We are holding a morning event called 'IWD: Reach For Better Business'.

Please note, we have limited spaces for the ladies only yoga class, but can take many more extra guests for the panel session and lunch.

Schedule

9:30am - Arrival and registration in Queen's Business School Student Hub.

10 - 10:50am - Gentle ladies yoga class for all abilities, led by Susan McEwen of Yoga Quarter in the Seminar Room (limited spaces).

11 - 11:20am - Refreshment break.

11:30am - 12:30pm - Panel discussion in Riddel Hall, featuring inspirational women working in different aspects of sustainable business. The panel will chaired by Dr Laura Steele, Queen's Business School Director of Ethics, Responsibility, and Sustainability; and will feature Gillian McKee, Maria Diffley, Susan McEwen and Professor Shuang Ren.

12:30 - 1:30pm - Networking lunch, a chance to catch up with colleagues and friends, old and new.

Speakers

Gillian McKee, Managing Director of Giraffe Associates

Gillian McKee is a sustainability and ESG consultant, working with businesses on strategy development, training and engagement.

She has worked in the responsible business and sustainability space for most of her career – spending 22 years with membership organisation Business in the Community NI before leaving in 2019 to establish her own business.

With clients across the agri-food, construction, manufacturing, tech and public sectors, she has a wealth of experience in guiding organisations through the big picture thinking needed to understand sustainability and embed it across their operations. She also offers training in sustainability, carbon literacy and a range of other topics designed to support companies in engaging employees on their sustainability journey.

Gillian is an external assessor for BITC’s CORE Standard for Responsible Business, the Gold Award assessor for the Diversity Mark in Northern Ireland and a B Leader, trained to support companies seeking to become certified B Corporations.

Maria Diffley, Co-founder of SustainIQ

Having worked in the sustainability space for well over a decade, both Maria and her business partner Liam recognised the need for a solution which helped companies to navigate the complexities involved in measuring, monitoring and reporting on their Sustainability and ESG investments. In response, they created SustainIQ, an agile, integrated, real-time reporting tool which calculates a company's impacts on the environment, local communities, and their people, through their products and supply chain. This data provides organisations with business intelligence that wasn’t previously being considered in strategic decision-making.

Prior to the establishment of SustainIQ, Maria worked with Business in the Community, providing support and advice on CR to the private, public and voluntary sectors. She also holds an MSc in Sustainability and CSR.

Maria is passionate about harnessing the power of business to positively impact the world and has advocated for long-term partnerships between business and community development organisations since her teens. She has helped with the capacity-building of many charitable and social enterprise organisations both locally in Northern Ireland and in the Developing World.

Susan McEwen, Co-founder of Yoga Quarter

Susan is one of the owners of Yoga Quarter, a local yoga studio in Ballyhackamore .  She has been practicing yoga for over 20 years and teaching since 2017 when she opened the studio.  She sees herself as an entrepreneur and through the studio she has nurtured not only a space that facilitates over 30 classes a week but also a vibrant connected community.  

Professor Shuang Ren, Director of DEIB, Queen's Business School

Professor Shuang Ren is the Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging at Queen’s Business School, Belfast.

Shuang is also actively engaged in research at the school, focusing on sustainability, human resource management and leadership. Her research adopts a multi-level, multi-stakeholder approach in investigating how to transform organisations towards sustainability.

Shuang Ren was awarded the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants in 2023 for her project titled ‘Legitimising digital sustainability through stakeholder communication’. Shuang is passionate about contributing to the important conversation of sustainability, ethics and responsibility.

Chair

Dr Laura Steele

Dr Laura Steele is a Senior Lecturer (Education) in Business and Society & Director of Ethics, Responsibility, and Sustainability at Queen’s Business School, Belfast.

Laura’s teaching and scholarship interests are found at the intersection between ethics, responsibility, sustainability and technology, with a particular emphasis on Artificial Intelligence (AI).

In 2023, Laura was elected Vice-Chair of the PRME UK and Ireland Chapter UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), a global platform which aims to raise the profile of sustainability within business schools and equip today’s students with the understanding and ability to deliver change tomorrow.

Prior to joining academia on a full-time basis in 2017, Laura gained experience across the private, public, and third/voluntary sectors with organisations including the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB), and Politics Plus.

Notes

• Whilst the yoga class is aimed at females, all genders are welcome to join us for the panel discussion and lunch.
• We have a small number of yoga mats available to borrow, but numbers are very limited. Please try to bring your own if you can.
• This event is free to attend, but we will be collecting cash donations for Belfast and Lisburn Women's Aid on the day, for those who are able to contribute.