Dinah Williams

Founder & Director
(She/Her)

The Avenir Network was set up by our Founder and Director, Dinah Williams. After a successful yet personally challenging career in the media industry, Dinah decided to pursue her passion and pivot her career into the Equity, Inclusion and Diversity sector. 

Dinah is a passionate and experienced EDI consultant, previously part of an award-winning global EDI consultancy as part of the senior leadership team as Client Services Director and Client Director at another international EDI consultancy. As a consultant, Dinah believes the most effective way to long-lasting change is to partner with clients to unpack complex challenges with long-term solutions as well as supporting their purpose and vision to be inclusive, innovative and accessible to all.

For 12 years, she worked driving media sales teams at content marketing agencies including John Brown Media on the Waitrose Portfolio and the Holland and Barrett portfolio at River Publishing as well as National Media-owner brands including News UK, Mail Metro Media and Time Inc. 

Outside of work, she continues to be a force for change. With her co-founder Elizabeth Anyaegbuna, co-founder 16x9media, they set up Bloom in Colour, an internal inclusion group for Black women and WOC within Bloom UK, a networking group to accelerate gender progress across the Marketing and Comms industries. She continued to elevate the conversation of Black representation in the workplace having moderated and participated in several panels discussing EDI issues from intersectionality and allyship to Black representation in media, specifically the challenges for Black women in leadership roles - an area Dinah is personally passionate about and keen to see tangible, positive change. 

Having personal experience of often being the only Black woman in a senior position within a business, Dinah understands the challenges of overcoming sexual harassment, microaggressions, gaslighting and tone-policing, pay inequality, overt and covert racism as well as working full-time as a single parent to twins - she’s resilient but also exhausted on how common-place her personal experiences still are for others in the workplace today. 

Dinah started The Avenir Network with one purpose in mind- to use her expertise and skillset to work collaboratively with organisations to eliminate as many barriers she's experienced and support them to become more purpose-driven through sustainable equity and inclusion, particularly with attracting, retaining and promoting Black and global majority talent and underrepresented groups.