Event Strategy and Planning Conference

For the last 15 years, Guy has been delivering award-winning consulting services focused on helping cities, governments, corporations and associations step up, scale up and speed up their sustainability programmes and smart event practices. He is a recognised expert on creating association and corporate sustainability programmes through multi stakeholder collaboration and co-creation. In 2015 Guy launched the Global Destinations Sustainability Index to accelerate the development and performance of sustainable business tourism destinations. Today over 50 cities are participating in the www.gds-index.com 

From 2006 to 2018, Guy was the Sustainability Director of MCI where he launched and managed a CSR program that positioned MCI to be an award winning sustainability champion, and the organiser of over 1000 events about sustainable development, Smart Cities and energy. Guy is a passionate and outstanding communicator, who has delivered over 300 keynote presentations and facilitated workshops engaging over 35,000 participants in more than 40 countries. Guy’s pioneering work has been recognised with 21 sustainability awards including the Events Industry Council Pacesetter Award.

LinkedIn: guybigwood

Jim has spent almost his whole life in golf; when he was six years old his family took over the management of a fledgling golf club in England and he literally grew up on the course, once he was old enough he was set to work in all aspects of the business including greenkeeping, food & beverage and office administration. His first real job was with the Professional Golfers Association where he remained for 16 years until taking up the role of CEO of the British & International Golf Greenkeepers Association in 2011.  

During his tenure he has been instrumental in raising the profile of the Association within the golf industry and ensuring that BIGGA’s nearly 6,000 members have a strong voice in how the sport is governed and managed.  

The Association focuses heavily on serving the needs of its members and has invested in a doubling of its regional workforce, ensuring that members have support at local level.

BIGGA’s annual exhibition and conference, BTME, has undergone strong growth under his leadership and is now firmly established as Europe’s premier turf management event. The world-renowned Continue to Learn education programme at BTME now delivers the equivalent of more than two hours of education annually for every golf facility in the UK.

LinkedIn: sashafrieze/?originalSubdomain=uk

Paul Gentry is Conferences & Events Manager at the Royal Statistical Society, which is the professional body for statisticians and data analysts.

Paul has worked at the Society since 1999 in a variety of roles and departments but has been responsible for the planning and delivery of the Society’s Annual International Conference since 2002. Paul manages all aspects of the conference including keynote speakers, session development, budgeting and sponsorship. Over the past 4 years the conference has grown from 460 to 660 attendees.

Mark Hutchinson is Societies and Member Marketing Director at the Chartered Insurance Institute. He has spent the last 30 years marketing financial services across a broad range of sectors including insurance, investment banking and private equity. His experience includes business to business, employee benefits and direct to consumer. In his current role he is focused on membership growth and engagement, both in the UK and overseas. As well membership revenue growth, Mark also has responsibility for communications, web, digital marketing and brand.

Mark is married with two children and, in what little spare time this affords him, he is a reluctant gardener and enjoys skiing and cycling. Mark completed his Open University MBA in 2004.

Julia Jepps has worked in events since the 1980s, learning her trade at a major commercial conference company to become a Conference Director. Since then, she has worked for a variety of commercial conference businesses including ICM and the Daily Mail Group; a brief spell in PR managing the RSPCA national account and events and also as a Corporate Fundraiser in a health charity. Julia was the Head of Commercial Development including events for eight years at the Council of Mortgage Lenders, developing a portfolio of highly successful conferences, training courses and hospitality events. During her years in events, Julia has programmed in diverse sectors including construction, maritime, social and health care, financial services, law, tobacco, utilities and now association management. In her spare time, she uses her events skills to run vintage events, fundraising dog shows and community events - she also is an amateur show commentator and compere. Julia has also had a retail business in antiques and vintage for the past 20 years.

Christine has been involved in conference content creation and production for over thirty years. Starting her career with Informa (then IBC Legal Studies and Services) working on a number of projects in the property, planning and environmental field, she was instrumental in developing the content of a numerous number of events focusing on policy and practice for large scale conferences in London, Edinburgh, Cambridge University for summer schools and major European capital cities. Christine was seconded to the Sydney office in the mid-to late-90s just at the time when IBC became Informa to be a general manager and head of the banking and finance team responsible for content and event generation – this saw her taking events to Adelaide, Brisbane, Hobart and Melbourne as well as in Sydney. As a consequence, Christine has seen a huge amount of change in the way events are researched, delivered and marketed! For the last twelve years, Christine has been freelance and responsible for a large number of projects creating content, delivering events and project managing (from blank sheet of paper to creating content of one, two and three day projects and online content) for a number of clients mainly in the field of property and digital asset management in London and the US.

LinkedIn: christine-le-couilliard-b7b73b5/

Riad has over 20 years’ experience in developing content and producing conferences in the commercial and non-commercial sectors, both in the UK and in the Middle East. He has developed new conferences from scratch as well as managed and grown portfolios whilst increasing ROI. He is currently event portfolio development manager at the Institution of Engineering and Technology managing a range of events from technical call for papers conferences, to invite only events, to training courses, annual dinners and evening lectures.

Laura Marshall has been the Events Manager at the NACFB since May 2019. Prior to this she worked at the Federation of Master Builders (FMB), where she was responsible for all external FMB events, the day-to-day operations of the FMB Events Team, and developing and launching new member events. Laura has spent the last 7 years working in the association events sector, first running conferences for the Catering Equipment Suppliers Association and then the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

Johnny leads the marketing and business development front at Shocklogic. He has been working with events and associations for the past 8 years, since his time as Events Coordinator at the Global Poverty Project and his role as Performance Coordinator at One World Week. He is now a seasoned contributor in several event publications and moderates regular discussions on social media such as the #EventProfsTalk with The MICE Blog. In 2017, Johnny became part of the PCMA ‘20 in Their Twenties’ class, as well as the EN ‘30 Under Thirty’ class.

Twitter: @johnDmartinez

Dr. James Morgan is the Dean of the International Tourism and Hospitality College in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He was previously the at the School of Architecture, University of Westminster, London. He was Principal Lecturer of Live Design and departmental leader for the MA Tourism Management, MA Event Design, BA Tourism Planning, BA Tourism Business and BA Events Management. He holds a PhD in Tourism Development and Destination Regeneration, MA Urban Planning and BA Hons Tourism Planning. He is also the founder of non-profit Event Tech Lab, a global partnership community for event technology companies and event professionals. He has been voted as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in the Events Industry in the Eventex Global Awards in 2019 and 2020 amongst other global awards he has received. As a respected international speaker, Dr Morgan also judge’s industry awards in Europe, North America, and the Middle East each year. As a truly international professional, he is passionate about researching and speaking on tourism, hospitality and events topics including destination design and regeneration, hospitality and live experience design, and visitor engagement.

Jessica is responsible for all internal and external WSTA events and the day-to-day operations of the WSTA. Her role includes liaising and coordinating suppliers, inhouse design, inventory, and IT.

Avnish Patel is the Events Manager at the Political Studies Association, a membership organisation which promotes the study and understanding of politics. He has been in this role since 2016 and his main responsibilities are: the PSA’s Annual International Conference, attended by up to 800 participants across three days; the prestigious PSA Awards; and the PSA Public Lecture Series, currently in partnership with the British Library. Previously Avnish was at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a defence think-tank based in Whitehall, where he organised events on a wide range of foreign policy, defence and international security issues.

Caroline specialises in consulting with event organisers, and is responsible for Association customers with much work in the Healthcare sector. She has worked in the events industry for over 11 years and joined Crystal (IML) in 2010 as an Account Manager. Caroline is at her best meeting with clients and discussing how she can help them. She has always enjoyed developing relationships with her clients in the legal, commercial conference and pharmaceutical sectors. Prior to joining Crystal, Caroline graduated with a business degree and worked at The College of Law and Centaur Media.

Personal Performance Coach, Master Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and licensed Practitioner of Motivational Maps.

Kate has over 15 years’ experience working in the event industry.   Kate has worked in commercial, not for profit and government. She began her career as a Conference Assistant at Informa and after promotions to Team leader, then went to work for IQPC as a Conference Director.  During her time at IQPC she was seconded to their Singapore Office General Manager. Her commercial experience and passion to make a difference led her to change direction and work for not for profit and government organisations.

Kate faced the many challenges when being promoted with little or no management training.  How do you make that switch from a ‘team mate’ to managing and leading your friends. From these experiences and her passion to find out what motivates people and how to empower and engage them, she set up as a personal performance coach, helping people to reach their full potential.

Lorraine is the Head of Conferences and Events at the Biochemical Society, developing and leading the Conference and Events team and ensuring that its activities are aligned with the organisation’s strategy. She began her career at a corporate events management agency but has spent most of the last 20 years working for a range of prestigious associations and learned societies. Lorraine’s first major event was during the final year of a Maths and Computer Science degree at the University of York, when she co-organised the 13th British Juggling Convention, a four-day festival for over 1,000 people. 

Twitter: @LorraineMReese

Twitter: @@bethereglobal

Carole’s credibility is rooted in twenty years’ success as CEO and Founder of the Carole Spiers Group.

In I998, Carole launched Stress Awareness Day on behalf of the International Stress Management Association of which she is the current Chair. She is also a Fellow and past President of the Professional Speaking Association [London].

Carole is recognised as a leading authority on wellbeing and stress at work and is the media’s first choice for comment on workplace issues and best-selling author of Tolleys ‘Managing Stress in the Workplace’ and ‘Show Stress Who’s Boss!’

Carole’s charismatic style of combining inspiration with insight has made her a sought-after international keynote speaker working with equal success in the contrasting cultures of the UK and the Gulf region.

Alex began his event management career in 2005 and has since produced over 800 conferences, events and brand activations all over the world in the education, finance, innovation, retail, HR, health, aviation and legal sectors. He has a background working for global media and technology firms and is the author of three books in The Guide to Events series.

In his current role, Alex leads a small, multi-disciplinary, in-house event team who produce around 30 conferences, dinners and business festivals every year for between 100-1000 delegates from UK Finance member firms.

Alex is also a co-founder of the Eventprofs London meetup group and sits on the board of the Event Marketing Association.