Speakers and Panellists Bios

Ben Stimson

Ben Stimson is the Bank’s Chief Operating Officer since January 2022. He is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Bank, including People, Technology, Central Operations, Change & Planning and Data.

Before joining the Bank, Ben has held various roles in the industry including the Digital Director of Waitrose, part of the John Lewis Partnership. Prior to that he was Retail Director of Waitrose, with overall responsibility for leading the company’s portfolio of shops and eCommerce services.

Ben was also Chief Customer Officer at NHS Test and Trace, where he held responsibility for the NHS Covid-19 app and created the offer of asymptomatic testing for UK citizens.

He holds non-executive roles with Premier Marinas (wholly owned by the Wellcome Trust), the Youth Sport Trust, and is a former Chair of the Nationwide Building Society’s Charitable Foundation.

Lee Chambers

Lee Chambers is a psychologist, coach and founder of Essentialise Workplace Wellbeing, a wellbeing and inclusion consultancy.

After a diverse career, including time in corporate finance, elite sports and the third sector, alongside scaling a videogame business, he has brought his knowledge and lived experience together to support companies in creating equitable culture, psychologically safe spaces and effective wellbeing strategies. This has been borne from his own lived experience, which has included mental health challenges, time as a stay at home Dad, and learning to walk again in 2014 after illness. He was the winner of the Great British Entrepreneur Award for service industries in 2021.

Vanessa Vallely OBE

Vanessa is one of the UK’s most well-networked women and has provided keynotes on a variety of career related topics for over 600 companies and 40,000 women worldwide. Vanessa is one of the UK’s most prominent figures in gender equality and often provides guidance and consultancy to both government and corporate organisations who are seeking to attract, develop and retain their female talent. Vanessa was awarded her OBE in June 2018 for her services to women and the economy.

At the height of her successful 25 year career in Banking and Finance, Vanessa launched the award winning WeAreTheCity in 2008 as a vehicle to help women progress in their careers. WeAreTheCity and its sister organisation, WeAreTechWomen now has over 120,000 members and provides resources/conferences/awards/jobs to women globally. Vanessa also founded the UK wide diversity forum Gender Networks in 2010. Gender Networks which brings together diversity leaders from 100 cross sector firms to share best practice on a quarterly basis.

Vanessa is also the founder of the Rising Stars, TechWomen100, Trailblazer50 and Pioneer20 awards. Through these awards she has raised the profile of over 1,500 incredible women and men.

Vanessa is author of the book “Heels of Steel: Surviving and Thriving in the Corporate World”, which tracks her career climb from a council estate in east London to the C-suite. Her new book is due for release in 2025.

Over the past 15 years, she has accumulated 26 industry awards, including Women in Banking & Finance’s Champion for Women, Financial News' Top 100 Rising Star, The International Alliance for Women's Top 100 Women globally, Brummell's Top 30 London Entrepreneurs, and most recently, she was inducted in to Computer Weekly’s Hall of Fame as an icon for Women in Tech. Vanessa was also cited in GQ UK’s Top 100 Connected Women and the Evening Standard’s 1000 Most Influential Londoners. Vanessa is a regular guest on TV and radio and has appeared on Sky News, the BBC, Talk London and Radio 4. Vanessa is proudly neurodiverse having discovered she has ADHD in her forties. She is now on a mission to help other women who have discovered their own neurodiverse powers later in life.

Vanessa is also the Pearly Queen of The City of London, a tradition that has been in her family for over 100 years. She is an avid charity worker and has sat on various boards, including Prostate UK and Cancer Research UK as one of its Women of Influence. Vanessa is currently a trustee for MS Together, a charity that supports 18-35 year old's who have been diagnosed with MS.

Sandie Duberry

Sandie is currently Technology Chief of Staff reporting to the Chief Information Officer. She is passionate about investing her time and energy in helping the Bank of England develop a highly skilled and motivated workforce, ensuring the right skills for now and the future. Sandie has worked for the Bank for 5 years and has spent most of her tenure in Service & Infrastructure accountable for protecting the Banks Critical National Infrastructure and key strategic projects.

She has over 26 years’ experience in Financial Services technology and previously held IT Services Management roles at Readers Digest, HSBC, Aviva Investors, MF Global and Thomson Reuters. She has consistently helped organisations evolve and adapt their technology offering, aligned to business goals.

Sandie is passionate about paying forward and recently trained as an executive coach specialising in mindfulness and transition.

She loves people and technology in equal measure and believes in TEAM - Together Everybody Achieves More.

Eugenia Planas

Eugenia Planas is the Head of Applications and Product Engineering at the Bank of England, leading the delivery and management of most technical services supporting the Bank's operations, including Payments, Markets and Banking systems, all areas of technical data delivery and core functions like Enterprise Services, Testing & Automation and Cloud technologies. Before this, she was the Head of Digital Services for the Bank, responsible for all end user technology, front line functions and day-to-day operation of its datacentres.

For the 750 colleagues working in Technology Directorate Eugenia acts as a sponsor and advocate for gender diversity, and has also been at the forefront of the Bank’s efforts to embrace flexible working and supporting assistive technologies. Prior to joining the organisation Eugenia had extensive service management experience through roles in outsourcing companies such as Capgemini and Computacenter. She worked with customers in the Financial Services area, Public Sector and Advisory, focusing on strategic alignment of account services against contractual commitments.

Michelle Ansell

Michelle Ansell is a global leader with deep expertise navigating complex financial services organizations. As a respected industry expert across market data, trading platforms, supplier relationships, and management, she has a proven track record bridging front-office, procurement, legal, technology, finance, and executives for transformational change.

Her unique experience from senior roles on both the supplier and financial services sides provides valuable insight into constraints and opportunities. Michelle has grown successful businesses by managing teams, developing business, building client relationships, and reducing risk.

She is an award-winning champion of diversity, equity, and inclusion passionate about advancing neurodiversity, social mobility, and empowering women in finance. Michelle fosters an inclusive, supportive environment while advocating for meaningful change.

Adam Grodecki

Adam is the Founder and CEO of the Forward Institute, a non-profit building a movement for responsible leadership that now partners with over 40 of the UK’s most influential public and private sector organisations. He set up the Institute with the support of the Boston Consulting Group, where he was a consultant for several years.

He previously co-founded a charity called Student Hubs, which works with over 25,000 students in UK universities. He graduated with a first-class degree in Theology from St Peter's College, Oxford where he was awarded the inaugural Vice-Chancellor's Civic Award. In 2014 he was named a 'Global Shaper' by the World Economic Forum and was invited to speak at their annual meeting at Davos.

Tangy C Morgan

Tangy is a corporate leader who has a proven track record of identifying risks, asking the critical questions, finding solutions to add value and driving profitable business for global organisations in the insurance and wider financial services industry. Her diverse industry knowledge of the US, Bermuda, London and international markets and jurisdictions can be evidenced from her appointment to the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority as an active cohort member of the PRA Senior Advisors. Her focus is on bringing commercial expertise and challenging the regulatory arm of the United Kingdom’s central bank.

Tangy excelled in production underwriting and managing catastrophe liability insurance for petroleum, banks, infrastructure projects, pharmaceuticals, marine, aviation and manufacturing with companies such as Chubb, AIG, TransAmerica (TIG), Guy Carpenter (Marsh, Inc.) and the Corporation of Lloyd’s of London. In her role at Lloyd’s she was predominately responsible for the approval of the annual business plans, profitablity and capital of the syndicates operating within the US$40 billion global insurance market. Tangy’s career started at Conoco, Inc as an oil and gas production analyst.

She is a sought- after panelist and a featured speaker on topics relevant to corporate board members, NEDs and executives such as sustainability, risk management, corporate governance, geopolitics and diversity equity and inclusion. She is also a mentor and a key role model for colleagues, whereby she specifically focuses on mentoring individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. Her impact can be demonstrated through her contribution to the UK bestseller on careers authored by Rene Germain, ‘Black and Great’: A Workplace Toolkit for Us by Us’.

Currently, her engagements include being an active member of the Boston University Alumni Council, StrategiaWorldwide, Ltd, STEM Learning UK Advisory Board, Cachet Inc (Estonia), Tantek4d (Ireland), American International Church, Trustee of The Lord Mayor’s Appeal and recently joined the Lord Mayor’s AI Ethics Initiative. She is also a member of the United Kingdom Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. and several other civic and philanthropic organisations in the UK and US (details available upon request).

Tangy graduated from Tennessee State University (B.A.), Boston University (Master of Science in Business Continuity, Security and Risk Management). She enjoys the arts (museums, music, ballet and cinema), travel (over 39 countries, 6 continents) and Stott Pilates. She is a dual citizen of the US and the UK.

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