Victoria Pritchard
Victoria Pritchard, 39, is a Chartered Human Resources professional, and currently works as Head of HR for Ellis Whittam, a fixed fee employment law and health & safety consultancy. Victoria first became a Soroptimist in 2003 in SI Nantwich. She joined SI Ellesmere Port in 2010 and was instrumental in creating the new Club in Chester, becoming its Founder President when it was chartered in February 2015. She has served as a Regional Representative, Treasurer and Secretary twice.
Victoria represented SIGBI on the Young Voices Panel at the 2015 SI Convention in Istanbul, and earlier this year was a member of the SI delegation (all in their 20s & 30s) to the UNESCO NGO Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on the theme of ‘Youth and their Social Impact’.
Passionate about SI’s goals to enable, educate and empower women and girls, Victoria believes that in order for us to be relevant in this connected internet age, we need to be quicker to adopt new technology as well as more flexible and responsive to new ideas in order to fulfil our mission and bring younger women into SI.
Emma Guthrie
Emma Guthrie 26, is a commercial property lawyer in Edinburgh. She spends her spare time is volunteering with Girlguiding and has been a member for 20 years. She is a Trustee for Girlguiding Scotland and a member of the Girlguiding UK council. She has participated in a number of international events, including with The Gambian Girl Guide Association, National Union of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts in Armenia and a recent visit with the Lesotho Girl Guide Association.
Emma strongly believes in the need for greater inclusion and diversity and was the lead volunteer in Scotland on a project with Scouting Netherlands. In this role she supported and trained nine leaders in carrying out research into barriers to leadership for girls and young women with a focus on gender. She also sits on a gender taskforce within the Europe Region of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) working on developing mainstreaming tools and supporting member organisations to be as inclusive as possible in relation to gender and diversity. Emma is passionate about the rights of women and girls and advocating for them and recently represented WAGGGS in New York at the UN’s 61st Commission on the Status of Women.
Jodie Foster
Jodie-Leigh Foster, 19, is a Student from Middlesbrough. She is passionate about improving women and young people’s quality of life.This interest came through voluntary work within her local area and feeding into national and European research projects some of which highlight the importance of children’s rights and safeguarding children. For the past 5 years, she has been volunteering at Barnardo’s, and has been involved in multiple projects and opportunities which enable young people to fight against Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE). She started off by working to prevent young people going missing from home; this then moved on to developing an information pack which helps young people address risks and make positive choices. She was also asked to feed into the development of the Wud U app.
Jodie is often asked to engage in research to ensure young people’s views are heard. With funding from the Police Crime Commissioner, she was part of a group who wrote and starred in a film called ‘It’s Not Your Fault’ which follows the lives of 5 girls affected by CSE.
Due to her passion to help improve the lives of others through empowering young people to speak out against sexual violence and work to support gender equality within her local area, earlier this year she was sponsored by SI Middlesbrough and The National Alliance of Women’s Organisations to speak at the UN’s 61st Commission on the Status of Women in New York.