MACQUARIE TOP 10 - OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO COMMUNITIES 2022
JABEER BUTT OBE
Butt, chief executive of the Race Equality Foundation, has an international reputation for his evidence-based work tackling discrimination and disadvantage. His studies have been used to inform government thinking, including interventions such as Sure Start, as well as the NSPCC’s Grove House Family Centre. He provides leadership on the Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities (SFSC) parenting programme and has a key role in the Health and Wellbeing Alliance, which has helped create better conversations between the Black and minority ethnic-led voluntary sector and the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and Public Health England. Butt also sits on a number of other boards and committees. He was awarded an OBE in the 2013 Queen’s New Year Honours List for his services to health equality.
JANETT WALKER
Walker is the CEO of Anti-Racist Cumbria, which she co-founded in 2020 and has overseen the growth of the organisation from an online group of activists to a strategic and influential registered charity whose mission to make Cumbria the UK’s first actively anti-racist county is already pioneering meaningful change. Change has never frightened Walker; her career has taken her from overseas youth worker to lawyer to events and PR business owner. At each turn she has been a force for good, challenged the status quo and uplifted those around her.
KEVIN FENTON
Professor Fenton is London’s Public Health Director and leads the region’s public health response to and recovery from the pandemic. His work highlighted disparities in Covid’s risks and outcomes, made interventions to protect vulnerable groups and promoted equity-focused vaccination roll-out. Community-centred approaches to improving health have been a cornerstone of his leadership, in the UK and globally, focused on the prevention and control of HIV/Aids, other infectious and chronic diseases. He is the President of the UK Faculty of Public Health and the government’s Chief Advisor on HIV. He was awarded a CBE in 2022 for services to public health.
LYDIA AMOAH
Recognised as Britain’s leading authority on diversity, equity and inclusion, Amoah is a campaigner, founder of cultural change agency Backlight Inc, an award-winning business strategist/coach and a TV presenter. She is a DEI pioneer, a history-maker and a game-changer. Her many landmark achievements include supporting the paths to the progress of 50,000+ people by unpicking their career-blockers and identifying clear routes for them to fulfil their ambitions. She has driven cultural workplace change for organisations such as News UK, Ofcom, P&G, the BBC, the NFL, Financial Times, Channel 4, the Daily Telegraph, the Bank of Ireland and the NHS. Amoah is also the architect of Accelerate, the creative sector’s revered multicultural leadership programme that’s actively changing the landscape of Black, Asian and multi-ethnic leaders in the workplace.
MOHSIN ZAIDI
Zaidi is an award-winning author and barrister. His critically acclaimed memoir, A Dutiful Boy, won the American Lambda Award, the British Polari prize and was named a Guardian, GQ and New Statesman Book of the Year. Zaidi was a solicitor at global law firm Linklaters and then became a barrister at a top criminal chamber. He is currently an executive at strategic advisory firm Hakluyt. He has also sat on the boards of London Pride and Stonewall. The Financial Times named him a top future leader, The Lawyer ranked named him in their Hot 100 and Attitude calls him ‘a trailblazer changing the world’.
ROHIT SAGOO
British Sikh Nurses, the organisation headed by Rohit Sagoo, has a renowned reputation for its work and awareness around organ and stem cell donation and tackling health inequalities in the South Asian communities. The various outreach activities by British Sikh Nurses have helped screen the health of hundreds of people, pushed the stem cell register into thousands, potentially saved up to 3,000 lives through organ donation registration and saved others through living donations. Sagoo is the 1514th Point of Light Award winner, a winner of the RCN Leadership Award in 2021 and Community Award winner at the London Faith and Belief Awards in 2018.
SHOLA MOS-SHOGBAMIMU
Dr Mos-Shogbamimu is a political and women’s rights activist, has taught intersectional feminism to female refugees and asylum seekers, scrutinises government policies from a gender and diversity inclusion perspective and co-organises women’s marches and social campaigns. She is also a solicitor, qualified to practice in both the UK and US, with broad expertise in the financial services industry, a writer, public speaker and political commentator featured in mainstream and online media. She founded the Women in Leadership publication as a platform to drive positive change on topical issues that impact women globally through inspiring personal leadership journeys and established She@LawTalks to promote women and Black, Asian and minority ethnic leadership in the legal profession through universities and secondary schools. An academic enthusiast, she has an Executive MBA (Cambridge), a PhD (Birkbeck) an LLM (London School of Economics & Political Science) an MA (Westminster) and an LLB Hons (Buckingham University).
SUSAN CUEVA
Cueva came to the UK from the Phillipines after fleeing persecution and imprisonment as a trade union organiser. She is a campaigner for the rights of migrant domestic workers. As National Organiser for Unison, she organised low-paid migrant workers and set up a national network of migrant and Black minority nurses and carers. She worked with the International Transport Workers Federation, campaigning for the rights of seafarers in global shipping. Cueva is a co-founder of community organisations such as Kanlungan, Kalayaan, the Filipino Domestic Workers Association and the Southeast and East Asian Centre, and is a trustee with Status Now For All, the Phoenix Fund and the JCWI (Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants).
HAU-YU TAM
Tam 譚巧瑜 is a community worker and campaigner, and a councillor in Lewisham. She co-founded and works as Head of Campaigns at End Violence and Racism Against ESEA Communities – an intergenerational anti-racism organisation using intersectional approaches and building solidarity to educate on, redress and prevent structural racism and inequalities harming East and Southeast Asian communities. Tam studied literature at the University of St Andrews and international politics and diplomacy at SOAS, University of London.
DR YVONNE THOMPSON CBE
Known as a game-changer, activist, public inspirer and coach, with 39 years of experience in communications, Dr Thompson advises corporate and public sector clients alike. Championing equality across industries, she advocates to ensure that women and minorities have access to the opportunities they deserve.
She has accomplished many firsts in the Black community including the first Black-owned PR company, the first legal Black-owned radio station (Choice FM) and the UK’s first Black women in business network. That was how she found her passion in work and life – supporting women and minority-owned businesses. She has written an Amazon Best Seller book on leadership, 7 Traits of Highly Successful Women on Boards and founded the WinTrade Global Network (Women In Trade), a women-led global trade network that supports thousands of women. Dr Thompson chairs Okre.org a charity supported by and based at the Wellcome Trust, is proud to be taking up the mantle of Chair at the Black Cultural Archives (BCA) and in February was invested as a Deputy Lieutenant for Greater London.