If you’ve watched Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi, Marvel’s Black Panther and Captain America Civil War, Jurassic World, or a whole host of other big-budget Hollywood movies in the past decade or so, you will have watched Charmaine Chan’s work. But if she’s good at her job – and she is – you probably won’t have even realised. Charmaine is a lead compositor for Industrial Light and Magic, the visual effects house owned by Lucasfilm (in turn owned by Disney) which has been responsible for bringing superheroes, Jedi and boy wizards to life. Most recently she’s been working on Disney’s hotly-antici ..read more

Alice Bentinck MBE has helped catalyse over 75 start-up companies around the world via her incubator 'Entrepreneur First'. With investment from illustrious business leaders including Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, who is now also a board member, Entrepreneur First focuses on funding ambitious individuals across Europe and Asia - and started from the so-called Silicon Roundabout in London's Old Street. Alice now also runs Code First: Girls, an organisation dedicated to helping female university students of arts subjects learn skills to allow them to work in the technology sector. And it all started ..read more

Professor Maja Pantic helps machines understand human emotion. She's a world leading expert in machine learning, deep learning and artificial intelligence. In her roles at Imperial College London and as head of Samsung AI lab she is developing diverse real-world applications for using machines to help humans understand the world. In this episode of Women Tech Charge she joins Anne Marie to discuss how intelligent robots can help autistic children emotionally interact with others, how 'deep-fake' videos can be used for good, and how she believes humanity is progressing toward mind-to-mind commu ..read more

Emma Lawton was working as a graphic designer when she was diagnosed with Parkinson's at the age of 29. The condition rendered her unable to draw until she teamed up with Microsoft as part of a BBC documentary. Together they created a unit to wear on her wrist like a watch which balanced the tremors in her hand to enable her to draw again. Emma is now a digital strategist for Parkinson's UK, where she has been working to help create apps and devices which can help people with Parkinson's manage their condition - and not, in her words, look 'daggy': "remember you're designing for people with t ..read more

On the day the world celebrates 50 years since the Beatles' iconic 'Abbey Road' album, we revisit an episode from series 1 with Isabel Garvey, MD of Abbey Road Studios. This episode was first published on 22nd April 2019 -- When services like Napster began to shake up the music industry, EMI called on Isabel Garvey to project how their business could prepare for the digital revolution. 15 years later Isabel continues to lead the music world's future focus as the MD of world-famous Abbey Road studios, leading their incubator for digital music technologies, Abbey Road RED. In this episode Isa ..read more

As a young woman working in the construction industry, Savannah De Savary grew frustrated with the inefficiencies she perceived. Despite never intending to start a company, the problems she saw inspired her to find solutions through tech. Inspired by her own experiences she founded BuiltID which democratises the planning and approvals process, bringing power to the people by methods as inclusive as possible. She's also championing diversity in a characteristically monoculture industry. Savannah is on Twitter @SdeSavary find out more about BuiltID at built-id.com and Twitter: @Built_ID Anne-M ..read more

Around the same time Uber were changing the way we get around, Venetia Archer spotted an opportunity to similarly disrupt the beauty industry. There was just one problem - she had no experience in tech. What she did have was a background in journalism and a passion for ideas which helped her research what she did not already know. Within a few short years she has built a thriving business with global ambition, has already begun acquiring other companies, and has been named on Forbes 30 under 30 list for retail and ecommerce. In this episode of Women Tech Charge, Venetia talks to Anne-Marie abo ..read more

Helen Disney was writing for The Times when Bitcoin launched. She quickly realised that businesses, policy makers and the public didn't fully understand the revolutionary implications of emerging blockchain technology. Now she runs the startup UnBlocked, making it her business to help leaders understand how blockchain can impact their field of work. In this podcast she discusses with Anne-Marie the implications of blockchain, demystifying the technology and sharing some of the best use examples she's seen - including a surprising connection to race horses. Helen Disney is on twitter at @HDisn ..read more

Priya Lakhani is a living example of how to use business to do a little good in the world. Her first company, Masala Masala, sold fresh Indian cooking sauces via supermarkets like Waitrose, and used the proceeds to provide a meal for a homeless person in India for every jar sold. When she discovered the overburden of workload affecting teachers in schools, and the knock-on effect for the students they teach, Priya spotted an opportunity to solve a new problem. Her company Century Tech now uses Artificial Intelligence and neuroscience to augment students' learning experiences in schools, enabl ..read more

Way back when the iPod Touch was (briefly) the cutting edge of mobile technology, Jenny Griffiths spotted an opportunity to use images to search the web. She combined this with a love of fashion to create a pioneering engine which powers searches for high street fashion giants such as ASOS, TopShop and Gap. She started out wanting to be an artist - but became a computer scientist, pioneer of machine learning and computer vision, and was awarded an MBE for her services to digital innovation in the fashion industry. In this episode of Women Tech Charge, Jenny talks to Anne-Marie about her journe ..read more