Lea, a former management consultant at Accenture, has almost two decades of experience as an entrepreneur, remote COO and business owner, leading fully remote teams of diverse employees and contractors around the globe. She was an early pioneer of the digital nomad movement as the founder of the world-renowned blog, Location Independent, and has helped thousands of people create the freedom to work from anywhere.

Lea was most recently the co-founder and COO of another EdTech company based in the USA. Under Lea’s leadership, the company was built as an explicitly anti-racist company fully committed to diversity, equity and belonging to create a safe working environment for Black, Brown and other deliberately disadvantaged communities…until Lea resigned after ongoing racism from her co-founder & CEO!

She now leads Mission Equality as the Strategy & Vision Lead, committed to building the company differently with a foundation of equity, equality and a true ‘people first’ approach.

Sharon Hurley Hall is an educator, writer and anti-racism activist. She is a co-founder and Equality Lead at Mission Equality, committed to building the company on a foundation of equality, anti-racism and humanity. She previously led the Diversity, Equity and Belonging team at a disruptive Ed Tech startup, where she was instrumental in operationalising a progressive approach to anti-racism across the business. 

Sharon is the Founder and Curator-in-Chief of Sharon’s Anti-Racism Newsletter, a twice-weekly online publication sharing global experiences of racism and guidance on better allyship. She is also the author of anti-racism essay collection “I’m Tired of Racism”, and “Exploring Shadeism”, which deals with colourism.  

A certified diversity and belonging facilitator and culture assessor, Sharon has facilitated numerous groups empowering participants to work towards anti-racism and equality. Sharon is also a public speaker covering racism, anti-racism and diversity topics.

Mae has worked for over a decade in outside-the-box education modalities, applying progressive education principles to facilitate growth for learners from pre-K through to adulthood. Their on-the-ground teaching experience includes time both in and out of ‘the system.’

Mae was formally trained as an educator at the University of Toronto and has taught in a range of institutions from public schools to Nunavut Arctic College, while also creating community programming ‘around the edges,’ particularly geared toward the arts and Disabled youth.

Both a creative and a systematic thinker, Mae taps into their affinity for blending structured frameworks with engaging visuals to create high quality educational experiences from behind a computer screen rather than in front of a classroom. Most recently, they led a team developing progressive education resources for a global audience at a disruptive EdTech company, with a strong emphasis on learner empowerment, diverse representation, and cross-disciplinary learning.

Mae’s passion areas include Neurodiversity justice, issues impacting the LGBTQ+ community, and all paths toward authentic, holistic, accessible and diverse education for every learner at every life stage.

Mae lives in Canada with their partner and children as they work and learn alongside one another at home.

From Mae: Mission Equality is the magical workplace environment:

• Fantastic, supportive colleagues.
• A flexible, neurodiversity-affirming remote work set-up.
• A method and a mission that resonate deeply and support my personal growth and the communities I care about.

I could literally not ask for a better place to be!

AJ is a mathematician and neuroscientist with almost 15 years’ experience in People & Culture, having built and scaled the People functions within tech start-ups many times over.

They are a passionate educator and activist, calling on their lived experience as a brown, autistic genderfluid person as well as their academic and professional background to create compassionate, inclusive, humanity-centred working environments, learning and development programmes, leadership development and organisational design.

Stacey Alvarez de la Campa is an environmental activist, and the founder of the organisation, Worldwide Sustainability Warriors, a movement which strives to empower those who wish to positively contribute to sustainable living, and focus on the collective impact of individual efforts. She continues to seek to improve the representation of Indigenous and marginalised voices in discussions about the effects of climate change.

She has successfully completed Climate Leadership Training with the Climate Reality Project, and is jointly certified in Climate Law and Governance by The University of Cambridge, The Centre for International Sustainable Development Law, and the Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law.

Stacey has been invited to speak at numerous panel discussions and webinars, including the Expert Roundtable Session on Climate Justice held on Climate Law and Governance Day at COP26. She was the lead presenter for two panel discussions on the role of experiential learning and ocean literacy during the 2022 European Geosciences Union conference. Stacey also provided crucial insights into the effects on climate change on human rights in the Caribbean during consultations with UN Special Rapporteur, David Boyd.

Stacey’s passion for the environment has led to other significant career roles. She has collaborated with the University of Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law and Governance as an educational consultant with the Ocean Explorers Programme. Stacey was also an Environmental Education Expert with a progressive EdTech company, and was a member of the 2021-2022 cohort of the Anant Fellowship for Climate Action.

Stacey is also a legal and educational consultant, with two decades of experience in the field of education. Her recent work in the legal profession focused on analysing anti-money laundering legislation.