SYMPOSIUM
CONTENTS 09 JUNE Professor Frances Balkwill OBE
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Amanda Kelly and Michael Atkins
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Martin Trickey
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16 JUNE Tanya Streeter
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Abadesi Osunsade
15
Bangyuan Wang
17
Natasha Sigala
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23 JUNE Mona Shah
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Sarah Wood OBE
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Richard Follett
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ROEDEAN SYMPOSIUM Symposium (definition)
Convivial discussion, especially as held in ancient Greece after a banquet Whilst we may not be able to provide the banquet just yet, the Roedean Symposium will most certainly offer ‘convivial discussion’: the opportunity to discuss your subjects, and related topics, in depth with senior students at Roedean and at other schools. This will provide you with an unrivalled opportunity to prepare for your education beyond school. The Symposium will consist of a range of speakers, according to the four Roedean Pathways: • • • •
STEM Business, Economics and Enterprise Society Creative and Performance Arts
In addition, there will be an opportunity for students to present 10-minute research papers in breakout rooms, followed by Q&A sessions. These sessions will broaden your mind and challenge your thinking, through discussion and exploring the perspectives of others. If you attend all three weeks of the Roedean Symposium, you will receive a certificate of participation. STEM
09 June 16 June 23 June
Prof Frances Balkwill OBE Tanya Streeter (OR) Natasha Sigala Mona Shah
ECONOMICS, BUSINESS AND ENTERPRISE
CREATIVE & PERFORMING ARTS
SOCIETY
Martin Trickey
Amanda Kelly & Michael Atkins
Abadesi Osunsade (OR)
Bangyuan Wang
Sarah Wood OBE
Richard Follett
If you would like to present a paper at the Symposium, please email Dr Hannan with your title and Pathway by Friday 14 May.
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09 June
Prof FRANCES BALKWILL OBE Professor of Cancer Biology
‘WILL WE EVER BE ABLE TO HARNESS THE IMMUNE SYSTEM TO CURE ALL CANCERS?’ Frances Balkwill is Professor of Cancer Biology at Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London. She is especially interested in translating knowledge of cancer biology into new biological treatments for cancer, and has published 260+ scientific papers and reviews during her career. Much of her work focuses on the tumour microenvironment of ovarian cancer. Having recently published a multi-level profile of the human ovarian cancer microenvironment, her lab has developed a platform of new mouse models, as well as human multi-cellular tissue culture models. They are now using these to research biological therapies that may prevent relapse and increase ovarian cancer patient survival. Fran is Director of the Centre of the Cell, a biomedical science centre for children, educational website, and outreach project in East London. There have been more than 207,000 participants in Centre of the Cell activities since opening in September 2009. Together with illustrator Mic Rolph, Fran has also produced thirteen science books for children on cell and molecular biology, with titles such as Enjoy Your Cells, The Egg and Sperm Race, and You, Me and HIV. These books have been translated into at least twelve foreign languages with over half a million copies sold worldwide. Fran serves on CRUK and ERC grant committees. She is a Trustee of the charity Blood Cancer UK.
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09 June
AMANDA KELLY & MICHAEL ATKINS Judge & Legal Director of the Parole Board
‘DECISIONS ON LIBERTY Locking up Criminals and Setting them Free’ Amanda is a judge who decides cases in criminal and family law. After obtaining a theology degree from Oxford University, she began her career as a national newspaper and television journalist. She retrained as a barrister in her late 20s and was appointed as a judge in 2013. Her husband, Michael Atkins, is legal director of the Parole Board, the body which decides whether the most dangerous criminals are safe to release into society once they have served the minimum term of their prison sentence. Michael, who studied law at Oxford University, qualified as a solicitor before joining the Government Legal Service. For twenty years, he has advised government ministers, drafted legislation, and taken Bills through Parliament. Amanda and Michael’s daughter, Sophie, is in Year 8 at Roedean. In their symposium session, Amanda and Michael will outline the key principles that must be taken into consideration when sentencing criminals and deciding if, and when, they are safe to be released from prison. They will then challenge students to take on the role of judge and decision-maker in their own fictitious, but true-to-life, scenarios.
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09 June
MARTIN TRICKEY Group Head of Digital at Warner Brothers International TV Production
‘MAKING IT UP AS YOU GO ALONG: How storytelling has changed in the 21st Century’ Martin has had many jobs, including teaching, but he started working in media for an online games company in Budapest in the late 90s. There, he was responsible for the online versions of some really old TV game shows that nobody watches anymore. However, it allowed him to move in 2000 to the BBC, where he ran the early digital teams for Doctor Who, EastEnders and Strictly Come Dancing, as well as helping to develop new formats such as Celebdaq, which won a BAFTA. He left to start the educational channel Teachers TV, before returning to the BBC as an Entertainment and Comedy Commissioner, and ultimately as Head of Multiplatform Production. He is now the Group Head of Digital at Warner Brothers International TV Production, where he leads their global digital strategy. His teams manage content on YouTube, Instagram, Snap, TikTok, and future emerging platforms. Martin’s talk centres around the idea of adapting to change throughout your career. Martin has been lucky to work in an industry which has seen rapid change over the last 20 years. The way we tell stories has evolved with technology, while the fundamentals of storytelling have remained the same.
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16 June
TANYA STREETER (OR) Free Diver
‘REDEFINING LIMITS: For Personal Growth and Planetary Health’ Born on the small island of Grand Cayman in 1973, Tanya’s comfort in, and passion for, the ocean began very early and is a constant in her life. During 13 years of education in England, separation from the sea was her toughest challenge. Returning after university with her husband Paul in 1995, Tanya spent time with spearfishing friends and first learned of a sport called “Freediving” in the summer of 1997. For this tenacious, determined young woman, the idea of challenging herself in her favorite environment proved impossible to resist, and thus her World Record breaking career began. Within 6 months of her introduction to freediving, Tanya began breaking records, and between 1998 and 2005 she claimed a total of 10 World Records, including one that she still holds today, the No Limits to 160m which involved diving to 160m and resurfacing, all on a single breath. She had to survive the pressures of the deep and hold her breath for 3 and a half minutes. With that dive, she eclipsed the legends Umberto Pelizzari, Pipin Ferreras, and Loic LeFerme. In 2004, Tanya began to transition from freediver to TV Presenter and has never looked back. Her passion remains under the waves, but today she focuses on her work as an environmentalist, raising global awareness for the importance of protecting the World’s oceans. Her most recent film, A Plastic Ocean, is a highly acclaimed contribution to the wave of change in our attitudes towards plastic pollution. Tanya lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband Paul and their two young children.
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16 June
ABADESI OSUNSADE (OR) Founder & CEO of Hustle Crew
‘CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO THROUGH RECRUITMENT’ Founder & CEO of Hustle Crew. Co-Host Techish podcast (Top 20 Tech podcast on Apple Podcasts). Author of Dream Big. Hustle Hard: The Millennial Woman’s Guide to Success in Tech. Abadesi was recently included in the Financial Times list of Top 100 Influential Leaders in Tech, and Tech Nation’s 50 most prominent and influential voices in Tech. She graduated from the London School of Economics in 2009, and wrote for the Financial Times before joining London’s tech scene. Prior to her current roles, she worked at Product Hunt, Elpha, Amazon, HotelTonight, and Groupon, where she was promoted after her first 8 months and helped scale her department up by a factor of 5, leading up to their record breaking IPO. In 2016, she published her careers advice book, Dream Big Hustle Hard: A Millennial Woman’s Guide to Success in Tech which is rated 5 stars on Amazon. She has been featured in Elle, Stylist, BBC, Forbes, The Times, and The Independent. Abadesi will be discussing how to make recruitment processes more optimised to target women and other underrepresented identities in the tech industry.
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16 June
BANGYUAN WANG International Public Health Practitioner
‘CONTROLLING MALARIA IN ASIA AMID COVID 19’ Bangyuan Wang is an experienced international public health practitioner originally from China. He has more than 20 years of experience in developing and managing public health programmes in Asia and Africa. Over the last 20 years, he worked for international health organisations such as Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF), Health Unlimited, and the International HIV/AIDS Alliance (now called Frontline AIDS). Bangyuan has been working for Health Poverty Action as the Head of Asia Programmes since May 2019. Bangyuan’s session will centre around discussing the impact of the COVID 19 Pandemic on Malaria Prevention and Control in South East Asia.
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16 June
NATASHA SIGALA Neuroscientist
‘ARE EXPERTS MADE OR BORN?’ Natasha Sigala is a Neuroscientist at the University of Sussex, interested in how the brain changes in response to learning and remembering. Her scientific curiosity took her from a small idyllic Greek island, Syros, to university in Patras, where she studied Biology and Animal Physiology. She then moved to Tübingen, where she worked on her PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. She continued her postdoctoral studies in Oxford and Cambridge, and was a Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow with the Royal Society, before taking a faculty position in Brighton. She is passionate about opportunities for all in STEM subjects, and regularly gives presentations of her work for the public and at schools. In her symposium session, Natasha will be discussing how experts perform feats of memory, and whether their brains have special powers.
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23 June
MONA SHAH Director
‘CAN INVESTING BE A FORCE FOR GOOD IN THE WORLD?’ Mona Shah is a Director of Stonehage Fleming Investment Management, she has 14 years’ experience in portfolio construction and manager selection across all asset classes, and she is a member of the Investment Committee. Mona is responsible for the Stonehage Fleming Global Sustainable Investment Portfolios, and has developed expertise in helping clients reflect their values in their portfolios, whilst also maximising returns and positive impact. Prior to joining Stonehage Fleming in 2018, Mona worked at Rathbones Investment Management, where she was Head of Collectives Research. She is a CFA Charterholder, and has a first class BSc (Hons) degree in Economics and Politics from the University of Bristol.
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23 June
SARAH WOOD OBE Entrepreneur
‘IT’S TIME FOR DRAGONS DEN: What kind of dragon are you? Could you be an angel? And why do we need more female investors?’ Following a (very short!) career as a university teacher, in 2006, Sarah Wood co-founded a tech start-up called Unruly, launching a Viral Video Chart, an advertising platform, and growing the company from 3 to 300 people around the world. She sold the company to News Corp in 2015 and stayed on to lead the business until 2019. Since then, she has been a board member of Superdry plc, and currently sits on the boards of Tech Nation, City Ventures, and The Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, which campaigns for young people’s mental health. She is an ambassador for The Prince’s Trust Women Supporting Women Programme, has been named Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year, City AM Entrepreneur of the Year, and was awarded an OBE for services to technology and innovation. She is an active angel investor in earlystage tech companies, a mentor at UCL’s tech incubator, and the author of a career book (also very short!) called Stepping Up: How to Accelerate Your Leadership Potential. In her spare time she likes to run, swim, and walk her two little dogs, Ginger and Snow (say hello on Instagram: @IcyyandSpicyy). Within her symposium session, Sarah will be talking about investing in start-ups.
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23 June
RICHARD FOLLETT Associate Vice President and Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor (International)
‘AMERICAN RACE RELATIONS IN THE ERA OF GEORGE FLOYD: Lessons from History, Action for the Future’ Professor Richard Follett is Associate Vice President and Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor (International) at the University of Sussex. He is responsible for developing, coordinating, and driving the University’s internationalisation strategy, and provides leadership to Sussex’s international activities worldwide. He is also Professor of American History and a specialist on the history of slavery and emancipation in the United States and Caribbean. Prior to joining Sussex, Follett taught at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He completed his PhD at Louisiana State University on a Fulbright scholarship, and has held visiting appointments at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, Nanjing and Beijing universities in China, and at Heidelberg University in Germany. With more than a decade of senior university leadership in the field of international education, Richard Follett is Chair of Universities UK International Africa Network (representing all 140 UK universities in Africa) and serves on the international steering committee of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, Higher Education, and Sustainable Development Goals Network.
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