Lewis Hamilton, MBE was born July 1985 in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England to a father born in Grenada and white mother born in England. Hamilton is a British racing driver who races in Formula One (or F1) for the Mercedes AMG Petronas team. A six-time F1 World Champion, the most for any British driver, Hamilton is considered to be the best driver of his generation, and widely regarded as one of the greatest F1 drivers in the history of the sport.
Hamilton won his first World Championship title with McLaren in 2008, then moved to Mercedes where he won back-to-back titles in 2014 and 2015 before winning 3 more titles in 2017, 2018 and 2019 making him one of the most successful F1 drivers of all time.
Statistically the most successful British driver in the history of the sport, Hamilton has more race victories than any other British driver in F1, and holds records for the all-time most career points, the most wins at different circuits, the all-time most pole positions and the most grand slams in a season.
Hamilton is the first and only Black driver to race in F1. In his first season he set numerous records as he finished runner-up in the 2007 F1 Championship to Kimi Räikkönen, by just one point. He set records for the most consecutive podium finishes from debut (9), the joint most wins in a debut season (4) and the most points in a debut season (109).
In his second season Hamilton won his first F1 World Championship in dramatic fashion; on the last corner of the last lap in the last race of the season, becoming the then-youngest Formula One World Champion in history. After four more years with McLaren Hamilton signed with Mercedes AMG Petronas for the 2013 season when he finished 4th once again, the third time in five years. His next 6 years with Mercedes were simply historic. He won his sixth F1 World Championship in 2019 which puts him just one fewer than Michael Schumacher.
Dr Nira Chamberlain is a professional mathematician who is listed by the Powerlist 2018 as the 5th most influential person in the UK’s Black community.
He is listed by the Science Council as “one of the UK’s top 100 Scientist” and in 2015 joined the elite list of distinguish mathematicians who featured in the biographical reference book Who’s Who, becoming the first Black mathematician to do so since 1849.
He is the Vice President, of Professional Affairs and Industry, of the Institute of Mathematics and Application (IMA) and is a Visiting Fellow of Loughborough University’s Mathematical Sciences Department. He is one of the few British Mathematicians to feature in the Encyclopedia of Mathematics & Society for two of his industrial mathematical models.
He has over 25 years of experience of writing mathematical models and simulation algorithms that solve complex industrial and engineering problems. He developed mathematical solutions within industrial sectors such as defence, aerospace, automotive and energy. He has worked in France, the Netherlands, Germany and Israel.
During his career he has chaired and organized a mini-symposium at an international mathematical modelling conference. He has been invited to speak at a number of prestigious conferences such as the New Scientist's Instant Expert: The Mathematical World and the London International Science Youth Forum.
He is the author of the paper - Long multiplication and percentages without a calculator - which is based on a method he invented, while teaching at an Inner-city Saturday school. As part of the National Higher Education STEM Programme project he recorded a video of his career – Being a Professional Mathematician - for use as resource material for the undergraduate mathematics curriculum.
He supports a number of charities most notably of which are: Speakers for Schools, Target Oxbridge and Reach Society.
Sir David Adjaye OBE is recognized as a leading architect of his generation. Adjaye was born in Tanzania to Ghanaian parents.
In 1994, he set up his first office and established himself as an architect with an artist’s sensibility and vision. He reformed his studio as Adjaye Associates in 2000 and now has offices in London, New York and Accra with projects in the US, UK, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
His largest project to date, the $540 million Smithsonian Institute National Museum of African American History and Culture, opened on the National Mall in Washington DC in fall of 2016 and was named Cultural Event of the Year by the New York Times.
Other prominent completed work include the Idea Stores in London (2005), the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO (2010), the Sugar Hill mixed-use social housing scheme in Harlem, New York (2015); and the Aishti Foundation retail and art complex in Beirut (2015).
In 2017, Adjaye was knighted by Her Majesty the Queen for services to Architecture, was awarded an OBE in 2007, and was recognized as one of the 100 most influential people of the year by TIME magazine. He has received the Design Miami/ Artist of the Year title in 2011, the Wall Street Journal Innovator Award in 2013 and the 2016 Panerai London Design Medal from the London Design Festival.
Adjaye has held distinguished professorships at the Harvard, Princeton and Yale universities. He has also taught at the Royal College of Art, where he had previously studied, and at the Architectural Association School in London.
Born in Birmingham in 1947, Elizabeth identifies as of Irish/Nigerian heritage and started work for the NHS as a school nurse assistant in Wolverhampton at the age of 16. She was inspired to become a nurse at age four because a wonderful nursing nun treated her childhood eczema in an expert and sensitive manner.
Elizabeth put a substantial amount of her life into her work as a nurse, health visitor and tutor working with black and minority ethnic communities in London. “People from diverse cultures are not always valued and still sometimes just seen as problems,” she says. In 1979, she helped to establish in the London borough of Brent the first UK Sickle & Thalassemia Screening and Counselling Centre.
Elizabeth was honoured with a Damehood (DBE) in the 2017 Queen’s New Year’s Honours List for her services to nursing and the Mary Seacole Statue Appeal. The Queen’s Nursing Institute awarded her a Fellowship (FQNI) in October 2017. In 2001 she was awarded a CBE for services to nursing. In 2004 she was presented with the Royal College of Nursing Fellowship (FRCN) for her work in the development of nurse-led sickle cell and thalassemia counselling services and education and leadership in transcultural nursing. She is a Patron of the Sickle Cell Society as well as the Sickle and Thalassemia Association of Nurses, Midwives & Associated Professionals (STANMAP).
In 1999 she became Head of the Mary Seacole Centre for Nursing Practice at the University of West London until her retirement in 2007. The university honoured her with the award of Emeritus Professor of Nursing.
Elizabeth was vice-chairperson of the Mary Seacole Memorial Statue Appeal from its launch in November 2003. The statue was unveiled in the grounds of London’s St Thomas’ Hospital in June 2016. She is now a Life Patron of the charity, the Mary Seacole Trust.