BLIX Accelerator Program 2022
This course will help you accelerate your Career or Startup
Leaders from the world's leading technology companies are coming together this autumn to deliver the inaugural BLIX Program. We will run several sessions to help candidates from underrepresented backgrounds to get hired or get ahead in their career and business. Spaces are limited but we want as many of you to attend as possible.
👇 If you would like to attend - please sign up here ASAP as spaces are limited 👇
When?
Workshops will take place Tues & Thurs 6:30 UK time
between the 27th of September and the 3rd of November 2022.
What will I learn?
Accelerate your Career & Startup:
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Personal STOCK VALUE
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Applied AI
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Building your Brand
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The 4 Keys to authentic (Self-)Leadership
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Take Charge of Your Destiny
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Connected Data: Making sense of relationships in data
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Courageous choices: Design Thinking
Accelerate your career:
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Career Development & Managing up
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Rock your LinkedIn profile, Interviewing in Tech
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Agile Collaboration
Accelerate your startup:
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Startup Funding 101
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Blockchain: the Future of Finance
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0 to 1 product Development
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Angel Investment
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Innovation
Who will teach me?
Karol Ussher
Founder BLIX & Product @ Apple
Karol is a father, founder and product leader at Apple. He is passionate about building inclusive teams & technologies. He has previously worked at Google, Microsoft, AWS & Alexa building programs & products used by millions daily.
Workshops 👇
Grow your Personal STOCK VALUE - Tuesday 27th of September 2022: Learnings and Lessons in leadership from the world's most innovative companies.
Applied AI - Tuesday 11th of October 2022: How to understand the impact of AI for business and society. Understand the fundamentals, terminology, applications, and look at real world demos & tools you can use for your career & business.
Ambreen Nadeem
Founder of Psychology Talks, Psychologist & Author | BLIX Mentor
The study of human behavior always intrigued Ambreen. Her passion to understand the human psyche led her to pursue a master's in Industrial Psychology. Soon after completing her studies, Ambreen joined Unilever (Biggest multinational) as Consumer Insight Manager, where she got the opportunity to utilize her knowledge of psychology and learn and practice the latest research techniques.
Workshop 👇
Take Charge of Your Destiny - on Thursday 29th of September 2022: In this session participants will learn how to take charge of their destiny, The session will be based on my upcoming book "The Algorithm of Life"
Neil Staunton
Co-Founder @Clear Digital Assets Ltd
Neil is ex-Microsoft and Google Cloud and has co-founded, raised funding and led several successful Blockchain, Data Science and AI startups, including Electron (Blockchain for energy systems), Pivigo (Data Science & AI School), Crypton (AI-crypto trading platform), Cofounder Venture Studios (incubating deep tech startups), Decidable (AI driven data storytelling). Neil is currently the CEO and founder of ClearDigital, which is launching the first stablecoin platform designed for UK banks to issue their own digital currencies.
Workshops 👇
Startup Funding 101 - Tuesday 25th of October 2022: Funding / cash is the lifeblood of any company, particularly startups. In the talk I will take you through the typical process of funding from end to end, what type of investors invest and who you should be pitching to, what should go into an investor presentation, and how to close an investment round with all the documents in place.
Blockchain: the Future of Finance - Thursday 27th of October 2022: We are going through an evolution of the internet, lets call it Web 3. In web 3 the use of blockchain technologies allows for the removal of trusted third parties and replaced with computer code. Many industries will be disrupted. In this talk I will explain the evolution of the internet, web 1, web 2 and now web 3, and what specifically is a blockchain and why it matters, the killer applications such as Bitcoin (money) and Ethereum (smart contracts and stablecoins), and why smart contracts are replacing old financial systems such as lending and borrowing, securities trading and fiat money. I will provide examples of innovations that are disrupting certain big financial firms and how after all the fighting to destroy "crypto", most banks and financial institutions are embracing and investing in blockchain, Bitcoin and crypto.
Mounira Latrache
CEO & Co-Founder @Connected Business | BLIX Mentor
Mounira is a pioneer & mentor supporting leaders and organizations to make the shift from systems of control to empowering organisms. Her focus lies in the skills for the inner and collective transformation needed to build the New Paradigm that serves an interconnected world, social justice, planet regeneration, and heart wisdom. She brings 20+ years of leadership experience at international brands like Google, Red Bull, and BMW.
Mounira was a pioneer of Google’s mindfulness community and its success led her to train teams at companies around the world. As the co-founder of Connected Business and internationally certified Search Inside Yourself trainer, her mission is to empower Leaders of the New Paradigm to find new ways of co-creation to create a better world for the next 7 generations to come. In the past years, she worked with and mentored more than 30.000 (business) pioneers and trained hundreds of teachers globally.
Her book Connected Business: How I learned to lead myself and others was published by Ariston/Randomhouse Publishing in April 2020.
Workshop 👇
The 4 Keys to authentic (Self-)Leadership in times of change, unpredictability & overwhelm - Tuesday 4th of October 2022: Discover how to bring more of yourself to work every day and deal skillfully with unpredictable challenging times so you can create meaningful change for this planet.
How can we find an inner strength when outer structures break down? How can we go from being in our own story to truly being of service to others and our planet? How can we build the New Paradigm that serves an interconnected world, social justice, planet regeneration, and heart wisdom - all dedicated to the future generations?
In her workshop, Mounira Latrache will address future trends, provide insights into the core 4 self-leadership skills we need to lead ourselves and co-lead a different future, and share some practical exercises along the way.
Job Maelane
Customer Success Architect @Neo4j | BLIX Mentor
I help provide high level technical leadership for enabling the successful design and delivery of enterprise wide solutions through high level system design and strategic business development.
I have worked with & for a number of global organisations in shaping technological solutions for their customers and employees. I have worked as a consultant for over 18 years and have navigated through the corporate world in a fairly modestly successful way which I intend to share with my mentees.
Workshop 👇
Connected Data: Making sense of relationships in data - Tuesday 18th of October 2022: We live in a world where almost everything is connected, whether it be close relationships with your friends to having a link to Bill Gates because you bought the same product on some e-commerce site. You might have heard of the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”?! This session explores how entities are linked through implicit or explicit relationships. We will take a look at real-world examples from uncovering fraud rings to exploring the details around The Paradise/Panama/Pandora Papers.
Rilwon Jaiyeola
Strategic Director - EMEA @Pluralsight | BLIX Mentor
Rilwon comes with about 14 years of industry experience within the Banking Sector, Telco, Insurance, Accounting and Tech. He is a Technology Enthusiast who has held various leadership position in diverse organisation where his primary focus is on Diversity & Inclusion.
A major take away from all his experience is the culture and vision of the multinational companies he has worked with in the past and current, ranging from the likes of Google, Royal Bank of Scotland, Sage, Citrix and Pluralsight. The values and culture he represents and adopted includes topics such as being Accountable for Excellence, Integrity, Curiosity, Teamwork, Leadership and Commitment to something bigger, all of which has made Him grow and evolve in His career, whilst adapting to challenges and devising ways to overcome them. Rilwon genuinely enjoys being a Mentor as he believes that sharing of knowledge and experience vice versa, really does improve the growth-mindset of mentees and foster leadership.
Workshop 👇
Building your Brand - Thursday 6th of October 2022: This session will focus on building individual brands, relationships, alignment and collaboration across multiple teams within internal and external teams of your organisation. Interactive session to discuss openly the challenges of navigating relationships within an organisation.
Paul Russell
Digital Transformation Coach @ Evenifitwasfree (Freelance) | BLIX Mentor
Paul has worked in the technology industry for some 30 years and have seen some things in how inequality and bias can create blind spots in how people experience change and growth. He has a motto 'just because you can doesn't mean you should unless you know why'. It is for this reason that he left IBM in 2021 to became a freelance coach and mentor to offer his thoughts on their ideas and problems learning as he goes and meeting incredible people like he has on BLIX. He hopes to meet more.
Workshop 👇
Courageous choices: How design thinking can make a real difference in how we approach opportunities - Thursday 20th of October 2022: We live in a VUCA world – where volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity surround the decisions we make. The session will explore how we can use our curious mindset to challenge what matters the most. Design thinking is a popular philosophy to encourage diversity of thought to see opportunity through a different lens.
A pragmatic iterative approach that explores how we can become more courageous to find human-centric solutions exposing assumptions and biases to find answers to our problems and opportunities. The session will be lively and participatory, leaving you with a toolkit of ideas to help you consider your own goals and aspirations – whether it is solving a specific problem, looking at career changes, or how to help others achieve greater success.
Matt Williams
Lead Product Manager @Apple
Hi there, I’m Matt. I was born and raised in NYC, but now reside in Los Angeles with my wife and daughter. I’ve been in product management for most of my career (about 10 years) and have deep expertise in ad tech, growth, media, and entertainment. I’m passionate about building, but also love giving back and mentoring. I’ve spoken at Product School about building a product vision, and regularly volunteer for the Posse Foundation, the scholarship program I was involved with in college. My work experience includes stints at Nielsen, FreeWheel (now owned by Comcast), Spotify, Quibi, and now at Apple where I work on product strategy around the services ecosystem (this includes products like TV plus, music, podcasts, etc.)
Workshops 👇
Career Development & Managing up - Tuesday 25th of October 2022: In this workshop, we'll cover topics like crafting a career path, dealing with setbacks and ambiguity in roles, self-reflection, and awareness techniques, and having an executive presence to get you to the next level in your career. These are vital skills for a successful career and to build the confidence you need to forge ahead in tech and product management.
0 to 1 Product Development - Thursday 3rd of November 2022: In this session, we'll cover a few things:
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Crafting a product vision using a practical framework
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Product Market Fit and honing in on your customer needs
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MVP development and iterating
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Getting customer feedback
Founder @ Angel Investing School
Andy is a father, husband, creator, thinker, investor and founder of The Angel Investing School. He has invested in over 15 startups and raised over £2.5M as an investor.
His career has seen him work in Hong Kong, San Francisco and Johannesburg. With experience as a founder, investor, product leader and management consultant.
He is one of the co-founders of Mixtape Madness and was recognised in 2021 with a Queen's honours MBE medal in recognition for his contribution to diversity and technology in the UK
Workshops 👇
Conforming is overrated - Thursday 13th of October 2022: During my career, I've transitioned from a management consultant to an investor, always looking for the most entrepreneurial work to do. However, my career took off when I became a full expression of myself.
This session will explore:
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What barriers stop us from showing up at work?
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What does it mean to be authentic?
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Why does this matter?
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How to not just survive but thrive in your career
What does it take to raise angel investment - Tuesday 1st of November 2022: Angel investing is a term most people have not come across unless they are in tech circles. Truth is, I had no idea what it was when I first started a company too.
During this session, we will explore:
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What angel investing is and isn't?
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What motivates people to angel invest?
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How can you find angel investors for your startup?
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When is the right time to raise from an angel?
Service Portfolio Director @Ericsson (Stockholm, Sweden)
Business leader and entrepreneur with measurable track record on business development on global scale, leading transformation, outsourcing, marketing, sales, solution development and portfolio management resulting exponential growth, both in corporate and start-up environments.
An AI/ML enthusiast working with value creation models, cloud based architecture and application development to result immediate needed value impact. Thought process and approach featured as a reference in MIT developed course.
Avid contributor on discussions regarding change, transformation, sustainability and diversity. Working in governing bodies of multiple NGOs, voluntary Blues and Swing dance instructor, a Scuba Diving instructor who loves spending time around people and nature, a globetrotter having travelled over 60 countries looking for opportunities on cultural learning and contribution.
Workshops 👇
Basics of Innovation - Thursday 29th of September 2022: Understanding the fundamentals of Innovation, its sources, and how to work with it in a startup & corporate environment.
Essentials of Agility & Collaboration - Tuesday 1st of November 2022: Basics on Agile principles, choosing the right IT tools to fuel your collaboration & task management.
Account Director @LinkedIn (Dublin, Ireland)
“Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.” (Paulo Coehlo)
A bavarian girl living in Dublin, Ireland, working for a network platform with professionals. I am helping clients to grow their business with the right audience and marketing formats. On top I am also a Coach & Rock Your Profile Ambassador for LinkedIn - this program is here to help educate members, customers, non-profits etc. on how to build a profile that tells your professional story, and connect to opportunity on LinkedIn.
Studied in Germany, Masters and Bachelor in Media and Communication and focused on marketing strategy, media relations, events, film, social & digital media. While studying full-time, I've worked for different brands in marketing, film and events focused on sport.
Workshops 👇
Rock Your LinkedIn Profile - Thursday 3rd of November 2022: Rock Your Profile is a program LinkedIn offers to educate members, customers, and partners on profile best practices and how to connect to opportunity using LinkedIn.
This LinkedIn Provided session will help you to create a stand-out LinkedIn profile.
Head of Recruiting Operations @Google (Singapore)
Head up Recruiting Operations for the Google Asia Pacific business, driving operational excellence for an org of 700 recruiters. Currently based out of Singapore having spent 14 years in London, the majority of that with Google UK in their Recruiting organisation leading teams of up to 40 recruiters.
Workshops 👇
Interviewing in Tech: Pulling back the curtain - Wednesday 26th of October 2022: Myth busting the interview process in Tech - what people really look for and how to ace them (and secure them!)