Speakers

Rehema Shabaya is a Senior Delivery Lead at Accenture. With a 18-year career in IT, she has built a distinguished reputation as a leader delivering complex global business and technology transformation programmes. Her career spans multiple industries – consumer goods and services, retail, manufacturing, automotive, aerospace and defence, utilities, pharmaceutical, telecommunications and public services.

From modernising enterprise platforms, leading digital transformation, strengthening IT operating models and enabling data-driven innovation, Rehema has demonstrated an exceptional ability to turn complex challenges into successful business outcomes. She collaborates with clients to shape business change programmes, and her work has consistently driven operational excellence and long-term strategic value for some of the world’s recognisable brands such as British Gas, Mars Inc, Jaguar Land Rover, Vodafone, GSK, Unilever, Dyson and L’Oréal. Her leadership style blends industry and technical expertise with stakeholder engagement and an unwavering focus to empower teams through coaching, so they can excel in their respective expertise.

Alongside her IT career, Rehema is a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion in the tech industry. As Ethnicity Lead for Accenture Technology – an internal role she held for 7 years – Rehema used this platform to inform senior leaders and employees on the lived experiences of minority ethnic employees, and in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, mobilised Reverse Mentoring to build sustainable cross-cultural connections in the workplace across all career levels. She regularly supports apprentice and graduate recruitment, and serves as mentor and coach to new joiners, empowering them to shape their IT careers. Externally, she has coached the Founder of Maliyo Games to restructure the software delivery team to meet product deadlines and is an advisor to CB Mentoring – a charity from her home town of Cambridge that mentors black school children.

Rehema is steadfast in driving black representation in tech through her contributions to immersive events like Accenture Decoded and Tech Taster Week where school leavers explore careers in technology with real-life business challenges. She has partnered with Coding Black Females on Demystifying Roles in Tech to encourage black women into the tech industry, has led skills sessions with Bright Network graduate careers fair and spoken at the WeAreTechWomen conference on the barriers women of colour face in the tech industry. As a black woman in tech, Rehema has shared her personal experiences on resilience and adaptability to empower others to unlock their potential as future technologists.