The judging panel will come together to go through Top 10 submissions and decide on the winner. We have chosen a judging panel of business leaders who are invested in their workplace and also the wider LGBT community. The Judging Panel will judge business categories only. Celebrity and consumer categories will be brought before a public vote.
Categories are:
- Future Leader
- Corporate Ally
- Network Group or ERG
- Diversity Hero
- Inspirational Leader
- Inclusive Employer or Company
- Exceptional Inclusion
Please enquire if you would like to receive more information on judging criteria or the nomination process. The Outstanding Contribution to LGBT+ Life category will return before a judging panel as well as Brand or Marketing Campaign, which has moved from a public vote to official judging.
Scroll down to find out more about our judges.
SARAH CHURCHMAN OBE
PEOPLE DIRECTOR / CHIEF INCLUSION,
COMMUNITY & WELLBEING OFFICER
PwC
Sarah is a senior HR professional with 20 years’ experience in the specialist area of Diversity & Inclusion and is one of the country’s leading practitioners in this field.
Sarah’s experience and understanding of the systemic barriers to diversity means she operates ahead of the curve. She worked with the firm’s LGBT+ network in 2003 to ensure equality in benefits provision for staff with same sex partners; experimented with unconscious bias awareness training in 2005; identified the link between diversity and talent management as an obvious mechanism for target setting in 2011; she established an award winning sponsorship programme in 2013 and, under her leadership, PwC was the fifth private sector organisation in the UK to publish their gender pay gap in 2014 before the Regulations came into force. PwC was the first professional services firm to sponsor Pride in London 2017-2019. She led her organisation to sign the Race at Work Charter and publish their ethnicity pay gap in 2017, 2018 and 2019 and lead PwC to #1 in the Social Mobility Employers Index.
Sarah was awarded an OBE in the 2018 New Year’s Honours List for services to women in business, equality & diversity.
PIPS BUNCE
DIRECTOR
CREDIT SUISSE
Pips is a Director and Head of Global Markets Technology Strategic Programs and co-chair of the LGBT & Ally Network at Credit Suisse. Pips identifies as gender fluid and non-binary hence both identities within the Trans umbrella.
Pips was awarded a prestigious position in the OUTStanding, Involve and Yahoo Finance executive Leader list, featured in the HERoes Female Executives list, shortlisted or the European Diversity Awards and won the Inspirational Leader category as part of the British LGBT Awards.
She is an active proponent for many of the firms holistic Diversity and Inclusion activities and also works with many mainstream firms including the BBC, Financial News, Parliament and the Government Equalities Office highlighting the importance of Diversity and Inclusion, Ally programs, LGBTQI inclusion, Trans* and non-binary identities the power of authenticity and why intersectionality is needed.
BARRY DAVIES
HEAD OF SUPPLY CHAIN – TESCO IRELAND
CHAIR OF OUT AT TESCO
Barry has worked at Tesco for 31 years. He started in stores in Wales, working his way through several senior management positions and stores before moving to London 22 years ago to join the Head Office operation in a number of operational and project management roles in Supply Chain. For the last three and half years has been Head of Supply Chain for Tesco Ireland.
He has been involved in Out At Tesco since its inception in 2005. In January 2019 Barry became Chair of the Network, which is one of the largest in Europe with over 3,000 members. 2019 was a huge year, with support for 43 Pride Events across the UK and Ireland, celebrating and supporting Pride with Tesco colleagues and customers in communities up and down the country.
His hobbies in his spare time (when he gets some) revolve mainly around travel and visiting different places around the world with his family and friends. He is also an avid theatre and cinema goer.
“Our Network is active year round to support an inclusive culture at Tesco where everyone’s welcome. These Awards celebrate all that is good in and around the LGBT+ community and I’m extremely proud to represent Tesco as a judge.”
BABAK ERFANI MBE
SENIOR SPONSOR, SIGNALLING & DIGITAL RAILWAY
NETWORK RAIL
Babak joined Network Rail in 2009, and has spent his career working on the development, design and construction of major infrastructure projects. He led the design and construction of part of London’s Crossrail network, before moving on to head up Network Rail’s major investment programme in signalling and digital railway projects across the South West of the UK.
In 2013 Babak established Archway, the company’s LGBT+ employee network. Over the past six years it’s grown to become the largest LGBT+ network in the rail industry and in 2017 it won the British LGBT Awards’ employee network award. Since 2016 it has hosted a major industry annual conference on LGBT+ inclusion, along with a huge variety of events all over Great Britain, along with a ground-breaking training programme for allies. This year it joined the umbrella group for LGBT+ employee networks in rail across Europe, developing international links and sharing best practice across the continent.
In 2017 Babak was awarded an MBE for his work at Archway in recognition of the support it has provided for LGBT+ colleagues throughout Britain’s railways.
KAREN FLYNN-MACFARLANE
COLLEAGUE EXPERIENCE LEAD FOR ETHNICITY
NATWEST
After studying for a period and achieving a Biochemistry degree and PgDip in Forensic Science, Karen started working for Natwest 14 years ago as technical specialist.
Having held a variety of different roles within the facilities team, she now works in the Colleague Experience and Proposition Team within HR, incorporating Inclusion, Wellbeing and Colleague experience. She has covered a variety of projects and roles in the team including driving forward on the banks BAME agenda to achieve 14% BAME representation in the top 4 layers of the organisation by 2025 and the bank LGBT agenda. She now focusses on the colleague experience and how this can be achieved for all colleagues
Karen also held the position of the RBS Rainbow Network Co-Chair for 4.5 years. Her focus during this time was working to support RBS one of her key activities was leading on the Global Pride activity, heading up a group of local volunteers to deliver the best entries possible across our locations and encourage as many colleagues as possible to attend.
Karen lives in Edinburgh and is married to Sharon. They have a toddler son, Archie.
JEMMA KAMEEN
STORE MANAGER & CHAIR OF PROUD @ SAINSBURY’S
SAINSBURY’S
Jemma Kameen is the store manager at Sainsbury’s Bradford in West Yorkshire and is the chair of the company’s LGBTA employee network of over 1800 colleagues – Proud@Sainsbury’s.
Using her leadership role to inspire and implement change as well as acting as a personal mentor to a number of colleagues, Jemma is the company’s most visible lesbian role model.
Championing Sainsbury’s vision to be the most inclusive retailer, Jemma helped to secure a Top 100 placement in this year’s Stonewall Workplace Equality index. Jemma is instrumental in Sainsbury’s attendance at Pride events across the UK, with the company attending more than 40 Prides in 2019. Jemma also won Future Leader at last year’s British LGBT Awards in London.
AMIR KABEL
DIRECTOR OF DIVERSITY & INCLUSION
BURBERRY
An award-winning global leader and influencer in D&I, Amir has been listed in the global Top 50 Diversity Professionals List, Top 50 Most Influential Diversity Stars 2020 List, and won the prestigious ‘Head of Diversity’ Award at the European Diversity Awards 2017, for his commitment to and 12+ direct years of service in the field of D&I.
Taking a business-led approach to D&I, Amir’s diversity programs are considered pioneering and innovative. Amir has recently crated and led global strategies for Burberry, Adidas, Coty and Vodafone- working across the world to effect change and create sustainable award-winning diversity and talent programs.
Amir has also received the following accolades: Telegraph’s Top 50 LGBT Executives List 2015; Winner of ‘Corporate Rising Star’ at the British LGBT Awards 2015; and he was selected for the Young Leaders program for the U.S. Embassy (UK).
GEFFRYE PARSONS
MANAGING DIRECTOR, COMMODITIES & GLOBAL MARKETS
MACQUARIE
Geff has a quarter of a century of experience in investment banking, based variously in London, Hong Kong, Singapore and Amsterdam. He joined Macquarie’s Commodities & Global Markets division in 2013 as a Managing Director, and now focuses on structured risk mitigation and distribution, as well as certain key projects, in the EMEA region.
At Macquarie, Geff has chaired the Pride network for almost six years, during which time it has grown to cover 30% of the overall staff population. Under his stewardship, Macquarie was named in Stonewall’s Top 100 Employers list for the 2016, 2017 and 2018 (Macquarie took a hiatus from submission in 2019), was one of only three financial services organisations to win Stonewall’s ‘Highly Commended Network Group’ accolade in 2018, and won the inaugural PinkNews’ Business Equality Award in October 2018, in recognition of Macquarie’s exemplary commitment to LGBT+ rights within its workforce, its customers and the business.
Geff uses his Pride network position, and his role model influence as a Managing Director, to promote the visibility of LGBT+ employees within Macquarie and externally. In this context, he has frequently acted as a speaker, panellist and moderator at external events, provided strategic input to various LGBT+ organisations, given press interviews, pioneered cross-industry best practice-sharing forums, and arranged many LGBT+ related charitable fundraisers, including for Opening Doors London and Diversity Role Models, for whom he is qualified as a schools role model.
Geff’s passion for promoting the visibility and interests of those identifying as LGBT+, and for educating others about LGBT+ matters, has resulted in his winning the award for ‘LGBT+ Inspirational Leader’ at the British LGBT Awards in May 2019, being ranked in the top quartile of OUTstanding list of the Top 100 LGBT+ Executives in each of 2018 and 2019, and being nominated for the award of ‘Corporate Role Model’ at the Pink News Awards in October 2018.
PEDRO PINA
VICE PRESIDENT
GOOGLE
A Portuguese-born marketer with an MBA from Insead, Pedro joined Google in 2013 to oversee Google’s deep engagement with global advertising giants like Unilever, L’Oreal, Nestle, LVMH, VW & BMW and more, as well as Google’s award-winning internal creative task force “The Zoo”.
Pedro is the Executive Sponsor of Google’s EMEA D&I programmes. He spearheads the vision for inclusive hiring, progression & retention of under-represented groups; sponsors the company’s LGBTQ+ ERG; and is a prominent LGBTQ+ voice among Google’s global leadership.
Driving 32 Roadshows across 20 countries, Pedro continues to reinforce the importance of better D&I behaviours, especially around LGBTQ+, and rolled-out initiatives, such as self-identification in Google’s people survey. This enabled community-specific action plans to improve benefits and address concerns, powering the goal to make Google a more inclusive place to work.
Pedro actively campaigned to secure funding for Google EMEA Pride programmes across 24 cities. An Executive Sponsor of Pride Day at Cannes Lion and a key executive ally for Google’s Women@ & Trans@ ERG, Pedro also works extensively with LGBTQ+ charities and contributes to campaigns fostering LGBTQ+ inclusion and shaping community perceptions.
In 2019 Pedro was named a top 10 influential LGBTQ+ UK executive (British LGBTQ+ awards) and also named the world’s top LGBTQ+ executive role model (OUTstanding 100 LGBTQ+ Executive Role Models List).
Pedro is the Executive Sponsor of Google’s EMEA D&I programmes. He spearheads the vision for inclusive hiring, progression & retention of under-represented groups; sponsors the company’s LGBTQ+ ERG; and is a prominent LGBTQ+ voice among Google’s global leadership.
Driving 32 Roadshows across 20 countries, Pedro continues to reinforce the importance of better D&I behaviours, especially around LGBTQ+, and rolled-out initiatives, such as self-identification in Google’s people survey. This enabled community-specific action plans to improve benefits and address concerns, powering the goal to make Google a more inclusive place to work.
Pedro actively campaigned to secure funding for Google EMEA Pride programmes across 24 cities. An Executive Sponsor of Pride Day at Cannes Lion and a key executive ally for Google’s Women@ & Trans@ ERG, Pedro also works extensively with LGBTQ+ charities and contributes to campaigns fostering LGBTQ+ inclusion and shaping community perceptions.
In 2019 Pedro was named a top 10 influential LGBTQ+ UK executive (British LGBTQ+ awards) and also named the world’s top LGBTQ+ executive role model (OUTstanding 100 LGBTQ+ Executive Role Models List).
EMMA SCOTT
IT STREAM LEAD, LGBT+ NETWORK CHAIR
NESTLE UK&I
Emma joined Nestle in 2013 through the Nestle Academy IT placement and graduate programmes. She has spent her career working across IT ranging from supporting global HR transformation programmes through to leading security risk management systems. In the past year she had led the Applications stream, joining the UK&I IT Leadership Team.
Emma is a Stonewall Young Leaders alumni and openly gay leader within the business. She co-founded the UK&I LGBT+ network in 2016 and is the current network chair. Emma has built a network from the ground up gaining sponsorship from the board to actively increase inclusivity for LGBT+ employees within the business and our communities. The network have made significant impact in the organisation over the past 3 years and have over 200 members within the UK&I and recognition globally within the Nestle group.
Outstanding Contribution to LGBT+ life
Judging Panel
ROBYN EXTON
HER, FOUNDER
Bio Coming Soon.
MZ KIMBERLEY
SINGER, ACTRESS, ACTIVIST
Bio Coming Soon.
LUCY LONDON
LONDON QUEER FASHION SHOW
Bio Coming Soon.
TIM SIGSWORTH
THE ALBERT KENNEDY TRUST
Bio Coming Soon.
SANJAY SOOD-SMITH
STONEWALL
Bio Coming Soon.
NEW to 2020!
Brand or Marketing Campaign
Judging Panel
