Rob Kerr has applied project management best practice in a range of industries throughout his career, helping to bring brilliant products and services to market.
He launched his own project management consultancy in 2014 and has been reviewing and expanding his offering ever since.
He has written Project Future to ensure that others aspiring to be their own boss have the confidence to test their ideas and make it happen.
Rob believes that everyone should be empowered to create the best life they possibly can for themselves, and that critical analysis in the planning phase is vital to prospects of success.
Originally from Essex, UK, Rob lives in London with his wife and two children.
Melissa Hood is the founding director of The Parent Practice. A former solicitor, when her youngest was born she changed career to spend more time at home, working part time as a decorative painter.
She took a parenting class when one of her sons, diagnosed with dyslexia, was in trouble at school with impulsive, aggressive and disruptive behaviour. Melissa and John wanted to address the behaviour, as well as help him academically. The advice transformed their family life as they learnt how to understand their children’s needs better, communicate more positively and improve their confidence.
Melissa completed the Teacher Training Programme (New Learning Centre) in 1998 and was a Parenting Facilitator there for 6 years, running parenting skills classes, workshops and parent and family consultations. She founded the Parent Practice in 2004 and since then she has led hundreds of classes. She has a Certificate in Systemic Family Therapy (Birkbeck) and is trained in NLP, Group dynamics, Non-verbal communication and Supporting Separated Families. She is the first UK Gottman Certified Educator to lead Bringing Baby Home Workshops.
Wincel Kaufmann is a leader in sustainable investing, a former BlackRock executive and the founder of blueColab, a company focused on sustainable investing and capital advisory.
At BlackRock she served as Global Sustainable Investing Lead for the Private Markets, leading sustainability strategies across real estate, infrastructure, private equity and credit, shaping sustainable investment strategies for over $300 billion in assets. Her work supports the advancement of the low-carbon transition, mobilizing private capital for renewable energy and driving innovation in nature-based solutions.
She has authored white papers such as Strategic Opportunities in Sustainable Real Estate and contributed to the ‘State of European Pension Funds’ Net-Zero Transition’ report by Climate Policy Initiative.
Wincel is an Advisory Board Member of the Solar Impulse Foundation’s World Alliance for Efficient Solutions and serves as a judge for the Women of the Future Awards. She has spoken at prestigious forums, including New York Climate Week, the Milken Institute Global Investors Forum, and the World Economic Forum in Davos. With an MBA from INSEAD, a degree in Economics and certifications in ESG investing, she brings a global perspective to advancing sustainable finance.
She is a Swiss-Filipina who has lived in five countries and speaks three languages. Now living in Switzerland with her husband and their dog, she continues to advise and teach others how to navigate sustainable investing.
Gethin Roberts has over 15 years’ experience of developing new products in the medical, industrial, and consumer sectors. He started his career as an in-house design engineer, which gave him hands-on experience of designing products for manufacture. It also meant that he was involved in the various commercial aspects of developing new products.
He’s now Managing Director of ITERATE, a dynamic product design consultancy that blends creative and technical expertise to develop products from concepts all the way through to production. Gethin’s masters degree in Rapid Product Development taught him that many businesses are slow to respond to market demands; this led him to develop the Rapid Development Pathway for his business, which focuses on removing the barriers that stop new products getting to market.
As a design advisor to the Welsh Government’s SMART Productivity and Design Programme, Gethin has gained huge insights into an array of product sectors. From multi-million pound companies in the aerospace and medical industries, to small technology start-ups, he’s seen it all. He’s also lectured at the University of the West of England, supporting its product design faculty and helping students with design submissions to the annual Royal Society of Arts competition.
When not working with clients to help them develop plans for their product developments, poring over CAD drawings, or presenting his consultancy’s latest 3D printed prototypes, Gethin enjoys spending time with his wife and two daughters.
You can discover more about ITERATE at www.iterate-uk.com.
Kath Howard is a Change Agent, HR Leader, Occupational Psychologist, Facilitator, Coach and Organisation Development Consultant who believes the way HR is working isn’t working.
She founded HeartSparks, an OD and HR consultancy, with the purpose of bringing greater humanity into the workplace. With a background in employee engagement and talent development, her unique combination of insights from Occupational Psychology and Organisation Development allows her to bring about holistic, sustainable change for a wide range of clients including major brands and government departments.
Jacqui is called the ‘presentation doctor’ at INSEAD, the number one global business school (Financial Times, 2017), where she is a visiting professor teaching Executive Presence.
Previously a TV news anchor for the BBC, she has also presented news programmes for Sky News and ITV.
As a communication coach at Crystal Business Coaching, Jacqui has transformed Executive Presentations for over fifteen years. Her clients include CEOs of global corporations and staff at The Foreign Office.
This is Jacqui’s second book: her first, ‘Voices of Experience: The Professional’s Guide to Making Great Presentations’, was published by How To Books in 2005.
Mike Sergeant is an international communications coach and PR adviser to CEOs and business leaders. Through his company www.sergeantleaders.com he delivers media training, public speaking coaching and reputation advice. Mike began his career at CNN in 1996 before moving to Reuters, Sky News and the BBC – where he spent 13 years as a TV and radio correspondent covering business, politics and the Middle East. He lives in North London with his wife and two sons.
Helen Beedham is an organizational expert, speaker, and host of The Business of Being Brilliant podcast. Her first book The Future of Time: How ‘re-working’ time can help you boost productivity, diversity and wellbeing was named People, Culture & Management Book of the Year at the Business Book Awards, and she regularly comments on the future of work in national, business and HR press.
First and foremost, Jane Hardy is quite simply just a daughter who loves her Mum. For the last four years she has devoted herself to caring for a mother with moderate Dementia and Alzheimers. Four years ago her Mum, Beth, was sad, doubly incontinent, scared and very low. In Pink Slippers, Jane shares the laughter, tears and all the things she’s learned as she’s brought her back from the edge of disappearing altogether. Today Beth is happy, secure and loved. She enjoys her life and is having fun and her memory has vastly improved, as has her quality of life.
