Meet The 2019 Speakers

Tarun Samtani is the Group Data Protection Officer for Boden Group. He holds over 20+ years of experience across various sectors like telecommunications, ISP's, financial services, gambling, pharmaceuticals, and most recently retail. 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 and 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.

Kerry Dawes experience has always focused on using technology, and rich, multi-faceted data to deliver actionable insights and 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 and 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 three years in the Australian market deploying technology and experience transformation projects for some of the largest brands across multiple sectors.

Mark Terry is the Tech Lead at Holiday Extras, the UK's market leader in travel add-ons. He has more than 20 years’ experience, from linux systems, databases and security, to e-commerce, and web tech - including running his own web-hosting startup. Mark currently leads a team developing Holiday Extras’ real-time streaming and data-processing platform, utilising his passion for all things data and its vital role in unlocking business potential.

Christina Garratt is a senior manager and intelligent automation lead for John Lewis. She has over 20 years’ retail IT industry experience, and has delivered multiple programmes of technology change across John Lewis physical estate, ERP, Contact Centre Systems and RPA. In her current role, Christina leads a multidisciplinary team of resources involved in RPA projects, from discovery to delivery and operational support. Her key achievements include; building COE capability, introduction of 3rd party support model and enhancement of RPA with AI.

Chris McGrath is passionate about building the digital landscape by which Marks and Spencer’s will win in this world, as it is now, and in the future. His part in this is to lead their transformational programmes that will create a digital engagement hub that is driven by machine learning and BOT technologies. This has started with implementing a Natural Language Processing Bot that has transformed how 9 million calls are handled to 640 Stores. Chris has spent decades building legacy systems in retail, and is now busy tearing these down.

Karl Boyce is currently Head of Digital & CRM at Domino's Pizza Group. He has considerable digital and CRM marketing experience, having delivered transformational strategies for a number of FTSE businesses within complex, multi-stakeholder environments. He is a people-orientated person, with a particular passion for developing and supporting the growth of specialist skill sets within internal teams. Karl's core experience includes CRM, websites, content, strategy, paid media, social media, PPC, SEO BI, Analytics, location marketing, location technology, system architecture, product marketing, advertising, brand development and B2B. He is proficient with a number of leading CRM solutions and integrations including Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, FastStats, Power BI, Tableau, Dotmailer, Coremotives, and MailChimp.

Michael Mrini joined Edwardian Hotels London (EHL) 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.

Eugene Fisher is currently a Strategy Architect with River Island. An entrepreneurial strategist passionate about helping businesses innovate, transform and thrive - he has launched six- and seven-figure products in startup, mid-cap and blue chip environments across retail, travel and banking sectors. Eugene thrives in fast-paced, ambiguous environments where new ideas are recognised as the critical currency for fueling growth. He is a recipient of the UK's Tier 1 Exceptional Talent in Digital Technology Visa.

Nick Masca 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.

Rebecca Vickery is a key member of the data science team at Holiday Extras. Her role has been instrumental in developing some of the first machine learning capabilities for the business, building customer segmentation and marketing models, and helping to the move the business from descriptive reporting to predictive and prescriptive analytics. She has more than ten years experience working in data and analytics within the travel industry. Currently she is working on developing analytical and machine learning tools on the Google Cloud Platform. In addition, she writes regularly about data science and artificial intelligence on Medium, and is the co-founder of the community initiative AlGo which delivers talks, workshops and information, for schools and colleges, to encourage more girls to study technology subjects.

Natalia Konstantinova is currently a lead software engineer in the R&D department of Shell Energy, the UK's largest independent energy provider, supplying gas and electricity to around one million UK homes. She 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. Having obtained her PhD from the University of Wolverhampton, Natalia has worked in various fields such as machine translation, ontologies, information extraction and currently dialogue systems and chat bots. She is a strong believer that modern technology can transform businesses and our everyday life.

Orlando Machado has 20 years of bringing data to life, working at board level with major organisations in the private and public sectors. He is currently Chief Data Scientist at Aviva Quantum, a global data science practice with over 500 members. His past experience includes being Chief Data Scientist at MoneySuperMarket, Head of Customer Insight at Dunnhumby and, Head of Analytics at Wunderman (WPP). He stared out as a statistician working in academia.

Dr Geraint Evans 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.