Meet the women leaders of tomorrow in The Drum’s 50 Under 30 UK

Every lunchtime this week, The Drum is profiling of some of the highest achieving women making their mark in digital as we reveal 2018’s 50 Under 30 UK.

We are taking a look at the women who have broken the mould before the age of 30, based on nominations from our readers and curated with the help of panel of industry experts. The list sets out to celebrate female digital talent in the industry, highlighting their careers and their plans for the future. And sign up to our newsletter to ensure you don’t miss tomorrow’s.

Keep scrolling for today’s 10 and view Monday and Tuesday’s instalments here. And sign up to our newsletter to ensure you don’t miss tomorrow’s.

Emily Davies, web developer/data scientist, Yard

Emily Davies joined the development team at technical marketing agency Yard three years ago while studying mathematics at nearby Cardiff University. Keen to enhance her programming skills to use alongside her mathematical knowledge, she has since developed a love and knowledge for programming, machine learning and statistics. Now a confident, established developer specialising in R, Python and JavaScript, she is making the move into data science as the driving force of the agency’s recently created data science team.

Alongside her everyday web development duties, she has been involved in projects including building a server for a Yard clients using Python Flask and AWS, creating materials and running training courses in R, Python and statistics, and building an algorithmic attribution marketing tool using Bayesian statistics combined with predictive modelling and machine learning.

Emma Parrish, associate director, Kindred Agency

Having joined Kindred as a graduate in 2010, Emma Parrish spent three years working in the agency’s PR team before moving over to its social media team in 2015. Last year she was promoted to associate director and now leads a team of nine, including community managers, paid social specialists and influencer experts.

Shaping Kindred’s social media and content offering, Parrish’s clients include the National Citizen Service (NCS), for which she develops social media strategy and campaigns to engage and inspire teens, and the Ikea Foundation, for which she oversees global digital strategy and content production.

She was behind a PR stunt for HM Treasury and The Royal Mint, enlisting English Premier League referees to use the new £1 for coin tosses at matches the weekend before its launch, and created the first ever promoted Facebook Live for The National Lottery.

Outside the day job, Emma is also head of social for Bloom – a network for women in communications which aims to help every woman in the industry achieve her potential through mentoring, events, skills-sharing and fundraising.

Sasha Spink, associated project manager, AnalogFolk

Sasha Spink started at AnalogFolk after a university internship and soon found herself working on AkzoNobel’s trade and retail portfolios, as well as on campaigns for Cuprinol promoting its ‘Shed of the Year’ competition. She now runs a cross-functional team responsible for ensuring a unified customer and design experience across all digital touchpoints.

As project manager and programme lead on the company’s largest financial services account, Spink manages an internal team of UX developers and designers, and manages client relationships across the globe. Spink also runs various specialist projects for the account, working closely with individual project teams across the globe.

Sophie Katsali, strategy lead, Wilderness

After several years working in social media, including a stint with a Silver Lion-winning team, Sophie Katsali joined global digital marketing and social media agency Wilderness. Working with Warner Bros on a range of digital campaigns, Katsali led initiatives like the ‘Warner Bros Elves’ which drove engagement by as much as 1000% for the brand.

As strategy lead, she oversees the strategy of the Warner Bros, Universal Pictures, Magic Light Pictures and 20th Century Fox accounts. Katsali mentors junior strategists to help them excel in the digital industry.

Katsali co-founded non-profit organisation Echelon Donates at the age of 19. The group partnered with WWF and Doctors Without Borders, amplifying fundraising efforts on social gaining coverage on MTV Act, Billboard and Teddy Hilton.

Sophie Mindell, content and publishing strategist, H+K Strategies UK

Sophie Mindell joined H+K as the senior social lead for the Huawei Global social account and has extensive experience in advising clients on social media, digital marketing, paid media strategies and digital transformations. During her time overseeing creative planning, social and channel strategy for the Huawei social account, she has launched a wide selection of products, developing the creative output and increasing platform engagement rates by over 250%. She has also worked on a cross-agency WPP pro-bono brief for the Metropolitan Police.

Prior to joining H+K, Sophie was a senior social media manager at TMW and recipient of The Drum’s Community Manager of the Year 2014 at the Social Buzz Awards for her work on Durex. At TMW she developed content strategies, pushed creative content and produced live content from events for a range of brands including Sure, Wall’s, Virgin Trains, Old El Paso and Canon B2B, along with several other key Unilever and RB FMCG accounts. Sophie also launched over 20 products with Samsung Mobile, establishing a global social presence and pushing the brand to collaborate with.

Funmilayo Adewodu, software engineer, Starling Bank

Funmi Adewodu started coding in 2017 following her decision to forgo a career in accountancy and instead focus on her passion for technology. A graduate of Code First: Girls and of the Makers Academy programming bootcamp, she now works as a software engineer at Starling Bank – the mobile-only challenger bank.

Part of the mobile engineering team and responsible for developing features for its current account offering, she was the first engineer at the bank to deliver functionality on the Android and iOS platform.

Alongside her work at Starling Bank, Adewodu also helps others get into coding through her work as a coach at Codebar – a non-profit initiative that runs regular programming workshops and looks to facilitates the growth of a diverse tech community – and by sharing her tech journey and insights into software development at a number of forums, including Rails Girls London, Afrotech Fest and Ladies of Code London.

She is listed by Code First: Girl as one of its top women in tech under 30.

Lucy Marsden, strategic design consultant, IBM iX

Lucy Marsden is a managing consultant at iX, IBM’s digital agency. Previously a service designer and innovation consultant, Marsden has managed two innovation hubs to drive forward the oil and gas sector since joining IBM. She spent the last year helping a global aviation fuel provider to move into operations, sustainability and disruption using blockchain, predictive analytics and digital twinning. This earned her a commendation in the Young Consultant of the Year category at the Management Consulting Awards this year.

Throughout 2018 she has managed four projects simultaneously, and grown her team from one to 14 by repeatedly demonstrating the value of experience-centric design.

Marsden has worked to drive inclusion and professional development within IBM by developing career paths for general graduates to move into design.

Outside work, Marsden volunteers for Wag and Company (a companion charity for isolated elderly in north England) and OpenIdeo. She is a mentor and career coach to three female graduates and interns within IBM and one external service designer, supporting young women to reach their potential.

Megan Dunsby, projects editor, Startups.co.uk

Megan Dunsby is projects editor of Startups.co.uk. After joining the company as an intern working on news and content, Dunsby has risen to head up the site’s projects and commercial content team, working with high-profile clients to deliver quality content.

She also heads up the Startups 100 index – the UK’s longest running ranking of the UK’s top 100 new businesses. The 2018 index has attracted over half a million views in just one month since going live. She also runs the Startups Awards, the Young Guns Awards and monthly equity seed funding competition The Start-Up Series.

As the winner of the Rising Star of the Year Award (Silver) at the British Media Awards, Dunsby is focused on encouraging more women to start businesses by showcasing successful female entrepreneurs as role models. Her work celebrating women in business includes interviewing Jacqueline Gold of Ann Summers, Notonthehighstreet.com’s Holly Tucker, Liz Earle, and Forward Ladies owner and chief executive Griselda Togobo for Startups.co.uk. Dunsby has appeared on the panel circuit, speaking at events for names including Enterprise Nation and CEW Communications.

Megan Train, senior insights analyst, 360i Europe

Having begun as an intern with 360i’s insights and planning team, Megan Train has since risen through the ranks to become a senior analyst. She is responsible for clients such as Save The Children, Mizkan and bareMinerals.

Train has developed innovative methodologies to measure the effectiveness of Insights work at 360i, creating a new formula to measure and track the affinity of audiences to homeware brand Ikea. The result informed communication strategies for Ikea, as well as providing a measurement framework for success. Her affinity modelling is now used across multiple 360i clients.

As a volunteer, she worked with both the Prince’s Trust and Dentsu initiative The Code to plan and lead digital marketing workshops for young people from underprivileged backgrounds. She volunteers with MediaTrust’s Women’s Voices event on International Women’s Day, collaborating with other volunteers from the world of digital media to help charities to develop digital strategies.

Christine Berry, lead UX designer, Cook

As lead UX designer at Cook, Christine Berry has been instrumental in increasing the frozen meals business’s online revenue year-on-year through her work on its user experience design and front-end development. Skilled at mobile and responsive design, she has worked on both Cook’s public e-commerce website and internal systems used by over 500 staff in its 90-plus shops across the UK. Her projects are underpinned by continual research including data analysis, customer feedback surveys and user testing to ensure that every new design has a customer focus.

Before joining Cook, Berry was head of digital and UX at web agency Redspa, heading up a team of designers and developers. Over the course of her career she has delivered projects spanning user experience design, web design and development and digital strategy for businesses such as Unilever, McAfee, Ferrero, Oskia and Freesat. Her experience spans a variety of different industries, including food & drink, travel, technology, beauty, health & fitness and retail.

When she’s not working, Berry runs a lifestyle blog called levenstyle.com where she writes about her adventures, both local and abroad.

If you’re interested in learning more about The Drum’s 50 Under 30, contact Olivia Denman via olivia.denman@thedrum.com.