Our Team
Mayur Gupta
CEO & Founder
Mayur set up Career Accelerator based on his own experiences growing up as an LGBT+ person of colour, as well as well as his experience working in state schools with 100s of students. Mayur observed how lots of hard working young people from diverse backgrounds were missing out on relatable and impactful career support, affecting what they feel capable of achieving and their future career destinations.
Mayur is driven by the notion that talent is everywhere but opportunity is not and through Career Accelerator tries to address this by connecting young people from diverse backgrounds with inspiring and relatable role models from top businesses through a combination of mentoring and wider career support.
He is passionate about supporting young people from diverse backgrounds, the role of businesses for social good and business entrepreneurship. Mayur is also a frequent guest speaker. He has spoken at The Economist, The Labour Party and Teach First and has contributed towards 2 books – DiversityEd and 26 Friends: Lessons to Learn Before It’s Too Late. He has been recognised on the OUTstanding and Empower Lists four times and was named as a LinkedIn Top Voice in 2022.
Jhanay Otto
Head of Youth Programmes Manager
Whilst studying English Language and Linguistics at Warwick University, Jhanay participated in delivering courses of traditional martial arts to young people who are newly arrived into the U.K (refugees, asylum seekers) alongside young people from marginalised communities and low socio-economic backgrounds. Jhanay additionally volunteered for ‘Warwick in Africa’ where she virtually contributed to supporting young people in Ghana with an enhanced educational experience.
Jhanay is also an alumnus of ‘The Black Collective of media in sport’, a programme whose objective is to increase diversity and career opportunities for minority young people within the media.
Jhanay currently works as The Youth Programme Manager at Career Accelerator where she aims to make a positive impact in the professional career development of young people.
Umbreen Lenoire
Marketing Manager
Umbreen graduated from Aston University, Birmingham, in 1999 with a BSc in Business Administration and Management (1st Class). A university placement at Prudential’s headquarters in London led to Umbreen joining the project team that launched Egg plc – one of the UK’s first online banks. The team at Egg went on to sponsor Umbreen for her final year at university and offered her a marketing role on graduation.
She has over 20 years experience as a marketing and campaign manager in both traditional and digital media – working in a variety of sectors from Financial Services to Utilities to her role as CRM manager at Weight Watchers UK.
Umbreen works as Career Accelerator’s Marketing & Communications Manager helping to showcase Career Accelerator’s work with young people and its corporate partners.
She is also a Trustee for Riverside Counselling, a leading Oxfordshire based mental health social enterprise – advising on its business and marketing.
Tracy Barlow
Marketing Assistant
Tracy has a love for all things digital! With a passion for bringing things to life, her personal motto is: ‘Dream the impossible, live the dream…never stop believing’.
If you don’t dream it, you won’t see it; and if you can’t see it, it can never happen!
Having 9 years’ experience in web design and development, Tracy has a passion for beautiful designs and a flair for the creative.
Along side her website design work, Tracy is also in her 3rd year of Cybersecurity studies.
Originally from South Africa, she moved to the UK in 2011 and currently lives in Reading, Berkshire with her wife Zané and two cats, Fuzz & Lily
Sanjeev Gupta
Finance Manager
Sanjeev is honorary finance manager for Career Accelerator. He holds a MSc in Business Studies from the London Business School and has done varied banking roles with international banks like Standard Chartered Bank, UBS AG and Emirates NBD over a 35 year period.
Along with Mayur, he is the co-founder of Master Money Ltd which provides financial coaching to young professionals.
Kate Vayle
Career Accelerator University Ambassador
Matt is an passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion in the workplace, and Matt seeks to promote the work of Career Accelerator in order to provide young LGBTQ+ professionals with invaluable mentoring opportunities through the program. Matt is a student at the University of Oxford, and after completing the program in 2023 with his mentor from Google, Matt decided to join the Career Accelerator team as a program ambassador. Across his work experience in both business development and tech investment consulting, Matt recognised the lack of LGBTQ+ role models in the workplace, and through promoting the LGBTQ+ mentoring scheme, Matt aspires to empower young LGBTQ+ professionals to be ‘out and proud’ in the workplace by connecting them with inspiring LGBTQ+ role models.
Jake Marshall
LGBT+ Ambassador
Jake volunteers as Career Accelerator’s LGBT+ Ambassador for Career Accelerator’s LGBT+ Mentoring Programme.
He has supported Career Accelerator ever since their first LGBT+ programme and has sat on Career Accelerator’s Youth Advisory Board for 2 years. Jake has a particular interest in promoting Career Accelerator’s work to the North East, Yorkshire and Humber and Midlands regions, and uses his role to increase the number and diversity of mentees from across the UK.
Mayur set up Career Accelerator based on his own experiences growing up as an LGBT+ person of colour, as well as well as his experience working in state schools with 100s of students. Mayur observed how lots of hard working young people from diverse backgrounds were missing out on relatable and impactful career support, affecting what they feel capable of achieving and their future career destinations.
Mayur is driven by the notion that talent is everywhere but opportunity is not and through Career Accelerator tries to address this by connecting young people from diverse backgrounds with inspiring and relatable role models from top businesses through a combination of mentoring and wider career support.
He is passionate about supporting young people from diverse backgrounds, the role of businesses for social good and business entrepreneurship. Mayur is also a frequent guest speaker. He has spoken at The Economist, The Labour Party and Teach First and has contributed towards 2 books – DiversityEd and 26 Friends: Lessons to Learn Before It’s Too Late. He has been recognised on the OUTstanding and Empower Lists four times and was named as a LinkedIn Top Voice in 2022.
Whilst studying English Language and Linguistics at Warwick University, Jhanay participated in delivering courses of traditional martial arts to young people who are newly arrived into the U.K (refugees, asylum seekers) alongside young people from marginalised communities and low socio-economic backgrounds.
Jhanay additionally volunteered for ‘Warwick in Africa’ where she virtually contributed to supporting young people in Ghana with an enhanced educational experience. Jhanay is also an alumnus of ‘The Black Collective of media in sport’, a programme whose objective is to increase diversity and career opportunities for minority young people within the media.
Jhanay currently works as The Youth Programme Manager at Career Accelerator where she aims to make a positive impact in the professional career development of young people.
Umbreen graduated from Aston University, Birmingham, in 1999 with a BSc in Business Administration and Management (1st Class). A university placement at Prudential’s headquarters in London led to Umbreen joining the project team that launched Egg plc – one of the UK’s first online banks. The team at Egg went on to sponsor Umbreen for her final year at university and offered her a marketing role on graduation.
She has over 20 years experience as a marketing and campaign manager in both traditional and digital media – working in a variety of sectors from Financial Services to Utilities to her role as CRM manager at Weight Watchers UK.
Umbreen works as Career Accelerator’s Marketing & Communications Manager helping to showcase Career Accelerator’s work with young people and its corporate partners.
She is also a Trustee for Riverside Counselling, a leading Oxfordshire based mental health social enterprise – advising on its business and marketing.
Tracy has a love for all things digital! With a passion for bringing things to life, her personal motto is: ‘Dream the impossible, live the dream…never stop believing’.
If you don’t dream it, you won’t see it; and if you can’t see it, it can never happen!
Having 9 years’ experience in web design and development, Tracy has a passion for beautiful designs and a flair for the creative.
Along side her website design work, Tracy is also in her 3rd year of Cybersecurity studies.
Originally from South Africa, she moved to the UK in 2011 and currently lives in Reading, Berkshire with her wife Zané and two cats, Fuzz & Lily
Sanjeev is honorary finance manager for Career Accelerator. He holds a MSc in Business Studies from the London Business School and has done varied banking roles with international banks like Standard Chartered Bank, UBS AG and Emirates NBD over a 35 year period.
Along with Mayur, he is the co-founder of Master Money Ltd which provides financial coaching to young professionals.
Matt is an passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion in the workplace, and Matt seeks to promote the work of Career Accelerator in order to provide young LGBTQ+ professionals with invaluable mentoring opportunities through the program.
Matt is a student at the University of Oxford, and after completing the program in 2023 with his mentor from Google, Matt decided to join the Career Accelerator team as a program ambassador.
Across his work experience in both business development and tech investment consulting, Matt recognised the lack of LGBTQ+ role models in the workplace, and through promoting the LGBTQ+ mentoring scheme, Matt aspires to empower young LGBTQ+ professionals to be ‘out and proud’ in the workplace by connecting them with inspiring LGBTQ+ role models.
Jake volunteers as Career Accelerator’s LGBT+ Ambassador for Career Accelerator’s LGBT+ Mentoring Programme.
He has supported Career Accelerator ever since their first LGBT+ programme and has sat on Career Accelerator’s Youth Advisory Board for 2 years. Jake has a particular interest in promoting Career Accelerator’s work to the North East, Yorkshire and Humber and Midlands regions, and uses his role to increase the number and diversity of mentees from across the UK.
Our Advisory Board
Career Accelerator is supported by a team of Business Advisers who contribute their expertise and professional network to help Career Accelerator develop successfully and positively impact its clients.
Bruna Gil
Partnerships at LinkedIn
Geff Parsons
CEO at The Inclusion Imperative
Charly Young MBE
Co-founder, The Girls' Network
Sherma Johnson-Gray
Careers Consultant at the University of Birmingham Dubai
Rosie Wright
Social innovation consultant
Jon Hugget
Professional Coach and Board Advisor
Jae Sloan
Consultant, Coach, Writer, Speaker
Jordan Keating
Head of Customer Experience at Bionic
George Stone
HR Programme Lead at BT Group
Bruna Gil
Leading Partnerships at LinkedIn
Bruna is a Channel Sales Leader with extensive experience in the tech industry, marketing, partnerships, and digital advertising. Currently working at LinkedIn, she leads Channel sales in the Ad Technology space, driving the growth of LinkedIn’s Marketing Partner Program in EMEA.
Bruna has a global role within LinkedIn’s LGBT+ network leading investment efforts in LGBT+ leadership. As a member of LinkedIn’s Social Impact Board, she has worked with numerous non-profits to create opportunity for youths from diverse backgrounds. In 2018 and 2019, Bruna has been recognised by OUTstanding in the Financial Times and Yahoo Finance as a top LGBT+ Emerging Leader. In 2020, she was shortlisted by the British LGBT Awards under the Diversity Hero category.
Charly Young MBE
Co-founder, The Girls’ Network
Charly Young co-founded The Girls’ Network. The Girls’ Network believes that no girl’s future should be limited by their background, gender or parental income.
The Girls’ Network is building a network of passionate and committed women and girls, organisations and individuals, to support teenage girls from the least advantaged communities across England.
Charly believes that mentoring, access to opportunities and the support and confidence to seize them, can be transformational. She wants to use her experience as a teacher and an entrepreneur to find the most effective way to support the future generation of female leaders. Charly wants to use her platform as charity CEO to share what works well, and to mobilise others to help ensure that neither one’s gender nor their family income determine the opportunities that are available to young people.
Rosie Wright
Freelance social innovation consultant & post-graduate student at the University of Cambridge
Social innovation researcher and consultant working to ensure that emerging technologies are used for good.
Rosie’s career has been driven by wanting to make the changes which really change the world.
That desire has taken her on a journey from understanding how to fight poverty fatigue in the international development sector to improving the data systems that underpin economic justice in the financial industry. Throughout it she’s always tried to understand the reality over the rhetoric which has naturally led her back to academia and the opportunity to contribute both her research and lived experience to the conversation.
That journey has also allowed her to develop her own leadership skills whilst learning when to step back and empower others around her. As a result, in addition to her studies at Cambridge, she also runs her own consultancy, allowing her to learn through collaborating with inspiring innovators.
She is also passionate about serving through volunteering with mental health and homelessness being deeply important issues to her. Outside of work she’s a photographer, performer and author.
Sherma Johnson-Gray
Sherma, currently leading the Careers Service at the University of Birmingham Dubai, is a highly accomplished Careers Consultant with a diverse background in mental health and recruitment. Utilising this experience, as a Fair recruitment advisor, she offers guidance addressing critical issues such as reasonable adjustments and racial bias in recruitment processes. Her contributions span institutions including London School of Economics and the University of Greenwich, as well as speaker events with UniversitiesUK and Gulf News Edufair.
Sherma is also a seasoned Career Coach, leveraging her expertise she guides individuals through various career transitions such as entering the workforce for the first time and navigating career changes. She also collaborates with organisations such as the Women’s Higher Education Network and InvestIn, facilitating career development programs.
Geff Parsons
Geffrye (he/him) is the CEO of, The Inclusion Imperative, an independent DE&I consultancy practice which Geff founded in 2022 to help commercial organisations build leadership capabilities and harness the power of inclusion.
In doing so, Geff draws on 35 years’ experience in front office executive roles, based in the UK, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Netherlands, with leading international financial and professional services organisations. During that time, Geff stewarded his former employer, Macquarie, to #1 in Stonewall’s annual inclusion rankings, while his side-of-desk DE&I work was recognised by the British LGBT Awards, the PinkNews Awards, The Guardian and OUTstanding.
Alongside Career Accelerator, Geff holds Board, Trustee or Advisory roles with GiveOut, Open for Business, Voda and Pride in Tennis, and formerly with Diversity Role Models.
Jon Hugget
Jon coaches leaders and advises boards globally. He serves on the board of the Alwan Foundation and has chaired the boards of the Social Innovation Exchange; All Out; the STOP AIDS Project; Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration; and Khulisa. Jon was a Partner with The Bridgespan Group in New York and San Francisco, and prior he was a Partner with Bain & Company, where he was a founder of the firm’s LGBT employee group, and served clients from the offices in Johannesburg and Toronto.
He has run three companies: a $75M health care operation on four continents; a firm leading economic development in emerging countries; and an LGBT web company. His articles have been published widely, including in Stanford Social Innovation Review, Huffington Post, and The Guardian. He has visited more than half of the countries in the world.
Jae Sloan
Consultant, Coach, Writer, Speaker
Jae is an organisational development consultant, holistic coach, writer, speaker and artist with expertise in business strategy, human performance, inclusion & diversity, leadership and change. They have 30 years’ professional experience working in multinationals, education and non-profits. Jae lives in Southwest Wales with their husband, Greg, and dog, Fred. Read more about Jae here.
Jordan Keating
Jordan is a customer experience leader, with a wealth of knowledge in operations, customer experience turnarounds, digital innovation, and business transformation, both within top FTSE 100 companies and smaller scale-up organisations. At Bionic, Jordan oversees customer service, frontline operations, and the ‘voice of the customer’ CX program. Additionally, Jordan is accountable for crafting and executing Bionics’ broader CX strategy, which is pivotal in driving Bionic’s efforts to differentiate itself through superior customer experience to deliver business growth.
George Stone
George is passionate about people and career development. His own experience has taught him that it takes just ‘one person in your corner’ to have a profound impact on a career and skills journey.
He is a HR leader with broad experience at some of the UK’s most loved tech and telco brands. Currently, George leads on talent and performance management at BT Group. Before this, he has led a range of global programmes across organisational culture, early careers, talent acquisition and business partnering.
What our mentees are saying
See all of our video testimonials.
What our mentees are saying
See all of our video testimonials.
Some captured moments
From our events, workshops, assemblies and mentoring sessions.
The businesses and organisations we work with
