Organising members

Professor Liz Bacon
Deputy Principal and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Abertay University

Liz is Deputy Principal and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Abertay University. She is currently a Trustee and Director of the Bletchley Park Trust, and President of EQANIE (European Quality Assurance Network for Informatics Education). She was President of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, in the year 14-15 and it was during that year that she set up STELLAR. She is a past Chair of the BCS Academy of Computing, and the CPHC (Council of Professors and Heads of Computing) national committee.

Liz is a Professor of Computer Science with over a hundred refereed publications and around 100 invited talks / keynotes. She is an experienced journal and conference reviewer, editorial board member, and PhD supervisor, and has been involved in many research projects including several EU FP7 and H2020 projects as both Principal Investigator and Project Coordinator. Her main research focus is in technology-enhanced, and immersive, learning, which involves bringing together expertise from a range of technologies in disciplines such as software engineering, artificial intelligence, security and computer games, to develop a range of novel applications in areas such as crisis management and eHealth.

Liz has been involved in many professional activities during her career which include working with: the European Commission, Parliamentary IT Committee (PITCOM), the National HE STEM programme, EKKA (Estonian Quality Assurance Agency), SKVC (the Lithuania Centre for Quality Assessment in Higher Education), ASIIN (German Quality Assurance Agency), AKKORK (Russian accreditation agency) and the University of Cambridge as an ICT Thought Leader for their International Examinations. Liz is passionate about the development of her discipline and keen to inspire more people to choose computing as a career, particularly women.

Rebecca George OBE
Managing Partner, Government and Public Services, Deloitte North South Europe

Rebecca leads Deloitte’s Public Sector practice across 25 countries in Europe and the Middle East.  She is responsible for the work Deloitte does across the Public Sector including Health and Social Care, Education, Transport, Defence, National Security, Justice and Home Affairs, and Central and Local Government. 

Rebecca has worked exclusively with the Public Sector since 2001.  She is a senior business manager with practical experience of managing businesses and improving operational efficiency.  She joined Deloitte as a Partner in 2006 after spending nearly 20 years at IBM in a variety of roles including sales, business process reengineering, and HR, in the UK, EMEA and globally.

Rebecca has been involved in activities to increase the participation of Women in the IT industry since the mid-1990s.  President and Trustee of the BCS in 2019-20, the Chartered Institute for IT, she is also a Fellow. She was one of the people who introduced unconscious bias training to the Institute and recently wrote an article on Neurodiversity.  She is a Liveryman at the Worshipful Company of IT.  She is on the Board of the City Mental Health Alliance and was a Mental Health Champion at Deloitte for several years.  

As a Board member of the City Mental Health Alliance (CMHA) she is keenly interested in health and well-being at work. She is working with both the CMHA and the Institute on responses to Black Lives Matter. She is Non-Executive Chair of the T-Level Reform Programme Board for the Department of Education and a member of the Business Advisory Group for the Secretary of State for Education.  She has mentored and coached a wide variety of people over more than twenty years, including a number of women and ethnic minorities.

She was honoured with an OBE in 2006 for work she did for the Government on Sustainable Communities.  Academically, her first Degree was in English Language and Literature at Oxford, and her MSc was in Broadcasting at Boston University USA, specialising in Cable TV and Satellite Systems. 

Rebecca lives near Taunton and is married with two grown up sons.  Her husband gave up work as an academic in 1995 to be a house husband when they moved to the USA.  He qualified as a lawyer a few years ago.

Isobel Pollock-Hulf OBE

Isobel Pollock-Hulf OBE is Past President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, after becoming only the second female President – in 2012 - in the 165 year history of the Institution.

For over 35 years Isobel has been an active volunteer member of the Institution both in Yorkshire and throughout the UK. She rejuvenated the IMechE Heritage Awards scheme and presented over 40 awards to places of significant mechanical engineering heritage. In 2015, she became a Trustee of the HMS Warrior 1860 Preservation Trust and was involved in a major renovation project funded by a Heritage Lottery Grant. She now chairs the Institution’s Diversity and Inclusion committee.

Isobel was Master of the Worshipful Company of Engineers between 2016-2017 – the first ever female Master. She is Hon Sec of the Phoenix Past Master Livery Group formed in 2016.

In 2014, Isobel led the Engineering Council review of the UK Standards for Professional Engineering (UK-SPEC) requirements for Chartered, Incorporated Engineers and Engineering Technicians. From 1999 to 2011, Isobel was a Trustee of the AUDI Design Foundation and in 2015, became a Trustee of the Design & Technology Association. She is Patron of WES (Women’s Engineering Society) and works with WISE (Women into Science and Engineering) to promote STEM to the next generation of engineers. She chaired the National Measurement and Regulation Office (NMRO) Steering Board (2013 – 2016). She is a member of the Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) at National Physical Laboratory (NPL, Teddington) and chairs the Digital Programme Expert Group (PEG) for Quantum, Electromagnetics, Time and Data on behalf of the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS). In 2019, she was appointed by BEIS as a member of the British Hallmarking Council.

In 2004, Isobel received an Honorary Doctorate from University of Huddersfield and was appointed to the University of Huddersfield Council in 2015. She is a visiting professor at the University of Leeds in the School of Mechanical Engineering and received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Leeds in 2016. In 2016 she was made an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Engineering Technology (IET). She was appointed OBE in 2014 for services to mechanical engineering. On 23rd June 2016, she was named as one of the Top 50 Women in Engineering in the Daily Telegraph.

Dawn Bonfield MBE
Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor of Inclusive Engineering, Aston University

Dawn Bonfield MBE is a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor of Inclusive Engineering at Aston University, and is the Founder & Director of Towards Vision, a not-for-profit which works towards a vision of diversity and inclusion in engineering. She is Past President and former Chief Executive of the Women's Engineering Society (WES). Dawn is Deputy Chair of the Women in Engineering Committee of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations working on the application of engineering and technology to address gender inequality globally. Dawn has recently been a member of the Engineering Design T level panel, and serves on a number of educational committees promoting engineering. She manages a social enterprise called ‘Magnificent Women’ which celebrates the history of women in engineering, and she was the founder of International Women in Engineering Day (INWED) which takes place on 23 June annually.

A materials engineer by profession - having studied Materials Science at Bath University - Dawn has worked at AERE Harwell, Citroen Research Centre (Paris), British Aerospace (Bristol), MBDA (Stevenage), and the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (London).

Dawn received an MBE in 2016 for 'Services to the promotion of diversity in engineering', and in 2015 Dawn won a WISE Award and an Association Congress Award for the INWED campaign, and in 2016 she won the SEMTA award for Diversity in Engineering. In 2016 she was a finalist in the GEDC Airbus Global Diversity Award, and in 2017 she won the Women's Business Council STEM 'Starting Out' award. In 2019 she was named as number 2 in the Inclusive Boards Financial Times Top 100 Women in Engineering List.