A Different Me

In the 2nd episode of A Different Me, Kevin Kelly from the NCBI tells his story about how he had to change and adapt to his disability during his teenager years and the journey he had to face.Kevin now works helping the blind renter the workplace with the help of various programmes supplied by the NCBI and is an inspiring example of overcoming adversary.Listen to his incredible story.

Parimala Hariprasad’s main objective is to make testers more efficient is solving accessibility problems for different abled people using technology in varying capacities in their daily lives. This episode might encourage your organisation to take the right steps to understand accessibility and apply it to your workplace.

In this podcast we talk to Tom Chapman of the The Lions Club Barber Collective which is a suicide prevention and awareness charity. The Lions Club Collective Barber Collective is a group of international barbers that provide an informal way to talk about men’s mental health. Tom Chapman is a Torquay-based barber who has made it his mission to propel the stigma of mental ill health among men into the mainstream. In 2015 founded the Lions Barber Collective, an international group of barbers who have undergone training in how to recognise symptoms of mental ill health in clients and signpost them to relevant support services. The group helps to raise awareness of mental illness and aims to prevent suicide by creating training that enables barbers to recognise, talk and listen out for symptoms of depression. We hope you enjoy Tom’s story of how The Lions Barber Collective has grown and has become such an amazing charity and movement, preventing one suicide at a time.

In this episode we speak to Ezechi Britton, founding Member of Impact X Capital, a £100m VC fund dedicated to funding underrepresented entrepreneurs. In this episode we talk about why Ezechi feels that diversity is important, how do you move from talking about diversity to focusing on inclusion and belonging and how that then drives diversity. And why it's important that more tech companies are built by people from diverse backgrounds. Inclusion is opening the door, inviting people in but belonging is about making people feel welcome- under these circumstances, diversity flourishes. Ezechi believes that diversity & inclusion means that every member of society has the opportunity to succeed equally. What you do is up to you but you shouldn't be limited by circumstance.

Alexandre Bauduin will take to the stage at the 27th EuroSTAR Conference in Prague with his keynote 'Flying High- Test Automation in the Boeing 777'. Alex's career started in the space industry where he discovered his passion for aerospace, working on both military and civilian projects. He was sometimes steered away from aerospace but his passion pushed him to become an airline pilot, as a way to really understand how those instruments he programmed and integrated were operating in a cockpit. One of his last challenges was to organize flight simulator testing into a lean manufacturing environment. The company Alex is currently working for has over 150 nationalities. This mix of culture and diversity is essential to the building of such a project. Sit back, relax and enjoy your flight time with Alex on this Boeing 777.

In this episode of A Different Me, i spoke to Sanne Visser, RisingSTAR Winner 2018 and blockchain tester. Sanne is passionate about quality, developing best practices for blockchain that traditional software development doesn’t have answers for yet.Sanne started in a new consultancy company in March. When discussing home life with her new co-workers, Sanne began exploring her personal life and in particular the school run. Sanne's husband is a full time dad and carries out all day to day activities concerning Sanne's children.Sanne speaks about how this works for her family, however she still receives alot of questions regarding her situation.Sanne says that although she enjoys speaking at conferences and everything, she doesnt feel the need to speak about her personal life. She does this to avoid the stigma attached to motherhood, this way Sanne can protect herself from being pigeon holed in her company. Sanne said she wants to feel that she is capable of all tasks in an equal manner.