Claudine Adeyemi is the Founder & CEO of Earlybird, a multi-award-winning former lawyer who read law at University College London, attended BPP Law School and practised at Mishcon de Reya for several years.
Her journey to achieving a successful legal career involved leaving home at a young age, moving from one temporary accommodation to another, not having a network of support and having to navigate her career ambitions largely alone. When she reflected on her journey in comparison to that of her white, middle class peers, it dawned on her just how many barriers and challenges she had to overcome that they didn’t. Claudine realised pretty quickly that there were millions of people who weren’t being given equal access to quality support and opportunities to fulfil their potential. She decided to fix this but didn’t know how.
She started by building a non-profit organisation in her spare time which supported over 1,000 young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds to prepare for work. She also spearheaded diversity and inclusion efforts, from leading her firm’s first ethnicity and social mobility committee and acting as a social mobility ambassador for the Law Society to advising senior leaders across professional services on EDI and attracting and retaining diverse talent. Claudine also became a public speaker on matters relating to EDI, talent, skills and subsequently AI and innovation.
Claudine founded and built a digital career support platform called CareerEar that leveraged AI and multiple sources of labour market intelligence data to build tools that supported thousands of career-seekers from overlooked communities to have career confidence. She also built and ran an employability organisation, providing opportunities for young adults from overlooked communities (recognised with HM Government Recognition Award).
Claudine spent time as Sole Legal Counsel at Wefarm which was a venture backed startup with a mission to empower the millions of small-holder farmers around the world with access to knowledge, products and services. Claudine left Wefarm and the law to focus on building her startup full time and is now Founder & CEO of Earlybird, user intelligence software powered by AI and voice technology that empowers employment support organisations to deliver quality employment support efficiently at scale. Earlybird’s ambition is to demonstrate the coexistence of profit and purpose by enabling employment support organisations to be more effective and successful and in turn ensuring that greater numbers of low-paid and low-skilled workers access, sustain and thrive in work. Earlybird is backed by Resolution Ventures (a specialist workertech fund), Innovate UK and Google for Startups, being one of just 15 startups to secure funding from the Black Founders Fund across the whole of Europe.
Claudine is also co-chair of the Employers’ Network for Equality, and Inclusion (enei), core team member of UK Black Tech, a former WEF Global Shaper, and advisory board member for Spiral Skills, a youth focused employment support organisation. Claudine has been recognised as a Rising Star in the We Are The City Awards (2016), Brummell Magazine’s 30 Ones to Watch (2018), EMpower #1 Future Leader as presented by the Financial Times (2018), 40×40 Black British Future Leader (2022) and Inspirational Business Woman in STEM presented in the House of Lords (2023).
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