Anne-Marie Imafidon

Biography

Computer scientist, mathematician and social entrepreneur Anne-Marie Imafidon works to inspire women to study and pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and maths. She hosted the Evening Standard’s Women Tech Charge podcast, and comments on technology, the changing nature of work, and the challenges both present to business and society.

A child prodigy, by the time she was thirteen she received a scholarship to the prestigious Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. She then went to Oxford, starting her master’s in mathematics and computer science at seventeen and becoming one of the university’s youngest ever master’s graduates. She then worked for Goldman Sachs, Hewlett-Packard, and Deutsche Bank in business analysis, enterprise collaboration and technology (and was cited as one of the leading figures in IT along the way). She then founded, and continues to lead, Stemettes, a social enterprise dedicated to bringing girls and young women to STEM subjects. Stemettes has helped tens of thousands of schoolgirls go on to higher levels of study in STEM.

A regular commentator in the media on opening up and diversifying access to STEM education, Anne-Marie is also the co-founder of Outbox, a pioneering incubator dedicated to businesses started by teenage girls. Elsewhere, Anne-Marie has also worked with companies including the BBC and 20th Century Fox to include more tech role models on screen. In her book She’s In CTRL, Anne-Marie insists that technology is not an unchangeable and unquestionable force, and it is not the preserve of the elite.

Anne-Marie examines the vital importance of diversity in the tech sector, and how AI will impact the future workspace and workforce. Drawing on a wealth of experiences from running and starting social enterprises, she looks at how to take an idea and turn it into a reality, the use of social media in the process and the intersection between corporate social responsibility and workplace culture. She has served as a board member on the Department of Culture, Media and Sport’s Digital Skills Partnership and is a trustee for the Institute of the Future of Work.