Topic: Enterpreneurship

Winnie Awa

Winnie Awa is an entrepreneur on a mission to build the next frontier of textured hair care. Famed as the Founder and CEO of Carra, Winnie provides her expert advice on textured hair and how to care for individual hair textures. Disrupting the status quo of the £90bn hair care industry, Winnie is giving a voice to marginalised people within the hair care industry, cutting out the guesswork and providing access to licenced experts on textured hair. Recognised by the likes of Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Sunday Times Style and Refinery 29, it comes with little surprise that Winnie is highly sought-after as a speaker for a range of corporate events, covering topics such as entrepreneurship, women in technology, diversity and textured haircare.

Having forged a highly successful career, Winnie’s career first began as an Analyst for IBM and later as a Senior Consultant for Ernst & Young. From that point on, Winnie worked with an exciting variety of start-up companies, helping to build cutting-edge consumer apps for the likes of ASOS, LVMH and NET-A-PORTER. Working as a Strategic Programme Manager for NET-A-PORTER, a Programme Manager for ASOS and a Product Management Consultant for LVMH, Winnie realised a passion for fashion and became the Co-Founder of andVerv, a London-based contemporary womenswear brand that premiered at London Fashion Week. Winnie is also the Founding CEO of Antidote Street, a global beauty marketplace for multi-cultural women that curates the best brands for multi- textured hair.

Determined to revolutionise the haircare industry, Winnie founded Carra in 2020, now working as Carra’s CEO. Honing her vision, Winnie created the hyper-personalisation platform that brings together expert advice and machine learning to offer custom routines for people with textured hair. Identifying the amount of time that people with textured hair spend on inappropriate and damaging routines, and the exorbitant amounts of money they spend, Winnie is determined to make the haircare industry a more diverse and inclusive place. Spearheading the launch of the Salon Manifesto for textured hair people, Winnie is also trusted by brands such as Professional Beauty, Dove, Tresemme, Unilever and GHD to share her expertise in creating haircare products for different hair types.

Recently named an InnovateUK Women in Innovation winner, Winnie has been recognised in various publications, cited in the book Palette and having contributed to Looking Beyond The Car In Front. Now booked as a speaker for a range of corporate events, Winnie is trusted by companies for her authority on diversity and inclusive haircare. If you are looking for an empowering speech from a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion, don’t hesitate in booking Winnie Awa today!

Andy Freire

Andy Freire is Axialent's co-founder and CEO. Entrepreneur in the business and social domains, after working at Procter & Gamble, he founded and led Officenet, a company that revolutionized the industry of distribution (retail) of office supplies in Latin America growing from one to almost a thousand employees in a 4 year span.

When he was 18, he created the Fundacion Iniciativa, for the promotion of leadership among the Latin American youth. He collaborates weekly with CNN in Spanish as "Expert Entrepreneur." He was distinguished by the World Economic Forum as "Global Leader for Tomorrow", by the Endeavor Foundation as "Latin American Entrepreneur of the Year" and he was one of two finalists who received awards as "World Young Business Achiever" in the Philippines in 2002.

Andy has a Licensure in Economics magna cum laude from the University of San Andres in Buenos Aires, Argentina and an OPM from the Harvard Business School. His several projects got funded by world recognized financial institutions such as GE Capital, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, George Soros, KKR, Santander Bank, Bank of America, Warburg Pincus, Louis Vuitton, GP Investimentos and Tommy Lee Putnam.

Andy has participated as a motivational speaker at several events in Europe (such as the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland or the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao Spain), Asia (such as The Manila's Entrepreneurial Forum), Latin America (such as the Interamerican Development Bank Annual Conference in Santiago, Chile), and the US (such as The Economist Annual Conference).