Meet our 2024 Your Nottingham Alumni Award winners

Vincent Egunlae (Politics and International Relations, 2016)

Vincent Egunlae is a multi-award winning investment banker, currently working at Los Angeles-based Houlihan Lokey and previously at Grant Thornton UK LLP, where after incepting his firm’s largest Diversity & Inclusion network, he joined it’s ‘C-suite’ for 1.5 years.

Vincent has since become an accomplished public speaker on creating equity, receiving over 1.3m views as part of One Young World, the pre-eminent global programme for future leaders.Vincent also co-founded The Open Private School, a charity which seeks to provide state school educated students with opportunity, directly impacting over 150 students in three years.

These immense community contributions saw Vincent named the UK’s ‘Best Young Professional’ by the Black British Business Awards in 2022, receiving acknowledgement from the Prime Minister.

Elizabeth Hall MBE (Psychology, 1990)

Elizabeth Hall MBE (nee Clark) graduated with a BA in psychology in 1990. Her career began in the press office of Action Aid before joining PR company Freud Communications. Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) agency marketing roles followed before becoming Marketing Director of The Carbon Neutral Company and teaching yoga at Holloway Prison.

In 2018, driven by the belief that no-one should be held back from participating in society because they cannot afford to wash their hair, clothes, brush their teeth, use period products or change their baby’s nappy, she set up The Hygiene Bank. 

With nearly 600 volunteers and 200 local projects across the UK, 1,539,182kg of basic hygiene products were distributed in 2023 to over 1,000 community partners, including schools, food banks, women’s refuges and homeless shelters. 

Sarah Hayford (International Relations and Global Issues, 2018)

Sarah Hayford is the Founder and CEO of The Land Collective, a social mobility organisation founded when she was a student at the University of Nottingham.

The organisation supports underrepresented engagement in the built environment sector by providing career opportunities, supporting the development of commercial awareness, and providing educational resources and employability programmes.

The Land Collective was listed as one of the Top 100 Social Enterprises in the UK in 2023. Sarah began her career in commercial real estate shortly after graduating and specialised in retail property.

Lauren James (Natural Sciences, 2014)

Lauren James is the Carnegie-longlisted British author of many Young Adult novels, including Green Rising, The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker and The Loneliest Girl in the Universe. She is a RLF Royal Fellow at Aston University and the story consultant on Netflix’s Heartstopper (Seasons 2 and 3).

Lauren is the founder of the Climate Fiction Writers League, editor of the anthology Future Hopes: Hopeful stories in a time of climate change, and a member of the Society of Authors’ Sustainability Committee. She works as a consultant on climate storytelling for museums, production companies, major brands and publishers, with a focus on optimism and hope. She runs a Queer Writers group in Coventry.

Trang Chu Minh (International Relations and Global Issues, 2011)

Trang Chu Minh has devoted her career to leveraging storytelling to drive positive change in underreported social and environmental issues.

She has worked on a multitude of high-impact campaigns, from advocating for the first state law banning child marriage in the US, to facilitating the opening of the UK’s first safe house for LGBTQ+ refugees, and campaigning for Indonesia’s first provincial ban against plastic bags. 

She is currently in charge of sustainability communications and thought leadership for Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, in addition to serving as a running guide for people with disabilities and volunteering for projects promoting wildlife conservation and disability inclusion. Her contributions earned her the One Young World Campaigner of the Year Award.