Event Audience: Partner Audiences

The demand for digital tech skills continues to grow exponentially in Scotland.

Neurodiversity presents an opportunity for employers to unlock strong skills and qualities which can be particularly well suited to digital tech jobs. Neurodiversity is also proven to bring business benefits such as increased productivity and retention.

Join us at this event and take action to support an inclusive sector for the neurodiverse.

You will learn why neurodiversity is good for your tech business and what you can do as a business leader to support the creation of an inclusive neurodiverse workforce.

We will be joined by Sopra Steria, Skills Development Scotland and Inclusion Scotland to hear about:

• Why neurodiversity is important and how it will benefit your business
• What other tech employers are doing to support neurodivergent recruits and improve inclusion in their organisations
• Where you can get help and support to increase neurodiversity in your tech business

CodeClan will also talk about our experience working with Inclusion Scotland to ensure we are accessible and inclusive as possible.

This event is of importance to all employers with a requirement for digital technology skills and is open to CEO’s, CTO’s, HR, and digital technology business leads.

This event is brought to you by CodeClan in partnership with Sopra Steria, Skills Development Scotland and Inclusion Scotland as part of the Neurodiversity in Tech programme with SDS.

Please note presentations will take place between 12pm and 1pm with speakers staying on the call until 1:30pm to chat further with any attendees who would like to continue the conversation. 

June is Pride month – a month dedicated to celebrating LGBTQ+ communities all around the world. Join us as we bring people together at this face to face event to celebrate at CodeClan’s Edinburgh Campus with our Digital Diversity Group and Lloyds Banking Group Women ConnecTech.

We will be starting a discussion around the current landscape of the tech community and if it is as inclusive as possible for the LGBTQ+ community.

We will be joined by keynote speaker Debbie Forster  from Tech Talent Charter who will be focusing on Data and how current data practices reflect an incomplete account of LGBTQ lives and the reasoning behind this.

Our second keynote speaker is Sophie Gray (She/Her) , Customer Success Director, Data and AI for Microsoft. Sophie will be talking through some of her experiences as a gay woman working in the tech field.

To close the event we will have a panel discussion and they will be talking about their experience being part of the LGBTQ + community has in their career and their thoughts on the positives in regards to inclusion within the industry and what areas needs to be worked on based on their experience.

Our panel includes:

Lauren Wright (She/Her) – Head of Data, Advanced Analytics & Insight Operations, COO, Lloyds Banking Group

Flo McCubbin (They/Them) – Data Engineer- Lloyds Banking Group

We will also be we opening up the floor to the audience to ask their questions and share their own experience.

There will also be plenty time to enjoy some refreshments and network with fellow attendees.

Speaker Bios:

Sophie Gray (She/Her) , Customer Success Director, Data and AI for Microsoft

Sophie has worked with Business Application and Data and AI solutions for over 15 years, supporting the delivery and utilisation of these in to Enterprise organisations cross industry. Primarily a practitioner, but more recently Sophie leads the technical architecture and engineering community within Microsoft UK. Alongside business commitments, Sophie chairs the Employee Resource Group for the LGBTQI+ community, building diverse and inclusive communities across Microsoft and Partners.

Lauren Wright( She/Her)- Head of Data, Advanced Analytics & Insight Operations, COO

Lauren is incredibly committed with a strong sense to ‘do the right thing’ for the business, team, and colleagues around her. She is currently the Data, Advanced Analytics and Insights lead in COO Operations; a team entrusted with helping improve business performance through data led decisions. They do this by encouraging each other as a team to positively disrupt, continually rediscover, innovate, and evolve the art of the possible through their combined skills and capabilities.

Lauren champions actively experimenting and trialling new ideas and technologies to develop end to end products which bring the most value to our colleagues, whilst fostering an environment of continual learning and support. Lauren is also passionate about Inclusion and Diversity, people development, collaboration, and resilience. She is an active ally and role model, working across numerous Group I&D activities, as well as being the lead mental health advocate for Operations, she is also a behavioural experiment champion and externally involved in the organisation and running of Women in Data Events.

Flo McCubbin  (They/Them)– Data Engineer

Flo McCubbin strives to promote intersectionality in everything they do, whether it is in their study of data ethics or in educating their colleagues. They regularly run LGBT+ and mental well-being events, including during LGBT+ history month – their most recent events focus specifically on the history of LGBT+ people of colour and their contributions to the community.

Within their team and beyond, McCubbin provides training on intersectionality and the impact of racism and xenophobia in the LGBT+ community, runs pronouns and trans inclusion training and furthers inclusive hiring by drawing attention to the intersections between gender, sexuality, disability, race, age, class, and adaptations that can be made to the hiring process to encourage diversity in teams. Outside of their organisation, McCubbin encourages young people to join apprenticeships, highlighting the accessibility and fiscal merits of non-university higher education.