Latest news with #Kenley
Belfast Telegraph
22-07-2025
- General
- Belfast Telegraph
‘Our world was a better place with you in it': Loved ones celebrate life of Jaidyn Rice as hundreds attend funeral
St Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Bangor was illuminated in pink, as the coffin and many mourners were adorned in Jaidyn Rice's favourite colour. Hundreds of funeral goers filled the Clandeboye Road hall for the teen's funeral on Wednesday to hear the deep connections she had formed with those around her and the 'big plans' her future held. The 16-year-old was struck by a car on the West Circular Road of Bangor on July 8 and was pronounced dead at the scene. The sermon saw a host of relatives, friends and volunteer groups with which she spent her time, such as the DICE project and Army Cadet Force (ACF), who all extended personal stories and tributes. Speaking first was Jaidyn's mum, Elaine Clarke, who stood side by side with her son, Kenley, and partner, Christopher. 'I've written you so many messages and notes and cards and letters over the years, but never did I ever think I'd ever be writing you anything under these circumstances,' Elaine said. 'I can't put into words how much I miss you. I miss our TikTok streaks. I miss our karaoke. I will miss seeing your face on Christmas morning and celebrating your birthdays. 'I miss your hugs and kisses and you telling me that you love me. I miss every single little thing about you, Jaidyn. I could stand here forever and list a billion things that I miss and it still wouldn't cover everything.' 'You wrote me a poem once for Mother's Day and in it you said the other half of your heart will always belong to me. Maybe that couldn't be more true. You have half of my heart with you. 'The 16 years I spent with you is the most treasured, precious memories I will hold close to my heart forever. I wish I had more time with you. You would have been the most beautiful bride ever and the best mummy the world has ever seen.' Jaidyn's brother Kenley (12) spoke of the deep bond they shared and the support his sister gave him. 'Jaidyn was like glitter,' he said. 'She always shined hope and happiness into everybody who met her. And no matter what happened, she'd always be there. I remember all the time at my cheer competitions, just before awards, everyone goes up and dances and she was always up on the floor, dancing it out to the max with me. I will miss that — and the time she stood up for me and held me when I cried.' The Co Down girl's passing was not only a loss to her family, but also to the volunteer groups she devoted much of her time to. Louise Little, from the DICE project, described how they had 'big plans' for her in the charity, as 'when others turned away, she stepped forward' and 'listened when others didn't or couldn't'. The youth programme worked with young people aged between 10 and 16 in Bangor. 'People were drawn to her strength,' Ms Little added. 'Her gentleness and her fierce sense of right and wrong. 'We had absolute faith in her ability and potential. She was someone who was going to be looked up to someone we trusted and someone who was already making a difference.' Poppy Andrews, who spoke on behalf of Jaidyn's friends, explained how the pair made many memories that she will 'cherish forever', and she shared a moment which brought warm laughter to the hall. 'My favourite memory of all time is when she was phoning the Chinese to order our dinner and she accidentally said 'love you' at the end of the phone call,' Poppy said. She added: 'You'll never be forgotten. I love you unconditionally. I can't even put my love for you into words. 'I'll miss our calls and just sitting in our room, or sitting in my room in silence as we watched TikTok, but it meant the world, just having your company. I hope Heaven knows what a wonderful girl they've gained.' Addressing those gathered, Reverend Ian McKee said: 'None of us could have foreseen this scenario that we'd be gathered together today to pay our last respects to Jaidyn Rice, who everyone loved deeply and adored absolutely. Her untimely death has devastated the family circle and shocked the whole community right to the core. 'Jaidyn was a beautiful, very special young lady. She loved, apparently, the colour pink, hence her pink Bible and the pink coffin. I'm told if she could have had her way, she would have dyed her pet hamster pink too.' Jaidyn's boyfriend, Ethan McClerg, also spoke at the service alongside Poppy and recalled the huge role she played in his life. He shared how the two acquired a hamster, which they agreed to have 'joint custody' of, naming it Jabba. 'One of my favourite memories of Jaidyn was how she wanted a friend of mine who had a fake ID to, not buy alcohol, not run anywhere, but to run into Pets at Home and get a hamster,' Ethan recalled. He added: 'She wasn't just my girlfriend. And despite how I'd never admitted it to her, she was my best friend, my life, my safe place. 'She was a person who could make me laugh even on my worst days, who made life feel fuller, more beautiful, and added a little more colour. She was one of a kind.' Jaidyn's grandmother told the congregation how, from a young age, her granddaughter's 'caring side was so clear to see'. Judith Rice said: 'I have never forgotten how privileged I was to be the first to hold you, as I held you close to mummy's face. Mummy's eyes and smile were so full of love, and how could they not be? From that day, you have brought us so much joy and love. 'Our world was a better place with you in it. As you grew, you taught us how to be grandparents. One look with those eyes and your wee face, and you had us every time.' Staff Sergeant Instructor Andrew Grey from the ACF explained that Ms Rice 'embodied the core values and standards' of the Army Cadet Force. He said: 'She was always in the middle of everything that was happening, guiding young cadets through their first night, quick to help when someone was having difficulties. She was my go-to cadet when we needed something done.' Concluding the tributes was Nicola Wilson, the principal of Jaidyn's school, Priory College, where, she told mourners, the Bangor teen 'inspired all around her'. The service ended with Ms Rice's favourite song, In The Stars by Benson Boone, being played, as well as a final hymn, before she was brought to her final resting place.
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Yahoo
The three award-winning Croydon parks for you to explore this summer
With heatwave after heatwave hitting the country and school holidays around the corner, it's the perfect time to get outdoors. Croydon is home to several Green Flag Award-winning parks, nationally recognised for their quality, safety, and community involvement. Whether you're after panoramic views, a family picnic, or a peaceful nature walk, these green spaces are among the best the borough has to offer. Here are the Croydon Green Flag parks to explore this summer: Riddlesdown Common On the eastern side of the borough, Riddlesdown Common offers stunning open views across the downs and over the valley into Surrey. It's part of the wider Kenley and Riddlesdown Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), known for its rare chalk grassland and rich biodiversity. Visitors can find ancient woodland, grazing cattle in the warmer months, and well-marked footpaths ideal for long walks or jogs. With its rural character and impressive vistas, Riddlesdown holds that now-Croydon but once upon a time Surrey feel. Hutchinson's Bank Hutchinson's Bank is tucked away between New Addington and Selsdon. This lesser-known gem is a steep chalk grassland reserve with wildflowers, butterflies, and birds. The green space is managed by the London Wildlife Trust and forms part of the Croydon countryside network. Visitors can expect winding trails, grazing sheep, and some of the borough's most scenic hidden spots. It was awarded the Green Flag for its dedicated conservation efforts, ensuring the landscape is protected for future generations. Wandle Park Not too far from Croydon's town centre is Wandle Park. Wandle Park is a true urban park success story. The River Wandle was once buried underground before being brought back to the surface during a major regeneration project, completed in 2012. Now the park has formal gardens, a large playground, sports courts, and open lawns, all set around the riverbanks. It's popular with families, dog walkers, and commuters alike – offering both relaxation and activity in equal measure. The Green Flag recognises the park's impressive turnaround and the community value it holds today. If you're staying local this summer, these parks offer everything from sweeping countryside to restored urban greenery, all of which are recognised as the best-kept in the country.
Forbes
14-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Consulting In The Age Of Enterprise AI
Noah Ohrner, Chief Technology Officer at Kenley. As a co-founder and chief technology officer of a company that builds AI tools for consultants, from supporting desktop research to generating slide decks, I have witnessed the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) within the consulting industry. This shift is creating a quiet revolution, reshaping the competitive landscape and empowering emerging firms to challenge traditional industry leaders. The Shift In Consulting Power Dynamics Until recently, the incumbents enjoyed economies of scale rooted in armies of analysts. AI flattens the landscape. Large language models can mine public reports, internal slide decks and statistical data sets in minutes, then generate first-pass insights that once required days of effort. According to a 2025 survey of 300 professional service workers (paywall), 95% now use Generative AI monthly, and for them, 14% of model outputs require no rework at all. This productivity step-change neutralizes a historical advantage of mega-firms. A hundred-person firm can wield the same analytical firepower that a thousand-person firm needed a decade ago, while preserving the intimacy and contextual acuity. In my experience, AI enables a significant reduction in the time required to deliver pricing strategy and due diligence projects. Why Mid-Market Firms Are Poised for Success Startups move quickly but struggle with client trust; behemoths enjoy trust but move slowly. I see mid-sized consultancies as sitting in a Goldilocks zone. They possess enough brand equity and sector depth to reassure clients yet remain unencumbered by decades of legacy processes. AI can accentuate those advantages in three ways: 1. Margin-neutral price flexibility. Automatic proposal drafting, data ingestion, and benchmarking collapse non-billable hours, freeing margin that can be redeployed as fee discounts or reinvested in service upgrades or tooling. 2. Time-to-insight as a differentiator. For strategy decisions tied to volatile markets—think foreign exchange exposure or energy procurement—speed outranks polish. Firms armed with domain-tuned LLM agents can iterate scenarios overnight, where manual workflows once took weeks. 3. Hyper-specialization without overhead. A reusable prompt library, chained to vertical knowledge graphs, lets a 12-person pricing-only team rival the depth of an incumbent's pricing practice. The usage metrics are already visible. Thomson Reuters' 2025 professional-services report posits that Gen AI will be central to all professional services organizations within the next five years, if not sooner. Doing AI Right: Beyond Generic Tools The consulting workflow—diagnose, model, recommend, package—contains domain-specific constraints that consumer chatbots ignore. A model that autocompletes poetry is useless if it hallucinates revenue figures in a buy-side diligence. Many firms still reach for general-purpose tools instead of deploying AI built for their specific workflows. I think that's a mistake. Successful AI programs do three things differently: 1. Embed AI inside the native toolchain. Instead of hopping between ChatGPT and Excel, analysts can use work streams to coordinate project insights, preserving provenance and audit trails. 2. Constrain generation to firm-approved standards. Templates enforce everything from slide masters to the lexical choices that signal risk levels; the model should not be able to invent metrics or rewrite disclaimers. 3. Surface source-of-truth metadata. Each generated cell or bullet should link back to the underlying dataset, document and expert interview transcript so senior reviewers can trace reasoning. A recent survey reveals that users of specialized GenAI tools note far fewer concerns about unreliable outputs (21%) than generic-tool users (30%). I expect this differential to increase exponentially with new tools on the market. Technical Imperatives: Data Access Control and Quality Assurance Consultancies must walk a tightrope: Leverage their collective know-how while never undercutting client confidences. The foundation is a dual-zone data architecture. Publicly shareable research and anonymized benchmarks live in an open vector store, while client-sensitive materials reside in encrypted, tenant-isolated stores. Role-based access control (RBAC) gates retrieval functions so that a consumer LLM cannot accidentally cross-pollinate projects. Quality loops are equally critical. Every generated artifact should enter a review queue where consultants can grade relevance, factual accuracy and stylistic adherence. These human-in-the-loop scores can then feed nightly, fine-tuning jobs that harden system performance. I don't consider governance as optional; the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), SOC compliance and upcoming EU AI Act provisions will impose traceability, explainability and bias-mitigation requirements by default. Firms that treat these safeguards as design inputs will move faster than rivals forced to retrofit later. Additionally, parallel investment is needed in observability. Token-level logs, latency metrics and guardrail trigger rates reveal drift long before it surfaces in client meetings. Firms can leapfrog vulnerabilities by adopting a "zero-copy" pattern—models come to the data, not vice versa—reducing both breach probability and regulatory friction. Consolidation: Battling Tool Sprawl Decision fatigue creeps in when consultants juggle a dozen unintegrated AI assistants, each with its own prompt syntax, data connectors and permission model. A unified, end‑to‑end platform collapses those seams. Analysts stay in a single interface, queries chain across shared memory and outputs flow into the same governance and audit layer. That consolidation compounds productivity: less context‑switching, fewer data exports and one learning curve instead of ten. I find that security hardens as well. Every additional vendor widens the blast radius for a breach; consolidating onto one stack limits credential exposure and sharpens monitoring. Attack-surface math is unforgiving: ten vendors with a 0.5% annual breach probability yield an aggregate risk of around 5%; one vendor cuts that to 0.5%. When client NDAs carry eight‑figure penalties, that delta is meaningful. For risk officers, a single‑tool architecture can not just be convenient; it can be an insurance policy. Embracing The New Competitive Landscape Taken together, these dynamics point to a consulting market that scales non-linearly with firms' AI sophistication. Expect the capability curve to flatten as premium insight becomes accessible to mid-market clients who once defaulted to DIY analysis or freelancers. Meanwhile, enterprise buyers will scrutinize vendors on governance maturity as closely as on sector credentials. For firms that collaborate closely with AI providers and integrate domain-specific tools, the next five years represent a once-in-a-generation land-grab opportunity. For clients, the upside is clear: faster delivery, deeper specialization and pricing models aligned to value. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Warren native spent over 60 years contributing to the local arts
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) — One local woman has spent over 60 years contributing to the local arts and created a platform to bring opportunities to young Black dancers, singers and actors. Karen Clark-Green grew up in Warren and started dancing with the Kenley players at Packard Music Hall at 9 years old. 65 years later, she has written and starred in numerous plays and movies, sung opera around the world and raised four kids — but it wasn't easy for her to get there. Clark-Green says she's done things she was told she couldn't do. 'I grew up in the 50s during the civil rights movement. There were a lot of opportunities that were not there for me and at that time, a lot of your white dance studios would not take a Black student,' she said. Clark-Green started a dance and theater company called Archangel in Youngstown, giving young students opportunities she didn't have. 'I think I was the first one in Youngstown to actually pull together a multicultural dance company,' she said. 'When I had the opportunity to just see potential in little Black kids, I just wanted to create something.' Clark-Green recently celebrated her 75th birthday with one of the oldest members of Archangel Dance. She credits growing up during the civil rights movement and watching her mother be an activist for shaping her work as an artist. 'I would not be who I am today. None of us were without the challenges, you know, that we are supposed to overcome,' she said. Clark-Green also brought back Jazz in the Park which still happens in Youngstown every year. She lives in Georgia now and hasn't worked in Youngstown since 2016 but says she is always open to coming back to share the arts. Clark-Green also says she wants to organize a reunion for her dance company sometime this summer. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
