Sheree’s Story

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Adopted from Sri Lanka

At 3 weeks old, Sheree was adopted from Sri Lanka by George and Marian Atcheson, a white Irish couple from Co. Tyrone in North of Ireland. Her brother David was also adopted.

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Raised in Ireland

Sheree was raised in Co. Tyrone, from 3 weeks old, until 18 years old when she went to university in Belfast. She attended a small primary school in Clonoe, and then attended an all-girls Roman Catholic secondary school. Throughout this time in her life, she experienced what it really means to be “the only” - in your school, your friend circle, your life. She grew up on “free school meals”, due to her parents becoming disabled and needing government-provided benefit support.

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An interest in technology

Sheree always had a keen interest in technology - with a fascination of creating something from scratch. This saw her attend Queen’s University in Belfast to study a BEng in Computer Science, where she completed a placement year as a Software Engineer at a local Northern Ireland software firm.
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Joining the world of work as an Engineer

Sheree held Software Engineer roles after she graduated, in a range of different companies. The majority of her work was creating technology solutions for high-profile public sector organisations. Whilst doing this work, she began her career in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.”

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Women Who Code

Spending her career in Engineering gave Sheree first hand experience of the problems she now works to fix. At the beginning of her career, she took the plunge and led the expansion of Global non-profit Women Who Code, which works to change the face of technology. She launched and led the group’s expansion across the U.K., building remote teams, creating partnerships with organisations to create meaningful change in this work. She now sits as an Advisory Board Member at WWCode.
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Deloitte leadership

After a number of years, Sheree joined Deloitte, originally as a Technology Consultant, and then shortly moved into doing Diversity, Equity & Inclusion leadership full-time, where she held historic pioneering roles. She began her DE&I work in Deloitte as the first Technology Respect & Inclusion Manager, and was promoted to Head of Consulting Inclusion, where her work was across all Consulting practice. Her work defined the first Consulting-wide inclusion strategy across attraction, retention, sponsorship and training. She spent much of her time across North South Europe training senior leaders on privilege awareness, and how to be active allies in this work.
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A journey back to Sri Lanka

After visiting Sri Lanka for honeymoon, Sheree decided to spend time to find her biological family in Sri Lanka. Newsfirst became involved by sharing her story on primetime news, setting up a tip hotline and actively searching for Sheree’s birth mother. After a few months of searching, they found her due to a photo Sheree’s family had taken when she was adopted.


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Making Monzo work for everyone

Sheree joined Monzo, a challenger bank in the U.K., as their first Global Head of Diversity & Inclusion, where her work was to define, lead and own diversity and inclusion across the business, aiming to create an inclusive bank.

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Demanding More

Demanding More is Sheree’s first book, published by Kogan Page. She signed a book deal in March 2020, and poured her decades of expertise and experience into a book which aims to teach why diversity and inclusion don’t happen and what we can all do it moving forward.
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Becoming a part of Peakon

Due to her passion for data-driven inclusion strategies, Sheree joined employee engagement platform Peakon, which aims to make work work for everyone. Her work was across both internal DE&I and the product suite, where she owned the vision for Include, an engagement tool to measure diversity, inclusiveness and non-discrimination.
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A voice in industry

Through her work, Sheree became a respected voice in the industry, having delivered keynotes globally, becoming a Forbes contributor, being featured in many high-profile publications and more.
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