Meet the speakers of AFBELIVE 2026

Dr Nike Folayan is Chartered Electronics Engineer with a doctorate in Electronics engineering focusing on electromagnetic bandgap antennas for mobile applications. Nike is currently Associate Director and the Technical Discipline Leader for Communications and Control within WSP, an engineering consultancy where she leads a team of telecommunications engineers in the UK and India working on a variety of projects within the transport industry including railways and the highways projects in the UK, Australia, South America, Middle East and Africa. She is also a Technical Blogger on SMART technology systems.

Nike is chair and Co-founder of AFBE-UK a not for profit organisation AFBE-UK promotes higher achievements in education and engineering particularly among people from black and minority ethnicity (BME) backgrounds. |

Nike was featured in Britain?s 100 most influential people of African and Caribbean heritage 2012 Powerlist. In 2019 Nike was named in the Financial Times published 100 most influential women in engineering. She is also a Trustee at the Engineering Development Trust (EDT). She is also on various Diversity steering groups including the Science Council and Transport for London amongst others. She was recently a judge at the IET Young Woman of the Year 2019 Award. She is a fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET).

Dr Ollie Folayan MBE is Head of Process Engineering at Costain Group PLC and a Visiting Professor at the School of Science and Engineering at University of Dundee. He is also the Deputy President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and a co-founder of Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers. Ollie graduated with a BEng in Chemical Process Engineering with Fuel Technology from University of Sheffield in 1999 and earned a PhD in Fuels and Combustion from University of Leeds in 2002, authoring five international publications in the field of combustion and engineering. Over the course of his career, Ollie has worked on major CAPEX projects spanning Front End Engineering Design (FEED), detailed design and commissioning across the energy and engineering sectors. In 2018 he was elected a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers. A passionate advocate for widening participation in engineering, Ollie has championed successful outreach programmes including Making Engineering Hot, NextGen (Scotland), Transition, and Real Projects. He has co-authored several publications exploring the role of representation and role models in supporting the transition from academic study to professional engineering careers and promoting the long-term sustainability of the engineering profession in the UK. Ollie is a regular speaker on engineering leadership, diversity and professional development. He has chaired numerous industry seminars featuring senior leaders and policymakers and has served on the All-Energy Diversity and Inclusion Task Group established by Oil and Gas UK in 2019. He has also served as a judge for several prestigious industry awards including the Young Woman Engineer of the Year Awards, the Offshore Achievement Awards, the Association for Consultancy and Engineering Awards, and the Oil and Gas UK Awards. Ollie was a finalist for Mentor of the Year at the OGUK Awards (2021) and Diversity Hero at the Herald Awards (2021), and in the same year he received the Diversity and Inclusion Award from IChemE. In recognition of his significant contributions to advancing diversity and inclusion within the engineering profession, Ollie was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours.

Awai is currently a Lead Systems Engineer at Siemens Mobility Limited. She holds a BEng degree in Mechatronics Engineering from the University of Nottingham and a PhD in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Manchester, UK. She is a STEM Ambassador and is passionate about promoting the engineering discipline to young people.