We are proud to reveal Brummell’s annual Ones to Watch in the City listing for 2024, as we shine a spotlight on the extraordinary achievements of rising stars in London’s financial services, law and allied fields. These 30 individuals under 40 years of age have been selected for their outstanding accomplishments in their day jobs, as well as their passion for making the world a better place for others by undertaking inspirational endeavours off the side of their desks. These progressive projects range from championing charitable initiatives to spearheading gender equality and sustainability agendas. The expert judges applied rigorous criteria to the nominations, looking for candidates’ demonstration of drive, energy and entrepreneurial spirit alongside positive contributions both inside and outside their workplace. We thank the judges (whose bios are featured here) and congratulate those who made the final list.

Daniel Chan MBE
Partner, PwC

A partner at PwC UK and the firm’s charities leader, Chan heads audits for large, high-profile charities. He is also chair of the ICAEW Charity Committee, a member of the Charities SORP Committee, as well as a member of the CIPFA Charities and Public Benefit Entities Forum. He volunteers as a trustee and honorary treasurer of UK Youth – a national youth charity – and is the senior independent governor of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. He was awarded an MBE in HM The King’s Birthday Honours 2023 for services to charity and to young people.

Margaret Campbell Counsel
Reed Smith

Campbell is an insurance litigation lawyer with more than 40 years of legal experience and rated in Band 1 of all the legal directories. She is EMEA chair of the Reed Smith Women’s Initiative Network, which has won many gender equality awards, including Power Women and Women and Diversity in Law Awards. Passionate about the retention and promotion of her firm’s female talent, she works hard to ensure women receive the promotion they deserve. She is also an advocate for enhanced parental leave and for men sharing parental responsibilities. She was listed as one of the top 50 Human Leaders Cohort by the TLC Lions and the Kindness & Leadership 50 Leading Lights list. In 2023, she was named one of Brummell’s 30 Inspirational Women in the city.

Iancu Daramus
Sustainable Investment Specialist and Author

Daramus is a sustainable investment specialist, with a decade of experience ranging from setting strategy and raising assets for sustainable investment solutions in senior asset management roles, to influencing some of the world’s largest energy and mining companies through stewardship. Awarded Rising Star Sustainable Investment Champion of the Year, and described as a “rising star” of sustainable finance by Investment Week in 2022, he speaks and writes regularly on decarbonisation, including as a lead author of the go-to industry qualification, the CFA Certificate in ESG Investing, and of an upcoming book on the myths of the energy transition, Green Herrings.

Brummell’s Rising Stars of the City

Adenike Adebiyi
Founder, Bounce Black

A visionary leader and advocate for mental health, racial equity and social mobility, Adebiyi channels her personal journey of overcoming anxiety and depression into supporting Black professionals in their workplaces and beyond. Bounce Black stands as a testament to her commitment to offer vital support to those on similar paths. As a writer and keynote speaker, she contributes to publications such as The Lancet Psychiatry and the Journal of Mental Health, and her speaking engagements across Europe addressing diversity, equality and inclusion reach a range of audiences. In addition, she serves on several boards, including the Creative Mentor Network’s Youth Board and the NIHR MindTech Partner Board. She is also a community moderator with ForbesBLK.

Nigel Atta-Mensah
Co-Founder and COO, NewComma

Growing up between Ghana and the UK, Atta- Mensah is the co-founder and COO of NewComma, a portfolio networking platform helping over 35,000 Black and African creatives and entrepreneurs access jobs, resources and funding worldwide. Prior to NewComma, he worked as a relationship manager supporting some of the largest development organisations worldwide, facilitating the flow of over $20b in FX and funding for lifesaving emergency response programmes and ongoing development initiatives in emerging and frontier markets, particularly across sub-Saharan Africa. Beyond his work at NewComma, Atta-Mensah’s achievements include being named a UN Young SDG Innovator in 2022 and winner of the ITFA’s inaugural Young Trade Financier of the Year award in 2019.

Dunja Relić
Trainee Solicitor, Mercurae Law

Alongside training as a solicitor at Mercurae Law, Relić has been volunteering for over 10 years, joining Hounslow Youth Council, where she was elected as a Member of Youth Parliament. She campaigned for better female representation in politics, increasing female involvement in her local borough. In 2016, she joined the National Council of Women Great Britain as a Youth Ambassador and has since represented them at the UN Commission on the Status of Women at the 61st and 65th sessions, as well as at the second Commonwealth Women’s Forum. As a first-generation immigrant from Serbia, she founded When Life Gives You Lemons (WLGYL) to help girls aged 16-22 in London to achieve their dream roles.

Francesca Brady
Co-Founder and Former CEO, AirRated

Brady is the co-founder and former CEO of AirRated, an organisation that certifies indoor air quality, providing AirScores to buildings in which we live, work and play. AirRated has been adopted as a certification on over 15 million square feet of real estate, with AirScore designed to provide peace of mind about our indoor spaces, while also helping to promote and communicate the importance of indoor air health to everyone. As a result of her success, Brady has gained recognition with multiple accolades, including being listed in the Forbes “30 Under 30” for heightening awareness of the link between indoor air quality and our health, and she was most recently announced the winner of the 2024 Veuve Clicquot Bold Future Award for her entrepreneurial achievements.

Lauren Cassells
Design Lead, Innovation Lab, Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)

Cassells began her career as a degree apprentice at EY in Newcastle, where she spearheaded the EY Regional Women’s Network, receiving numerous award nominations for her efforts to promote diversity and inclusion. As co-chair of the Shadow Board in Women in Banking and Finance (WIBF) UK, she received an Honourable Mention in the Future Leader category at the WIBF of Achievement and was awarded Highly Commended in the EY UK Financial Services Future Rising Star annual awards. Currently, she leads the FCA hackathon programme and serves as the co-chair of the Future Leaders Shadow Board (FLSB). Her commitment to gender equality and empowerment has been highlighted through her selection as a UNCSW68 delegate.

Reece Chowdhry
Founding Partner, Concept Ventures VC

Having built and sold multiple software companies, Chowdhry has invested in more than 100 startups, including being the first investor in one of the UK’s fastest-growing unicorns, Elevenlabs. As the founding partner of multi-award-winning Concept Ventures, the UK’s largest dedicated pre-seed fund, he invests in global software companies and focuses on identifying the top one per cent of exceptional founders in a unique people-centric investment approach. He was recently awarded Seed VC of the Year at the UKBAA Investment Awards and has been recognised by the FT as one of the top 100 BAME leaders in tech. He is also passionate about giving back and established the Concept Venture Pledge to donate to social causes.

Becca Naylor
Counsel, Head of Pro Bono, EMEA, Reed Smith

Naylor’s career is marked by her commitment to human rights and pro bono work. She’s worked in Greece and Jordan on Reed Smith’s global refugee protection project, held secondments as Head of Legal at Safe Passage and served in Liberty’s Advice and Information team. Over the past eight years, Reed Smith’s EMEA pro bono practice has almost tripled in size under her leadership, and in 2023 alone, the firm’s EMEA lawyers provided over 34,000 hours of pro bono support. Naylor collaborated with law firms and NGOs to set up and support the Domestic Abuse Response Alliance in the UK; the Afghan Pro Bono Initiative; the Ukraine Refugee Project; and handled cases with Kids in Need of Defense UK.

Vincent Egunlae
Investment Banking Analyst, Houlihan Lokey

Egunlae has been widely recognised as a future leader, co-founding a UK-wide Ethnicity Network at one of the world’s largest accountancy firms with over 600 members, working to reduce the ethnicity pay gap and increase representation at the firm’s top level. He is also a NED at Capital City College Group, and has been a One Young World Ambassador, an Aspen Fellow and a VocL Voice, three programmes acknowledging the world’s young leaders working to drive the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. He is also a co-founder of The Open Private School, a charity providing state-school-educated students with the benefits of a private education by matching them with elite mentors.

Lucy Ellis-Keeler
Vice President, Business Development and Innovation Compliance, Citi

In her role as a global compliance officer, Ellis- Keeler supports business growth in Digital Assets in adherence with global laws and regulations. She is co-chair of the Future Leaders Shadow Board for Women in Banking & Finance UK, a body that champions women in financial services. She won the WeAreTheCity Rising Star Award in the Banking & Capital Markets category, and mentors students through Career Ready and the University of Bristol. She spearheads volunteering and donation initiatives in aid of Smart Works, a charity that helps women secure employment through interview coaching and professional dressing. She was selected as a UN Women UK delegate for CSW68 and is a One Young World ambassador.

James Freshwater
Manager, Deloitte

In addition to his role as manager in Deloitte’s Government and Public Sector, Freshwater leads from a risk perspective on Generative AI at Deloitte, enabling the firm to navigate GenAI safely and securely, and he was instrumental in launching Deloitte’s Generative AI platform “PairD” across Europe and the Middle East. He also recently led on Deloitte’s provision to the charity Scope of free access to PairD, which has been nominated for two DataIQ Awards for each of (i) Breakthrough with Data/AI and (ii) Best Use of Data for Non-Profit. He received a Deloitte Above and Beyond reward for his continued support to the Government and Public Sector team alongside his side-of-desk work, and mentors international students, helping them navigate the international legal system.

Lauren Fuller
Customer Journey Developer, National Westminster Bank PLC

A qualified mortgage advisor, Fuller in her current role continually looks for opportunities to digitise and improve the customer journey. This includes recent projects working in the new green mortgage product development and digital transformation of digital mortgage applications. She was a finalist in the Chartered Banker Young Banker of the Year 2019 when she developed a solution to support customers to use their EPC to improve the energy performance rating, which has been taken forward by NatWest, and she recently completed her Masters in Innovation and Business Management. She leads the NatWest Group Gender Network Initiatives & Partnerships Committee and won FT Adviser’s Diversity in Finance Award 2024.

Anisha Kochar
Leveraged Finance Associate, NatWest

Kochar joined NatWest on the Structured Finance graduate scheme in 2020, which she completed as a highly rated performer. In 2022, she permanently joined the Mid Cap Leveraged Finance team as an associate and became a strategy committee member for the Gender Network, leading the 50 Ways to Fight Bias initiative by Lean In. She co-leads the culture pillar of the People & Inclusion Hub for Corporate Banking & Structure Finance (CBSF) at NatWest. In 2023 she won a WeAreTheCity Rising Star award in the Banking & Capital Markets category, was a finalist for the NatWest South Asian Heritage 2023 awards for Outstanding Service to Diversity and Inclusion and was shortlisted for the NatWest Gender Network Volunteer Award.

Nnenna Onuba
Founder and CEO, 100 Allies Cic, LBB Skin Ltd

After 10 years as an investment banker at Rothschild and qualifying as a CA at PwC, Onuba transitioned to the beauty industry, where she has become a pivotal figure. She is the first Black Executive Board Director of the British Beauty Council and founded 100 Allies, a social enterprise in partnership with CEW UK, to drive inclusion in leadership. Onuba also led the successful sale of the premium clean cosmetics brand Nailberry. She serves on the Finance and Executive Committees at the Royal Veterinary College and Cheltenham Ladies’ College. As an angel investor, Onuba supports under-represented and innovative startups through an open-door mentoring policy.

Georgia Louca
Principal Investments Assistant Vice President, Barclays

Louca joined Barclays in 2018 and was promoted twice within three years. Committed to empowering others in their career journeys, she has led Win Scotland’s Careers Week, the annual week of events powered by Win – Barclays’ gender resource group – since 2021, while also co-chairing Win Global Careers Week in 2024. Since her involvement, she has seen Careers Week grow fourfold, reaching over 5,500 attendees globally. In 2023, she was awarded the Barclays Scotland DEI Week Outstanding Contribution Award for her contributions in Win Scotland. Furthermore, she has been a Barclays Champion, supporting businesses in the 2024 Female Founder Accelerator powered by Barclays Eagle Labs and funded by the UK Government.

Shaheen Mamun
Director, Black Antelope Law

Having founded Black Antelope Law with an innovative vision, Mamun is committed to advancing justice and effecting societal change through his expertise as a public law solicitor. His practice focuses on judicial review, civil actions against public authorities and challenges to unlawful detention under the Immigration Acts. His many accolades include, among others, being named as a Rising Star at the Business Legal Awards 2023 and being recognised in the 2021 EqualityX Top 50 Influential Muslims in Europe. Under his leadership, Black Antelope Law has reached pioneering milestones, including being the first BSB-regulated firm awarded the Bar Council’s Wellbeing Certificate and being shortlisted for the LexisNexis Awards 2024 for Diversity and Inclusion.

Adora Nwodo
Founder at NexaScale

Nwodo is a multi-award-winning senior software engineer who is on the Advisory Boards for the VR/AR Association and DevNetwork, and serves as a Global Youth Ambassador for Theirworld, contributing to the UN SDG 4 (inclusive and equitable quality education for all). She builds and advocates for education, cloud and emerging technologies and is founder of NexaScale, an ed-tech nonprofit providing work experience for over 10,700 software engineers, designers and product managers. She has authored three books: Cloud Engineering for Beginners; Beginning Azure DevOps (Wiley); and Confident Cloud (Kogan Page), and has spoken at more than 180 tech events globally. In 2023, she won the WomenTech Network Software Engineering Leader of the Year award.

Kaylan Patel
Lead Product Owner, Barclays Bank PLC

Patel leads digital enhancement projects at Barclays Business Bank. As Lead Product Owner, he delivers platform upgrades to help High Value clients to transition to a world of digital transactions. He is also co-chair of Win in the Community (Barclays’ gender employee resource group) and an Ex-Officio on the Acquisition & Engagement Leadership Team and Mentor. He has founded initiatives raising funds to tackle gender-related issues and career development. A strong advocate in “Diversity of Thought”, he mentors young professionals and directors to challenge perceptions on gender, race and bias via The Prince’s Trust, Barclays Life Skills, Emerge, Inspire, Win and Bristol University.

Rupert Davies
Founder, ESG Sum Ltd

Davies is a sustainable finance professional with more than a decade delivering positive returns through environmental and social impact in equity, fixed income and alternative investment strategies. Prior to 2023, when he founded ESG Sum, an independent firm providing sustainability advisory services to buy-side firms and a platform for disseminating industry news, he was the lead ESG specialist for the multi-asset team at a $1.6tn US investment bank, and in 2021 he became the first Head of ESG for a $13bn alternatives manager. Elsewhere, Davies holds the CFA Certificate in ESG Investing and is an advocate to the industry as a speaker, a judge for several industry awards and mentors young sustainable finance professionals.

Megan Pope
Marketing Executive, First Wealth (London) LTD

Just two years into her career, Pope has participated as a panellist at the prestigious IMpower FundForum event (Monaco), been a joint winner for the IMpower and Women in Asset Servicing Finding Your Voice (FYV) event, supported by LGBT Great and BWAM. She returned to FYV as keynote speaker for the 2024 event, giving an impassioned and confident speech. In 2023, she became a finalist for Women in Financial Advice’s (WiFA) Marketing Influencer of the Year for her stellar work on client communication – also becoming a finalist in the same category and for WiFA Rising Star in 2024. She then won Professional Adviser’s Marketing Initiative of the Year (2023) for her client literacy campaign.

Carolina Restrepo
Products, Technology & Innovation Manager, Vanderlande

Restrepo leads the development of forward- thinking strategies in collaboration with strategic partners, overseeing a diverse product portfolio. She received the prestigious Future CIO 100 Award for 2024, recognising her as one of the top 100 emerging CIOs shaping global technological innovation and leadership, and earned the Next CIO 2023 award, highlighting her as a rising star and future technology leader in the UK IT sector. Her background in engineering and product management fuels her passion for technology, and she is also dedicated to empowering the next generation through her mentorship roles with Women in Tech, specifically within the Cajigo and Reed mentoring programmes.

Jacqui Rhule-Dagher
Associate, Hogan Lovells International LLP

Alongside her day job as an associate in the complex commercial litigation team at Hogan Lovells, Rhule-Dagher founded the LoveALL Festival and she sits on the Pride Network Steerco. She is also a member of The Law Society’s LGBTQ+ Solicitors Network Steerco. Rhule-Dagher has written for City A.M., Thomson Reuters and The Lawyer on intersectionality, and has spoken on Bloomberg Radio about improving LGBTQIA representation in the City. She founded Legally Lesbians, published by DIVA Magazine, where lesbians in the legal industry/in-house lawyers write about the importance of visibility. She was recognised as an Attitude Magazine 101 Trailblazer, Diversity Champion of the Year at the DIVA Awards, ranked #2 in the Empower Future Leader Role Models List and featured in the Pride Power List 2024.

Kelsey Robb
EMEA Community Advisor, Google

As an EMEA Community Advisor for Google, Robb has played a pivotal role in executing Turning Point 2023, a flagship summit focused on the career development of Black Googlers across EMEA, as well as leading all EMEA programming and in-person events in four countries for the Global Black Summit. Formerly a creator manager and D&I creator lead at TikTok, she spearheaded and supported key DEI activations, including Women’s History Month, Windrush, Pride and Disability Pride Month, alongside partner campaigns for UN Women and COP26. Beyond her corporate roles, she has mentored more than 50 students from under-represented backgrounds and was recognised in the Top 20 Ethnic Minority Future Leaders by INvolve.

Eleanor Ruiz
Senior Associate, Reed Smith

A lawyer qualified in England and Wales and Hong Kong, Ruiz is a commercial litigator at Reed Smith, with expertise in insurance recovery work as part of a Band 1 ranked practice. She is a leader for pro bono work within Reed Smith, winning the 2022 LawWorks Pro Bono Award for “Best Contribution by an Individual” for her commitment and leadership across multiple pro bono projects, including coordinating the firm’s work with Amicus, assisting lawyers representing individuals facing the death penalty in the US. She was featured in The Law Society Gazette as a “lawyer in the news” in respect of a high-profile pro bono case in May 2022. Ruiz also serves on the committee for the Women’s Initiative Network of Reed Smith.

Aashi Sahu
Sales Engineer, Freelance

With over six years of experience in digital transformation, business development and customer relationship management, Sahu has been recognised as a Global Exceptional Talent in Digital Technology, earning a UK TechWomen100 award in 2022 and 2023. Her journey began in 2020, moving from a small town in India to the UK, where she transitioned from software engineering in intelligent automation to bridging the gap between cutting- edge technology and business needs. Passionate about technology for good, Sahu is dedicated to human development, emotional balance and stress management. She invests her time in mentoring and creating impactful content, striving for business success while fostering wellbeing and harnessing technology to build a better world.

Liyana Shirin
Global Internal Communications, Publicis Sapient

Shirin leads communications initiatives to support company strategies and drives communications for global programmes. She was among the first 40 women selected for the CFA Institute’s “Young Women in Investment” programme, to promote D&I in investment management and one of the youngest guest bloggers on Tata Consultancy Services’ largest engagement platform. She has contributed to launch campaigns with Lean In networks and led initiatives with IEEE. Through these efforts, she has empowered female students to break into STEM fields and her contributions have received accolades, including the Outstanding Woman in Engineering Volunteer award. She currently serves on the Future Leaders Shadow Board of Women in Banking & Finance UK.

Ramat Tejani
Strategic Partnerships Lead, EMEA, Google

Tejani is Chief Encouragement Officer of personal development consultancy The Inspiration Box (TIB), and has collaborated with organisations including UN Women UK and Barclays, as well as presenting a TEDx talk. Previously, she was responsible for leading and scaling AWS GetIT, one of Amazon’s largest education programmes, impacting over 50,000 students globally, and served as Professional Development Lead on the board of Amazon’s Black Employee Network. As a Strategic Partnerships Lead at Google, Tejani drives initiatives to diversify talent through thoughtful engagements. Her partnership with Black Ballad, The Face of the Modern British Workforce photo essay, was prominently featured on billboards around London.

Karen Chukwu
Founder and Managing Partner, Katwig & Dale

Passionate about achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8, Chukwu founded Katwig & Dale, a women-led African tech law firm, supporting over 70 African startups. She established the non-profit Katwig Kare Foundation, providing health-focused workshops, free healthcare, group therapy and sanitary products for over 600 women and young girls in Africa. In 2023, she received the Global Leader award from the Stephen Young Institute for her work. She established her scholarship fund to provide full-tuition scholarships to applicants at AltSchool and co-founded the #FutureSTEMStars project to mentor young secondary-school girls.

Siân Toussaint
Financial Services Management Consultant, Senior Manager, PwC

With 10 years of experience, Toussaint won the WeAreTheCity Rising Star Award for Insurance in 2021. In her role at PwC she has led her clients through transformations that harness culture, technology adoption and reimagined ways of working. She also co-leads the Consulting Insurance Diversity Initiative. Externally, she has co-chaired the Management Consultancies Association (MCA) Diversity & Inclusion Working Group, where she defined an industry Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) strategy, chaired the membership working group, and participated in panels to discuss the role of female leaders to launch the MCA Women in Consulting Working Group.

Jennifer Tsim
Partner, Financial Services; Head of Climate and Sustainability, UK&I, Oliver Wyman

A partner at Oliver Wyman’s, Tsim is also head of the firm’s Climate and Sustainability practice in the UK and Ireland. Her work is centred on driving progress on net-zero goals and financing the transition to a green economy, working with clients to embed climate and sustainability in their organisations and building sustainable finance capabilities. She recently led Oliver Wyman’s presence at London Climate Action Week, working with partners such as the WEF, NZBA and CDP to convene senior leaders across investors, banking, insurance and energy. She co-founded Oliver Wyman’s Social Impact programme and is on the Board of Trustees for the national UK charity Police Now.

Emma Weeden
Senior Associate, Reed Smith

A lawyer in the London corporate team of global law firm Reed Smith, Weeden gives advice across sectors, particularly to clients in the media and transportation industry. She is regularly published in relation to the competition law applying to liner shipping consortia and has spoken at the European Maritime Law Organisation’s conference on this topic. She was part of the “Antitrust Investigation Team of the Year” at the Women in Compliance Awards 2017 for the work Reed Smith did on the European Commission’s investigation into price signalling. Outside her day job she is a pro bono community mediator for the Tower Hamlets Mediation Project (THMP) and previously worked part-time at charity ELHAP, leading volunteer projects for disabled and disadvantaged children.

Find out about Brummell’s 2023 Ones to Watch.