Reed Women in Tech Community - Bournemouth Meetup

Meetup for women in tech and allies, hosted by the Reed women in technology community in partnership with Vitality, providing an opportunity for people to learn more about this fantastic community, network with our members and learn from our fantastic speakers.

Come and join us over lunch for networking, with food, drinks and inspiring discussion.

11:00 - Arrival

11:15 - Intros

Reed Women in Technology Community | Kevin Dainty

Women @ Vitality, Career Pathways and Everywoman Programme |

• Lydia Harris – Head of Engineering
• Kribashnee Moodley – Head of Engineering
• Shelley-Anne Da Costa – Software engineering Manager

11:45 - Speaker

Psychological Safety | The Power of Vulnerability as a Leader | Alex Walton

12:30 - Lunch & Networking

13:15 - Panel Discussion - Allyship

• Fran Hoyle - IT Director - Vitality
• Alex Walton - Senior Manager Business Transformation - Vodafone

14:00 - Close

Alex is a senior leader driving strategy and transformation within a global telecoms company. In addition to that, he has launched several projects to spread positivity, hope and kindness across the nation that recently culminated in the publication of his first book: The Kind Mind Method.

The power of vulnerability as a leader. Through this presentation Alex will share a story about a personal project he carried out to spread a message of hope to a random stranger and how this inspired a simple thought process to overcome negative thinking. Alex will then discuss how this has led to him being a more open and honest leader and demonstrates the profound influence of vulnerability in building trust and resilience and creating a culture of psychological safety.

Fran Hoyle

Fran is Vitality's IT Systems Director for Member Claims, Policy Servicing and Customer Data applications, and is responsible for the strategic leadership of the technology that supports this area of the Vitality business.

Fran has over 20 years’ experience in business systems design and technology management and has benefitted from exposure within Retail, Banking and Financial Services Sectors across the UK, European and South Africa markets. Her role is to ensure that the technology decisions we make meet the needs of our members, and our business, which includes assessment of our Target Operating Models, Health Strategy and Risk position.

She joined Vitality in 2014 to manage a programme of work which delivered our digital presence for Prospects, Members and Advisers, and then moved to create our Portfolio Change Management division in 2016. In 2018 Fran became Head of Health Systems, and IT Systems Director in 2020.

In 2022 Fran was privileged to be recognised at the UK Women In Technology Awards where she won Transformation Leader of the Year (Financial Services).

Fran is passionate about generating opportunities for women and girls in STEM subjects, and leads on our IT People Strategy to enable equality and equitable opportunities for all.

The Reed Women in Technology Community is a 2,800 person network established in 2019 to help close the gender gap in the Technology industry. We do this by:

Supporting women in technology and transformation to achieve their goals and ambitions. Through:

-Access to mentoring (Over the last 5 years we have created over 1,450 mentoring relationships)

-Access to personal & professional development opportunities (weekly webinars, workshops. coaching sessions)

-Access to networking opportunities (In person and virtual)

Bringing more women in to the industry. By:

-Increasing visibility of female role models

-Demystifying tech roles

-Providing the above support to people trying to enter the industry (transitioners, returners, early careers)

-Creating better pathways in to technology careers

Host or Publisher Reed Technology Leadership Practice