From Microsoft SharePoint to Power Apps to global meetings in the Metaverse, their female-led teams are making their mark on the digital landscape.
Since it’s conception in 2016, Brave & Heart, led by CEO David Parkinson, has always relied on women to get the job done. Rather than this being a conscious choice, however, it just so happened that the most competent people he knew and could call on for help were women – often former colleagues from his time as Head of Digital & Social at Nissan.
From a three-person operation to now an extended team of over a dozen, the gender balance has always swung in the favour of women, and Brave & Heart are proud to be paving the way for women in the tech field by providing opportunities to shine and training to upskill the team in technical subjects.
Their CEO, David, originally worked alongside Rachel, a former project manager from his prior Nissan team, in getting Brave & Heart off the ground as they expanded as a consultancy company specialising in providing tactical solutions across three core pillars – Strategy, People, and Digital.
Together they led the company through the beginning of one of their biggest ongoing projects to date, the complete building of a SharePoint intranet infrastructure along with page design and day to day support for a Dubai based global company – which today serves over one hundred thousand employees worldwide across hundreds of regional and business department specific sites.
As the company grew, Brave & Heart continued to recruit new talent. Emma, who works in the web development team, is an artist at heart, and uses her artistic talents when building SharePoint sites to ensure an unparalleled style, look and feel.
Olivia, who joined them this year, has been working on an exciting new project building a digital decarbonisation model which will allow businesses to measure and improve their digital carbon footprint, in partnership with professors at Loughborough University. Along with Charlotte, a recent graduate hire, who has been supporting the team with digital work for Northern Powergrid as they refresh the user experience on their website to ensure customers can reach their end point quickly and efficiently.
Some of their most exciting tech work is done by Karen, who joined the team with a decade long career as an IT teacher already under her belt. Working with CPI – a part of the UK Catapult network, made up of world-leading technology and innovation centres – Karen developed an internal application from scratch which allows them to manage strategic reporting to the UK government.
Another ex-Nissan alumni turned Brave & Heart team member, Wajeeha, joined the company to help in the development of a new IT strategy and three-year plan for another of our Catapult network clients, and has been furthering her technology expertise since through extensive training.
Wajeeha is now leading the Metaverse meeting development project, in which they aim to find the best technology for global companies and their employees to stay connected. 3D Holograms are included, so watch this space!
While excelling in the digital sphere, Brave & Heart also count successful projects in their other two key pillars – Strategy and People. This includes the development of Employee Value Propositions (EVP) for two members of the UK Catapult Network, to enable them to increase employee retention and engagement and strengthen their brand and talent attraction. However, they can never resist getting a bit of tech in there too, as they also developed a podcast series to go with their EVP, along with a promotional video using innovative drone techniques.
They also put out a weekly newsletter, written by Lauren, who you can also find running the Brave & Heart LinkedIn page, which covers trending topics in the tech, people and marketing spheres – from keeping up with the changing faces of Twitter (or X) to the effects of the “Great Resignation” on how you should be managing your people.
Building on David’s expertise gained from a 27-year career at Nissan, and continued technical and soft-skills training for employees in SharePoint development, Power Apps, and Power BI, along with Marketing, HR, and Project Management, Brave & Heart’s female-focused teams are racking up an impressive set of capabilities, and becoming a force to be reckoned with in the tech business sphere.
To find out more about Brave & Heart, reach out or simply sign up to their newsletter, visit braveandheart.com
