Lead, Drive, and Sustain Your Lasting Digital Transformation
Tuesday 18 October 2022 ︱London
TECHNOLOGICAL DISRUPTION︱AI︱AUTOMATION︱BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION︱TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP︱METAVERSE︱WEB 3︱INNOVATION︱EXPERIMENTATION
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.
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 Waters
Chief Digital Officer, Ashurst LLP
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 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
Customer Insights Manager, Huel
Kabir Patel
Global Head of Finance IT and Transformation, AstraZeneca
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
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
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.
Matthew as Head of Software Development and Integration at Aston Martin Lagonda is in charge of the teams that build all internal Software, Integrations and Business Intelligence solutions, currently transforming and moving to a new ERP solution in Infor LN from AML’s legacy home grown COBOL Solutions.
Working at AML since 2008 starting as a Junior .Net Developer and touching most technical solutions within that time, gaining a lot of insight on Automotive processes and how IT has changed during that time.
More recently Matthew is a founding member of the Diversity and Inclusion network at AML, here they are involved in organising events internally and externally to ensure a more inclusive working environment. As part of this work they are involved in modernising the office space for our new way of working, ensuring the workspace is inclusive of everyone who works and may work in the future at AML.
Felicity is the Executive Director of the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI). The CDEI is a government expert body enabling the trustworthy use of data and AI. Felicity's role is to lead the CDEI's multidisciplinary team of specialists, and its overall strategy to deliver, test and refine trustworthy approaches to data and AI governance, working in partnership with public sector and industry bodies.
Before CDEI, she was the CBI Director of Innovation and Digital, leading the organisation’s policy work to create the conditions that enable businesses to come up with new ideas, invest in research and development (R&D) and adopt new technologies. At CBI, Felicity also worked on technology adoption, public spending on R&D and labour markets. Felicity's background is in economic policy, with a focus on business growth.
Jay Swanton is Moneybox Chief Platform Officer and has accountability for the systems, people, and processes that manage customer savings and investments. Jay was instrumental in the development of the Moneybox infrastructure, has previous experience at Janus Henderson, and was the co-founder of outsourcing business Cogent, now part of Paribas.
Mark has a strong pedigree of delivering information systems and technology solutions across the globe. He is a seasoned executive with over 30 years’ experience providing strategy, governance and thought leadership across technology environments and information security disciplines. Mark's broad understanding of technology enables him to navigate the most complex issues and drive consensus to deliver tangible business results.
Mark begin his career as a Technology apprentice within the British Army, and built a successful 27 year military career delivering command and control networks, technology solutions and information systems in support of operations globally. Post his military career, Mark went on to join KPMG UK LLP, initially undertaking a People Operations role. It was during this time that Mark quickly established himself as a subject matter expert in Risk Management, Cyber Security and Information Assurance leading to him being appointed as the Chief Information Security Officer and Head of Information Assurance.
In his current role at HFW as the Global Director of IT, Mark is driving transformational change and is focused on delivering best-in-class technology solutions and acting as the driving force behind HFW's digital transformation focusing on people, process and technology. The mission of his team is to provide an outstanding service to HFW by delivering and supporting robust, secure, flexible and intuitive solutions and to add value to the firm and its clients as a strategic partner through the innovative use of technology.
Mark has a passion for business-led innovation, encouraging understanding, exploration and adoption of new technologies through collaboration across the firm, with HFW clients and external Partners. He is also a champion and industry commentator for greater diversity and inclusion in technology, as well as being incredibly active in promoting the transition and employability of military veterans.
Andy is the Vice President of Product Management at GoCardless, leading a department of highly skilled product managers who are responsible for driving forward the organisation’s product and feature innovations. Andy joined GoCardless in 2020, but has a long and demonstrated history of working in the subscriptions industry for both digital and consumer goods.
Prior GoCardless Andy was the Direct of Product Engineering and Growth at Paws.com, as well at the Director of Payments at Spotify. During his time at Spotify he headed up the payment division and was responsible for global payment acceptance strategy and execution (online and offline) whilst also leading a team of payments operators who managed revenue
streams north of 2 billion transactions/ year.
Andy also has a Master’s Degree in Engineering from the University Cambridge.
Leon Gauhman
Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Elsewhen
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
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
Chief Commercial Officer, Makers
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
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.
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
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
Open Innovation and Open Data Expert, PA Consulting and Ex-Head of Open Innovation, TfL
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
VP CH Separation Lead, GlaxoSmithKline
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.
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