Winner
Rituja Rao
Journalism BA, 2018
Rituja Rao is an award-winning IT Consultant and emerging thought leader in the UK tech industry with a background in financial services and digital transformation. She regularly speaks at industry events, sharing her story of joining the tech industry without a non-tech degree to inspire other graduates to join the industry. She is currently mentoring four women and is also a mentor on the Caiigo app and other platforms. She is also a tech careers panellist, speaking at schools across the UK.
Rituja is an ex-trustee for a UK-based women's charity and actively advocates for younger people to start their board careers. Her latest venture is a new YouTube channel and a community called Gen-We, focussing on skills diversity and mental health during early careers.
Finalists
Kaylee Golding
Radio and Digital Production BA, 2019
Kaylee is an award-winning radio presenter and producer. She currently presents a weekly show on Reprezent Radio and produces the Breakfast Show on Magic FM. Alongside two other alumni, Kaylee started a campaign called Radio Silence which researched the lack of diversity in radio. Uncovering a clear issue within the audio industry, Kaylee shared the research with her employer Bauer Media, which has since signed the Equality in Audio Pact.
Kaylee is a pioneer for change across the industry. She wrote a four-page spread for DJ Mag exploring why there is a diversity issue within radio, speaking to a range of BAME presenters including KISS’s Swarzy and BBC Radio 1Xtra’s DJ Ace, and continues to explore these issues with big names in radio on her Radio Silence podcast.
Trevor Gomes
Business Management BA, 2018
After graduating, Trevor joined BT and currently works in digital marketing. Alongside this, in 2019 he launched his own youth mentoring programme called ELEVATE. The aim of ELEVATE is to provide young people on the programme, many of whom are from disadvantaged backgrounds, with the skills, knowledge and experiences needed for the world of work and higher education. As well as a programme of career skills content, students on the core programme receive 1-2-1 mentoring from a volunteer mentor at BT.
ELEVATE started as a face-to-face programme at the sixth form where Trevor studied, before moving online during the pandemic and partnering with new schools. The programme currently has reach of over 10,000 young people despite receiving no funding and has been supported by a range of talent and business leaders.
Sian Meades-Williams
English Literature: Modern & Contemporary Fiction MA, 2018
Sian is a freelance writer who has made a business out of helping other freelance writers. Freelance Writing Jobs was the first newsletter of its kind in the UK. It’s an email that curates the best paying freelance gigs and calls for pitches from editors and it’s read by 26,000 writers each week, making it one of the largest media industry emails in the UK. Every year it helps writers earn hundreds of thousands of pounds in commissions.
During the pandemic, Sian started the annual Freelance Writing Jobs Fund. Ten writers who didn’t qualify for government support were given a cash prize and twelve were given a mentoring session with leading figures in the media industry. Sian has also written a book called The Pyjama Myth: The Freelance Writer’s Survival Guide.