Wycombe High School presents
Monday 19 March 2018
Speaker Biographies Rachel Aston Rachel currently works as Policy Manager for an international disability and development charity, CBM. Her role involves lobbying the UK government to ensure that its overseas aid and development work includes people with all forms of disability. Prior to CBM, Rachel worked as a Policy Adviser at Bond (the international development network); and as a Policy Officer and later as a Policy Manager for Mothers' Union (an international grassroots charity), where she lobbied the UK government on a range of issues affecting families and the United Nations on gender equality and the empowerment of women. She also trained and equipped Mothers' Union members to campaign and lobby directly, in the UK and across a number of countries including Burundi, Kenya, Sudan and South Sudan, Uganda and Zambia. Prior to working in the policy field, Rachel worked as a church youth worker; and for a number of housing organisations, supporting people facing a range of challenges, including addiction, mental health problems and HIV/AIDS following on from earlier experience during her gap year before her undergraduate degree in Politics and in the two years between that and her post-graduate degree in International Relations. Rachel is also a trustee of her church, and has participated in a number of challenges, including volunteer project work in Sri Lanka and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.
Nicki Gray After leaving Wycombe High School in 1992 Nicki Gray went on to gain B.Sc. in Genetics from University College, London. Following graduation she worked at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London for Cancer Research UK investigating the role of the tumour suppressor gene PTEN in prostate cancer. In 1999 she moved to Oxford University to work as a bioinformatician in the Oxford University Bioinformatics Centre. She is currently a bioinformatician for the Molecular Haematology Unit in The MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford. Through this role she works closely with the Computational Biology Research Group. The main focus of her research is aiming to understand how mature blood cells are normally made from stem cells and how this is perturbed in common blood disorders. The role also includes teaching and training Institute staff in bioinformatics and tutoring Oxford University undergraduate students.
Speaker Biographies Jen Hicks-Taylor Jen is a Chartered Environmentalist and Environmental Health Practitioner with 16 years’ experience in Environmental Protection and a strong track record of client and stakeholder engagement. Through a variety of roles across proactive and reactive pollution services within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, she has considerable experience of co-ordinating specialist Noise/Vibration, Air Quality and Contaminated Land responses to Environment Impact Assessments and Planning Consultations, and in managing the impacts of major projects during construction and operation. This experience is augmented by her background in Environmental Consultancy coupled with her Geology BSc, Environmental Management MSc and Acoustics Diploma. She is Environmental Lead on the Kent County Council Technical and Environmental Services Contract, and Regional Environment and Sustainability Lead for South East.
Rebecca Lowe From July 2015-16, Rebecca cycled solo from London to Tehran in an attempt to challenge preconceptions about the Middle East and report on the lives of people she met along the way. She now works as a freelance journalist, with a focus on human rights and the Middle East. She has written publications for the BBC, the Guardian, the Sunday Times, the Independent, the Economist, Huffington Post, Spectator and numerous travel and sports magazines. From 2010-15, Rebecca was the Senior Reporter at the International Bar Association (IBA), where she specialised in human rights and the rule of law. Most recently, she wrote and directed a documentary on military impunity for human rights abuses in Myanmar, including an interview with Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Rebecca previously worked as a freelance Senior Reporter at the Evening Standard and on a series of Newsquest papers across London. She has a BA in English Literature from Cambridge University, where she won the Cambridge University Hunter Senior Scholarship, and an MA in journalism from Stanford University, where she won a full tuition scholarship.
Speaker Biographies Amy Mason Amy attended Wycombe High School from 1997 to 2003. She studied Mathematics at University of Oxford. She currently works as a statistical researcher, looking into how statistics can answer medical questions. This involves looking at data and calculating statistics, but also programming in statistical computer languages. Amy’s paper on the so-called ‘Weekend Effect’ in hospital mortality was published by the Lancet. Amy has also done work on E.coli and the spread of antibiotic resistance. Currently, she is investigating the factors that cause cardiovascular disease with the University of Cambridge.
Helen O’Neill Helen is a wildlife biologist who recently completed a PhD, based at the Zoological Society of London’s Institute of Zoology and University College London. Throughout her career she has focused on research topics that contribute to the conservation of endangered species. Her current research is centred on the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation which are among the leading causes of global biodiversity loss. By fitting study animals with GPS collars, Helen tracked how cheetahs and wild dogs are affected by anthropogenic features in their landscape, such as fences, in order to make recommendations for how to better conserve these species. Previous research she has conducted has included working with anti-poaching rangers in Russia to test out new population monitoring strategies for the critically endangered saiga antelope and working in Madagascar where Helen studied a wide variety of different species including lemurs, reptiles, and small mammals. Before beginning her PhD, Helen worked as Project Manager for the Serengeti Cheetah Project in Tanzania.
Speaker Biographies Helen Ramsbottom Helen is a Forensic Examiner for Metropolitan police. She works in the lab which services the whole of the Met, mainly working in serious violent crimes. She attended Wycombe High School from 2002 to 2009 and then went on to study a BSc in Natural Sciences at the University of Bath. After this she completed a MSc in Crime and Forensic Science at University College London. A Question and Answer session following the screening of ’She Started It’ - a documentary on successful business women and tech start ups in Silicon Valley - motivated her to get more involved in STEM.
Angela Spang Angela is the founder of a total of six companies including JUNE MEDICAL and London Medical Academy (LMEDAC). Not only is Angela a successful business woman but she is overtly passionate about making a difference with the companies that she has created. Angela’s entrepreneurial journey began with her first company, JUNE MEDICAL. Having worked in connection with medical education throughout her career, she had worked within the industry for fifteen years and had a particular interest in women’s health. Through this experience, Angela recognised that there was an opportunity and a need to bring safe and effective medical devices into the UK and that there was no dedicated distributer for women’s health devices. Hence, JUNE MEDICAL was born. As JUNE MEDICAL developed, Angela realised that no matter how good the medical devices that she could provide and distribute were/are, the biggest variable was in fact the surgical training and how the medical devices were introduced into the market. Logically, if the surgeon doesn’t know how to use the product safety and effectively, if they haven’t undergone a safe learning curve, the results won’t and can’t be successful, no matter how great the product is. This realisation lead to Angela setting up LMEDAC, her London Medical Education Academy, which trains surgeons how to use these products properly before they operate on a living individual.
Please make the most of this evening by asking questions during the Q & A and introducing yourselves during the networking session.
Special Thanks With special thanks to: our wonderful speakers for taking time out of their busy schedules; the Guild (Wycombe High School’s student and staff association) for sponsoring the advertising, programme, refreshments and speaker gifts; Innovate Ltd for providing our refreshments; our Heads of Guild for helping to produce this event; members of the Student Leadership Team; Site Services for their support and to Mrs. Morgan and Mrs. Miles for organising this evening.
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