Speakers

Navigating Uncertainty: Driving business value now whilst innovating for future growth
18 May 2023︱The May Fair Hotel, Stratton Street, London W1J 8LT, UK 

Get Involved

TECHNOLOGICAL DISRUPTIONAI︱AUTOMATION︱BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION︱TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP︱METAVERSE︱WEB 3︱INNOVATION︱EXPERIMENTATION

Maurizio Headshot-1

Dr Maurizio Pilu
Managing Director, Safetytech Accelerator

Maurizio is a digital technologist and technology and innovation executive with 30 years experience. After gaining a PhD in Artificial Intelligence at Edinburgh University he joined Hewlett Packard Laboratories in Bristol and Paolo Alto, CA, where he invented, published and commercialized a variety of cutting edge imaging technologies.

After an Executive MBA, he moved on to early stage venture capital where he was in charge of deep-tech investments. After being involved in high profile projects at InnovateUK, the UK’s Innovation Agency, and the UK’s first-ever national digital innovation centre, Digital Catapult, he moved on to Lloyd’s Register as VP of Digital Innovation with the brief to create and run its first ever digital innovation pract

ice and contributing to transforming the business.

As part of that he created Safety Accelerator, where is he now Managing Director. Maurizio has 50 patents, 35 academic publications, secured over $100m of investments for programmes and ventures and his work has featured in the FT, Guardian, BBC.

VladBreus (1)-1

Vladislav Breus
Data Scientist, Meta

Vlad is a seasoned product development professional with extensive experience in E-commerce and AdTech, having worked in both startups and large IT companies. He has a passion for using machine learning and data analytics to drive improvements in user experience. With his wealth of knowledge and expertise in working with large scale data, he is sure to provide valuable insights and best practices for attendees of the event.

Tara-1-1

Tara Waters
Chief Digital Officer, Ashurst LLP

Neil_col (2)

Neil Turner
Chief Technology Officer, GoCardless

Neil joined GoCardless in 2018 as the VP of Engineering before quickly progressing to become the Chief Technology Officer. As CTO, Neil’s role is to oversee the organisation’s global product development.

He has over 20 years of engineering experience and, prior to joining GoCardless, he held senior roles at Capital One and Amazon. 

Patricia-1

Patricia Haynes

VP Technology Operations and Delivery, Zopa

As VP Tech Ops & Delivery at Zopa, Patricia is responsible for the smooth running of technology teams from Data to Delivery. 

Having joined Zopa in January 2020 as VP Engineering, Patricia took on a wider role to lead the Technology and Engineering teams during Zopa's bank launch with a focus on expanding our products and establishing Zopa as an exciting and supportive environment in which to grow a tech career.

Patricia is passionate about supporting our D&I initiatives and creating opportunities for new paths into technology. She is a leading member of the Zopa Women in Tech Community often seen in panel discussions and hosting events both internal and external.

Patricia has over 20 years of experience across tech and engineering. She previously worked at Octopus Labs where she held the position of Head of Engineering. 

Olivia Chambers 2-1

Olivia Chambers

Customer Insights Manager, Huel

Kabir Patel-1

Kabir Patel
Global Head of Finance IT and Transformation, AstraZeneca

Matt George, Equinix

Matt George
Director and SME - Digital Transformation, Equinix

Matt joined Equinix in 2012 and is one of the company’s Global SME’s (Subject Matter Experts).

He covers several industry sectors including Content & Digital Media, Manufacturing and Retail/wholesale supply chain transformation. Sitting as an overlay between the sales and technical teams he advises companies on ways to improve connectivity, global reach, end user experience and cloud enablement through deployment on Equinix’s global interconnection platform. 

Prior to joining Equinix, Matt worked as a Digital Transformation Consultant for companies including Sky Germany and Ladbrokes. 

He started his career in the UK cable TV industry in the mid 90’s. He has led a number of senior marketing and business development positions at Flextech, TiVo, Sky and BT.

Vimal Parekh-1

Vimal Parekh

Head of Digital Innovation, Oxford University Press

Vimal is a people focused leader of progressive, digital, customer-focused innovation.

Innovation is a machine that needs to be designed, built, and maintained. Vimal is driven by creating and managing these innovation mechanisms in organisations to improve customer/user experience.

Vimal’s innovation capability was born from a project delivery background. He’s experienced delivering outstanding insights grounded in robust logic with energy and passion. This was enabled through his Business Analysis and Lean Six Sigma experience. Later with Capita, he adopted the Service Design methodology to ensure human centred design principles are at the foundation of his recommendations.

Previous, Vimal headed up Digital Product Innovation within FTSE 250 company- Capita. Vimal built the innovation mechanism in Capita and oversaw a steady stream of Digital Products which Capita used to use to support their outsourcing business.

Vimal has now moved onto Oxford University Press as Head of Digital Innovation where he is building a similar innovation engine.

Dan Cooper

Dan Cooper 

Director, Global Innovations, Movember

More than a decade of international experience in communications, innovation, partnerships, business development, CSR and brand marketing, working with some of the world’s most recognised brands and entertainment platforms. Currently leading Innovation at Movember building the brands presence in Web3.

Leon Full Head Shot-1

Leon Gauhman 

Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Elsewhen

Leon Gauhman is the co-founder and Chief Product & Strategy Officer at Elsewhen the Digital Product Consultancy.

Among their clients are companies like Spotify, Google, Microsoft and Mastercard.

Their mission is to empower leaders to harness a cutting edge approach to design and technology to deliver positive impact for their organisations.

They have three service offerings – Digital Strategy, Digital Transformation and Product Design.

Leon writes for publications including Sifted, Venturebeat, City AM and Fintech Futures.

He loves using his experience in engineering and product to invest in promising early stage founders.
Brandie Deignan-1

Brandie Deignan

CEO, Pier Health Group

Brandie is a sector agnostic leader, having held leadership roles in 4 different sectors so far in her career. She is a mentor, a guest lecturer, a trustee, a non-exec director, a JP, an advisory board member and a CEO by the day oh, plus a twin- mom most of the time!

In early 2021 Brandie joined primary care within NHS as Chief Executive Officer, highlighting that leadership is leadership, and cuts across all sectors. Prior to this role, Brandie was Managing Director at Marco Pierre White Restaurants, cementing her c20 years’ experience in the consumer service delivery industry across hospitality, retail and aviation. Before her MD role, Brandie held senior leadership positions at British Airways Plc, Tesco Plc, Whitbread Plc, Travelodge and Hilton Hotels, where she started her career as a graduate trainee and worked her way up.

A true trailblazer, Brandie was the first female MD to hold her MD role at MPW Restaurants. As of 2020, Brandie was the first black female MD within branded restaurant groups in the UK. Brandie was named as one of the top 15 BAME high fliers in travel and tourism industry and was a finalist at the Black British Business Awards, Senior Leader, Consumer and Luxury. Brandie was voted No 41 of the Top 50 listening leaders and also nominated in the National Diversity Awards for positive role model, gender diversity. Recently, Brandie was nominated in the SheInspires
Awards as an agent of change.

Peter Dignan

Peter Dignan

Head of Engineering and Customer Engagement, PistonHeads

Pete is currently serving as the Head of Engineering and Consumer Engagement at the enthusiast car website PistonHeads. He is passionate about strategies and innovation to help make the car buying, selling and ownership process less bewildering and easier for people who are looking for premium, performance or collectible cars.

Previously Pete has worked as Head of Architecture for fintech company, Collinson, the leading airport experiences programme implementing bank and credit card benefit solutions across global markets and as Head of Architecture for Haymarket Media Group building unique content to specialist audiences. Pete started his career (after failing at being a professional racing driver) for University of Surrey building one of the first global distance learning MBA experiences back in the early 2000s.

Sam Stamp

Sam Stamp

Chief Commercial Officer, Makers

Sam is Chief Commercial Officer at Makers, creating a new generation of tech talent who are skilled and ready for the changing world of work. Prior to this, he was Head of New Business at international law firm Simmons & Simmons, where he led the firm’s innovation and diversification initiatives including the development of new products and services. Previously, he has worked for a range of technology startups, from smart energy to YouTube content creation, and various marketing agencies in the UK as a Strategy and Business Director. Sam is an Anthropologist by training, which has reinforced a preoccupation with people and the way they interact with the structures and systems around them.
Tom Clarke

Tom Clarke 

Chief EV Officer, Abacai

Tom is the Chief EV Officer for insurtech Abacai, where he leads the group’s work on revolutionising insurance for electric cars. He has over a decade of experience in financial services and has been working in the electric vehicle space since 2018. Tom is passionate about the decarbonisation of transport through electrification and was previously Head of EV strategy at LV= General Insurance. He also sits on the advisory board for electric car subscription provider Voltric. Tom has an MBA from Cranfield School of Management and is a chartered fellow of the Chartered Management Institute.  

Nermin Magued-1

Nermin Magued 

VP Digital, Herbalife

15 years of experience in driving digital change, passionate about great digital experiences, change management & leading with purpose. Apart from being a digital expert, Nermin is a certified change management practitioner (APMG) and has vast experience in driving change through digital transformations , business innovations and process simplification.

IMG_0172-jpeg (1)

James Fullarton

VP Commercial IT, Smith & Nephew

James is VP of Commercial IT for Smith + Nephew where he is responsible for all customer experience, commercial excellence and digital health technologies. He believes that technology is at the heart of every business strategy and is driving transformation of how S+N do business by integrating digital technologies and experiences seamlessly across the value chain from marketing right through to the operating theatre and beyond into patient recovery. James has a background of complex transformation having provided digital technology leadership at TUI Travel, Tesco, HMRC, Accenture and Capita.

Jamie Crummie September 2021-1

Jamie Crummie

Co-Founder, Too Good To Go

Jamie Crummie trained as a lawyer before pursuing his mission of fighting food waste. He is the co-founder of Too Good To Go, the world’s largest marketplace for surplus food. The app lets consumers buy unsold food from restaurants and retailers so that it doesn’t go to waste. 

Too Good To Go is now active in 17 countries. The market-leading app has 72 million users and 180,000 food businesses signed up, who have rescued over 167 million bags of food collectively. 
 
Jamie was named Sustainability Entrepreneur of the Year at the GB Entrepreneur Awards 2022, a Trailblazing Activist in the 50 Next class of 2021, One Young World’s Entrepreneur of the Year in August 2020, one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in Europe in February 2019.

Rikesh Shah

Rikesh Shah

Open Innovation and Open Data Expert, PA Consulting and Ex-Head of Open Innovation, TfL

Rikesh Shah is Head of Open Innovation at Transport for London (TfL), has worked in urban mobility for the last 20 years. He has championed the organization’s award-winning market innovation activity to create new value for London by working with start-ups, corporates, academia, accelerators, and venture capitalists. He was responsible for creating TfL’s first Innovation Hub. The Hub sets out the organization’s key problem statements, bringing in the best innovators from across the world, piloting and scaling innovative solutions with the potential to commercialize, as well as establishing the right culture in the company focusing on agility and design thinking to work with market innovators who either have a new mobility product or an innovative idea to help solve existing city challenges through new technologies.
Natalia Konstantinova

Natalia Konstantinova

Architecture Lead in AI, BP

Natalia Konstantinova is a great enthusiast with over 15 years' experience in the application of Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, IT and machine learning technologies to real world problems. 

She is currently a Staff Data Scientist at BP and her role is to develop standards and best practices to accelerate the adoption and implementation of AI enabled solutions, and doing so with the right level of compliance and standards within BP.  

Natalia got her PhD from the University of Wolverhampton and worked in various fields such as machine translation, ontologies, information extraction, dialogue systems and chat bots. 

Natalia is a strong believer that modern technology can transform businesses and our everyday life.

DAVID VENTER

David Venter

VP CH Separation Lead, GlaxoSmithKline

Alex Cottrell

Alex Cottrell

Principal Innovation Lead, Zurich

Alex is an experienced product leader with extensive knowledge of developing innovative products directly within large corporations and in consultancy roles. He has 20 year experience of working with global commercial enterprises over multiple industries and also major government agencies. Having co-founded Zurich’s Innovation function he has thorough experience of what it takes to create, mature and lead a successful innovation team inside a large company as well having a wealth of experience of the many pitfalls and complexities. He is passionate about how innovation practices can provide the business with the competitive edge by exploring and developing many more value propositions & business models using customer-centric and evidenced based Lean UX and Product Management approaches.