Selfridges x Women Supporting Women: Celebrating Creativity
June Sarpong is an internationally renowned broadcaster, writer and campaigner on diversity issues. She started her career as a DJ and presenter on MTV, Kiss FM and for ten years on Channel 4’s T4 youth strand. She has gone on to appear as a panellist on ITV’s Loose Women and now on Sky News’ The Pledge. Since 2010, she has built a reputation as a leading campaigner on a wide range of diversity and inclusion issues. She is a passionate advocate for change in the workplace and a champion for greater representation throughout the media. She has written two books on diversity issues - Diversify (2017) and The Power of Women (2018) - and co-founded the Women - Inspiration and Enterprise (WIE) Alliance in 2010, an international conference supporting female excellence and empowerment. She also co-founded the Decide Act Now (DNA) summit, promoting discussion and innovation. From 2019-2022, she was Director of Creative Diversity at the BBC.
Amelia Abraham is a writer and editor who also works as an editorial strategist, copywriter and brand consultant. She has written for The Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times, ES Magazine, British Vogue and American Vogue, and have previously worked as a commissioning editor at VICE, Refinery29 and Dazed Media. Amelia is also the authortwo books: Queer Intentions: A (Personal) Journey Through LGBTQ+ Culture (Picador, 2019) and We Can Do Better Than This (Vintage, 2021). She speaks on LGBTQ+ rights and diversity in the media, for cultural institutions and within brands and organisations.
Theresa Lola is a poet, writer, and creative practitioner. She was the appointed Young People’s Laureate for London in the year 2019-20. In 2018 she was the co-winner of the Brunel International African Poetry Prize. Her work is included in the OCR’s GCSE English Literature syllabus. As a practitioner she infuses poetry to deliver creative outcomes. She has worked on projects by the National Gallery, Dulwich Picture Gallery, and presented an audio documentary on BBC Radio 4. She has been commissioned by Selfridges, Rimowa, and Hush. Her second poetry collection, Ceremony for the Nameless (2024), is published by Penguin.
Rosh Mahtani is driven by telling stories through the universal language of jewellery that bring people together by unlocking narratives and embarking on adventures. Growing up in Zambia, Africa, she spent her childhood collecting “magical” stones and imbuing them with meaning. Tales of her grandparents leaving India in 1944 with not much more than the few pieces of jewellery they owned, left a lasting impression on the importance of jewellery as family heirlooms and protective talismans. An outsider in a big world, she fell in love with Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, a story of a poet lost in a dark wood. Alighieri Jewellery was born in 2014, inspired by this journey.