Welcoming in-person attendees

1:00 – 2:00 pm BST

Refreshments & networking

Opening Keynote

2:00 – 2:05 pm BST

SPEAKER

Corina Balaneanu is the Founder of IP, a high-touch membership organisation for board directors/C-suite, focused on curating innovation and leading change case studies as well as facilitating bespoke introductions for members.

She has led delegations to Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv, visiting emerging startups, venture capital firms, CVCs and corporate incubators/accelerators.

She has travelled to over 80 countries, loves fashion and soca music.

Keynote: Leading on climate from the boardroom

2:05 – 2:15 pm BST

SPEAKER

Susan is Chair of Tangle Teezer and Chair Designate of Inter.Earth, and sits on the Boards of Moonpig plc and Uber UK.

She is a Founding Director of Chapter Zero, and is involved in several start-ups in carbon capture and sustainability.

Susan is also an Ambassador for the World Travel & Tourism Council.

Susan chairs the annual Innovation Partnership advisory board, supporting the network to address key business priorities for members.

Achieving Net Zero

2:15 – 2:50 pm BST

SPEAKER

As Chief Sustainability Officer at IHG Hotels & Resorts, Catherine was responsible for developing the company’s Journey to Tomorrow 2030 responsible business strategy, and leads now its execution across all IHG’s 6,000 plus hotels globally.

Her team is also responsible for all the company’s ESG reporting and engagement activities.

Prior to this role, Catherine was IHG’s Global Head of Investor Relations, leading all activities and communications with institutional investors and sellside analysts.

Catherine is Treasurer of the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance. She has an MA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accounts of England and Wales.

Creating social impact at scale

2:55 – 3:35 pm BST

SPEAKER

Sarah Hopley is the Head of Venture Studio at Crisis, the national charity for people experiencing homelessness in the UK. Joining Crisis in 2021 through the Year Here social innovation fellowship, Sarah draws from her firsthand experiences to catalyse investments into solutions, and nurture startups that end homelessness. Alongside this, she has made a significant contribution to the charity’s future housing supply strategy development.

Previously as Head of Landlord Partnerships at short-term retail platform Appear Here, she democratised real estate to create better access for smaller, diverse businesses. During her time at Estates Gazette (EG), in response to the lack of diversity in the property industry she launched ‘EG People’ and ‘Connecting Tomorrow’s Leaders’, a series of initiatives aimed at dismantling barriers and nurturing the next generation of industry leaders.

Sarah won the Social Investment Champion award at the 2024 WISE100 awards from Pioneers Post and NatWest, was named in their Top100 women in social enterprise list and was shortlisted for the Rising Star award at the UK Proptech Awards in 2023. She has spoken at leading industry events including Anthropy and CRETech London about innovation in affordable housing. And is also currently a Fellow on the Newton Venture Program.

SPEAKER

Jamie Crummie trained as a lawyer, having studied a LLB in Law at Leeds University and a master’s in Human Rights Law LLM at Queen’s Mary 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. Through its marketplace app Too Good To Go enables consumers to buy unsold food from restaurants and retailers, so that it doesn’t go to waste.

Too Good To Go is currently active in 17 countries. The market-leading app has over 80 million registered users and 135,000 active food businesses, who together have rescued over 250+ million meals of food collectively.

Jamie was named as an Obama Leader in 2023, Sustainability Entrepreneur of the Year at the GB Entrepreneur Awards 2022, a Trailblazing Activist in Forbes’ the 50 Next class of 2021, One Young World’s Entrepreneur of the Year in August 2020, and one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in Europe in February 2019.

SPEAKER

Erik brings three decades of experience in strategy, branding, sales, marketing, and technology. He prioritises driving growth and profitability and is a renowned author and expert on brand-driven M&A and IPO strategies.

Before founding Unbox, he was the founder and CEO of Brandhome, a strategic agency specializing in rebranding and renaming operations. Erik led over 350 brand-change operations for blue-chip companies, governments and politicians across Europe, America, the Middle East and Africa.

He has written more than 15 books on brand marketing, created the widely used Brandhome method®, and invented the Triple-A brand® index, a leading brand management instrument used by capital-intensive organizations.

He studied Economics at the University of Antwerp and holds a degree in hotel management and multiple brand marketing certificates.

CHAIR

Isabel is a NED at TPXimpact, an AIM-listed digital transformation company, where she Chairs the ESG Committee. She is the Social Impact Board Advisor at Simply Business, SME insurance provider. Both companies are BCorps.

She is an impact careers advisor for MBAs at the Said Business School Oxford, and a Trustee at Big Give, the UK’s largest match funding charity. From 2002 to 2014 she was International Director of the Salesforce Foundation, and before that worked for 11 years at Amnesty International on the East Asia desk. Her first job was at Oxfam.

ClimateTech pioneering startups – Investing in energy innovation

3:50 – 4:15 pm BST

SPEAKER

Torsten Kolind is the Co-Founder & CEO of Underground Ventures. UGV is the world’s first specialized geothermal technology investment firm. Backed by Unity co-founder Joachim Ante, UGV invests $40m over 3-5 years into early-stage technology startups enabling geothermal deployments at a global scale.

Prior to UGV, Torsten co-founded grant evaluation platform YouNoodle in San Francisco, and serves as an expert evaluator for Innovation Fund Denmark, collective member at Nordic VC fund byFounders, and an advisor to early-stage VC fund Antler.

Torsten is also an angel investor in multiple women’s health companies, and startup advisor for the Alliance of Democracies.

SPEAKER

Staffan Qvist – CEO @ QUANTIFIED CARBON | Managing Partner @ EXASCALE FUND

The art and economics of DEI in business

4:20 – 5:00 pm BST

SPEAKER

Tamara Box is a partner and immediate past (July 2023) Managing Partner, EME at Reed Smith LLP.

She is also a non-executive director on the Boards of Interpath Advisory and Hanover Investors, a Trustee of Chartered Management Institute and Chair CMI Women, Chair of gynaecological cancer charity The Eve Appeal, an Advisory Board member of charity Theirworld, an Advisory Board member of LSE’s The Inclusion Initiative, and a founding member of the Steering Committee of 30% Club.

Tamara has twice been named a Financial News “50 Most influential Lawyers” (2022, 2023) and was Law Firm Leader of the Year – Large Law Firm at Women and Diversity in Law Awards, 2023.

SPEAKER

Sanchia is a multi-award-winning and distinguished global Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) practitioner, public speaker, and community change-maker with a reputation for driving systematic and sustainable change towards fostering inclusive environments. She has worked across the public sector over the last 20 years to help move organisations towards being truly being inclusive, valuing their staff and creating a culture where staff feel supported, appreciated, and respected.

She currently works as the Diversity Lead at Transport for London.

She is a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, fellow of the Chartered Management Institute, fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufacturing and Commerce and fellow of the Institute for Educational and Social Equity.

She was elected as a councillor to Barking and Dagenham Council in 2010 a role she held until 2021 and was the first of three Black women to be elected there.

SPEAKER

Barbara’s career in the financial services covers 4 decades equally operating in the industry as a business leader and as a consultant to the insurance sector as an executive search consultant. Passionate about better gender equity and a more inclusive work life environment for everybody in the sector she serves, Barbara has always championed sustainable culture change.

In her extensive years operating in executive search for the international insurance markets, Barbara challenged normal practices and spotted the need, over a decade ago, to bring together women leaders in the London Market to network and in so doing over time created an international community of women in insurance. More recently and in direct response to the pandemic, she opened the network to aspiring female leaders, and all women operating in the industry.

Barbara is a Freeman of the City of London and a member of the Worshipful Company of Insurers where she co-founder iWIN (Independent Women Insurance Network). Barbara was also a board member of Insurance United Against Dementia (IUAD) as part of the Alzheimer Society.

SPEAKER

Alla is an experienced Independent Non-Executive Director and Committee Chair with extensive international background in business leadership across regulated financial services, and expertise in global markets spanning a broad spectrum of products, asset classes and jurisdictions.

Currently she is an iNED on the Boards of Willis Limited, WTW Group’s biggest regulated subsidiary in Corporate Risk Advisory and Insurance Broking, where she is also Chair of Enterprise Risk Management Committee, and Mitsui Bussan Commodities, where she is Chair of Risk and Audit Committees and Whistleblowing Champion.

She has long-standing engagements with technology focused Gauss Ventures venture capital fund, and with Parkinson’s UK charity.

Additionally, Alla has been an avid war relief volunteer and refugee resettlement activist during the war in her native Ukraine.

Drinks reception & networking

5:20 – 7:00 pm BST

Join us for some awesome wine/beer/soft drinks/kombucha