Tangent

At Tangent we make employee referrals accessible to everyone and NOT just the privileged few with the best networks!

- Stephen Lloyd Awards 2023 Winner
- Google Black Founders Fund 2023 Recipient

Co-Founder

Gary Izunwa 

I am a passionate keynote and public speaker on the topics of social mobility, socioeconomic inclusion and careers. For speaker enquiries feel free to send me a message (my InMail is open). Find testimonials from previous clients in the ‘Recommendations’ section at the bottom of my LinkedIn profile. 

Speaking engagements include:

2022
▪ Envision: Judge for the "Community Apprentice Pitching Competition"
▪ Office for National Statistics: "Diversity into Leadership: Social Mobility"
▪ GitLab: "The Importance of Social Mobility"
▪ The Oxford Union: "Education: A Broken Social Contract"

2021
▪ KPMG: "Social Mobility in the UK"
▪ Skyscanner: "In conversation with Gary Izunwa: Social Mobility at work"
▪ JLL: "World Cultural Diversity Day; what does cultural diversity mean to you?"
▪ YDWC: "How do we improve formal education systems and drive greater social mobility?"
▪ upReach: "Intersections & Social Mobility"
▪ Dods: "Advancing Social Mobility at Work"
▪ Common Purpose: “How can we make cities inclusive and resilient”
▪ University of Leicester: "The Future of Work"
▪ Sparta Global: "Democratising Digital: A Social Mobility Seminar"
▪ Leeds Business Confucius Institute: "China, employability and widening participation"
▪ Department for Education: “Improving Social Mobility”
▪ Barclays: "The Importance of Socioeconomic Inclusion in the Workplace"
▪ Oliver Wyman: "Black History is Now"
▪ LinkedIn: "Making Mentoring Relevant for Women in 2021"
▪ Future First: "How can we close the network gap? Social mobility and the power of alumni"

Keynote and Public Speaker

Climbing The Rungs Podcast

A social mobility podcast that aims to inspire people from less privileged backgrounds to achieve career success and raise awareness of issues related to socio-economic background. Subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts! Podcast launched on 24 February 2021.

Highlights include:

- gaining national coverage in The Sun
- partnering with award-winning charities such as Future First and Sutton Trust
- collaborating with leading universities to reach students across the country
- Winner: McKinsey & Company Achievement Award

Founder & Host

British Council

Lead on programmes for Generation UK. Generation UK is the British Council's flagship campaign committed to social mobility & widening participation. We provide UK students from low-income backgrounds with funded study and work opportunities in China.

- Responsible for strategic programme design, internal/external stakeholder management, partnership engagement and monitoring and evaluation 
- Own and manage multiple concurrent programme and project activities from conception to completion
- Deliver multi-platform marketing plans and manage community and alumni groups of over 6000 members
- Action orientated: created/launched two programmes within first 9 months; the Mentorship Programme and Webinar Series

Programme Manager, Outward & Social Mobility

LinkedIn

Full cycle new business sales role within LinkedIn's Talent Solutions (HR/Recruitment SaaS).

Global top performer with exceptional relationship building, vision-matching and negotiation skills, highlighted by the results below:
    
Q3 FY19 - 101%
Q4 FY19 - 174%
Q1 FY20 - 148% (with 3 weeks out of office) 
Q2 FY20 - 204%

From Q4 FY19 to Q2 FY20 I was the highest attaining fully-ramped sales rep in the UK/I Search & Staffing business (50+ reps)

Q1 FY20: I became the first Account Executive in LinkedIn history to achieve quota only with Multi-Year deals.

Before leaving LinkedIn I was among the highest performing Account Executive's in EMEA & LATAM qualifying for LinkedIn's Presidents Club 2020.

Account Executive

As a Sales Development Representative at LinkedIn my role is to help boutique and specialist search and staffing firms in the UK and Ireland understand how to best leverage LinkedIn. 
Whether it is to quickly find and access quality talent, build strong pipeline or demonstrate and strengthen their employer brand, at LinkedIn we are committed and passionate about supporting search and staffing companies achieve their corporate objectives.

Highlights include:

- Top performing rep in the team with an average attainment between 100% - 130%
- Met/overachieved on every monthly target consecutively for 17 months
- Contributed to over $1m in revenue for LinkedIn
- Promoted to a Senior from January 2018 in shortest timeframe
- Q4 Rockstar; peer nominated award based on Leadership, Leverage and Results
- Dragons Den: Victory Plan competition winner

Sales Development Representative

LinkedIn's Business Leadership Program (BLP) aims to develop top graduate talent into future business leaders through various rotations as well as regular development sessions & speaker series with LinkedIn senior leaders. Upon completing the program, Associates are equipped with the skills, opportunities, and relationships to build a successful career at LinkedIn and beyond.

Rotation 1 - Talent Acquisition: 
I worked within Talent Acquisition to build up our EMEA leadership team by sourcing, attracting & hiring top Sales Managers [in]to LinkedIn. From sourcing to screening to sending out offers, I was involved in the full cycle of recruitment - all whilst learning about best recruiting practises, how to hire top talent & developing a strong appreciation and understanding of the HR business function. 

Results:
- LinkedIn Recruiter Certified (91%).
- Hires - Management hire for 1 of LinkedIn's strategic markets.

Skills developed: Recruitment, Sourcing, Candidate Experience, Candidate Engagement, Interview Day Coordination, Stakeholder Management, Project Management

Rotation 2 - Enterprise Services:
I worked within the Customer Operations; Enterprise Services team. Here my role was to educate, empower and engage our customers to ensure that they have the best experience and are productive when on LinkedIn. 

Results:
- First BLP Associate in EMEA to receive recognition from the VP of Customer Operations in the Global Kudos for my high level of customer service  
- Consistently high customer service scores from LinkedIn customers

Associate - Business Leadership Program

Youths Distracted

Road injuries is the global leading cause of death for people aged between 15 to 29 with distracted driving increasingly contributing towards this.

Youths Distracted is a social project that aims to raise awareness to young people on the significance of distracted driving (specifically mobile phone use), the effects of the issue and what can be done to help solve the problem.

Founder

Travel

Between graduating university and starting my career at LinkedIn I decided to take a Gap Year to develop my ability to connect with/understand people from different backgrounds and cultures, broaden my global awareness, re/discover some of my passions and finally to have some fun!

Easily the best year of my life I lived, studied and travelled in 15 different countries. See below for where I got to:

Europe: UK, Hungary, Sweden

Americas: U.S, Panama, Colombia

Asia: India, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia

Gap Year

Recipient of the Generation-UK China Scholarship.

Following the scholarship I have represented the British Council through multiple activities such as being selected to cover my experiences in a blog post for the website, featuring in a British Council China video campaign as well as being invited to speak at Parliament on the importance of China-UK academic relations.

British Council Scholar

The Study India Programme is an intense cultural immersion in contemporary India that aims to build an understanding of India’s diversity, complexity, scale — and ultimately its relevance to students and graduates studies and careers. Selected as 1 of 150 out of 7300+ applications. 

Activities included:
- Attending cultural exchanges at Delhi University and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
- Visiting and learning about historical landmarks such as the Taj Mahal and the Bahai Lotus Temple 
- Visiting the Dharavi Slum and staying with host families in rural Maharashtra 
- Attending numerous panel sessions with notable individuals such as Dolly Thakore, Sir Mark Tully and William Bissell
- Learning about the Indian startup ecosystem and the Indian economy at the Bombay Stock Exchange

Study India Delegate

Mashable

Summer Intern

Co-Founder @ Tangent | Follow for posts about class, social mobility and mission-driven entrepreneurship✨

Co-Founder & CEO of Tangent - an employee referral platform that makes referrals accessible to everyone and NOT just the privileged few with the best networks.

Prior to Tangent I worked at the British Council leading programmes for 'Generation UK'; a multimillion £ campaign committed to social mobility by providing UK students from low income backgrounds with funded work opportunities in China. Whilst at the British Council I created my social mobility podcast "Climbing the Rungs" which was featured in the media and won an award from McKinsey & Company. Before the British Council I started my career as 1 of 9 Associate's on LinkedIn's Business Leadership Program (ranked #2 Graduate Program, Forbes '19), leaving as one of the highest performing Account Executives in EMEA.

I love to talk about social mobility, marketplaces, entrepreneurship, travel, the gym, cats and anything Marvel/DC related!

Feel free to send me a message (my InMail is open!) or connection request with a personal note - I am always happy to chat and help wherever I can.

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What is Gary talking about?

Want to drive more opportunities from LinkedIn?

Gary Izunwa's Linkedin Analytics