“We want to put women in the driving seat” – We sat down with head of Bumble UK and Ireland

Bumble is leading the way when it comes to prioritising women and putting their safety first.

The team behind the app have created this very safe community for women, where they can log on and feel like their best interests are at heart, which they are. This month we're celebrating all women and one very impressive one we had the chance to sit down with is head of Bumble UK and Ireland Naomi Walkland to chat about the revolutionary app and her career path which led her to where she is now. Naomi studied Anthropology in university and went on to work for many creative agencies before setting up her own consultancy firm where Bumble was one of her clients. She then gave up being her own boss and signed on with Bumble. Naomi says hasn't looked back once joining the dating app, "one of the good things about bumble is that you are entrepreneurial, there's a lot of hustle, there's a lot of thinking, there's a lot of fast paced moving. I don't think I lost any of the entrepreneurial part that I had when I was consulting." This year's theme for International Women's Day was "choose to challenge", something Bumble chooses to do for women every day. Naomi says "every day is International Women's Day for us, we started to redefine and challenge archaic gender norms and dating norms. We want to put women in the driving seat, so every day we're working on how can we challenge the status quo, and empower more women across the globe." Bumble was the first dating app to put women in control of who they want to message, and they continue to promote a safe place and have implemented a number of safety measures including bans on hate speech within the app, unsolicited lewd images being shared, and most recently, a ban on body shaming. "Safety is absolutely paramount, we have a zero tolerance policy on hate, bullying, harassment. It's really important to us that our community feels safe on the platform. Recently we launched a body shaming ban so we are not tolerating hurtful comments around people's size appearance, weight, health or anything." Whitney Wolfe Herd launched Bumble in 2014 and in February she became the youngest female billionaire when the company went public. Naomi tells us that Whitney always said "we want to make the internet a kind place," and that's what they continue to do for all their users.