Our Team 

Stephanie Itimi

Founder and Executive Director

Stephanie is passionate about upskilling girls and women from ethnic minority groups with digital skills needed to compete in the modern-day world. She has a track record of facilitating significant development initiatives and was part of the team that pioneered the world’s first public health information service inside the WhatsApp platform. It provided content in text, images and audio to users in West Africa from the BBC World Service as well as through partners Unicef, World Health Organisation, World Food Programme and the Centre for Disease Control. Outside Seidea she currently works as a Senior Equality and Partnerships Advisor to a Local Government Body. She is currently working as a technology advisor, helping SME's with security auditing.

Maria Grazia Vigliotti

Education Advisor

A lifelong experienced computing professional, who has worked as academic at Imperial College London specialising in writing AI algorithms to aid in cybersecurity and formal code verification. Maria has worked in cyber security by convening and leading the development of the cyber security strategy for the entire British railway industry and worked on prevention of cryptographic attacks on the European Railway Traffic Management Systems (ERTMS). Maria has also advised most of the major players in the UK nuclear industry on smart device security.   Currently, Maria Grazia Vigliotti leads Sandblocks Consulting , a boutique consultancy specialising in blockchain technology and cybersecurity. Maria is the author of “The Executive Guide to Blockchain”. 

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Bushra Burge

Creative Technology Advisor

Bushra Burge is the Owner and Creative Director award-winning creative technology company BB Studio. Her background of science, technology and sustainable design cultivates innovation within her multi-disciplinary team. BB Studio's recent projects have included engaging immersive stories using virtual reality integrated with proprietary wearable technology used for educational and science communication, fashion marketing and user-centred research and development. Her career started 20 years ago as a software engineer within financial data, including the very first pioneering corporate e-commerce sites. Since then she has also had successful careers in sustainable fashion, academia and wearable technology.

Helen Babalola

Finance Advisor

Helen is passionate about finance, education and diversity and enjoys bringing the three areas together. Whilst at Goldman Sachs, she not only immersed herself in the world of long-term investing as a professional but also ran various initiatives designed to educate and inspire employees across the firm as a committee member of the Goldman Sachs Firmwide Black Network. Her passion for education and finance has taken her to the Department for Education where she has held various roles including as a financial policy and strategy adviser for the apprenticeship programme in England. Here she advised on how the programme’s finances could be managed better both in the present and the future and engaged directly in negotiations with HM Treasury to secure funding for future years.

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Stephen Chapendama

Cybersecurity Advisor

Stephen Chapendama is a DevSecOps & Cybersecurity professional currently working for Foundervine as the Technology Manager. An alumnus of the University of Hertfordshire with a BSc in Computer Science (Networks), Stephen has previously worked for the Infrastructure Development team at the University of Hertfordshire, focusing on SIEM and cybersecurity. Stephen has experience within the tech sector having worked for BlackBerry as a Global Network Operations Centre Operator and also Bulletproof as a Security Operations Centre Analyst. Further experience in cybersecurity includes working for global IT services company Fujitsu as Platforms Lead (Infrastructure Engineer) working within the Advanced Threat Centre. 

Serah Francis

Head of Community

Serah is passionate in promoting digital skills for women and girls as well as online safety and awareness.  She has ran various initiatives designed to promote women and girls education. She co-founded ISES initiative that facilitated discussion, information sharing and input into the policy space provided by the UNESCO on issues and developments of digital transformation.  The initiative brought together experts from government, academia and  private organisations from different countries to share their experiences and implementation models to help in tackling information security issues. It included submitting proposals as well as speaking in Workshops and Conferences such as annual WSIS forum in ITU Geneva and International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) World Computer Congress in Poland and Korea.