Joining UK Youth as CEO in January 2020, Ndidi is an influential public advocate, delivering transformational change in a variety of contexts. She is deeply committed to youth work, life skills development, and youth equality. Ndidi is also a board member for youth homelessness charity, Centrepoint UK, the National Citizen Service and The Mulberry Schools Trust.

Jerry During grew up and lives in Newham, East London. He was motivated to work in money advice from an early age: when he was 16, his father was made redundant and took on large debts to cover household bills, placing great strain on the family but ultimately being resolved with the right support.

Money A+E was set up in 2011 when Jerry and his co-founders saw a need for disadvantaged communities to access money advice and education that they could truly trust – and this is achieved by recruiting staff who like Jerry have their own lived experience of money challenges.

Alex is a veteran CEO of the tech space and a successful serial entrepreneur with extensive experience in the recruitment and careers sector. Her particular experience of balancing needs within a double-sided marketplace, with a focus on quality, will help us create a new definition for Work Experience that becomes a ‘currency’ for recruitment, which should help make Workfinder the first-choice platform for work experience hosts and seekers across the globe.

Multi-award winning career coach/trainer, TEDx speaker and changemaker, Carolyn came to careers work in her early 30s, after a successful, but ultimately unfulfilling, business career working in property, international software and publishing. After retraining as a university careers adviser in 2001, she spent 15 years in the higher education career development sector, latterly as a careers and employability director, and took Voluntary Severance in 2015 to set up Career Alchemy. The business uses its own all age independently research-proven INSPiRED framework, toolkit and planner to help teenagers, graduates and professionals to identify and create purpose-driven and sustainable careers that help to solve the world’s greatest challenges.

Rich is the Chief Executive and Co-founder of Settle. He decided to set up Settle in 2015 after working in homeless hostels and seeing vulnerable young people getting trapped in a cycle of homelessness. Prior to this, he worked on the frontline supporting disadvantaged young people for several charities. He also completed the Year Here social innovation fellowship in 2014.

Helen is Chief Executive of the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, the research charity set up by Martin Lewis to better understand and tackle the link between financial difficulty and mental health problems. Since its inception in 2016 the charity has become a leading voice on issues from debt to impulsive spending, mental health services, consumer protection and the potential for big data and open banking for vulnerable customers. Before becoming CEO, Helen led the charity’s communications and influencing work, leading to changes in the financial services industry, in policy and in the health system.

Will is passionate about challenging the status quo, where people from disadvantaged backgrounds are consistently overlooked getting into work, and then unsupported to do well in work. MyKindaFuture’s digital mentoring platform, connectr, empowers a sense of belonging, builds relationships, supports people through the employment journey, whilst reducing employee attrition rates by as much as 67%. Initially supporting young-people, connectr now also supports ‘returners’ to work, and whole workforce.

Having spent nearly 30 years in the charity sector, primarily at The Prince’s Trust in their events department, Caroline has been privileged to work on many spectacular and unique charity events often involving major celebrities and royalty. Caroline joined The Lord Mayor’s Appeal in 2014 as part of the Appeal team for Sir Alan Yarrow. This team then became the permanent team working with consecutive Lord Mayors and Appeals. Caroline was instrumental in the Appeal’s strategy A Better City for All incorporating the 4 pillars Inclusive, Healthy, Skilled and Fair and taking the Appeal from a one year Appeal to a multi-year Appeal now delivering four initiatives – Power of Inclusion, This is Me, She Can Be and City Giving Day and in 2020 supporting four charities Place2Be, OnSide Youth Zones , Samaritans and The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award.

Freddy Kelly is the founder and CEO of Credit Kudos, a challenger credit bureau that uses financial behaviour to measure creditworthiness, harnessing Open Banking. Freddy started his career in Silicon Valley, as the first engineer at Bitnami (YC W13) and later A16z-backed TXN, developing their transaction analytics platform. With extensive experience in developing high-security performant web applications for the likes of Google, Microsoft and Amazon, Freddy has an intimate understanding of what is required to develop software at scale, safely and securely processing sensitive customer information.

Matt started his diversified business group from scratch in 2009 . This led to launching in 2013 an in-home computer tuition service (Silver Training), which rebranded in March 2016 to We Are Digital. After three rounds of angel investment, including the VC fund Midven, the start-up has grown to a 48-person business in Coventry - now serving over 100 clients as a major digital and financial inclusion education provider with the largest network of IT tutors in the UK. We Are Digital works with government, housing associations, councils, charities and corporates to get residents and staff digitally upskilled.

David founded ToolShed to help young people who did not suit the standard education pathway to discover their strengths and learn how they were going to earn their own living. Over the last four years the ToolShed has enabled over 100 young people who had limited to no prior qualifications progress into paid work or onto further education courses at local colleges.  Some ToolShed graduates have been employed directly by ToolShed and, at the age of 18-20, are now building houses using modern off-site manufacturing processes.