Shehzad H. Abbasi
Senior Manager, St. James's Place Wealth Management
Born in South Yorkshire to Pakistani parents who were civil servants, Shehzad went to Liverpool for his undergraduate degree, and followed a Maîtrise (Masters) Management course at IPAG, in Nice, France. He recently returned to England after almost fourteen years in Dubai, UAE, where he was the COO of a multi-billion dollar family office (Galadari) active in venture capital, real estate and investments and subsequently an external management consultant and non-executive director, helping businesses grow. With almost 20 years of international business experience at a senior level and a fluent speaker of three languages, he has helped steer and shape business growth strategies internationally for FTSE100 and Fortune 500 companies. Having done this for clients across verticals such as Financial Services, Real Estate and Technology, Shehzad is always delighted to sit with business leaders and senior managers to help review their strategic growth or career plans. He can bring lessons learned across various disciplines to life through experience gained during a career spanning three countries and two continents. Shehzad works for St. James's Place Wealth Management. 'I am thrilled to become an ambassador for the Diversity Project and relishing the challenge of helping promote D&I across the piste. I am very thankful for the opportunities which have come my way, and for the life that working in financial services has given me. Very keen to help shape and promote more opportunities for inclusion so that we can all celebrate a sector more reflective of the wider society we live in'.
Alison Cottrell
CEO, Financial Services Culture Board
Alison Cottrell is the founding CEO of the Financial Services Culture Board (FSCB), a non-statutory membership body established in April 2015 to help raise standards of behaviour and competence – initially within banking, and now across financial services. The FSCB provides the boards and senior teams of its member firms with evidence, support and challenge to help them manage their workplace culture and identify and learn from good practice. Alison began her career as a City economist covering international fixed income and currency markets. In 2001 she joined HM Treasury where she was Director of Financial Services from 2009 to 2015. She combined this role for three years with that of Director of Corporate Services, focusing on staff development and organisational culture.
Cosmo Elms
Head of ETF Business Development, Legal & General Investment Management
Cosmo joined LGIM’s ETF team in April 2019 as Head of Business Development. In this role he works on the strategic market positioning of LGIM’s ETF business as well as initiatives designed to help LGIM ETFs business grow across client channels and markets. Prior to this Cosmo was a Senior Product Strategy & Development manager at LGIM, contributing to the design and delivery of new pooled products at LGIM, as well as driving the firm’s product strategy across its investment range. Cosmo started his career at Mercer Investments, where he advised pension fund and insurance clients on their investment strategy and manager selection. Cosmo has been involved with the Diversity Project for over 4 years, initially co-chairing the Gender Diversity committee and he is now focussing on promoting male allyship. Cosmo graduated from Bristol University and holds an MEng in Civil Engineering.
Peter Ewing
Technical Specialist, Financial Conduct Authority
Peter started his career in the life insurance industry, first in IT and later moving to work as a project manager in marketing. He joined the FCA in 2009 and has had a number of specialist roles in regulation, including Treating Customers Fairly (TCF), culture and governance and accountability.
Lee Georgs
Chief Operating Officer, Redington
Lee Georgs is Redington’s Chief Operating Officer. She is an executive board member and sits on the
firm’s Leadership Team, Risk and Remuneration Committees as well as their Diversity and Inclusion,
Culture and Values Teams, speaking regularly on matters of gender, diversity recruitment, social
mobility, pay equity, the Gender Pay Gap and Returnships.
Lee has spent the last 20 years in the financial services industry in a host of roles across the U.S., Asia
and Europe, spanning Wealth Management, Private Banking, Consulting, M&A and Investment
Management. She spent a decade in Private Banking and Wealth Management in New York at
Citibank and JP Morgan before moving overseas in 2006, first to Hong Kong where she spent several
years as Director of Global Accounts for the Asia Pacific Region for consulting firm RGP, and then to London, where she spent several years in M&A at Credit Suisse prior to joining Redington in 2017. Lee holds her MBA from Columbia Business School and is the London Alumni Club’s co-President. In
addition to this, she is a Steering Committee Member for The Diversity Project (the U.K.’s Investment
Management Industry body working to advance the diversity agenda in the sector), an LGBT Great Ally
and a volunteer with Speakers for Schools (an organization dedicated to encouraging young women
to pursue careers in Financial Services). In addition to her MBA, she holds a BA in Spanish and Art
History from Vanderbilt University.
Lee currently lives in London with her husband and their three boys.
Christopher Hill
Chief Executive Officer, Hargreaves Lansdown
Chris was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Hargreaves Lansdown from April 2017 and joined the company as CFO in February 2016. As CEO, Chris has considerable experience in managing strategy, leadership and operational management in the financial services sector – including the challenge of navigating a company during significant disruption, from COVID to digital execution and ESG.
Faced with economic uncertainty, Covid has led many people to engage more with their savings, but it has also reinforced a financial divide in this country. That is why Chris has made the need for more financial resilience a core part of his leadership philosophy, building on Hargreaves Lansdown’s core purpose of empowering people to save and invest with confidence. With many households lacking the financial resilience to withstand a sudden loss of income or increase in expenditure, or little protection against falling into difficulty, the impacts can be severe. That is why in July 2021 Chris launched 5 to Thrive, the five key building blocks for financial resilience, and in January 2022 he will launch a new Savings and Resilience barometer as a regular tracker of the nation’s progress on resilience.
Prior to joining Hargreaves Lansdown, Chris also worked as CFO at IG Group Holdings plc, and Travelex. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant at Arthur Andersen, is a member of the Investment Association’s Advisory Council, the FCA’s Practitioner Panel, and of the 30% Club.
“At HL, financial resilience is at the heart of what we do. I believe that we have a responsibility to play our part, so we are looking to build on our purpose, to broaden our understanding and work in the financial resilience area and play a bigger role, through additional insights, tools, guidance and advice. Before the pandemic in 2019 the Financial Resilience Taskforce called for the development of a new index to track the nation’s financial resilience to help improve it, now more than ever this is needed. We intend to do our part by launching a new Savings and Resilience Barometer in January 2022, as a regular tracker of the nation’s progress on resilience dimensions.”
Apiramy Jeyarajah
Head of UK Wholesale, Aviva Investors
Apiramy joined Aviva Investors in January 2020 as the Head of UK Wholesale. She is responsible for driving the sales strategy across the wealth, savings and retirement market for domestic and cross boarder relationships in the UK . Apiramy is passionate about driving diversity of thought and ensuring our businesses will better reflect both society at large and the clients who trust us with their money. Apiramy is involved with a number of initiatives including co-lead of the intersectionality workstream at the Diversity Project. She joined Aviva Investors from HSBC Global Asset management, where she established and led the Financial Institutions sales team, focusing on deepening relationships with asset owners in the UK and Israel. Apiramy joined the Asset management industry in 2013.
Between 2007- 2013 Apiramy worked for RBS Global Banking and Markets and ABN AMRO where she was responsible for institutional sales’ strategy and business development for bespoke solutions and quantitative systematic strategies across all asset classes. She has also held various structuring roles within the organisation including Equity Derivatives, FICC and Real Estate. She began her career at SEI investments in the multi manager investment business.
Apiramy holds a BSc Economics and Statistics from University College London.
Lisa Lee Lewis
Head of Risk Consulting EMEA Advisory, Norton Rose Fulbright
Gwyneth Nurse
Director, Financial Services, HM Treasury
Gwyneth Nurse took up the role of Director of Financial Services in HM Treasury in April 2015. Prior to that, Gwyneth was Deputy Director of the Banking and Credit Team in the Treasury. She moved to that role after heading up the Assets, Savings and Wealth Team, also in the Treasury. Before joining the Treasury, Gwyneth worked for HM Revenue & Customs, where she qualified as a Tax Inspector and then worked in tax policy.
Julie Pardy
Director of Regulation and Market Engagement, Worksmart
Katie Stephen
Partner, Norton Rose Fulbright
Katie Stephen is a financial services lawyer based in London. She specialises in advising clients on contentious regulatory matters, including internal and external investigations and enforcement proceedings involving a variety of regulators and other bodies, such as the FCA, PRA, Ofgem, HMRC, SFO, FRC, SRA and the Exchanges (including AIM and ICE) as well as those in other jurisdictions. Katie has twice been seconded to the Financial Conduct Authority as a legal advisor to its Regulatory Decisions Committee and has acted on a number of high profile financial crime cases, including money laundering and market abuse proceedings against firms and individuals. She has also conducted a wide range of internal investigations for financial institutions and corporates and regularly advises on the regulatory implications and cross-border issues arising from these. She is praised by clients for her "investigatory talents" (Legal 500).
Raj Tulsiani
CEO & Co-Founder, Green Park
Raj Tulsiani has become one of the UK’s leading figures in executive search, interim management, workforce planning and diversification. He has over 20 years of experience moving the dial on leadership, talent and diversity and is the author of 'Diversity and Inclusion for Leaders: Making a Difference with the Diversity Headhunter.'
As one of the most respected and disruptive figures internationally in these fields, Raj advises boards and change agents across the public and private sectors on diversity and talent. He sits on a number of boards including the Met Police.
As the leader of one of the recruitment industry’s few minority-owned businesses, Raj is a passionate advocate of the power of diversity as a source of competitive advantage, leading a team that sets the benchmark for innovation and commitment to consistently attracting and retaining diverse groups of appointable leadership candidates.
Under his leadership, Green Park has become an award-winning consultancy at the forefront of client and candidate service and innovation. In 2019, Green Park featured in the Financial Times’ list of 1000 Fastest Growing Companies and was the only recruitment agency to feature within the Sunday Times Virgin Atlantic Fast Track 100, ranking Britain’s fastest-growing private companies.
Regarded as a champion for entrepreneurialism within the UK, in 2018 Raj was most awarded Entrepreneur of the Year by both the MSDUK Awards and Recruitment International Awards and named in The EMpower 100 Ethnic Minority Executives List, presented by the FT. Other awards include Best Agency Recruitment Lead of the Year, a Lifetime Diversity Achievement Award and winning the Lord Noon Award at the Global Equality & Diversity Awards 2017.
Before co-founding Green Park, Raj was the first ethnic-minority manager at Michael Page, growing a start-up team to £10 million and was on the Executive Board at Penna, growing a start-up function to £14.5 million.
Lisa Laybourn
Head of Technical Policy and Regulation, TISA
Lisa has over 25 years experience in financial services with a breadth of regulatory knowledge and particular expertise in CASS. She spent 5 years at Architas Multi Manager as CF10a, and deputised for the COO in leading a function which included Third Party Governance, Operations and IT, as well as CASS. Prior to this Lisa spent 10 years with IFDS in various senior roles including as a Lead Relationship Manager and Head of European Cash and Stock Reconciliations. Lisa also spent some time with a Big 4 firm as a CASS SME. Prior to this Lisa worked in various operational roles in the banking sector.