Judges & Judges Processes

The judges will consider all submissions for particular categories including viewing/reading all material. They will come to a judgement based on the criteria relevant to that category.

The judges will meet in person or virtually at a meeting chaired by a Lean In Leeds Committee Member. At the meeting they will discuss their findings and come to an agreed decision.

Although a scoring process may be used as part of the judging process the final decision will be made through discussion.

If it is the judges’ view that none of the entries for a particular category reflects the exceptional in terms of quality, then Lean In Leeds reserves the right to withdraw that category from the Awards schedule. This will protect the integrity of the Awards as reflecting quality.

Nominations should provide sufficient information to enable the judges to make a decision based on the criteria - only the information provided via the online entry form will be considered so it is important to include as much detail as possible

Judges will be asked to disregard any knowledge or information they have if it is not included in the nomination information provided.

Any known and declared conflicts of interest are managed by the Chair to prevent any undue influence on the judging process.

The Judges’ decision is final.

Tracy Fletcher

Tracy is a former senior banker at HSBC, having enjoyed a 20 year career in and around the North of England.

She launched a banking recruitment consultancy in 2007, supporting a number of high profile high street and challenger banks as well as other FS companies.

Tracy also sits on the Board of the charity, Smart Works Leeds, that supports the women of Yorkshire back into employment. She is a NED for an award winning new-to-market Fintech, an invoice finance disruptor. She is delighted to have just been appointed to the Board of the HM treasury WIFC, supporting over 400 signatories in Financial Services with their diversity objectives.

Passionate about supporting career development for women, she is both mentor and coach in the business community.

At home she loves the outdoors, spending as much time as possible at the YSP with her beloved dog Rudy.

Anna Sutton

Anna’s career started with 15 years’ Marketing experience in agencies and businesses across a variety of sectors where she came up against a variety of data and insight challenges. For Anna, data & analysis is the beginning and end of every business decision, stating that “Gut Feel”has no real place in organisations, but getting the information needed to get by without it, is often difficult. The Data Shed was set up by Anna and her business partner to help other organisations optimise the data they hold. Integrating, cleaning and enhancing for trust and insight; then pushing out to appropriate analysis tools and supporting business change programs to give the decision makers access to data in a meaningful way. Over the last 10 years, The Data Shed have worked with clients of all sizes and shapes to tackle all sorts of data problems and in the last 12 months we’ve pushed our own SaaS product live and onboarded our first customers. Data Democratisation is at the heart of everything we do!

Eve Roodhouse

Eve leads on Culture and Economic Development at Leeds City Council. Her portfolio is wide ranging spanning everything from oversight of Leeds Museums and Galleries through to destination marketing, international relations, economic policy and business support. Her team provided extensive support to businesses across the city during Covid-19 and delivered the Leeds Economic Recovery Framework published in October 2020.

Prior to joining Leeds City Council in July 2018, Eve worked at NHS Digital for 15 years on the delivery of a range of programmes including the first Prison Health IT system in England and the delivery of the Child Protection Information Sharing Project across the NHS and Local Authorities.

Eve is a member of the Leadership Group of the Chamber of Commerce, a Director of North Invest and a Board member of WILD (formerly known as Women in Leeds Digital) and the Leeds Digital Ball.

Juliette Atkinson

Juliette’s Atkinson career in technology and senior management has spanned over 25 years. She has held IT directorial roles across the higher education, financial, and telehealth sectors, and is currently the IT Director at The University of Bradford.

Juliette won ‘Highly Commended’ at the Women in Tech Awards 2021 (also narrowly missing out on 3 other nominations for IT Leader of The Year and Transformation Leader of the Year at the awards). Juliette has a track record of delivering innovative technology solutions to stakeholders and customer’s even in circumstances of upheaval (Covid-19).

Juliette’s stand-out message is to continuously build additional skills into your skillset - that will help you perform better, work smarter, or elevate you to your dream job. She is a qualified

engineer, project manager and ITIL Expert. She has taken up the challenge of a master’s degree in Business Administration at the age of 50

Karen Landells

Karen Landells is a Tax Partner with Deloitte, with over 20 years experience working with privately owned businesses and their owners.

Karen works with businesses throughout their corporate journey advising on the tax implications of acquisitions, disposals, expansion and fundraising, compliance and shareholder exit.

Karen is the People and Purpose partner for the Y&NE Business Tax team and enjoys supporting her team in their development and success.