I. Stephanie Boyce

Ingrid Stephanie Boyce or I. Stephanie Boyce as she is professionally known (born 1972) is a British solicitor. In March 2021 she became the 177th individual, the sixth female, and the first black and the first person of colour to be President of the Law Society of England and Wales.

Life

Boyce is of Caribbean descent. Her mother, born on the island of Saint Vincent, came to England aged 15 in 1967 to join her parents, who had emigrated there. I. Boyce's father had come to the UK from Barbados three years earlier. I. Boyce was born in Aylesbury, where she was brought up in a single-parent household on a council estate. The footballer Emmerson Boyce is her younger brother. In her teens, the family relocated to the United States, where she lived for six years before returning to the UK to study law. She gained a LLB from London Guildhall University in 1999, and passed the Legal Practice Course at the College of Law, Guildford. She was admitted as a solicitor in 2002. She is the director of Stephanie Boyce Consulting Limited (10866503 - incorporated on 14 July 2017), a micro-entity company advising on not-for-profit management and governance.

Law Society

Boyce was elected Deputy Vice President of the Law Society in 2019, taking up the post in July 2019. She became the society's vice president in 2020, and its president in March 2021.

In May 2021 I. Boyce said that Priti Patel's plans to penalise asylum seekers who arrived in the United Kingdom by "so-called irregular routes" risked a "two tier asylum system" in breach of international law and the Refugee Convention. After the Queen's Speech at the 2021 State Opening of Parliament announced government plans to limit the powers of Judicial review in England and Wales, she said that the proposals "would allow unlawful acts by government or public bodies to be untouched or untouchable" and "risk taking power away from citizens".

Membership

Boyce is a Fellow of the Society of Leadership Fellows and a Fellow of the Chartered Governance Institute.   She is a member of the Joint Tribunal Service and holds a number of statutory appointments with her local authority.   In 2020 she was appointed to the HM Treasury and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) commissioned - independent taskforce to boost socio-economic diversity at senior levels in UK financial and professional services. She is also a member of Thomson Reuters Transforming Women’s Leadership in the Law Advisory Board and sits as a Commissioner on the National Preparedness Commission to promote better preparedness for a major crisis or incident and also sits on the Shinkwin Commission looking at how business can harness diverse talent for success.

Honours and Awards

In 2020 Boyce was voted on to the Governance Hot 100 - Board Influencer and made the Power List 100 Most Influential Black People in the UK in 2021 and 2022. She is the joint winner of the 2022 Burberry British Diversity Awards-Inspirational Role Model of the Year. An Honorary Professor of Law, The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London.

In 2022 Boyce received an Honorary Doctorate of Law from Keele University and University of East London for her outstanding contribution to the Law and her commitment to promoting equality and diversity within the profession. The recipient of the King’s College London Distinguished Alumni of the Year award, (her picture can be seen in the window of King’s campus on the Strand). She also received in 2022 the High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire award for her leadership of the legal profession during the COVID-19 pandemic and for services to equality, diversity and inclusion.