Kathryn Corrick
With a keen interest in innovating responsibly and the impact of technology on society Kathryn brings together experience of digital technology development, communications and change management with a practical understanding of public policy and compliance. As a strategist and trainer she enables organisations to consider business, regulatory and technology requirements and to build cultures for sustainable change. Her clients have included the British Council, McCann (London), Mastercard and Innovate UK. She co-founded democracy platform Represent.me, was head of learning and content at the Open Data Institute from 2012-2015, and was online manager for the New Statesman until 2006.
Frank Wales
Frank has over 25 years of professional software design and development experience, mostly in the private sector, but also for government and military projects. He co-founded one of the UK’s first Internet companies, Limitless. For several years at Net-a-Porter, he built and ran the development teams responsible for the core customer, order and payment systems that underpinned the company’s world-class e-commerce service, and invented their real-time fraud analysis system. He also created their technical blog, and ran many internal hackathons that developed both the technical and communication skills of the IT team.
Chris Adams
Based in Berlin, Chris is a technologist with experience as a user researcher, product manager, developer, sysadmin and UX specialist. His client work includes building proof-of-concepts for personal data stores and rolling out privacy-preserving city data platforms. He is co-convenor of the OMGDPR unconference and one of the organisers of ResearchOps, a community of professionals examining how to scale user research across organisations ethically and effectively.
Ed Dowding
Ed is a founder and builder of pioneering and socially-impactful services. He has extensive innovation and development experience and specialises in product, business, and market-development. His work has included building risk analysis services for the insurance industry, developing SMS alert systems for the emergency services, mapping the food system to increase B2B trade for SMEs and founding the online democracy platform Represent.me.
Benjamin Ellis
Benjamin has worked at the cutting edge of technology and communication for over three decades, with expertise in Big Data, Machine Learning, data governance, privacy and security, organisational psychology, and behavioural economics. He has been a Vice President of marketing, CTO, a CEO and an early stage investor to a number of successful US and UK-based technology companies. His efforts have taken multiple start ups from early stage to annual revenues in excess of $1 billion.
Paola Kathuria
Paola is an experienced technology consultant and developer. With degrees in psychology and computing her work focuses on the customer, which includes: usability audits, requirements definition, software development and user interface design. She co-founded one of the UK’s first Internet companies, Limitless, and has worked for The Guardian, hotels.com, Oxford University Press and the BBC.
Mel Norman
Mel is a business strategist, enabling companies to identify and commercialise new products and services. She works with organisations to build new business models that will maintain their relevance and help them grow. She has worked with Royal Shakespeare Company, BBC, Innovate UK, and was Theme Champion for Business Models and Growth for the Creative Industries.
Danny Shisler
Danny is founder and director of Evamber Ltd, providing software and technology consultancy to the retail, telecoms, financial services and digital media industries. He has worked with a number of start ups as CTO and enjoys finding, managing and motivating top-class technical talent and teams.
Mark Simpkins
Mark is a highly skilled user experience designer and digital technologist, with interests in cybersecurity and blockchain technology. He is CTO of Creative Passport, a personalised ID for music makers where they can access, update and manage information about themselves and their works, making complex data sharing models easy to use and understand for everybody. As head of technology for Imogen Heap's Mycelia Project, he is helping re-imagine the music industry through technology.
Ceri Stanaway
Ceri is a consumer rights specialist and formerly an investigative journalist and researcher for Which? Magazine. She is a consumer co-ordinator for the British Standard's Institute (BSI). Until 2017, she headed up the research team at Mapa Research, an agency which helps financial organisations understand how their competitors are developing their digital offerings – including how they are responding to new regulation.
Emma Thwaites
Emma is the founder and CEO of Thwaites Communications, with 25 years of strategic communications experience. She has advised government Ministers and corporate directors but remains a very hands-on executive, recently leading on the delivery of projects for high-profile organisations including the Open Data Institute, the Web Foundation, The Open University, and FutureLearn Ltd.
Sherree Westell
Sherree works for Woodroffes Solicitors and is our legal go-to person. An experienced solicitor, she has been a partner at a number of leading City law firms, and specialises in commercial contracts, primarily in the contexts of technology and intellectual property.