An experienced policy adviser
Bhavni is a highly experience policy adviser having worked within HM Treasury and Cabinet Office, dealing with demanding stakeholders like the Bank of England, Prudential Regulation Authority, Financial Conduct Authority, No. 10, and various government departments including intelligence agencies and international partners such as United Nations (UN) and US Treasury.
Early in her career, Bhavni led on HM Treasury’s process for insider dealing on disposing of shares in Lloyds Banking Group. Bhavni helped develop a key policy framework for HM Treasury’s response strategy for a major operational or incident disruption to the finance sector. This led her to work with international partners and collaborating with industry experts on UK-US cyber exercise, aligning communication plans, participated in key decision-making meetings with ministers and senior management.
Bhavni has worked on the COVID-19 employment support schemes, the biggest in the history of the UK during an unprecedented global health crisis.
Passion for gender equality, diversity and inclusion
Bhavni’s life-long passion for gender equality, diversity and creating an inclusive society guided her to work with the Treasury’s Diversity Board. Here she helped set the policy on gender pay gap reporting. This led her to work within the Cabinet Office’s Race Disparity Unit, an initiative under the former Prime Minister Theresa May. A key remit of this role was to tackle ethnic disparities experienced across public services and improve outcomes for citizens. Bhavni’s team won the Chris Martin Policy Award recognising excellence in domestic and international policy making. Bhavni is also a Crossing Thresholds’ mentor, helping women progress and develop their career in the Civil Service.
A dedication to public service
Outside of a long-dedicated career in central government, Bhavni has previously been a trustee of a UK registered national charity, with over 20,000 members across nine regional branches. It has a consolidated turnover of over £2 million and net assets over £20 million. The focus of the charity was on community engagement and Bhavni led the youth engagement strategy through various charitable projects, including fund raising for building a school in rural India by climbing Mount. Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain.
A passion for badminton
Bhavni has a passion for badminton from a young age and now helps run a local badminton club, where she is also a Welfare Officer. Bhavni is keen to promote badminton as a sport which can help transform physical and mental wellbeing for all. Wanting to increase the number of women members in her local club, she introduced women’s only sessions which engaged more women into the club, offering an inclusive, friendly, fun, safe and positive environment to play badminton.
By making small changes together, we can enable real change for all.
Bhavni Shah