Advisory Council

The Ada Lovelace Day Advisory Council is a group of volunteers who provide strategic and practical advice on:

  • Funding and fundraising
  • Marketing and community growth
  • Governance
  • Prioritising campaigning activities

Current Advisory Council members are:

Sumaya Abdurrezak

Sumaya is an accomplished tech industry professional. She currently leads Enterprise development at WePow, a digital interviewing solution that empowers companies and candidates to share their stories. Prior to joining WePow, Sumaya was the Director of Partnerships at AnyGuide where she grew the business via strategic planning and outcome focused approach. Sumaya, a Bryn Mawr graduate and San Francisco Bay Area resident, likes to swim, write and cook in her free time.

Timo Hannay

Timo is the founder of SchoolDash, an education data analytics firm, and a non-executive director of SAGE Publishing. Until mid-2015 he was the founding managing director of Digital Science, a research software business that grew out of Nature Publishing Group (NPG). Before that he spent 13 years at NPG, latterly as director of nature.com. He has also been a consultant at McKinsey & Company, a writer for The Economist and a research neurophysiologist at the University of Oxford and Waseda University in Tokyo.

Dr Thorunn Helgason

Thorunn is a senior lecturer in ecology at the University of York, UK. She has worked for many years in research focussed on understanding how microbes build healthy soils, and how we can use this knowledge in crop production and habitat conservation. As a higher education professional, she has worked towards widening participation in STEM subjects at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and in public engagement, bringing science into the wider community.

Stefan Magdalinski

Stefan is a technology entrepreneur and experienced civic activist. He was the CEO of Mocality, a mobile business directory providing services to entrepreneurs across Africa, and previously was CTO of MOO.com, an innovative digital printing company. He has been involved in civic activism since founding UpMyStreet, the ground-breaking web1.0 location-based information source and community. He went on to found WriteToThem.com (formerly faxyourmp.com), TheyWorkForYou.com, a searchable version of Hansard, the UK’s parliamentary record, and was co-founder of the Open Rights Group.

Emma Mulqueeny OBE

Emma Mulqueeny OBE is a British technologist and educator. She is best known for co-founding Rewired State and Young Rewired State, which provided a community and events for technically gifted young people. She has campaigned for programming to be taught from an early age in UK schools to encourage wider uptake and increased diversity in the tech sector.

Tom Hunter

Tom is the director of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the UK’s premier prize for science fiction literature, and has a background in arts and cultural marketing and publicity. He lives in London.