Zainab’s Biography

Zainab joined Barclays 7 years ago as a graduate and is now an award-winning Senior Product Manager with a passion for inclusion and innovation. Her expertise lies in shaping digital strategy and launching new features to enhance customer experience and improve the Barclays app. Zainab is a champion of diversity and equality in the workplace, and most notably chaired the Barclays Black Employee Resource group from 2019-2021, supporting the bank in delivering its Race at Work agenda and leading colleague development initiatives during an incredibly challenging time of lockdown and the tragic murder of George Floyd. She won the “Financial Services Rising Star” category at the 2020 Black British Business Awards for her contributions to the workplace.

Outside of work, Zainab regularly delivers talks about pursuing careers in STEM, defying stereotypes and navigating spaces that lack diversity. Zainab was featured in the 2023 International Women’s Day campaign for global clothing brand Mango, sharing her experiences of being a Black woman in FinTech and promoting a new t-shirt, of which all profits were donated to Save the Children. In 2021, she was featured in a billboard campaign by the community organisation “Project Embrace”, in collaboration with haircare brand Aveda. An image of her was accompanied with the slogan “Black hair is as inspiring as her career in STEM”, as a way to increase visibility of Black women in corporate industries.

Zainab was a founding member of gal-dem, an award-winning online publication platforming the creative work of women from marginalised ethnicities, to increase representation in the media industry. Zainab wrote a number of articles on gal-dem relating to diversity, representation and technology, and published her debut book on Afro hair in 2022.

Zainab was a TechWomen100 2023 winner, and was featured in The Female Lead’s book of “67 trailblazing women across the world”.