Meet our speakers
Please note that more speakers will be added closer to the event. During the event you will get to hear from:
Keynote Welcome
KR Liu
Pronouns: she/her
Role at Google: Group Lead for Brand Accessibility, Brand Studio
KR is a leader in the area of disability inclusion and LGBTQ rights. She has been on the forefront of issues blazing a trail towards inclusive design and marketing for more than 20 years. Diagnosed with severe hearing loss at the age of three, she’s made it her life’s work to be a strong advocate for disabled people. As the Head of Brand Accessibility at Google, Brand Studio she drives innovation of representation and storytelling for diverse disabled audiences, a segment that historically has been overlooked. She successfully lobbied on Capitol Hill with Senator Warren’s team and helped pass the Over-The-Counter Hearing Aid Act of 2017, made available as of October 2022.
Google's Product Accessibility
Christopher Patnoe
Pronouns: he/him
Role at Google: EMEA Lead, Accessibility and Disability Inclusion
Christopher Patnoe is the EMEA lead for Accessibility and Disability Inclusion at Google. He leads Google's efforts around the accessibility of product, people, policy and partnerships across EMEA - with a particular focus on Emerging Markets. He has more than 25 years experience in Tech working at companies like Apple, Sony Ericsson and Disney where he's built hardware, software, and services. His current passion is Accessibility at the intersection of immersive technologies (AR/VR) and consumer hardware. He is the chair for the Immersive Captions Community Group with the W3C, is the Accessibility Working Group Chair for the XR Association, and sits on the Board of Trustees for the American Foundation for the Blind, the GAAD Foundation, and Digit Music. Christopher has a degree in Music from UC Berkeley.
Chris Blayney
Pronouns: he/him
Role at Google: Channel Manager, Chrome OS Commercial
Chris is the UK/I Partner manager for ChromeOS & Google For Education, and lead for the Disability Alliance ERG in London. Chris has 20 years experience working in the Tech industry, and has been with Google for 3 years. Chris’s core role is being responsible for building out and delivering the ChromeOS and Google for Education partner strategy for the UK and Ireland. Which entails, recruiting, inspiring, and enabling Google’s partners to deliver the best end user technology to their customers across enterprise, mid market, and education.
Belonging at Google - Panel discussion
David Benson
Pronouns: he/him
Role at Google: Director, Agency Sales
David Benson joined Google in 2012 and is the Director of Agency, Google Customer Solutions, UK/I. Before joining Google, David worked for 20+ years in the advertising industry, on world leading brands including L'Oreal, Nestle, Aviva, Ford, Toyota, Disney, Coca-Cola and Levis. He has a degree in psychology from Durham University and is endlessly curious about how and why people buy. He lives in Dublin and is married with a wife, 3 children, 2 dogs, 3 cats, 2 horses and a variable number of chickens.
Aurelie Rimmen
Pronouns: she/her
Role at Google: Head of Strategy & Operations
Prior to joining Google Aurelie worked in an AI tech startup. Aurelie graduated from ESCP, a French business school. She now lives in London.
Lorenzo Caggioni
Pronouns: he/him
Role at Google: Customer Solution Engineer
After finishing University, Lorenzo started his job journey in the IT/consulting area. Lorenzo has multiple years of experience working in Integration and Big Data projects. Working at Google since 2010, he supported technical integration on several Google products: Google AdSense, YouTube and now Google Cloud Platform. He is a Certified Google Cloud Architect, Data Engineer, YouTube Audience Growth and Digital Rights. In his spare time, Lorenzo loves investigating areas where technology can help increase autonomy of people with disabilities. This passion led Lorenzo to start a 20% project inside Google focused on making the Google Assistant more accessible announced at Google I/O 2019: Project DIVA. Project DIVA inspired Action Blocks, a Google application released in 2020.
Helga Velroyen
Pronouns: she/her
Role at Google: Senior Software Engineer, Corporate Engineering
Helga graduated in Computer Science at RWTH Aachen, Germany, in 2008. Afterwards she worked as a software engineer for a consulting company for 2 years. In 2011, she joined Google Munich and hasn’t left ever since. She worked on various topics, from privacy, virtualization, network, space planning. Currently she is part of Corporate Engineering in a team that builds tools for space planning and utilization measurement. Helga identifies as hard of hearing. Since 2021, she is also the disability representative for employees in Google Germany.
Careers and Culture at Google
Orlaith Downey
Pronouns: she/her
Role at Google: Sales Recruiter EMEA
After completing her degree in French and Business in 2016, Orlaith moved to Dublin to start working as an Account Strategist in the Sales team for digital advertisers in the United Kingdom. After 5 years building her expertise working on Marketing strategies with clients across a large range of businesses and industries, she moved to the Human Resources side. For the last year Orlaith has worked as a Sales Recruiter for the Northern Europe team. In addition to this Orlaith leads the internal Disability Alliance Employee Resource Group and actively volunteers on site as well as in the local community. In her free time she spends it traveling with her partner James, playing ‘Gaelic’ sports such as Camogie and watching films.
Sofia Sharkova
Pronouns: she/her
Role at Google: Head of Inclusion, EMEA
Sofia Sharkova is Google’s Head of Inclusion for the EMEA region. Since joining the organization over 12 years ago, her focus has been on fostering a culture of inclusion and belonging through active support, development and advancement of Employee Resources Groups.
Rhys Davies
Pronouns: he/him
Role at Google: Recruiter
After finishing University, Rhys joined a Digital recruitment agency in London working in the digital marketing space with a number of large brands and digital agencies. After 3 years in this role he joined Google to work on recruitment for the Large Customer Sales team where he has hired in to many different regions and countries
Nima Kalantari
Pronouns: he/him
Role at Google: Diversity Program Lead
Nima first joined Google in 2016 and started working as an Account Strategist supporting UK digital advertisers. After exploring a variety of roles within the business organization he joined YouTube as part of the core team that designed and launched #YouTube Black, a program intended to present fresh narratives that emphasise the intellectual power and authenticity of Black content creators. Championing inclusion is core to EVERYTHING he does; naturally he moved into this current role within the Diversity Recruitment team where he leads programs that enable People with Disabilities to build a successful career at Google. He is also a long time member of the employer resource group DA (Disability Alliance) and an avid GIF user with an unhealthy addiction to Yoga and travel.
Closing address
Tom Dewaele
Pronouns: he/him
Role at Google: Vice President, People Experience
Tom Dewaele is Vice President of People Experience for Google, a role he started in April, 2022. In this role, Tom oversees the teams responsible for supporting Candidates, Googlers, and Leaders across every market, to provide extraordinary support in moments that matter. Before Google, Tom was with Unilever for over 11 years, where he sat on both the HR and Operations leadership teams, and was Global Head of Employee Experience, leading a team of 1500 globally to deliver services that impacted the everyday experiences of Unilever employees. Tom’s two plus decades of HR leadership include roles such as VP of Rewards, VP of HR Central and Eastern Europe, and VP of Global HR Services for Unilever, and 10 years of HR leadership at Anheuser-Busch InBev. Tom has been featured in international HR case studies, podcasts, articles, and panels, and has been a finalist for HR Leader of the year and HR Excellence awards. He is based in London and enjoys running, his family of girls, and watching all numbers of sports.
DisCo Organizers
Benjamin Hütteroth
Pronouns: he/him
Role at Google: Industry Talent Outreach Programs Manager
After completing his apprenticeship as an event manager in 2005 he moved to Switzerland. Benjamin has 15+ years experience in the event, marketing and hospitality business, working for companies such as Hyatt Hotels, the Würth Group and Credit Suisse. In 2018, Benjamin joined Google’s talent engagement team where he manages Google hosted events and the presence at externally organized conferences to build a strong pipeline of great talent and to grow Google. He is married and a father of one child. In addition to his core-role at Google he is also a steering committee and founding member of the employer resource group BGN (Black Googler Network) Zurich and a strong advocate of diversity, equity and inclusion. In his free time he spends time with his family, loves to travel, and hitting the gym.
Georgina Hetherington
Pronouns: she/her
Role at Google: University Programs Specialist
Georgina lives in London with her husband and her dog Frank, and she has worked at Google for six years. Within that time, Georgina worked a number of different roles in People Operations, including staffing services, a recruiter for UX design and now she works on student outreach in the University Programs team. Within the team, she specialises in outreach for tech students based in the Nordics and the UK, and also students with disabilities. She was involved in the Ability@Google event series in 2020 and very passionate about helping students with their confidence to apply for roles. For that reason, Georgina is also involved in the #iamremarkable workshop, helping to boost people’s confidence to talk openly about their accomplishments.
Ellie Buckhout
Pronouns: she/her
Role at Google: Student Talent Outreach Program Manager
After finishing university in the US, Ellie became a program manager at an NGO working to help underrepresented students attend college and prepare for life after school. After a few years of working, Ellie moved to Dublin to study a Masters degree in education. Following her degree she moved into student recruitment in Irish higher education. Ellie joined Google in 2021 where she began as a recruiter on the EMEA Intern Team. She recently joined the Student Talent Outreach team as a Program Manager in 2022, which means she looks after student outreach in EMEA by running programs and spreading the word about opportunities for students or recent graduates at Google. In her free time, Ellie spends time with her friends & family, hiking and doing yoga, and going on walks with the best four-legged pal, her dog named Oscar.
Ciara Campbell
Pronouns: she/her
Role at Google: Talent Programs Manager
After leaving university, Ciara began her career in student recruitment within the professional services industry. From there she moved into specializing in campus outreach activities and creating programs to support underrepresented talent and has worked in big tech and investment banking. Ciara joined Google in 2022 and sits within the Talent Programs team who work to create developmental programs to support people from underrepresented groups into careers at Google. In her free time, Ciara spends time with friends, likes trying new restaurants and cooking new dishes.
Claire Fennelly
Pronouns: she/her
Role at Google: Employee Referrals Program Manager
Claire first joined Google’s Customer Experience team in 2020, identifying new ways to support Google’s large customer sales teams through customer feedback analysis. Claire moved to People Operations a year ago as a Program Manager in Employee Referrals, working with recruiting teams to increase referrals for open roles through initiatives with Google teams and underrepresented groups. DisCo is Claire’s first experience working in external events, and has enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about Google’s Disability Alliance. Claire is originally from Ireland, having moved to London for her most recent role. In her spare time she loves to travel and explore new places.
Niamh Kavanagh
Pronouns: she/her
Role at Google: Diversity Program Manager
After completing her degree in Marketing and Event Management, Niamh moved to Australia and New Zealand for 3 years where her career in Recruitment began. When Niamh returned to Ireland, she joined Google and in the past 9 years has had a variety of roles relating to Recruitment and Google.org in EMEA. Niamh completed a Msc in Human Resources before her journey led her to motherhood where she took leave to welcome her two beautiful daughters. Since her return, Niamh has the position of Diversity Program Manager for Google EMEA. In her spare time, Niamh likes to spend time with her family and friends, exploring new places and making memories!
Guy Hurford
Pronouns: he/him
Role at Google: Technical recruiter
Guy Graduated from Newcastle university in 2016 with a bachelors degree in Ancient history. He moved to Geneva in September 2016 and got into the world of recruiting. As COVID came to an end he applied to Google and started in April 2021. He worked for the Zurich recruiting team first before joining the Poland cloud team where he currently works.
