Page 47 - 2018 Powerlist

Tunji Akintokun
Director, Cisco, Africa

With 18 years under his belt at worldwide IT leader Cisco,
London-based Tunji leads its business across Africa covering
commercial customers, partnerships and alliances with
teams in Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal and South Business, Corporates, Financiers & Entrepreneurs
Africa. He is a passionate advocate of seeing Africa fulfil its
digital potential.
Tunji is also a non-executive director of Regital, a digital
marketing agency with offices in the UK and Australia,
overseeing their expansion into emerging markets.
Having founded his first Science & Technology (STEM)
social enterprise in 2012 (the multi-award winning
Your Future, Your Ambition), he has recently founded
and launched his second STEM social enterprise,
Aspire2Achieve, which connects young people in Africa,
the US and UK with organisations in STEM to educate and
inspire them to follow a career in these fields.
An in-demand speaker on diversity in the workplace
and STEM, Tunji sits on the boards and councils of many
organisations. He is a Vibrant Economy Commissioner at
Grant Thornton, which looks to realise the shared potential
of companies, cities, people and communities across the UK. NEW Nancy Armand
He serves on the Business Leader Council of the education 2018
charity Teach First, which aims remove inequalities in EVP and Interim Head of Marketing
education. As a member of techUK’s Women in Tech for Retail Bank and Wealth
Council, which represents over 900 tech companies in the Management (RBWM) Europe, HSBC
UK, he is active in initiatives to attract more female talent
into the tech industry. He is also co-chair of Raise Tech, a
professional network setup to encourage race diversity and Nancy is one of the most senior women executives at HSBC,
inclusion in the UK Digital and technology sector. one of the world’s largest banking and financial services
Tunji is a patron of the autism charity CASPA, and also organisations. She is responsible for leading the country
founded the Ilesha Charitable Trust in memory of his marketing teams of Europe as well as the First Direct and
parents, dispersing funds to many charities and individuals M&S Bank brands in driving customer engagement and
involved in diversity, science and technology causes. supporting revenue growth.
Prior to this, Nancy was the EVP and Global Head
of Marketing Transformation where she championed
developing the verbal identity of the HSBC Brand, led the
customer communication strategies around the evolving
regulatory landscape and served as a change agent within
the marketing discipline to reshape strategies in order to
ensure that the customer is placed at the centre of it all.
She joined HSBC in late 2006, leading the Mass Affluent
(HSBC Premier) proposition in the US and subsequently
became the Regional Head of North America Marketing for
RBWM covering the US, Bermuda and Canada markets. She
is currently based in London.
Nancy is often described as a dynamic manager. She
combines a BA in Economics from Washington University in
St Louis, Missouri, with more than 20 years of progressive
corporate success in consumer and business marketing
having held brand and management positions with Dun &
Bradstreet, American Express and AT&T.
Throughout Nancy’s professional career from her start at
AT&T to today at HSBC she has always been active and an
advocate of the need to embed D&I as a working practice.
She works with the BME D&I leads at HSBC as well as
those at other financial services institutions in order to
collectively demonstrate the power of D&I and its potential
at Canary Wharf (in 2017 and 2018 she spoke brilliantly at
launches of Powerful Media’s Future Leaders magazine).

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