Leadership Summit

Jasvinder has full P&L responsibility for Direct Line’s entire B2B offering. She is rapidly growing and transforming the SME insurance space with a customer centric approach providing over 450,000 small businesses with direct digital access to insurance without the need for a broker. Prior to this, Jasvinder had many achievements such as growing Commercial Direct by delivering its first profitable year within two years as Head of Direct Line. She is also recognised as a Northern Power Women ‘Top 50 Women to Watch’.

Karen has been profiled in Media Guardian, The Evening Standard, The Independent on Sunday, The Sunday Times Business section – Andrew Davidson interview, Company Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Vogue and The Independent. Karen has appeared on Channel 4 News, BBC Global News, ITN News, BBC Breakfast News. 

Karen is an experienced speaker both within her industry sector and wider, and has spoken at: Management Today Inspiring Women conference, Mumsnet Workfest, AANA Reset Conference in Sydney Australia, the Huxley Summit, Advertising Association Lead Conference, has given a TEDx talk, and was a panellist for The Guardian Changing Media Conference whilst also guest editing the publication, Sunday Times Style “What She Said” column. Campaign’s most recent “BAME Issue” was guest edited by Karen. Karen is also a permanent contributor to The PipeLine Training Programme, focused on helping organisations progress their female talent. 

Valerie Amos was Britain’s first black, female Cabinet Minister, with an impressive history of leadership roles in government, NGOs, academic institutions, and international organisations. After working for several London boroughs, Valerie became CEO of the Equal Opportunities Commission in 1989. She was elevated to the House of Lords in 1997, becoming Secretary of State for International Development in 2003, and later Leader of the House of Lords.

After leaving the Cabinet, Valerie was appointed the British High Commissioner to Australia, and later the UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief. She has since held non-executive roles with organisations such as the UCLH Trust and the Royal College of Nursing Institute, and from 2015 to 2020 was the Director of SOAS, becoming the first black woman to lead a university school in the UK. Since September 2020, Valerie has been the Master of University College, Oxford, becoming the first-ever black head of an Oxford College.

Michele is an Executive Leadership coach with an avid interest in health and well-being. With a reputation for building excellent working relationships across all sectors and tackling controversial projects, she served as an executive manager in local government during her 35+ year public sector career. She led a diverse range of services such as housing, transport, planning, economic development, regeneration and corporate policy including leading on the delivery of the £90m Metrolink town centre extension for Oldham.

A keen walker and believer in the power of exercise and the outdoors, she has been director of her own company Walking the Talk Ltd since 2015, offering her clients the opportunity to walk outdoors during their coaching sessions.

Margaret is an experienced HR and Recruitment consultant with well-established credentials in the executive search sector. Margaret previously worked with The Pipeline as the director of our Consultancy Services. Prior to this she spent 10 years with Norman Broadbent Executive Search and played a leading role within the HR Practice, working with both large and small clients to help them build capability within their HR functions.

Prior to becoming a full-time executive coach, Lynn spent almost 20 years in the media industry as an award-winning (Emmy, National Press Club and Peter Lisagor Award for Investigative Journalism) television journalist, writer, producer, and on-air presenter/contributor in the USA and UK. Her excellent communication skills and distinctive can-do spirit were honed in professional posts with top international networks including BBC, ITV 1, CNN, CBS, CNBC, GMTV, Fox Health Network, E! Entertainment, BET and Showtime, where she developed and presented hard news as well as entertainment programming.

Lynn is known for her no-nonsense yet non-judgmental approach to coaching, upheld with total commitment to empowering her clients. She insists that measurable results can be obtained when time is valued as a commodity used to achieve leadership growth. Lynn inspires courage, humility and discipline in her clients and consistently coaches leaders to uncover their hidden potential for success.

Karen has over 25 years experience of developing leaders and coaching clients in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. She has a robust and practical approach and believes that coaching and personal development should be based on the realities, challenges and opportunities that exist in the wonderful world in which we live.

Passionate about women’s leadership and gender equality, she has worked on the Leadership Summit at The Pipeline for over 5 years and relishes the outcomes that can be seen from the participating women taking more control for their careers and gaining traction in their future roles.

Pargavi has joined The Pipeline as our Intern. She has recently graduated with a 1^st class degree in International Business from University of Hull where she also did a year abroad at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. She is extremely passionate about Diversity and Inclusion which has led her to The Pipeline. She believes that people from different backgrounds should be allowed equal opportunities to better their lives and careers.

Pauline has held a number of senior leadership roles in the European and UK motor industry. In addition she has supported several charities in a non-executive role, drawing on her broad commercial experience as a Finance Director, Learning and Development specialist and International Human Resources Director.

Pauline is now engaged in providing consultancy support to organisations aiming to create positive commercial change while bringing out the potential excellence within their people.

Working with senior leaders to examine their strategic direction, company structure and culture, Pauline supports positive change through organisation design, leadership development and executive coaching. Recent clients include Jaguar Land Rover, Ultra Engineering, Children with Cancer UK and MacIntyre.

As an executive coach, Pauline is focused particularly on supporting senior female leaders to bring out their most authentic personal leadership in challenging environments. Feedback from those Pauline has worked with attributes her with enabling them to leverage their personal impact and influence more effectively and so drive the success of their organisations.

Margaret McDonagh is a dynamic business woman and member of the House of Lords. She read an article by Alice Thompson in 2012 that explained corporate UK had lost 40% senior female executives in the previous decade and thus co-founded The Pipeline. Its purpose is to increase the number of women at the most senior levels of large organisations.

Margaret passionately believes such organisations are more successful over the long term and therefore looks at this gap as an economic rather than an equality issue. The Pipeline achieves its aim by working with both organisations and individual female executives because if women could do this on their own it would already have happened.

Margaret herself has had a successful corporate career serving as a NED for both Standard Life and Spanish based infrastructure company Abertis – TBI (global airports). Margaret was also the founding Chairperson of Smart Energy GB. She actively supports several charities including serving as trustee of AFC Wimbledon Foundation and is the Chairperson of the Orthopaedic Research & Education Fund, which uses big data to improve outcomes for patients.

By profession, Margaret is a global expert in leading ‘big campaigns’. Margaret ran Labour’s 1997 and 2001 General Election campaigns, which produced the most successful results for any party in Britain’s history. Margaret was also the first female and youngest General Secretary of the Labour Party.

Lorna is co-founder of The Pipeline and is a trusted advisor to big cap companies and Whitehall on gender and developing executive female talent. She is also a Board member of the UK Fashion Textiles Association, UKFT, Greater Manchester Local Enterprise Partnership and a trustee of the education charity, SHINE. Lorna is deeply committed to unlocking women’s potential at the top of corporate Britain as well as realising growth in the Northern Powerhouse.

Previously, Lorna was the founder and Director of The Alliance Project, a £150m public-private partnership to bring back textile manufacturing to the UK and CEO at the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM). She turned BICOM into an internationally renowned centre of excellence. She was also a visiting Fellow at the Defence Academy’s Advanced Research and Assessment Group and former Member of Parliament for Rochdale.

Mark has been a successful journalist (25 years with The Sunday Times), and also a successful pitch doctor (helping companies win over $5 billion of new business). In recent years he has focused on training, coaching and facilitating. Mark is a member of the Complementary Therapists Association, qualified to teach mindfulness, resilience and emotional wellbeing.

Although Mark teaches many “soft” skills, his wide experience in a hard-edged business environment means that all courses are specifically tailored to today’s busy, pressured work environment. This isn’t tinkly bells and incense. Mark’s recent clients include Renault, Intercontinental Hotels, The Economist, MediaCom, Krow, Bauer and Entura. He has also worked with senior executives from HSBC, Direct Line, Marks and Spencer, Standard Life, and the Home Office.

Matilda has worked in theatre, TV, film & live comedy Most recently playing alongside Helena Bonham Carter in a new movie due for release in 2023. She plays Rupert Grint’s mother in the comedy, Sick Note, for Sky Atlantic. She is also known for Mandy in TV’s long-running comedy, Desmond’s, BBC’s Robin Hood, & has worked with, among others, Robin Williams & many UK cast members of Whose Line Is It Anyway in comedy improvisation. 

She appeared in the West End’s Olivier award-winning, When We are Married, Golden Girls at Leeds Playhouse and recently in the Park Theatre production, Shutters. 

Other TV credits include: Eastenders, The Bill, Holby City, Casualty, Rosemary and Thyme. Films include Queen of Hearts & Crush. 

Harriet is best known for playing Carole Parkinson in The Brittas Empire and Fleur in Absolutely Fabulous, a role she is reprised in the recent movie adaptation. She has also appeared on television in The Three Musketeers (BBC), The Secret (BBC), Victoria Wood’s Christmas Special+Midlife Crisis, French & Saunders, Girls On Top, Doctors, The Bill and Casualty.

Harriet has also appeared on film in Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, The Lady in the Van, Calendar Girls, Suzie Gold, The Calling, Maurice, Life Is Sweet and Greystoke.

West End theatre includes Wicked, Mamma Mia, Great Britain, Cabaret, Crazy For You and Les Miserables. Harriet has also appeared at the National Theatre in All My Sons, A Prayer for Owen Meany, Pravda and The Government Inspector; the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in Twelfth Night, Cymbeline, Richard III and A Midsummer Night’s Dream; in Gary Barlow + Tim Firth’s musical adaptation of Calendar Girls; and as Mrs. Lovett in John Doyle’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. Harriet is ambassador for breast cancer charity Walk The Walk.

Tessa Watt is an experienced Mindfulness facilitator and helps Pipeline participants deal with the pressures of everyday life at work. She is the author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide (Icon, 2012) and Mindful London (Virgin, 2014). She teaches mindfulness in leading global organisations through Awaris – specialists in creating healthy human systems in the workplace. She is the lead trainer for the mindfulness programme in the UK Parliament. 

Tessa is co-presenter of Be Mindful Online, the Mental Health Foundation’s online mindfulness course. She follows the UK Good Practice Guidelines for mindfulness teachers, and completed her training with the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice, Bangor University. Tessa was formerly a Research Fellow in History at Cambridge University, where she completed her PhD, and a Senior Producer with BBC Radio.

Prior to her retirement Carole was Associate Professor of Finance at Henley Business School, where she taught, supervised and coached managers studying for their MBA and on external company programmes in the UK and in many international locations.  Her key research interests were valuation and human capital and she aims to help those she works with to understand what leaders need from finance professionals and to develop the confidence to ask the right questions. 

She trained and worked as an accountant and finance professional in UK and multinational businesses earlier in her career and was a governor and trustee at a large independent girls school for many years.  She continues to be a governor at a local primary school.