Zia Hayat

Zia Hayat is the CEO & Founder of Callsign. The son of Pakistani immigrants, Zia grew up in Darwen, Northwest England and firmly believes that British technology businesses are disruptive enough to compete with their International peers and successfully break into the global market. Callsign is an identification platform which uses biometrics and deep learning technology to power adaptive access control for enterprises and consumers — enabling the identification of a person from just a swipe on a touchscreen and allowing users to carry on with their digital lives uninterrupted. Zia oversees the overall direction and strategy of the company, whilst contributing to the innovation and design of the service. A strong advocate for home-grown talent, Zia promotes a leadership style of leading by example and wants to help consolidate the North’s reputation as a centre of tech excellence. Before founding Callsign Zia designed and delivered secure information systems in a career spanning BAE Systems, Accenture Consulting and Lloyds Banking Group. He holds an honours first Bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering & Computing from the University of Manchester, and a Ph.D. for his thesis on Information Security in Ubiquitous Computing from the University of Southampton - scholarship from BAE Systems.