WESTMINSTER ALUMNI AWARDS 2021

Westminster Alumni Awards recognise and celebrate the outstanding achievements of graduates from the University of Westminster, as well as from our predecessors including the Polytechnic of Central London and Regent Street Polytechnic.

In the four years the awards have been running, they have revealed the remarkable and diverse impact Westminster graduates make across the globe.

This year, we received a record number of applications for the awards, with more than 300 alumni applying or being nominated. We also chose to recognise four alumni finalists per category rather than three for the first time, as the quality of applications was so high.

Following a public vote this spring, we are thrilled to reveal this year’s Westminster Alumni Awards winners.

CONTRIBUTION TO THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES AWARD

KADRI MAHMOUD, KIRAN MANDLA AND CHRIS TOUMAZOU (CONTEMPORARY MEDIA PRACTICE BA, 2012)

Having met at Harrow Campus, Kadri, Kiran and Chris set up entertainment brand COMPULSORY from a bedroom in West London. Over six years, they have grown from working on low-budget music videos to feature film distribution, television and broadcast advertising. They have created three videos with Stormzy, including number-one trending YouTube video ‘Superheroes’, as well as two collaborations with Madonna.

COMPULSORY is currently the only independently owned production company of its scale in London competing with zero investment. They champion young and emerging talent, and have managed the careers of over 15 directors and photographers, with work being selected at global film festivals. They have also received nominations for Best Production Company at the UK Music Video Awards 2019 and 2020, and worked with major brands such as Gucci, Vogue and Google.

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

NEVEEN GALAL (LEGAL PRACTICE PGDIP, 2002)

Neveen is an immigration human rights lawyer whose career has focused on representing unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and victims of trafficking and slavery. Within four years of graduating, she became a director and board member at Duncan Lewis Solicitors, and was recognised in Who’s Who of Britain’s Young Business Elite for being one of the youngest directors of a multimillion-pound company, where she also helped mentor and train graduates at the start of their career.

Neveen later founded Amnesty Solicitors, a UK immigration and human rights law firm. Within two years she has had a number of judicial review cases against the UK Government and cases in the Court of Appeal, even successfully judicially reviewing the Ministry of Justice.

ENTREPRENEURIAL AWARD

SIOBHAN MILLER (PSYCHOLOGY MSC, 2015)

Siobhan is the founder of The Positive Birth Company; her mission is to make antenatal and postnatal education and support more accessible for everyone. The Positive Birth Company offers a range of online courses on topics including hypnobirthing and conception, and free resources shared through social media.

Growing the business alongside raising three young boys, Siobhan has also written a book and created the Freya app, which has been listed as one of the top paid apps of the year by the App Store for two years running. Through her book, app and courses, she has helped more than 100,000 people in the last year alone.

In July this year, Siobhan appeared on Dragon’s Den and was granted funding from two of the Dragons to expand The Positive Birth Company and support even more families.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

IRUTHISHAM ADAM (DIPLOMATIC STUDIES MA, 2001)

Iru has served as Minister of Health and Minister of Youth and Sports for the Republic of Maldives. After graduating, she advanced in her diplomatic career serving in key posts in London, New York and Geneva.

Under the first democratically elected Maldives government, she was appointed as the first ever female Ambassador/Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, and in 2013 she was elected as a Vice-President of the UN Human Rights Council.

In 2015, Iru was appointed as the Minister of Health. Under her leadership, the health system began initiatives for universal health coverage, the infrastructure of atoll hospitals and specialist medical services. Her achievements include the setting up of medical councils under new health legislation and inaugurating an MRI service and a centre for cancer screening.

SOCIAL IMPACT AWARD

SHIVANI DHILLON (DIPLOMATIC STUDIES MA, 2003)

Shivani is the founder of Down Syndrome Support Group India, an organisation that helps people with learning disabilities and their families. After struggling to find support for her daughter and facing stigma and discrimination in India, Shivani started the online support group in 2012.

The group provides counselling, support and information to people with Down’s Syndrome and other learning disabilities and their families. The group consists of more than 2,500 parents from all across India. Shivani, an ex-BBC journalist, is also the founder of Samvid-Stories & Beyond, an initiative that holds storytelling sessions for children and young adults with learning disabilities and mental health challenges.

RECENT GRADUATE AWARD

RITUJA RAO (JOURNALISM BA, 2018)

Three years after graduating from Westminster’s Journalism BA, Rituja Rao is already an award-winning consultant and a tech industry thought leader. She can now add to this list, Westminster’s Recent Graduate Award. We caught up with Rituja to find out how she has achieved so much in the few short years since graduating.

Winning the award has been a personal “milestone”, says Rituja. Without the original Westminster scholarship, however, studying in London would never have been an option.

“I won’t stop talking about scholarships if we start – it’s supported me in such different aspects of my life,” she says. Receiving one “taught [her] gratitude” and made her want to engage with the University as much as she could.

While holding down part-time jobs, Rituja’s extensive extracurricular activities included Model United Nations, student TV and radio, and being the QH newspaper’s Editor-inChief and President of the Erasmus Student Network.

“Every day, I was living life 9 to 9,” she says. “University from 9 to 1, 1 to 6 at my job, and then 6 to 9 I was at events and doing student societies.”

This engagement, in turn, brought more scholarships and opportunities. She won a travel scholarship to go to Canada for the Model United Nations, and The 125 Fund award to start her YouTube channel.

As a woman in tech, Rituja is bucking the trend – recent figures suggest less than 20 per cent of the sector’s workforce is female. The first step to changing this, Rituja suggests, is explaining – to everyone – that tech is more than coding.

“I feel like coding is one thing that happens in technology,” she says. “There are so many other things.”

From the outset, Rituja says, young girls are often made to feel like maths and science are for boys (“When you’re young, you just can’t be what you can’t see”). If a girl of ten is turned off STEM, she probably won’t be studying it at university. At this stage, Rituja says, it’s not enough to just encourage more girls to study maths and science.

“I really think we can’t wait for an entire generation for that to come into effect,” she says. “We need to start now – and the best way to start now is to catch women in the age group of 17 to 22.” This means showing young women who have not studied STEM, that they still have career options in tech – from project management, to sales and marketing, to HR.

Rituja, herself, is walking proof of this. When she was 18 – as her degree choice suggests – she had her heart set on journalism.

“I imagined myself in broadcast journalism,” she says, “on BBC World, BBC One… going across to broadcast on international news. I imagined myself at war zones.”

When Rituja landed a BBC internship at the end of her first year, it seemed like all of her dreams were coming true. It was here, however, that she really discovered tech.

“I kind of started feeling a bit like – I want to be in journalism, I want to stick in media,” she says. “But if I want to be as successful as I want to be, I actually need to get into tech in one shape or another, so I can at least understand.”

From this point onwards, Rituja made it her mission to gain broader technology experience through part-time work and internships, and discovered her passion for management. Soon after graduating, she joined technology services provider Sparta Global as Project Manager, before moving to Capco as a Management Consultant in April this year.

Even after three years in the industry, Rituja says she is constantly learning.

“There’s that famous saying – how does it go? – ‘the more you find out, the more you find you don’t know’.”

She has made it a practice to learn by seeking out mentors – something she recommends to anyone starting out in their career. Rituja advises finding someone at just the career next stage, who you have things in common with – like, maybe, being a woman in tech!

“I call this ‘proximity of inspiration’,” she says. “So, for example, if you’re a graduate, it’s best to speak to a manager – you know, somebody who’s in the middle management level – don’t speak to a CEO, a Jeff Bezos. They’re not going to help you – their experiences are not going to align with yours.”

Once you know what you’re talking about, the next challenge is to get people to listen to you.

“Being in boardrooms and teams that are completely full of men – you’re trying to get your voice heard, but you’re also kind of fighting through the noise,” Rituja says.

Employers can help by checking in with female employees, she suggests. Ultimately, though, sometimes you need to be “assertive” – “persistent” even – and stop worrying about what people think of you.

“I still struggle with it,” she admits.

Of course, whatever career path you choose, this is an incredibly tough time to graduate. Sometimes just applying for jobs may not be enough, Rituja says. Instead, why not go out and create something – whether it’s a podcast or an Instagram page – before anyone asks you to.

“Do something nobody else is doing and you’ll stand out – not just in the job market, but in life.”

COULD YOU BE A WESTMINSTER ALUMNI AWARD WINNER?

To find out more, visit westminster.ac.uk/ westminster-alumni-awards