monitoring data to identify trends and focus areas, or designing outreach programmes to maximise reach and diversify talent pools. As part of her role as workstream lead for ‘social’ in Reaction Engines’ ESG strategy, Claire is also responsible for community volunteering initiatives. In 2019, Claire was shortlisted for a We Are The City Rising Star Award.

Claire says, "a true ally should be visible and involved, taking an active approach in calling in non-inclusive behaviours, advocating for others, and giving a voice to those who may feel unheard".

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Nicole Hardiman, Director of Engineering, Flagstone

Nicole has worked for Flagstone since October 2022. Her previous experience includes Technical Lead, IT Practice Manager, IT Engineering Manager and Data Engineering COE Lead at Nationwide, Service Management Lead at National Trust and Global 2nd Line Support Manager for Cloud Solutions within Intergraph. She has evolved a technical career spanning 20+ years to a management one focussed on people as individuals. Her background allows her to speak to the technical teams on their level with a good understanding of their issues. In 2018, Nicole was one of the co-creators of the Nationwide Ada Lovelace Day event, promoting women in IT and encouraging them to consider working in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM). She was awarded one of the coveted Nationwide Building Society quarterly awards for her efforts. Keen on coaching and mentoring, Nicole believes that anyone with a passion for what they want to do can succeed.
Nicole says, “Businesses need to recognise that their customer base is very diverse and to represent them effectively the workforce needs to be as well. Our differences make us stronger”.