Leanne Tyme was nominated for her efforts in founding the first Black & Minority Ethnic Society at her College and the positive impacts the Society has made for her peers.

Leanne Tyme has gone out of her way to found the first Black and Minority Ethnic Society in Homerton College. Confused by the fact that Cambridge’s most diverse College lacked this and reflecting on her experiences in first year, she thought it productive to create a space where students had the ability to attend events and get to know each other, especially across years. Leanne built a team around her from willing volunteers to make up a constitution, manage social media pages and drum up ideas for events. The Society are currently creating a buddy scheme where older students will be aligned with younger students with similar interests.

One hard thing to quantitatively measure, but which I can attest to as a BME second-year student at Homerton College, is the increase in integration, especially between years, after this society has come about. It gets hard to know people in other years studying different degrees and living in different accommodation blocks, but this society has facilitated that.

Ultimately, going to university itself is a whole new experience, but meeting new people and making friends makes that experience so much better, and that’s what Leanne has been trying to achieve for everyone.

In 2020-21, Leanne was a second-year Undergraduate reading Modern & Medieval Languages at Homerton College.