June 17, 2025
At Equal Experts, we love to help our customers achieve their goals. In March 2025, as part of our strategic supplier relationship with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) — the UK’s tax authority — we partnered with the multi-award-winning HMRC Women in Tech (WiT) Network Steering Group to co-curate and host the WiT Network’s first in-person Women in Leadership and Tech conference since the pandemic in 2020. Timed to coincide with International Women’s Day, the event was part of a joint value initiative aimed at promoting the network’s impact and showcasing the benefits of being part of this vibrant community.
We wanted the conference to have as much impact as possible and reach a range of senior women in tech, so we extended the invite to the wider cross-government network. On the day, around 90 women came together to share experiences, learn and most importantly – to have some fun!
Since the day centred on women in leadership, Amelia Bampton was selected to lead the event. An award-winning tech leader and career mentor, Amelia plays a key role at Equal Experts, where she supports teams in developing and delivering technical strategies for clients. As part of this joint value initiative, she had already facilitated virtual interactive workshops for the HMRC Women in Tech community, making her a natural choice to host the day. Amelia successfully brought together audience members and expert speakers, creating space for meaningful discussion and engagement.
Emma Lee (Deputy Director – Head of Digital Portfolio at Defra) and Sally Bogg (Head of Internal IT and Service Management at NHS England) were our amazing keynote speakers – They both bravely shared their personal journeys and left the audience with actionable insights they could take into their own careers and lives. Their talks sparked plenty of conversation, laughter, and some really moving moments for the women in the audience. We couldn’t have asked for better speakers.
Next, Equal Experts’ own Louise Elliott led an interactive session on leadership, using the presentation tool Mentimeter to engage the audience with career and confidence-related questions, all while sharing the highs and lows of her own journey, accompanied by statistics around women in the workplace that were thought provoking. Louise’s talk was voted one of the most valuable sessions of the day by attendees.
The event continued with a panel discussion, which I had the privilege of chairing, featuring an incredible lineup of female tech leaders who gave us their take on the challenges they think women in tech leadership face, how women can help each other, and what can be done to accelerate progress towards truly equal workplaces.
They each brought unique perspectives on leadership, diversity, and what it means to be a woman in tech today.
Fortified by a networking lunch, attendees settled into some more in-depth discussions around their particular interests, including psychological safety, menopause in the workplace, how to build a personal brand, and the importance of emotional intelligence in the tech industry. With insights from leaders in diversity and people management, these sessions sparked some interesting debates and more than a few aha moments.
By the end of the day, people were buzzing, but we wanted to know if the event had been valuable to the women who experienced it, so we asked them! With an average 4.72 star rating and 100% of attendees saying it met or exceeded expectations, this felt like a great start to 2025 for HMRC’s Women in Tech programme.
The overwhelming feedback was how inspiring the speakers were, but attendees also enjoyed how interactive the day was; they enjoyed the atmosphere and opportunities for networking, and noted that it felt different from Women in Tech events they’d attended previously.
To close the day, Zoe Wilkins , a Delivery Lead working on behalf of Equal Experts presented a powerful timeline of women’s rights over the past 100 years, highlighting how far we’ve come – and how much more we can do. She then invited everyone to commit to one personal action to help accelerate real change toward equal workplaces. A perfect ending to an inspiring day.
All business models have their pros and cons. But, when you consider the type of problems we help our clients to solve at Equal Experts, it’s worth thinking about the level of experience and the best consultancy approach to solve them.
If you’d like to find out more about working with us – get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.
