About

Dr Hannah Fry is an Associate Professor in the Mathematics of Cities at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL where she studies patterns in human behaviour. Her research applies to a wide range of social problems and questions, from shopping and transport to urban crime, riots and terrorism.

Her critically acclaimed BBC documentaries include Horizon: Diagnosis on Demand? The Computer Will See You Now, Britain’s Greatest Invention, City in the Sky (BBC Two), Magic Numbers: Hannah Fry’s Mysterious World of Maths, The Joy of Winning, The Joy of Data, Contagion! The BBC Four Pandemic and Calculating Ada (BBC Four). She also co-presents The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry (BBC Radio 4) and The Maths of Life with Lauren Laverne (BBC Radio 6).

Hannah is the author of Hello World, published in 2018.

Nick Smallwood is the Chief Executive Officer of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority and Head of Government’s Project Delivery Function.

Nick is the former Vice President for Projects Engineering and Chief Projects Engineer at Shell. He joins the IPA with 37 years’ experience of managing complex project portfolios and having developed Shell’s Global Project Academy. At Shell, Nick was accountable for managing how projects were delivered and a variety of significant improvement programmes.

Nick was also a trustee of the board of the Association for Project Management (APM) until November 2019, where he contributed to the overall development of the UK’s project management profession.

Richard has over 25 years’ experience in infrastructure policy, governance, strategy and financing, advising both public and private sector clients in the UK and overseas. 

Richard began his career as a civil servant at the UK Department for Transport where he held positions in the road, rail and aviation directorates. He was Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Transport and the Deputy Prime Minister. He subsequently moved to the Infrastructure Advisory team at Citigroup before joining KPMG, where he led the UK Infrastructure, Building and Construction sector until 2018. 

Richard clients include national and local infrastructure and transport authorities, private infrastructure owners and promoters of infrastructure schemes. He has advised on the governance and financing of some of the worlds’ most complex civil engineering projects. 

Richard has a long-standing reputation for leading clients through complex and politically high-profile transactions and providing strategic, financial and governance advice in relation to the delivery of infrastructure services and projects. 

Richard is Vice President and Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He is a Commissioner on the International Development Infrastructure Commission established by the UK government’s Secretary of State for International Development. He is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Infrastructure and the Forum Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment. He is a member of the Infrastructure Board of the Confederation of British Industry. He chairs the Advisory Council of The Infrastructure Forum, which is an independent think-tank which brings together organisations with involvement in UK infrastructure from public, private and regulatory perspectives. As a prolific writer on infrastructure and transport, Richard is quoted regularly in the trade and national press.

Ewelina is a passionate advocate of best practices, progressive project thinking, diversity in all aspects of project delivery and an enthusiastic supporter of anyone being able to choose project management as their way of life and career.

Her career in project management and construction begun in 2013 and within 7 years Ewelina has grown from an assistant project manager to a chartered programme manager delivering increasingly complex and geographically disbursed schemes. She was managing the delivery of the Dyson Electric Vehicle manufacturing plant and is now responsible for the Dyson Headquarters to be located within St James Power Station in Singapore.

Ewelina has the first-hand experience of being the underdog, the newcomer in a male dominated industry demanding the technical knowledge she yet had to gain. Now keen to share the insights and learnings from her own journey to date in the drive to support all inspired managers wanting to reach their individual best. Her motto is based on the approach that we all are our own businesses and the way we manage our career must solely be based on our own business case i.e. our dreams!

Gillian Jones is Managing Director and founder of Emerge Development Consultancy. For over twenty-two years she has worked on organisational strategy development and change initiatives with companies worldwide.

Throughout her career, Gillian’s main focus has been leadership development, coaching, studying with leaders that empower their staff to achieve great performance and working with organisations to change the culture to an empowered workforce through coaching culture strategy.

In the last five years she has been specialising in championing women’s development, specialising in supporting women to achieve their goals, develop their confidence and reach more senior positions. In 2015 she developed the acclaimed Empowering Women’s programme RISE which is delivered in the UK and the Middle East.

Following over 17 years’ experience as an executive coach Gillian has proven ability in coaching people to higher performance and in particular coaching women to achieve and succeed in board positions. Her experience of working within many engineering and male dominated organisations ensures she understands how women need to portray themselves in a male orientated environment. She has worked with leaders in all types of industry and companies including, space, defence, media, publishing legal, sport, accounting, construction, public service, entertainment and many others.

Jeni’s whole focus is on the human factor within team and organisational development. Without true individual and team well-being, there can be very little sustainable organisational success. This insight led Jeni to investigate and implement better ways to re-energise team development and build on what's strong to facilitate positive change.  

Jeni's expertise lies in positive psychology or ‘the science of human flourishing’ and takes a perspective on team development and personal and organisational change that focuses on well-being as the main step to performance. She helps individuals to discover and amplify the best of themselves and to apply their best strengths with energy and focus; leading to greater creativity and productivity, better business outcomes and personal fulfilment. With her current project, she is working with The Open University to support the human element in a new product team working under pressure and in a situation of uncertainty and emerging strategy.

Jeni has an MSc in applied positive psychology and is a qualified appreciative inquiry practitioner, transformational coach and agile team coach. Jeni has a wealth of multi-disciplined experience to call on, having previously worked as a marketing director and VP of marketing, as well as running a successful business.

Mark has been involved with business change for over 25 years. A common thread throughout that time has been his work in the music and publishing sector, supporting the major music labels (EMI, Warner Music and Universal) and others through a period of major upheaval.

Mark’s keen interest in human behaviour in fast paced change situations stemmed from the reactions of many of his peers and clients at the time. The common approach was to resist at all costs until it was too late. He became increasingly curious as to why we all tend to resist change in some circumstances whilst embracing it in others.

He co-founded Applied Change with a clear purpose to push the thinking on change and human behaviour whilst also helping his clients to get changes done, often in highly complex and political situations. Most recently he’s been working closely with the University of the West of England (UWE) Psychological Sciences Research Group to develop simple, practical models and tools that re-orientate our approach to business change, starting from the human perspective.

Performance coach, speaker and author. His working life has focused on training and developing high performing individuals and teams from a variety of environments such as the project sector, health, corporate, sport and military. He studied at Manchester Met Uni and within the Military during his colourful Service career.

His current work includes research, supporting selection processes and performance development of individuals and teams by using best practices taken from the various environments he has worked in.  He is a firm believer in generating responsibility, creating a leadership ethos that is flexible charismatic, and based on values and good judgement.  Rob’s mission is to use the Judgement Index to bring positive life and organisational change to those he works with.

Susanne is an internationally recognised project leadership coach, trainer and consultant. She is the author The Project Management Coaching Workbook and The Power of Project Leadership (now in its second edition), for which she recently won an award. Working with organisations across the globe, Susanne delivers leadership development programmes and executive coaching to help project and change managers step up and become better leaders.

Prior to setting up her own business, Susanne worked in the corporate sector leading high-profile programmes of up to $30 million for organisations such as Standard Bank, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. She is a fully qualified corporate and executive coach, an NLP Practitioner and DISC accredited. Susanne is the director of Susanne Madsen International. She is also the co-founder of The Project Leadership Institute, which is dedicated to building authentic project leaders by engaging the heart, the soul and the mind.

Vijay came to project management through an earlier career in the challenging arena of the live music and events industry.  Wishing to apply his skills in less noisy, more predictable environments, Vijay moved into operations and project management roles with the Mayor of London’s administration delivering a range of initiatives from the 2007 and 2008 Red Bull Air Races to organisation restructures to CRM deployments; graduating to leading visitor welcome initiatives for London 2012.  Since 2012, Vijay has been a consultant across a range of sectors from financial services, consumer and manufacturing to government.  More recently at PwC and now PA; Vijay has specialised in helping organisations with their strategic execution challenges – two thirds of strategies fail in execution.  Vijay’s current focus is on diversity and inclusion and the importance of this to innovation in a VUCA world.  Where organisations are increasingly turning to projects as a mechanism to disrupt or manage disruption; having diverse experiences and views in project teams is an important driver of success.  Vijay will be speaking on the importance of diversity to the project economy and dealing with disruption.

Outside work, Vijay is an advocate of organ donation; having been the lucky recipient of a cadaveric kidney transplant in 2006.  Vijay is also a recovering politician and has been using the advocacy skills he developed as a local councillor on behalf of the project profession to encourage greater diversity and emphasise the growing importance of the profession in a world shifting to a project and network based economy.

David is the Managing Director of the project management firm Projecting which specialises in financial services projects and has offices in Edinburgh, London, and Madrid. He started the company in 2013 after 14 years in project management in various project, programme, and head of project roles. However, with a degree and a PhD in botany, he is also one of the trustees of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, a non-departmental public body and home to Scotland’s national collection of plant species and specimens.

He is one of two trustees that sit on the programme board for the £70m Edinburgh Biomes project. David has been involved with the Association for Project Management for several years, including organising Scottish conferences in the past, as well as running project management seminars and writing articles within his sector. He is also a board member, and former chair, of the Scottish youth homelessness charity The Rock Trust.

Dr Stephanie Fitzgerald is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist, keynote speaker and published author. Stephanie's clinical specialisms are anxiety disorders and trauma, and she has worked as a Health and Wellbeing Consultant to many companies across multiple industries.

Stephanie is the Senior Business Partner - Mental Health at Rolls-Royce where she is delivering the Global Mental Health strategy, working with a vibrant and diverse workforce, in a safety critical environment. 

Stephanie believes health issues are safety issues and will often talk of health as safety not health and safety. Stephanie specialises in delivering practical, evidence-based interventions, focusing on sustainable improvement. Stephanie is passionate about ensuring people are happy, healthy, safe and engaged in the workplace, and believes everyone can and should enjoy work. 

Fiona completed her degree in Performing Arts (music) at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, and then began her career as a vocalist, singing backing vocals for many bands and musicians. Even experiencing solo success with her own song.

Throughout these ten years, Fiona also worked in community arts, teaching singing and song writing to children and young people in deprived areas. Using music to build confidence, self-esteem and life skills.

Having experienced the positive effects the arts can have on children and young people, Fiona transitioned into arts management. Initially, Fiona worked in charities who focused on hard to reach children and young people, and it was in this setting that arts in health became a real interest.

For the past seven years, Fiona has worked for Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity as an arts programme manager, building an innovative and diverse arts in health programme which gives children and young people in hospital the opportunity to express themselves creatively and to find fun and engaging ways to help children through their treatment. Fiona also sits on the Arts Culture Health and Wellbeing Scotland committee, and Edinburgh Lothian Health Foundation Advisory Group and the Arts in Health Advisory Council for Dublin children’s hospitals.

Kenn is author of "Implementing project and program benefits management" (2018). He is a recognised expert in benefits realisation management, stakeholder engagement and portfolio, programme and project management as well as the application of best practices. Kenn has extensive experience advising clients across five continents.

As an in-demand management consultant and public speaker, Kenn has influenced the implementation of best practices in programme and project management to improve performance and maturity within organisations within the financial, IT, defence, resources, construction and public sectors.

Kenn has coached and mentored senior executives in over 20 countries

Mike is a chartered civil engineer and has spent his career delivering large, complex, multi-disciplinary projects and programmes in the UK and abroad, including in the Middle East, Asia Pacific and most recently the ITER megaproject in France. 

He has experience across the built environment, infrastructure and development sectors with a broad range of energy, commercial, industrial, academic and residential schemes.  He works closely with a wide range of clients and stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle from inception, feasibility and planning to design, construction and handover.   Mike is part of the APM Stakeholder Engagement Focus Group.

Naomi has a global reputation for her work on cross-sectoral comparisons of the performance of large and complex projects. She ran the MEGAPROJECT COST Action, an EU funded research programme that bought together over 90 researchers from 23 countries to create and analyse a cross-sectoral database of megaproject performance. She was a member of the World Economic Forum’s CEO Council for Transformational Megaprojects.

Naomi has disseminated her research findings internationally to organisations such as the OECD, World Bank, and the European Investment Bank; and nationally to organisations such as the National Audit Office, Lloyds Register, the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency (NDA) and the Association of Project Management. She has worked with a variety of companies from ‘blue-chips’ to regional SMEs. She has been an executive director for the European Construction Institute and she is the author of one hundred and thirty peer-reviewed journal papers, book chapters and articles in the field of project and innovation management.

Nukey Proctor is a principal consultant in project and programme management for Methods Consulting with extensive experience in the technology sector driving transformation projects for public sector organisations. 

With a career spanning engagement management, procurement and business operations, Nukey’s previous clients have included Croydon Health Services NHS Trust, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Barts’ Health NHS Trust and most recently the service management department within Digital Operations at Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Services, where she is the Transformation Lead.

She is also qualified in ITIL, PRINCE 2, AGILE, SCRUM and APM, and delivers Project Management training and mentoring to other PM professionals.

Vocationally, Nukey sits on a Local Governing Body within Coventry and has held Vice-Chair positions at both local and regional level for a political party. An advocate for youth development, Nukey is a Brightside Mentor and WISE Registered Role Model. She believes passionately in encouraging young people to pursue careers in Project Management and improving diversity in the STEM industries.

Dr Philip Goodwin has been Chief Executive of VSO since March 2015. He was previously CEO of TREEAID, an NGO working on agro-forestry in dryland Africa and spent 11 years with British Council where he held leadership positions in Kenya, Uganda, Pakistan and Belgium. Philip has been a community development volunteer in Timbuktu, Mali. He has a PhD and MSc in environmental policy and a degree in agricultural economics.

Philip is Vice Chair of the International Forum for Volunteering in Development. He is also a trustee of the Royal National Lifeboat Institute, the charity that saves lives at sea. He is co-author with Tony Page of the leadership book “From Hippos to Gazelles: how leaders create leaders”.

The University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University are delivering Data-Driven Innovation as part of the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal. They are increasing the provision of data and digital skills in the workforce and using world-leading expertise in research and data analytics to improve products and services, transforming the City Region into the data capital of Europe.

As DDI’s Head of Strategy, Ritchie maintains the strategic context for the DDI programme, within which the range of initiatives that deliver the programme’s outcomes can be developed and delivered; assuring that the programme aligns with the ever-evolving wider innovation landscape, enabling diverse collaborations that deliver valuable engagements for our partners and stakeholders.

Sarah is the global Head of People and Professionalism in the Programme Management function at Rolls-Royce Plc and draws upon 14 years’ experience in leading and implementing global functional transformation projects that have been designed to deliver step changes in people capability.

Her most recent noticeable achievement was the launch of the Rolls-Royce Programme Management Academy which is now seen as a global company asset. The Academy aims to upskill and reskill employees in P3M skillsets across the company to meet the needs of one of the company’s strategic objectives.

Sarah is highly motivated, results driven and is passionate about enabling people to be at their best.  She brings a progressive mindset towards promoting the importance and understanding of neurodiversity in project teams and how this impacts on healthy high performance.  Creating a healthy high-performance culture is essential in order for practitioners to thrive and yield greater productivity in their roles.  Sarah provides support to practitioners who want to move their personal and professional performance to the next level.

Sonia has over 20 years of experience working with Projects and driving change initiatives predominantly within the area of technology. Taking on a role within a Global portfolio office for Mars IS she developed her passion for PMO and became an advocate and skilled change agent for adopting PMO process and best practice. Qualified as an AIPMO Expert, MSP® and P3O® practitioner, her background as an IT project and programme manager enables her to work with key stakeholders to ensure that they are taken on the change journey at a pace that works for them. 4 years ago, Sonia took on a challenge to setup a greenfield Technology PMO at Channel 4. Her success in this mission led her to an opportunity to take on her current role as Head of Planning and PMO and do the same at the Enterprise level. In an industry that does not lend itself well to project management, Sonia has had to overcome many obstacles and challenges to achieve the success and results that are already making a significant difference to the organisation. Sonia has both a collaborative style and pragmatic approach that contributes to her success in the setup of greenfield PMO’s.

Debbie joined APM in 2015 and held the roles of chief commercial officer and chief operating officer before becoming CEO in 2018. She is responsible for leading the organisation through a period of change, including establishing it as a chartered body and developing the reputation of project management as a profession of value.

Adrian is above all a project professional. He has led or rescued transformation programmes widely from Telcos to eCommerce, mining, aviation, and public sector. He has designed, built and operated P3 capability and PMOs, including professional services businesses.

His key skill is the adaptation of best practice successfully. In the last ten years his consultancy practice has focussed on two areas. Firstly, what he and colleagues call Organisational Project Management – the creation of an organisation culture that enables projects to thrive and not merely survive, or even die. Secondly, on agile project management which too many organisations get badly, and expensively, wrong.

Adrian has helped evolve P3 and PMOs through UK government standards, APM BoK6, the Gower Handbook of Programme Management (1st edition), and APM guides on agile governance and assurance. He is a visiting lecturer at Nottingham and Southampton University Business Schools.

Alan is the Head of Delivery and Change for Coop Funeralcare and is responsible for ensuring change lands and is sustained whilst protecting the core operation. 

Alan joined the Co-op in 2010 and has worked across the organisation in both retail and services working on significant transformation programmes. He is an innovative problem solver with a proven track record of leading transformational change that has delivered substantial success and contributed to market leading growth. In 2015 he led and launched the Fresh Quality Always initiative which saw double digit growth for impacted categories and saw the first quarter of growth which still continues.

Adaptable, resilient and motivated, Alan champions both customer/client and colleague, ensuring they are at the forefront of strategic decisions. His motivational and empowering leadership style has allowed him to inspire his teams to deliver excellent results at pace, whilst developing a culture of continuous improvement, trust and sustainability.

Avtar is a Vice President of Solution Architecture at Barclays. He has worked in commercial IT settings for 25  years for organisations across multiple business domains and of varying sizes. His career started early, writing code for small software houses, before writing degree courses in Software Engineering whilst researching emergent technologies and interconnected systems, to working as an Enterprise Solution Architect for multi-national Systems Integrators and user facing organisations.

As an Architect who has worked in environments ranging in size from small teams of 2-3 people to deliveries with several hundred people using numerous methodologies. Avtar has often had to “bridge the gap” between technical, delivery and business stakeholders and facilitate a dynamic that fits people, organisational culture, technological imperatives, business change and value realisation pressures.

Working within the CTO of Barclays, Avtar ensures that solutions and deliveries adhere to corporate governance, standards and toolsets whilst shaping future state models and technology adoption.

Belinda joined Green Alliance in 2018 and is responsible for developing and executing Green Alliance’s strategy and overseeing Greener UK and its influence on the Brexit process. Prior to joining Green Alliance, Belinda worked as head of government and rural affairs at the Campaign to Protect Rural England for two and a half years.

Before that, she worked in the Science Policy Centre of The Royal Society and at Defra, where she focused on issues ranging from waste to noise and agriculture. She started her career at Shell before joining the Countryside Agency. She has a degree in geography from Cambridge University and an MSc in environmental management from Birkbeck College.

Kate Ho is a principal product manager at Skyscanner, a global travel company that serves millions of travellers every day. Throughout her career, she has worked in various agile projects across a diverse set of industries; from public sector at the Scottish Government, to financial services at Sainsbury's Bank and FreeAgent, as well as running her own educational games startup.

Her academic background is in computer science, she navigated through academia with a BSc (Edinburgh), MSc (Manchester) and a PhD in Requirements Engineering at Edinburgh University.

Louise leads the project controls team with Turner and Townsend in Scotland. With 12 years’ experience in the railway industry, Louise has worked on many large scale, multi-disciplinary rail improvement programmes both in Scotland and Sydney, Australia.

She has spent significant time working in a construction environment and loves getting out of the office back to site. Her core specialisms lie in planning and scheduling and performance reporting. Louise is an expert in earned value management and is accredited to deliver the APM foundation and practitioner courses. Louise forms part of the APM Scotland committee.

Paul has been a programme director for public and private mega-programmes across the country in the telecom, finance, energy/nuclear and transport sectors. Paul also gives pro bono support for global conservation organisations such as WWF. He has an MPhil in International Relations from Cambridge University, an MSc in Major Programmes from Oxford University and an MA in Strategic Studies from King’s College London.

Paul has a portfolio career and has been senior independent advisor to Infrastructure and Projects Authority since 2008 (Major Projects Review Group reviewer for Cabinet Office and HM Treasury); leading/teaching the governance module at University College London on the MSc ‘Strategic Management of Projects’ since 2012; full-time PhD research into ‘Measuring Infrastructure Projects’ Sustainable Development Goals Impact’ with the Nathu Puri Institute; and project advisor to global organisations such as Cisco, UNOPS and Deutsche Bank.

Previously, Paul worked for 20 years in the Royal Marines Commandos and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office on global operations. He then had five years in Deloitte Consulting as a director, and jointly set-up a leading project performance consultancy, Moorhouse, in 2004, winning many national awards, including the APM Firm of the Year twice in its first five years.

Rob is a director with Arup, based in London. He has worked around the world with Arup for 27 years, and specialises in the planning, set-up, leadership and delivery of complex infrastructure and property projects, both client side and as leader of multidisciplinary teams.

His project track record includes the Beijing Olympics Water Cube, the Laban Dance School in Deptford, New Acton Nishi in Canberra, Greenhouse by Joost in Sydney, and High Speed 2, currently Europe’s biggest project. He is a regular speaker on leadership, project management, organisational culture and the future of work, and is a guest lecturer at the Bartlett at UCL and the University of New South Wales.

In 2018 Rob was lead author for ‘Future of Project Management’ – a collaboration between Association for Project Management, Arup, and the Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management. The future trends explored in FoPM continue to inspire significant research activities, including how the project management profession can respond to and influence achieving the UN sustainable development goals and the UK’s net zero emissions targets.