A lawyer who has championed diversity has been honoured in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list after receiving five separate nominations.

Funke Abimbola, 44, has been awarded a Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for services to diversity in the legal profession and to young people.

Ms Funke is works as a senior solicitor at the pharmaceutical company Roche UK, and serves 10 other organisations at board level away from her day job.

She has advised on government policy for the Department of Justice and former Secretary of State for Justice Liz Truss MP would contact her for advice.

The mother-of-one was spurred onto to fulfil her career ambitions after being told that she would not be able to become a corporate solicitor as a black woman because the field was too competitive.

She said: “Proving him wrong was a real factor in spurring me on. I think he meant it as kindly advice but I just felt angry that he could limit me in that way.

“I thought how dare you think that will be a barrier to me. Whichever way that sentiment is meant it is something you should never ever say to someone.

“Statistically, as a black woman I should not be here because there are so many hurdles.

“I am the only lawyer in my family and I am the eldest child so I had a lot to prove.”

As well as her race and gender, she has also faced challenges of being a single parent and a mother returning to work.

She said: “Being black is by far the worst way I have been discriminated against.

“The race agenda is 20 years behind the gender agenda. We have done a lot on gender equality and that has been at the expense of race.

“We need to be very honest and brave in talking about race and we need to think about what we are teaching the next generation.”

Ms Abimbola frequently talks at schools in St Albans, advising pupils not to let anything stand in their way and telling them to maximise on their strengths.

She says that she is proudest of the impact on her son.

She said: “He is a black boy, and statistics show that there are three careers open to him, music, sports or prison.

“He is proving that is not the case. He is a member of the UN He for She movement, and is showing leadership by supporting and encouraging his peers.

“He tells people to believe in themselves and I know this is because I have been dragging to events that I have been speaking at since he was nine.”

Ms Abimbola says she will be taking her mother with her to the celebration and plans to wear Nigerian clothes to celebrate her heritage.