Meet The 2023 Speakers

Graham Johnston recently joined the Donaldson Group as their Retail & Distribution CEO, bringing together the retail, eCommerce and distribution businesses. He was previously the Senior Director for Omnichannel Customer Support & Transformation at Asda and formally headed up omnichannel transformation for Three UK. For the past 10 years, Graham has led large-scale transformations in customer interactions, focussed on innovation to bridge the gap between physical and digital. Graham also hosts his own podcast series 'Think Omnichannel' where he speaks to fellow Omnichannel experts about the use of digital innovation to create better customer experiences.

Stuart Hill oversees all fulfilment, delivery and customer care aspects of Matches Fashion. With over 20 years experience in retail logistics, he has held senior operational roles at John Lewis & ASOS, CEO of Pie, as well as CEO & co-founder of wnDirect. Directly prior to Matches, Stuart was at FarFetch from 2018 to 2022 as their SVP of Logistics, overseeing all delivery, fulfilment and returns operations globally.

As Head of Retail at Dreams, Caroline Scott is an experienced people leader within the retail sector, both in central and field roles. She is obsessed with delivering outstanding customer experience, exceptional record of driving sustained results. The thing she loves the most is leading and building high performing teams. She was previously SVP Global Retail at Sweaty Betty for 1.5 years and prior to that she was Head of Retail - UK & ROI at Clarks for over three years.

Ellie Starr has been the Senior Strategic Partnerships Manager at Just Eat since 2019, where she is responsible for leading a sales team to acquire national branded restaurant groups, grocery & convenience brands and retailers onto the Just Eat platform. Previous roles included Strategic Partnerships Manager with Debut and National Sales Team Manager at Wowcher.

Nick King, as the Market Research & Insight Director at Auto Trader, analyses and interprets the trends in consumer adoption of technology and what this means for manufacturers and retailers. By doing so, can demonstrate strategies for customer acquisition and retention through digital and traditional offline channels. He has a particular focus on best practice in digital retailing today; how to stand out in digital marketplace - what are successful retailers doing today to win and; what will be the must have technologies - AI, VR, augmented reality.

Desi Reuben-Sealey is currently working as a Senior UX Manager at Victorinox and was the Senior UX/UI Designer for Debenhams until very recently. He offers a hands-on UX approach, to coach, mentor, grow and lead the design team in delivering a great digital product that crosses over the whole business. He has evolved the design language, utilised leadership skills to evolve the experience design strategy that supports the innovation and product streams of the organisation. Above all, Desi has established and evangelised UX methodologies, whilst embedding them as best practice and collaborating with other areas of the business, to make great UX a reality for debenhams.com.

Anna Woods is the Founder of Positive Retail, a chain of resale stores changing the way customers experience resale, through careful curation of deadstock partnerships, seller partnerships and in-house curation. She was voted as one of Sunday Times Styles 'Top 50 Independents in UK', Mary Portas 'Portas Picks' and featured in Elle, Vogue and Red Magazine. Anna is also a business and leadership coach, selected as a top business coach by coachfoundation.com in 2023.

Brian Abplanalp leads the Account Management team in London at Lightspeed Commerce and is responsible for the growth of UK & RoEMEA retailers and providing them with the best experience possible. He has worked in the tech space for 10+ years and is focused on ensuring retailers, leaders and business owners have the tools to accelerate their growth and scale to create high-performing retail businesses

Emma Thackray is the co-founder of Hip Pop, a brewer of functional gut lovin’ drinks. Since inception, Hip Pop has experienced exponential growth, with its range of vegan, low-sugar and non-artificial kombuchas and living sodas stocked by retailers including Booths, Harrods, Fortnum & Mason and most recently, 280 Sainsbury’s stores – the brand’s largest commercial listing to date. The alternative beverage brand was awarded a total of 5 stars across 4 of its fermented living culture drinks at this year’s Great Taste Awards – the world’s largest and most trusted food and drink accreditation scheme – in addition to being shortlisted for ‘SME Emerging Business’ at the Food & Drink Federation (FDF) Awards 2023. Emma was also recently selected to join Insider Media’s ‘North West 42 under 42’ list for 2023 – an annual campaign which profiles 42 people from the region who are excelling in heading up businesses, aged 42 and under

Will Lockie until recently was the Digital Director at The Rug Company, a leading global luxury design brand, trading across B2C, B2B, and HNW clients. Based in London, as a Global P&L owner, accountable for total digital performance and reporting to the CEO - he was leading a team of 10, comprised of digital product, technology, marketing, marketplaces, and client services. Global P&L owner, accountable for total digital performance, reporting to the CEO. Prior to TRC, Will was Global Head of Digital for Georg Jensen for just under four years.

Dan Turner joined ToolsGroup in January 2023 to lead the retail team in EMEA, following the recent acquisitions of JustEnough and Onera. With close to 20 years of experience working with retailers in solution areas from Point of Sale, eCommerce, Merchandising, and Supply Chain, Dan has seen many evolutions and revolutions in retail. His passion and success has always been around how the use of innovative technology can both drive real change in customer experience as well as reduce the cost and complexity of retail operations.

Rowland Gee is CEO of The Shoklite Company, a revolutionary new urban cycling/scootering apparel and Director of AromaChimie, a company who supply nutrition for the farming, poultry and livestock industry. He was until recently the Chairman of The Board at Cell Workout Athleisure for the past four years. He is an experienced retail manager with over 35 years of public company experience in the retail, marketing and design sector - he was CEO of Moss Bros Group from 1989-2002 and helped develop Hugo Boss retail operations in the UK to 17 stores. With two co-authors, Rowland wrote The Retail Start Up Book published by KoganPage, which was released in 2019 and is specifically targeted at the retail start up community. He has also founded Grey4Gold.com (G4G) and has recently completed a contract to mentor retail businesses in Wales, and with Cherwell District Council, Shropshire Councils on re-invigorating town centres and on the restoration of the UK high streets.

Penny Grivea is an executive leader with a record of delivering sustainable growth for international luxury and well-being brands across beauty, jewellery and fashion accessories. She builds and repositions brands to support strategic moves and product development in competitive markets; develops and executes profitable multi-channel growth strategies in retail, wholesale and eCommerce. Penny is passionate about building inspired high performance teams and building a strong company culture.

Kelly Whitwick is Head of Retail Market Insights at GfK and has over 12 years’ experience in the retail industry, across tech, durables, and home markets. She works closely with the UK’s leading retailers in this space, delivering consultancy on retail trends, by intertwining Point of Sale data with consumer research methodologies, to give a holistic view of the retail market and consumer shopping habits.

James Stark is Senior Account Director NER, Merchant Services at Worldline. He is an experienced payments leader who has spent over 14 years within the payment industry in client focused roles. During his time with Worldline, drawing on the expertise he has gained throughout his career, James has been playing a key role in supporting the company developing its retail business - retail being one of the company’s key verticals.

Founder and CEO of Sol Retail, Barry Tong had built a global business from scratch without a loan, investment, or overdraft. The now £15 million pound a year business is one of Amazons largest beauty businesses on the planet and is on a path to deliver a £50 million turnover in the next three years. A previous regional winner of the Great British Entrepreneur of the year award, Barry is also a Department of International Trade export champion helping companies grow globally. He has helped many new businesses get a foot on the global marketplaces and participates in both live and digital events speaking about how to take a business from start up to £15 million.

With 15+ years in ecommerce, including early Amazon UK and Tesco, Thomas Vosper has a detailed insight on strategy, marketing and operations across thousands of eCommerce sites, high street stores, and digital marketing agencies. He is an international awards judge and a TEDx speaker about the challenge of building the startup aisle 3 as a first-time founder. He has raised over £1m in funding during the past 24 months and built an international team, as aisle 3 looks to remove the need to open another tab or app to shop.

Amelia Macdonald is Head of Retail Experience, Colart. Having worked in retail design for over 20 years, her core challenge is delivering OMNI centric brand experiences. Today’s shoppers demand in-store experience, this must be targeted to the consumer to drive emotional engagement and fulfil both needs and inspiration whilst nudging towards conversion at all touchpoints. From FMCG such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Aldi - to mass market such as Marks & Spencer, Harvey Nicholls, Loreal and J&J - through too high-end retail such as Heidi Klein, Wedgewood and Molton Brown, in house and agency side, Amelia has an extensive background in retail, and a passion for understanding shoppers.

As the Head of Marketplace Experiences at Michaels, Colin McDonnell’s role is to build teams of product and operations specialists across the organisation, to support new lines of business, and to lead the Michaels marketplaces experience team - as they develop operations and product experiences and launch and operate their new online marketplace on a home-built platform. In addition, the team supports the integrations and operations of their complimentary channels of business such as Walmart and Amazon.

Kaylie Mitten joined FatFace in 2020 to drive the digital agenda and build new capabilities within the digital function. FatFace is a multichannel retailer with a thriving international digital business as well as over 200 stores in the UK and over 20 stores in the US and a highly engaged social community. Drawing on experience across multiple sectors, including utilities and finance, Kaylie is responsible for the digital roadmap and leads the development and UX/UI teams in delivering numerous optimisations and projects to improve the digital customer experience. Her passion is exploring customer behaviour thorough data and testing and she propels a test and learn mentality within FatFace.

Leanne Oddy has over ten years' merchandising experience and a demonstrated history of working successfully within the global retail industry. She is responsible for all UK, international wholesale and 3rd Party activities for both Ann Summers & My Viv and has been in this role since 2019. Leanne is currently working on growing awareness of a new female sexual wellness range - My Viv - developed in partnership with Breast Cancer Now, the range is designed to support every woman through every stage of their life. Leanne was previously Franchise Trading Manager (Merchandise Manager) for Top Shop and Top Man for over four years and worked for Arcadia before that, as an international merchandiser.

Rob Savin is an award-winning marketing leader with bags of energy and experience. Alongside consultancy, he is the founder of Ink Parlour and a non-exec director for Skamper, a start-up running app. In his last role as Marketing Director at Alpkit, he grew sales by over 100% in every channel category and territory. winning awards for customer experience in the process. Rob also ran two record-breaking crowd-funding campaigns, literally achieving in minutes what most companies take weeks to do. Prior to Alpkit, Rob has held marketing and technology leadership roles at Co-op, Yorkshire Building Society and Leeds Building Society.

As the VP of Marketing & Design, Lucy Nicholls is responsible for driving Intelligence Node's overall position and go-to-market strategy in North America and around the world. Her focus is at the intersection of AI, Analytics, and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), delivering emerging technologies into the complex operating environments of enterprise brands and retailers to drive revenue impact through marketing optimization, eCommerce enablement, and customer experience. Lucy has worked with some of the world's largest brands and retailers to implement software that drives revenue growth, eCommerce enablement, customer experience, brand and trade marketing optimization both online and offline. Lucy has undertaken various leadership positions with venture-backed companies focused on driving technology through the consumer goods vertical. She has experience building up and running lean marketing and design teams, building and refining customer success programs, and she has also had a hand in product design for software interfaces in this space. Lucy holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Economics and Finance from The University of Sydney and a Master's Degree in Information and Data Visualisation from MICA.

Emma Siveyer has been with Three UK for 10 years, most recently within Three Business, defining and executing a multi-year digital strategy. A key focus has been maximising the digital capability from the company-wide digital transformation programme to develop new experiences, ensuring sales and service journeys are innovative, seamless and customers can effortlessly interact with Three and their products, however and whenever they want to.

Maxim Gelmann founded Stroodles four years ago. Stroodles is an eco-tableware company, famous for its pasta straws, featured on Dragons Den, BBC Good Food, Unilad, Huffington Post and many more. The Stroodles portfolio also includes edible biscuit spoons and stirrers, edible wafer cups, eco wheat bran plates, biscuit bowls and saucers. The Alchemist, de Longhi, Benares, Marriot, Hilton, Selfridges and Whole Foods are already stroodling. Stroodles offers uncompromising solutions to the everyday consumer and business and inspire how fun and easy sustainability can be. Stroodles is part of a larger global effort to change the way we consume products, one Stroodle product at a time. Maxim is an enthusiastic, proactive, future oriented, multi-skilled and strongly networked entrepreneur, investor and freelancer with over 13 years of strategy consulting, mentoring, investment and operational and interim management experience across industries, with a focus on retail, fashion and FMCG.

Jo Causon joined The Institute of Customer Services as its CEO in 2009, where she has driven membership growth by 150 percent and established the UK Customer Satisfaction Index as the country premier indicator of consumer satisfaction, providing organisations with an indicator of the return on their service strategy investment. Jo focuses on demonstrating a clear link between employee engagement, customer service strategies and organisational performance. Working across the public, private and voluntary sectors she provides strategic advice to Boardrooms to raise the standards of service provided by UK organisations and to provide evidence of the connection between customer satisfaction and operational efficiency and profitability.

James Coughlan has been Interim Sales Transformation Lead since April 2023 at Arco, the leading retailer in keeping people safe at work. He is supporting the Sales Director & Senior Executive Team in the strategic execution of the company's digital transformation with a data-first approach, through leveraging insights and analytics to drive improvements in group revenues. Past roles include Interim Head of Global Transformation, Digital & Data at Inspired Education Group and
Interim Head of Digital & CRM, UK & Ireland at Northgate. James was Managing Director, Digital at HMV for three years from 2013-2016. He is an inspirational and transformational business leader, recognised for a deep understanding of enterprise technologies and quickly cutting through to the heart of the challenge.

Wizz Selvey is a thought leader and a go-to industry name for market insights and advice in the retail industry. Previously Head of Buying at Selfridges, and Director at Cowshed Beauty and Soho Home, she is now the founder of Wizz & Co, a strategy agency specialising in retail, consumer trends and brand-building. Wizz has been named an ‘Expert’ in the Top 100 Retail Influencer list 2023 by USA’s Re-Think Retail and the UK’s Retail Tech Innovation Hub, and is an international speaker for trend forecast events (including at Google’s London offices) and a regular contributor to industry and mainstream press.

Tim Nash is the visionary behind Shop Drop Daily, retail’s go to resource and industry voice, in addition to challenging brand creativity through his work as Chief Creative Thinker at iiiF. He has worked creatively in the retail industry for nearly twenty years, designing and delivering memorable global activations and strategies, winning a number of awards and accolades along the way. From a shopfloor start to heading up global Visual Merchandising departments, he currently directs creative for Wild VC, working with diverse businesses to bring them to life IRL. Tim is a creative thinker passionate about curating physical brand experiences that engage and inspires.

Andrew Mann is an omnichannel leader with a consistent record of breakthrough commercial success within data driven insight, Loyalty CRM, brand development, and digital transformation. His broad experience includes Cadbury Schweppes plc, The Coca-Cola Company, Clubcard Director at Tesco plc, Insight & Loyalty Director at Sainsbury's plc , Customer Director at Coop, VP Insight, Pricing & CRM at Asda, and most recently, Head of Insight & Loyalty at M&S. He now heads up NorthBailey, a market research led business consultancy working with retailers, CPGs and tech suppliers. Andrew is a data driven commercial leader who is passionate about innovating and transforming the customer experience and driving customer numbers and L4L growth. He identifies the heart of the commercial challenge, making complexity clear, and listening to customers, to develop customer led solutions to solve commercial challenges.

Joris Peucheret is the Global eCommerce Director at Alamy, a British privately owned stock photography agency launched in September 1999. He has a passion and expertise to help innovative companies in building best-in-class customer experiences, to deliver global online business growth by delighting customers and employees. He was previously Digital Director at L'Occitane and led the eCommerce strategy alongside acquisition, retention, digital personalisation, community engagement and customer experience.

Jack Sweeney is the Founder & Chief Strategist at JDS, a boutique consulting firm that empowers consumer product brands with strategic marketing & sales. Previous to this, he spent 10 years working for household name brands, most recently as Marketing Director for Kärcher UK. Relentlessly customer-centric, data-driven and profit-focused, Jack believes in a strategic no-nonsense approach to business, always seeking to simplify the seemingly complex.

Trevor Gordon is a highly versatile, digital, customer experience and transformation leader, who consistently delivers results through innovative use of customer insight, data, and technology to drive growth, improvements, and efficiencies. He is a passionate multi-award-winning executive with 20 years track-record (permanent & interim) of driving digital transformation, scale, optimisation, and operational leadership for world-class businesses including Diageo, Sodexo, Vodafone, Collinson, Vue Entertainmen and Autotrader.

Neil Tunbridge was most recently the Managing Director of Whoosh, a new 'live selling & content delivery' marketplace. Whoosh empowers small brands to participate in live selling shows and delivers multi channel live selling capabilities. Formally Neil was co-Founder of Mellow, the multi-brand eCommerce and Technology CB company. Neil was also a co-founder of Pivot International, an eCommerce marketplace services agency.