Company & Role: Open Audience, Chief Executive Officer and Founder

Leslie started Open Audience in 2015, drawing upon his 26-year career with Life Science company AstraZeneca. Here he honed his expertise in multiple senior and strategic leadership roles in areas such as Marketing, Brand, Sales, Human Resources and Internal Communications across the AZ globe.  Leslie’s vision is to make meetings better by engaging, inspiring and informing audiences through dynamic interactive experiences - leading to behavioural change, memorable interactions, and quality, measurable outcomes.

Leslie believes that event design and relevant content are at the heart of every successful meeting, and that by harnessing the power of audience engagement you can turn passive delegates into active participants and thereby deliver true value against the investment you make in your event.

Company & Role: Clarion Events, Portfolio Director

With over 20 years of exhibition experience James has worked on and led a number of business divisions across multiple industry sectors. James started his career at Reed Exhibitions back in 2001 with senior leadership positions at UBM, Tarsus and GovNet.

James is currently working at Clarion Events where he led and managed the Revo Business before heading up the Digital Media business as part of Clarion’s defence portfolio as well as directing DSEI Japan. Having been front facing and running domestic events, international portfolios, launching digital portfolios as well as growing Omni-Channel businesses James has a significant experience of the events industry and the ever increasing role technology plays in supporting our events.   

Company & Role: Notified, Global Director of Customer Engagement

Vanessa is an established digital media professional with over a decade of experience in building engaged digital communities and 18 years in events, webinars and digital events.

Particularly focused on customer success, Vanessa has leveraged her experience of being a user of technology to build communities and deliver meetings and events to now work on the supplier side with Notified, who supply communications tech to around 12,000 customers spread right across the globe.

Vanessa works with multiple departments at Notified mainly marketing, account management and customer success to develop useful content and community strategies to engage both customers and partners.

The main goals of Vanessa’s work are to enable customers to win bigger and to better collaborate with customers and partners to gather their input that will enhance Notified’s tech products and services.

Having worked in the B2B media sector since 2005, Vanessa has been immersed in and witnessed the scope, landscape and potential of communities, events, training and digital content evolve.

With digital communications now an essential part of today’s business world; she has made it her mission to facilitate all communications professionals (principally Investor Relations, PR, events and marketing) to navigate the rapidly evolving world of virtual opportunities.

Company & Role: WRG, Managing Director

Tim is a lifelong member of the experience industry with over twenty years of creating and delivering events, environments and spectacles all over the world. As MD, Tim supports the WRG leadership team in ensuring it continues to push innovation, experience design, sustainability and talent development with a focus on our DE&I.

Tim was foundational in the creation of WRG’s AXD Unit which combines Behavioural Science, Data Insights, and Digital and Live UX and is excited to bring this innovative collective to the market to enable experiential marketers to design more impactful live, virtual and hybrid experiences.

Company & Role: The Croc, Head of Events

With over 12 years of experience in the events world, Catriona Boyle has delivered virtual and hybrid B2B conferences and events worldwide, for various industry-specific audiences.

Over the past five years, she has championed the value of live digital content alongside its physical counterpart, with her virtual events expertise proving invaluable to clients as they continue to adapt to the ever-changing event landscape.

Today as Head of Events at The Croc, Catriona focuses on global impact projects in technology, insurance, and other related fields. Her Fierce Thinking approach to event delivery is helping organisations such as Google & Microsoft engage audiences in vital, exceptional, and ground-breaking discussions.

Company & Role: Totem, Growth Director

Rob Prevett is Growth Director at Totem, an enterprise event technology partner. He oversees Totem's sales and marketing efforts across EMEA.

Totem’s digital engagement platform Reef, helps event organisers gain deep insight into their communities and deliver highly personalised experiences for their users. A single platform for all their live and on demand content, all year round an always on.

Rob brings a wealth of experience to Totem having scaled two successful events businesses over the last 20 years. He draws on that experience to help leading brands change the way they deliver events.

Company & Role: Omniverse Agency, Founder

Whitney has 6+ years experience working in brand, content and creative marketing roles at Web3 and tech startup companies (where she's had to wear many hats at a time). She specialises in growing early teams within the tech and Web3 space and is passionate about driving the widespread adoption of advanced digital technologies.

Her experience ranges from developing go-to-market plans including persona mapping and competitive analysis, client case studies, market research, product positioning, and driving creative content workflows for new marketing collateral/sales enablement materials.

She is also Founder of Omniverse Agency & CryptoSessions - providing education to beginners in the Web3 space. Whitney is passionate about neurodiversity awareness, inclusion in the workplace - as well as being a keen believer in eradicating imposter syndrome to achieve success and build something special.

Company & Role: DRPG, Creative Technologist

Nick started his carrier in the early 2000’s as Sound engineer in live theatre. After finding his feet on a series of number one global touring productions Nick discovered a passion overall technical management across multiple disciplines and went on to become technical manager of multiple venues and teams.

Striving to learn, then develop technical solutions and knowledge drove Nick to become a recognised name within the industry. With experience in Theatre, Touring music, Opera, Corporate and Experiential events Nick is responsible at DRPG to push the boundaries, researching new technology and actively challenges our own and our client’s thinking.

Company & Role: Swapcard, Head of Channel & Partnerships UK

Having worked several years in London for Live Nation & Ticketmaster, Alex has had the opportunity to work with various B2C & B2B events across Europe. Alex then switched industries and worked in the marketing space where he managed all global partnerships with marketing & media agencies. At the end of 2021, Alex joined Swapcard as a Partner Manager where he now looks after its event agency partners across several European countries.

Company & Role: ZiaBia, Director

Debbie Bell is one of the Directors and Co Owners of ZiaBia Events Consultancy founded in 2012, based in the south west of England, who has a passion for delivering events! This includes a fanatical attention to detail and a passion and ability to organise things and find solutions for situations.

With over 20 years events experience and even more in the hospitality industry, and knowledge of managing events for clients across the UK and globally in the corporate and charity sectors with a range of budgets and requirements.

Company & Role: George P. Johnson, Creative Technology Director

Zara pioneers cutting-edge tech experiences for George P. Johnson's clients with her team at GPJ London.  She has driven and created creative concepts and progressive experiences for IBM, Cisco, Nike, DP World and many more. She is pivotal in accelerating GPJ's digital revenue services lines and ground-breaking digital engagements and specialises in AI, UX (AR/VR), games, cloud and IoT. 

A regular speaker in the industry, she continually champions the importance of digital experiences to connect audiences and drive brand loyalty through powerful storytelling.

Zara is one of GPJ's key leaders, driving consistent growth, and is currently spearheading the company's new Metaverse service, guiding clients and new prospects through the first steps of this digital transformation.

Company & Role: emc3, VP of Growth

Josh King is the VP of Growth at emc3, one of the world’s leading creative agencies that specialises in the production of virtual, hybrid and in person events.

Josh is an experienced marketer, creative and growth strategist who has worked with some of the world’s most innovative and influential brands over the last decade including LinkedIn, Google and HubSpot.

Josh’s company, emc3 are at the forefront of the industry leveraging the latest technologies such as metaversal platforms, web3 and NFT’s to create world class experiences.

Company & Role: Cheerful Twentyfirst, Marketing & Campaign Manager

Georgia leads the digital marketing, communications and industry partnerships for global brand experience agency, Cheerful Twentyfirst. With a background in targeted and strategic campaigns, her understanding of multichannel marketing means she can look at the objectives and holistically explore the best channels to deliver against them.

She was recognised in 2020 as a rising star in the Conference News 30 Under Thirty Awards and holds a board position with ILEA (International Live Events Association) Europe, focused on supporting marketing and communications efforts across the region.

Company & Role: Hubilo, SVP of Market Strategy

Sophie has over two decades of experience in the media and events industry having led global events for brands like Informa, Reed Exhibitions, Cannes Lions, and Money 20/20.

In her most recent role, Sophie was the CEO at The Virtual Events Institute (VEI), where she has upskilled over 2500 professionals, connected and educated event professionals, planners, and event tech companies in the area of virtual, live, and hybrid events; this was before joining Hubilo as the SVP in Market Strategy in March, 2022.

Company & Role: Guild, Chief Executive Officer & Founder

Ashley is a serial entrepreneur as Founder of both Econsultancy and now Guild. He has over 20yrs experience in B2B media, marketing and technology. Guild is a platform for communities and networking.

Company & Role: Expert Impact Speakers, Head of Communications

Lee Mannion is Head of Communications for Expert Impact Speakers, which supplies impactful speakers for every type of event and uses the profits to support charities and social enterprises. Prior to working in communications, Lee was a journalist for several years, working at organisations such as Thomson Reuters and Associated Newspapers.

Company & Role: Oxford Analytica, Head of Events and Marketing

Amy, who joined Oxford Analytica in 2019, is an event specialist with particular interest in corporate events. She oversees the direction of marketing and events whilst building partnerships to enhance the Oxford Analytica brand. In 2020, she won the Conference News 30 Under Thirty Award for exemplary contributions to the UK meetings and events sector.

Amy has worked with some of the top organisations in the world, including Unilever, EY and The World Bank. Amy previously worked for Aurora Energy Research, where she delivered a variety of in person and online conferences including the Aurora Spring Forum, which has been described as the “Davos of the energy industry”.

She holds a BSc in Sports Development (1st) from the University of Portsmouth and a CIM L4 Diploma in Events Management from The Event Academy.

Company & Role: IVent, Chief Executive Officer

Gavin Newman is a leading specialist in virtual events, CEO at iVent and university lecturer on digital event solutions