Meet The 2019 Speakers

Geraint is an award-winning international chief marketing officer, board advisor, author and academic researcher. He has held a variety of global marketing leadership roles and delivered work for brands such as ODEON Cinemas Group, Virgin Media, Tesco, Boots and Whitbread. Geraint also consults with a wide variety of clients from SMEs to Global blue-chip companies on marketing, digital and strategic growth. Geraint has a PhD in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, is a Visiting Fellow at St Mary’s University, and is a Fellow and Board Member of The Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Karen joined intu in Dec 2012 as part of the acquisition of StyleMeTV, an online shopping centre. Karen set up intuDigital and, together with her new in house team, developed a single digital shopping platform for all 14 intu shopping centres where visitors can shop in centre, online and on the go.

Previously she was founder & CEO of Geronimo PR (awarded The UK’s Number 1 Consumer PR Agency in 2005 & 2006 by PR Week) and Non-executive Chairman of TVC Group (an integrated marketing agency specialising in broadcast & digital, sold to the Economist in March 2012).

In addition to her experience in digital media and broadcast, Karen was listed as a leader in her field in the PR Week Powerbook.Karen was a trustee of UJIA for 9 years and is currently advising Jewish Futures Trust (JFT).

Kerry’s experience has always focused on using technology, and rich, multi-faceted data to deliver actionable insights & recommendations that ultimately deliver a great experience for our customers.

During recent years she put that insight into action by defining, building and developing a customer experience, optimisation, personalisation programme at The Rank Group, the UK's leading multi-channel gaming operator, who own and manage Mecca Bingo & Grosvenor Casinos.As part of that programme, Kerry has also brought in an entirely new enterprise tech stack, introduced behavioural analytics and managed a change in approach to become truly data driven and customer centric.

Prior to this, Kerry spent 3 years in the Australian market deploying technology & experience transformation projects for some of the largest brands across multiple sectors.

Michael joined Edwardian Hotels London in 1997 as Customer Services Manager.
Software Development was one of Michael’s passions which he put to good use when he introduced automation and data analysis in his department during his first year with the Company.

By the year 2000 Michael had formed Edwardian’s first software development team and through progression, dedication and hard work, is now the Group’s Director of Information Technology.

With 30+ years’ experience in the hospitality industry, Michael drives a successful in-house IT team with the objective to increase the personalisation of guest services via sophisticated technology built around Edwardian’s highly specific requirements and in alignment with the Group’s vision of being ‘Memory Makers’. The EHL technology team serves 12 luxury properties including their respective F&B portfolio. Michael and his team constantly push to make this technology available to a wide range of guests and employees on as many different platforms as possible.

Tarun Samtani is the Group Data Protection Officer for Boden Group. Boden is a British clothing multi-channel retailer selling online, by mail order and with a high street presence. Boden sells in several markets across UK, Europe, US, Asia and Australia. Tarun holds over 20+ years of experience across various sectors like Telecommunications, ISP's, Financial Services, Gambling, Retail and most recently Pharmaceuticals. Tarun has worked across UK, Europe, Asia & Middle East on different assignments.

He has a wealth of experience in Cyber security & Data privacy and is passionate about securing business information landscape. During the course of his career Tarun has been involved in the strategy & planning, design, architecture and implementation of a significant number of information security programmes.

His specialisations include strategic board advisory, building roadmaps planning through delivery of security / privacy programmes including Building a security aware culture, Data Security, GDPR and Data loss prevention.

Natalia Konstantinova is a great enthusiast with over 10 years' experience in the application of Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, IT and machine learning technologies to real world problems. She got her PhD from the University of Wolverhampton and worked in various fields such as machine translation, ontologies, information extraction and currently dialogue systems and chat bots. She is currently a lead software engineer in the R&D department of First Utility, the UK's largest independent energy provider, supplying gas and electricity to around one million UK homes.

Natalia is a strong believer that modern technology can transform businesses and our everyday life.

Nick is a data scientist at the tech unicorn Skyscanner. Having previously carried out a number of different roles across various industries – such as insurance, law, food tech and academia, he has experienced the joys and gains of delivering successful AI products, as well as felt the frustrations of some failed attempts.

Rob Wood is Head of Online at The Entertainer, the UK's fastest growing toy retailer. During Rob's eight years at The Entertainer he's overseen 7x online growth and introduced a range of market-leading multichannel features including 30 minute click and collect, pre-order and a Santa Claus chat bot.